Budget deal "flawed" Meacham says

OKLAHOMA CITY — An omnibus budget bill, quickly ushered through both houses of the Legislature this week, is “very flawed” and a good portion of it should be vetoed, the governor’s chief budget negotiator said Thursday.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said State Treasurer Scott Meacham, “where a deal just sorta’ emerged from the back room and then passed both bodies of the Legislature within a week.”

Meacham, Gov. Brad Henry’s Cabinet secretary for revenue and finance — and Henry’s chief budget negotiator — wasn’t allowed to participate in the House-Senate budget meetings which created the bill.

And that, he said, created problems.

“This is the type of product you get when three people get together behind closed doors and do a deal,” he said. “There’s a reason why the subcommittees exist. There’s a reason why we go through the appropriation process. There’s a reason you work together. You don’t get extra points for doing it fast, but for doing it right.”

And, so far, Meacham said, the Legislature gets very few points.

“The whole time we’ve been here, there’s always been this idea that the Legislature writes the budget and the governor’s job is to sign off on it,” he said. “I don’t think lawmakers fully understand that state government is a three-legged stool. It makes a lot more sense to participate from the outset.”

As it’s currently written, Meacham said the budget — contained in House Bill 1234 — is very flawed. So flawed, he said, that it funds some programs which no longer exist, doesn’t fully pay for last year’s $3,000 pay increase for teachers and only gives the Department of Corrections enough supplemental revenue to operate for another 30 days.

“I think the taxpayers expect the Legislature to get up here and work,” he said. “They want lawmakers to take the time to get things done right. This bill doesn’t do that.”

Meacham said the bill’s flaws include:

• Not providing enough funds for school districts to fund last year’s teacher pay increase for those teachers who have a portion of their salaries funded by federal money — such as special education teachers. “That’s at least an $8 million problem,” he said.

• Not annualizing the pay increase so it includes teachers hired in 2007. “By the time schools would get their money, they would actually see a cut in their operations budget,” he said.

• Funding programs which have previously been eliminated. “Lawmakers put in money for the Stars program. But that program doesn’t exist any more.”

• Funding the state’s higher education system at a ‘stand-still’ level which would result in “big tuition increases.”

• Only providing the state Department of Corrections about $10 million when they need $40 million. “They need $40 million for operations to the end of the fiscal year,” he said. “But the legislature only provided them $10 million. That will only keep them operating for about 30 days.”

• Funding a pay increase for correctional officers twice — in the corrections budget and in the general appropriations budget.

But Meacham saved his harshest criticism for a $1 million appropriation to the Legislature’s joint staff, the Legislative Service Bureau.

“They (lawmakers) gave the Legislative Service Bureau $1 million to go and contract with somebody — and we don’t know who — to find out how much we should fund corrections,” he said. “Both the House and Senate have fiscal policy analysts, but instead they want to contract with someone else to find out how much money to appropriate to DOC.”

“Funding corrections isn’t hard,” he said. “It’s a function of the number of contract beds you’re gonna have to pay for through the end of the year, plus salaries you’re gonna have to pay for through the end of year. It’s funny, we’re able to figure out how much money they need, I don’t understand why they can’t. It’s not that hard.”

Because of the bill’s flaws, Meacham said he would ask Gov. Henry to use a line-item veto on “a majority” of the proposal and only endorse the bill’s supplemental appropriations.

“I think it’s important that Gov. Henry sign the supplemental section,” he said. “But he should take a hard look at vetoing all, or a part of the 2008 budget.”

Henry, Meacham said, almost needs to veto the whole general appropriation budget just to force lawmakers to start over. “Why not just run the supplemental bill,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time to do the general appropriations measure.”

That idea probably won’t sit well with legislative leaders.

In a statement issued Thursday, Sen. Glen Coffee, the Senate’s co-president pro tempore, praised the proposal, calling it “historic.”

“The Legislature has made history by reaching the earliest agreement on the state budget since 1972,” Coffee said. “We have worked very hard to develop this carefully balanced bipartisan budget agreement. When Gov. Henry returns we are confident he will like what he sees in this historic agreement.”

The Senate’s Democratic leader, Mike Morgan, agreed.

“This measure represents the earliest budget agreement in more than three decades. For the first time, it will allow us to meet the ‘fund education first’ deadline we established in 2003,” he said. “Most importantly, the budget agreement will allow state agencies to continue to provide the services Oklahomans count on every day. It also makes good on all of the Legislature’s existing obligations.”

Meacham disagreed.

“We didn’t even get the bill until Monday afternoon,” he said. “And every day we find new problems. The bill is very flawed; the question is whether it is so flawed that you can give it life support and get it fixed, or whether it needs to die and start over — but that’s the governor’s decision.”