How is borrowing and consolidating power "small government conservatism"?

Longtime Wisconsin Capitol reporter Steven Walters has a good summary in Urban Milwaukee regarding Gov. Walker’s plans for transportation funding in this budget, and he particularly focuses in on Walker’s proposal to keep putting highway funding on the state’s credit card.

The governor defends his request to borrow $1.3-billion more for transportation, and another $220 million for a new downtown Milwaukee Bucks arena, by saying his overall budget would borrow less than any budget in the last 10 years. It’s also important to note that Walker’s $1.3-billion bonding request includes every important statewide project – all of which are championed by local legislators, chambers of commerce and other civic groups – and increases aids to local governments.

The official budget summary puts it this way: "This includes timely investments to rebuild the Zoo Interchange, as well as the Hoan and Stillwater bridges. The governor also recommends enumeration of the I94 East/West project [west of Miller Park] to allow DOT to initiate substantive work on the project. The budget also includes $836.1 million over the biennium to keep major highway projects on schedule, such as the widening of I39/90," between Madison and the Illinois border.

What isn’t in that budget summary: The current two-year budget borrows $991 million for transportation programs, so the new proposal would borrow $1.3 billion more. It would require, by the 2016-17 budget, 22.8 percent of all state transportation taxes to go to paying off bonds, instead of for highway and bridge construction and maintenance.

The budget sends this hardball message to Republican legislative leaders and transportation special-interest groups: “If you don’t like my plan to borrow $1.3 billion, you raise taxes and fees – or you pick the major highway projects that will be delayed. And then you – and not me – get the blame for doing anything but borrowing $1.3 billion.”

So Walker passes off the duty of figuring out how to be more responsible with funding these road and highway projects to the Legislature while he galavants across the country. What an “Unintimidated” guy.

Walters doesn’t even mention the other sizable amount of can-kicking Walker pulls in this budget, the $1.5 billion in debt refinancing that is requested, continuing a trend that the Governor has pulled in all 4+ years that he has been in office, and bringing the total that the state can refinance to nearly $5.3 billion.

What’s also interesting about these borrowing provisions is that Walker wants to remove a level of oversight from his administration when it comes time to ask for more money from the debt markets, and allow his administration to oversee and pay for all project without any checks on that power. Mike Ivey of the Capital Times had an article mentioning this today, and like many other moves in this budget, it centralizes power with the Governor.

Under the Walker budget, the Building Commission would no longer meet in order to approve projects or the borrowing to make them happen. The commission — which by statute includes members of both political parties and is chaired by the governor — has traditionally met monthly.

Instead, the commission would operate under what the budget proposal calls a “passive review process” where items are considered approved unless a majority of Building Commission members request a meeting.

There is also this note from Page 42 of the budget bill.

Also under this bill, at the first meeting of the Building Commission following the enactment of the biennial budget act, the Building Commission may 1) authorize DOA (the Wisconsin Department of Administration) to contract certain public debt in an amount not to exceed the amount that the Building Commission is authorized to contract; 2) release an amount not to exceed the amount of state building trust fund moneys to DOA for planning for enumerated projects; and 3) authorize DOA to issue revenue−obligation refunding obligations. Also, after this first meeting of the Building Commission, DOA must report quarterly to the Building Commission regarding the status of projects under the state building program.

Under current law DOA may prepare a request for the issuance of operating notes and may submit the request to the Building Commission. The request must be signed by the governor and the secretary of administration and is subject to review by JCF [Joint Committee on Finance].

Under this bill, DOA is not required to submit a request for the issuance of operating notes to the Building Commission. Instead, DOA may prepare an authorizing certification for the issuance of operating notes that must be signed by the secretary, must be transmitted to the governor, and is subject to review by JCF.

In other words, if the state is running out of money to pay its bills and has to borrow for it, this seems to allow the Walker Administration to get the money without asking the full Legislature if this is OK, or if they should do other methods to come up with the funds (like cutting programs or delaying payments or raise taxes). Seems like quite the power-grab to stick into the budget for a “small government” guy, doesn’t it?

You have to think some of Walker’s GOP rivals for the 2016 nomination will bring up that Scotty is centralizing power into his inner circle by removing some of this oversight over borrowing and budget practices. And you also can’t help but notice that Walker uses the same Dubya-like “don’t tax but still spend” mentality that dropped this country into the $1 trillion+ deficit that greeted President Obama during the Great Recession (leading the increased overall debt that GOPs cry crocodile tears over but disavow any role in causing).

And once Walker’s rivals bring it up (or someone else does. HINT TO THE DPW!), you can bet that will encourage media will also start looking into Walker’s dismal record on budgeting, and they will find that Scotty is anything but the “fiscal conservative” he claims to be.