House Budget Debate.. What's next? What can we do to win?

Dear Hecate

Our statewide coalition has taken your advice about our budget campaign since the beginning. We started last fall to brief all the appropriate administration line staff, Administration and Finance and finally the Governor’s staff and the Governor himself. House 2 included a modest increase in one of our line items—(not as much as we need to repair the program, so we’re asking the Legislature for the full amount) - and a new line item that was again, not as much as we needed, so we’ve been lobbying the Legislature to increase that one too.

We’ve built a team of opinion leaders in the House and Senate each of whom met with their Leadership last month to say we are on their list of budget priorities. With all the talk about budget cuts, we’ve been asking all of the Reps and Senators if they would be ready to offer amendments to our line items should they be underfunded, and they’ve all said they would either file an amendment on their own or sign on to somebody else’s amendment. (Except for some folks on the Leadership team, who say they can’t file amendments – what’s that about?)

House Ways and Means is going to report out their version of the budget next week. Have we missed anything? What do we do next?

Determined to Win

Dear Determined

If the HW&M Budget does come out next Wednesday, which is the week before April vacation, by the way, the House, in formal session sometimes that week, will pass a resolution that sets out the rules for offering amendments and the rules for floor debate itself. The House resolution will be quite specific about the form of amendments and the deadline by which the amendment must be filed – traditionally by 5:00 pm on Friday. There are also rules governing how Reps sign on in support of other Reps amendments as well as the deadline for doing that.


For the last couple of years it has gone as follows: the HW&M recommendations come out on the Wed before April vacation and is available on the web at http://www.mass.gov/legis/ by noon. By 4:00 in the afternoon the House Clerks office and House Ways and Means begin to receive and record amendments electronically from individual Reps and have set up a system for receiving and recording the names of Reps supporting each amendment.

You have two jobs during this time.
1. Analyze your line items, help your team of Reps to chose primary sponsors among themselves, and help their staff compose and file correctly worded amendments and file them ON TIME.
2. Direct your statewide network to call their own Reps to ask them to sign on to your amendments and to commit to attending the appropriate budget caucus ( more on budget caucus later) to advocate for your amendment. Please note you will not have a budget number for your amendment. Make up a title that includes the sponsor’s name. “Please sign on to Rep Sweetie’s amendment to establish a court of fairness.”

The House Ways and Means Chairman and staff spend their April vacations sorting out all the amendments by line item, preparing a summary of each amendment including the cost/savings and compiling a report sorted further by department and distributing that report to the Members. That list is available to the public via the House Clerks office and at some point is put on the House Budget website. At some point during April vacation, the HW&M Chair and staff meet with HW&M Members and the Leadership to begin drafting “consolidated amendments” by department or agency which will be presented in a budget caucus (more on budget caucus later ) during the House floor debate.

1. Continue with job two above.
2. Get out the briefing packages you used for meetings with House Ways and Means staff, update them if necessary and drop off the package to your sponsors and to the staff. You probably won’t be able to get into meet with staff during vacation week, but you should make yourself available for any questions.
3. Check out the final amendment list to identify any amendments that you consider dangerous to your program and consult with your supporters to devise a strategy to make sure they do not survive the budget process.

House floor debate will open with a tough times, tough decisions speech by the Chair of Ways and Means, followed by the Minority party moving debate on some specific budget line items and some “off budget” items like tax cuts, spending caps and debate rules. All of that might take up a whole day and a half. Let’s just say attendance drops off a little bit. At some point the presiding officer will announce “Members interested in discussing the consolidated amendment for the Department of (Whatever) will be meeting in 10 minutes in room 342. And the House goes in recess while some of the Members go into room 342 for a budget caucus on this particular agency. Once in budget caucus the HW&M Chair or Vice Chair, W&M staff, often the Chair of the Committee with expertise on the agency reviews the consolidated amendment – often 5 to 10 pages of single spaced text listing the text of some of the amendments filed earlier, and some amendments that were not filed earlier. Reps who are able to find their own amendments in the consolidate amendment are happy, and Reps who are not able to find their amendments are not, and so starts the most important part of the House Budget debate. The budget caucus might last 1 hour, might last two hours, might be recessed for further consultation. The governing rule for budget caucuses is “S/he who pays attention and stays till the end of the caucus wins something.“ Reps confer with each other, confer with the W&M staff, appeal in private conversation with the Chair or Vice Chair, speak up on behalf of their amendment, speak up against the inclusion of another amendment, form mini caucuses outside room 342, leave the caucus to confer with the Leadership, or entreat their colleagues to join them in the caucus and so on. Eventually the Chair declares the close of the caucus and unhappy Reps are permitted to “pull” their amendments for later debate on the floor. These announcements go on every few hours, and yes sometimes there are two caucuses going on at the same time, and the House Chamber itself it quiet.

Your job is to monitor the House session all the time and prepare to jump up when you hear the announcement of the budget caucus dealing with the department/agency funded by the line items affected by your amendments. Call out your supporters from the floor, go to their offices, check out the lunch room, call them on their cell phones, and ask them, beg them to get into the caucus to fight for your amendments. Hand them another set of briefing papers and station yourself at the ropes outside the House Chamber. If you have a phone tree set up this is the time to trigger calls to your network to call their Reps and tell them you are hoping they are in the caucus fighting for our amendments. Meanwhile you are still waiting out on the ropes with about 25 other lobbyists. Sometimes you can recruit a staff person to go in and find out what’s going on, sometimes one of your supporters will come out to ask a question. Sooner or later one of your supporters will come out of the caucus and say we got it, we got part of it, we got promise for a later supplemental, we didn’t get it. Your sponsor might say, I’m going to pull the amendment and debate it on the floor, we won’t win, but it’s important to make a point.

After the close of the caucus the amended consolidated amendment is copied for all the Members, distributed on House Floor and after a review of the consolidated amendment by the Chair, Vice Chair or the Committee Chair who presided over the caucus, various Reps stand up to say everything from this is wonderful compromise to I’m really disappointed, but times are tough to I’m really angry and am going to vote no and offer my amendment separately.

Your job is to say thank you for being there and fighting for us whether they won something or not, and to call your network to say the same thing to their own Reps. Now take your copy of the consolidated amendment and go over it carefully to spot any technical errors and share them with your sponsors. This lively caucus process almost guarantees that there will be typos and punctuation mistakes that can be helpful or devastating to your program, and HW&M will be looking for stuff that needs to be fixed in a very last amendment before budget debate ends. Of course thatlast amendment is doomed to have a couple of mistakes that can be only resolved in conference.

PS Re: Leadership not filing amendments. What’s that about?

It’s about the fact that it’s their budget, that’s what it’s about.

What do we have to do to get our bill to an up or down vote before the budget?

Dear Hecate:

I was really irritated to hear that the Speaker was going to have a an "up or down" vote on the Governor's Casino bill before the House began it's debate on the budget. As I understand it that means the bill will have it's hearing at the Joint Committee on Economic Development & Technical Development, get reported out favorably to House Ways and Means Committe and then get reported out of Ways and Means favorably before it can go to the House Floor for a vote. All in a few weeks.

Now our bill, which by the way, will provide living wages for many more than 30,000 people, has been around for a long time, had it's hearing before the joint committee and was reported favorably to House Ways and Means a month ago. We've had many meetings with the appropriate staff and Members of Ways and Means to brief them on the facts and we have a majority of Reps and Senators committed to vote for us.
I know it's not first come first serve, but please explain.

Irritated

Dear Irritated,

Looks like you're doing your homework, and it is early in a two year session. As for the Governor cutting ahead, there is not much to explain, other than Governors often are granted early consideration as a courtesy.

What we want our government to do and how we pay for it.

Dear Hecate:

I just wanted to thank you for advising us to add a "revenue message" as we lobbied our state legislators for our budget line item this winter. The best part was going in with some of our allies who were lobbying their related budget line item and being able to say -- "We are tired of competing with each other for limited resources and asking you to make "tough choices" between us. We know there is a revenue shortfall and we know you and your colleagues will have to find some new revuenues to be able to keep our programs going and we know that may mean additional taxes. We are asking you is to work with your colleagues to make sure that those taxes are fair, adequate and a stable source of income to pay for the kind of government we want. Every single one of the people we talked to said it was about time they heard this message, and wished more advocates were saying the same thing.

Not afraid to talk Taxes

Dear Not Afraid,

You are very welcome. Nice to know it's working. Now all we have to do is get more people on this little straight talk express.

Our Earmark in the Budget.

Dear Hecate

Why are budget earmarks a dirty word? Our little program is targeted to a very specific population in our community, and our not-so-very-powerful Rep has been able to protect us every year in the budget by "earmarking" some funds for us in the line item that funds programs like ours. In fact the line item is full of earmarks for other programs like ours from all over the state. We all still go through the RFP process, fill out all the forms and fill out all the reports justifying every single penny. We're all subject to audits, we all must make sure our programs meet state standards and follow regulations. We just don't have to compete with each other. I don't get it.

Good guy provider

Dear Good Guy,

Do not spend another second worrying about what anybody else thinks about earmarks. Get to work with your not so powerful Rep and make sure he gets your earmark in his list of priorites to Chairman DeLeo. As you may already know, the Chairman has sent out a letter to all Reps asking them for a letter listing their individual priorities by Feb 11. The letter also asks each Rep to schedule a meeting with the Chairman to justify the list. Now, stop reading this and star putting together the briefing material for your Rep.

What we want our government to do and how we pay for it.

Dear Hecate

Please explain the recent announcements from the Governor's office about their upcoming budget to be released on the 23rd. The initiatives seem pretty well thought out and reasonable to me (especially the one investing in our state parks), but in the light of a well know $ 1 billion structural imbalance, why doesn't he explain how these new initiatives are going to be paid for? It seems to me that the essential task for concerned citizens is to participate in the debate about what we want our state government to do (like advocating for cleaning up the parks) but also be able to participate in the debate about how we're going to pay for it.

Just Asking



Dear Just Asking

I'm sure you've noticed that every press story about every initiative announcement includes a quote or three from a legislative leader or a "state house observer" asking the same question. And the answer will come to everyone on the 23rd or sooner. Will these new initiatives be funded by going into the state's 2.3 billion dollar rainy day fund, or by cutting other programs somewhere else, or from his revenue proposals (gambling and corporate loophole proposals) even if they haven't passed the legislature yet? You’ll find out soon enough. Let me repeat by the way, it’s perfectly legal and appropriate for the Administration to submit an annual budget estimating income from various sources even if they haven’t passed the legislature yet. Of course such a move might really irritate everyone opposed to those revenue sources, but all they have to do is continue their fight in the legislature.

BTW your description of the essential task for concerned citizens is right, excuse me, perfect.

The Massachusetts Budget Process.....What's happening?

Dear Hecate

Our group got the list of budget analysts in the Secretary of Administration and Finance who are developing the Administration's FY 09 Budget from the Public Policy Institute's September Insider Budget Briefing. We've met with a really nice brainiac budget analyst who handles the account that funds our program in November and she told us that we were a priority for the Governor, but warned us that there was a structural budget deficit and it was unlikely we would get what we were asking for. Now we read in the paper every day that the structural deficit is at least 1 billion dollars (on a 30 billion dollar budget) and the Governor may include some revenue options (gaming and closing corporate loopholes) that haven't passed the legislature yet. I thought our state, unlike the federal government had to have a balanced budget?

Baffled in Bridgewater

Dear Baffled,

It really is pretty simple. All of those young brainiacs in the Fiscal affairs Division of the Administration and Finance (who appear younger every year to Hecate) have been burning the midnight oil for weeks doing a fact based analysis of each program and developing a so-called "maintenance" budget for every single state agency.

The Secretary of Administration and Finance adds up all the maintenance budgets and compares that sum to another list of estimated revenues from various taxes and fees submitted by another set of brainiacs and if the total of the maintenance budgets is bigger than the estimated revenues it's called a structural deficit. Now there are a couple of straight forward ways to address a structural deficit that are similar to what every family does, .......cut expenses (maybe not your program, but somebody elses), draw down various "rainey day funds" (your kids college or your retirement savings accounts), or simply plan on some additional revenue streams (a 2nd or 3rd job).

The Governor will be submitting a budget on January 23 that is based on estimated expenses and revenues. First the House and then the Senate will debate the Governor's proposals and come up with their own proposals to solve the structural deficit by either by cutting programs, going into savings or passing the Governor's suggestions for revenue generating measures like gambling, closing corporate loopholes. And yes of course they could come up with their own revenue generating measures. At any rate in the end the Governor has a constitutional obligation to sign a balanced budget.

All of this back and forth can appear to get complex and complicated with at least a dozen ways to explain the same accounting method. You might find it helpful to check out the Mass Budget and Policy Center’s Budget Monitors for straightforward – just - the - facts analysis of the Budget process.