This is news. This summer, the state House Finance Committee will be working.
Republicans are calling it “unprecedented,” and a legislative veteran first elected 34 years ago said it was “unheard of.”
The plan, according to the House Finance Committee chairwoman, Rep. Sylvia Luke, is to assign the 16 committee members different state departments and ask them to review or at least become conversant with the departments’ special funds and how they relate to the budget.
During the Legislature’s regular session, the House and Senate budget committees listened to testimony from the department heads. In past years, some of the questions from committee members only showed how little preparation or simple advance reading they did.
So Luke’s idea may fill some of the vacuum.
Compared to bills about animal cruelty or banning GMOs, the detail work with budget items rarely gets play.
Going line by line through the Agriculture Department’s spreadsheet listing of the weights and measure branch will set no hearts racing, but if you did your homework and know there is only one person testing all the gas pumps in the state, it might make a difference to pay attention.
The big item for Luke’s summer session is the state’s 570 special funds. Special funds are carved out of the budget and can be used only for a niche purpose. Almost every year, new special funds are created to screen off more and more state money.
Luke’s committee, working with the legislative auditor, is going through the funds, one by one, asking if the money is still needed for the specified special program or if it can be tossed back into the general fund in competition with all other state programs.
“It is a huge task,” said Luke, who says she is concerned about the “proliferation of special funds.”
Once money goes into a special fund, critics complain, it cannot be used for any other purpose.
In simple terms, it is like your household budget.
For instance, if your spouse dedicates $200 a month to the craft beer fund and the rent fund is empty, it might be time for a realignment of priorities.
Interestingly, Luke is asking committee members to do their research independently without guidance from the state departments. This is not a team sport with the administration on the state Capitol’s fifth floor.
“The administration has its role in building its budget,” Luke said.
“They have their role; the Legislature has a different role so, in as much as possible, we want to use the department as a resource, but I am encouraging the member to be independent of the departments and do their own fact finding,” Luke said.
Other projects Luke has for her committee include querying the Education Department about how it will make up the funds used for programs now expending “Race to the Top” federal funds that will eventually be depleted.
She also wants more information on money devoted to vacant state positions that are still carried on the budget and used for different purposes.
Democratic Rep. Bert Kobayashi, who served 16 years in the state House and Senate from 1978 to 1994 before being re-elected to the House last year, said this is all for the good.
“The Legislature has never done systematic interim work and there is much to do,” Kobayashi said.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
