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Budget Talks Continue
By Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance staff | June 22, 2017
From WisPolitics.com … (late yesterday)
GOP legislative leaders are still at an impasse on the transportation budget, although they’re confident they will strike a deal soon on K-12 education.
GOP leg leaders met yesterday as well as this afternoon.
Still, Joint Finance Committee Co-chair John Nygren said it would be a “challenge” to wrap up the budget by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
Nygren, R-Marinette, told reporters during the Assembly session this afternoon that the committee is not meeting tomorrow, but he expects budget negotiations to continue then.
Earlier today, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, meanwhile, noted he’d prefer to spend this week negotiating and finding “common ground” in order to reach a consensus before holding more committee hearings.
And Nygren said he’s hopeful the education budget could be completed by next week.
“I think we’ve made progress on education to the point where I think we can come to an agreement fairly quickly,” he told reporters today. “It’s going to come down, I believe, to transportation being the main stumbling block for us moving forward.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said yesterday’s closed door discussions, which included Vos, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, members of the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau and JFC co-chairs Nygren and Sen. Alberta Darling, didn’t stray from education.
“We have a lot left just to figure out on education,” said Vos, R-Rochester. “Do we pause to talk about transportation?”
On transportation, Nygren said the Senate GOP supports bonding at levels higher than what Gov. Scott Walker has proposed, a position Assembly Republicans are “solidly against,” as Vos called for a long-term transportation solution.
“Bonding is nothing more than a Band-Aid to us,” Vos said.
Fitzgerald spokeswoman Myranda Tanck said Fitzgerald’s advocating for $850 million in bonding for transportation, $350 million more than Walker proposed.
Vos also called Rep. Amy Loudenbeck’s proposal to charge a per-mile fee on heavy trucks a “short term solution,” although he said he was still open to it, along with other ideas. Still, he noted that it hasn’t yet been discussed by the group.
See Wisconsin State Journal coverage here.
See Wisconsin Public Radio coverage here.
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