Lawmakers prefer working without a safety net

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June 25, 2009

Anonymous The Kokomo Tribune Thu Jun 25, 2009, 06:05 PM EDT

House Democrats say they won’t even consider a Republican proposal to pass a contingency plan to keep state government operating in case budget negotiations come up short.

Such a plan, they say, would take the pressure off lawmakers to actually come up with a new budget.

They might be right about that. After all, facing the prospect of state government grinding to a screeching halt would seem to give lawmakers adequate incentive to find middle ground.

But what if it doesn’t? What if even the embarrassment of having state police forced to park their cars isn’t enough to get Republicans and Democrats to sit down together and work out a budget they can all live with?

This is no mere theory.

The Legislative Services Agency, the General Assembly’s research arm, says that without a budget, most of state government would stop running.

Indiana’s 25 state parks and dozens of campgrounds could close at the height of vacation season. Money to pay 31,000 full-time state employees could dry up. Folks needing to renew their drivers licenses or conduct other in-person transactions with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles might be out of luck, and many schools might be forced to borrow money to keep summer programs running.

Frankly, public opinion ought to be enough to spur an agreement.

With the price of this special session running at least $12,000 a day, few lawmakers will have trouble finding constituents saying it’s time to come to some agreement and get out of Indianapolis.

And that impatience will only get worse if a deadlock really leads to a shutdown of state government.

Of course, it has almost never come to that. Gov. Oliver Morton had to raise private funds to keep state government going for two years in the 1860s, but other than that, lawmakers have always managed to pass a budget ahead of the deadline.

Here’s hoping they manage it again this year.

– Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, and Kokomo Tribune

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