Case Participates in Special Budget Mitigation Session

State Representative Jay Case (R-63) participated in a special legislative session held Tuesday. The legislature convened in order to take up a transportation lock box and budget mitigation plan, which ended up passing in both the House and Senate by party line vote.

Prior to the debate on the mitigation plan, the House of Representatives took action on three matters of business including state worker raises and fringe benefits be approved by the legislature, remove state pensions from collective bargaining and to adopt a constitutional spending cap to ward off looming state budget deficits. To no avail, Case, along with his Republican colleagues supported these measures.

The legislature then attempted to place a lock on the Special Transportation Fund (STF). Case voted against the “lock box” measure to be added to the STF in order to protect funding meant for the repair and construction of our roads, bridges and highways. However, the language of the bill does not necessarily require monies to be added to the STF, thus locking a box that has no contents.

“My main issue with the ‘lock box’ idea is that it does not guarantee that tax dollars put into the pot from the Northwest Corner will return to us. It’s important that taxpayers see a return on that investment, especially when we continually increase taxes,” remarked Case.

The deficit mitigation plan was the last order of business the House took up on Tuesday. The current budget slid immediately into a deficit from the start of FY ’16. Case, along with Republican Leadership, called for structural changes in the budget to be made in order for a long-term approach to minimize lapses in funding and to create cohesive budget policy. Such changes were not addressed, thus solidifying the Majority Party’s agenda to piece meal budget funding and effectively creating only a temporary fix to the ongoing budget crisis.

Case remarked on the budget mitigation plan, “The cuts to the Department of Developmental Services, which will ultimately affect individuals and their families who are faced with intellectual and developmental disabilities, are detrimental to our state’s youth and municipal special education budgets. Furthermore, cutting the vocational technical school program to the tune of $1.4 million will hurt the students from the Northwest Corner who are interested in being educated in a trade.”

Although the measure will temporarily balance the FY ’16-17 budget, there is a looming $358 million deficit for FY 2017.

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