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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Republicans Gaveth, Now Taketh Away Batt Wants To Trim Down Government His Own Party Built

Associated Press

Republican Gov. Phil Batt’s commitment to make state government leaner, more efficient and less intrusive leaves the largest GOP legislative majority in generations with a conundrum.

For all the campaign railing against big government, wasteful spending and bloated payrolls, GOP lawmakers will be asked by Batt to begin undoing the government their own votes built up over the past 35 years.

“I certainly agree that the Republicans have set the budgets in the past, they’ve been in control in both the House and Senate,” conservative Senate Finance Chairman Atwell Parry, R-Melba, concedes. “Now comes the reality to see if we can really cut.”

Unlike the past 24 years, dominated by the strong hand of Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus, GOP legislative leaders believe the leopard will change its spots in 1995 with a Republican governor at the helm.

“The public is really expecting it,” Parry said. “And if we don’t do it, I can see in a couple of years that it can flip-flop and Democrats will be in control.”

History would suggest otherwise. But Batt, while keeping the details of his own budget plan for 1995-1996 close to his vest, has left no doubt he plans to give Idahoans a more frugal government than his Democratic predecessors did.

Some, however, like Sen. Marguerite McLaughlin, the senior Democrat on the House-Senate budget-writing committee, and Rep. Kathleen Gurnsey, the moderate GOP chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, have doubts about the fiscal intestinal fortitude of the new governor’s Republican allies.

“The only budget that came out of there with any growth in it they voted for,” McLaughlin said. “So what are they talking about? It’s their own government they’re talking about.”

And Gurnsey questions just how much excessive spending there is to begin with. The budget may have increased significantly in recent years, but she sees that as more a result of Idaho’s dramatic population growth - one of the nation’s fastest - and the continued reduction of federal support in certain areas than legislative largesse. Nearly threequarters of general tax spending, she points out, goes for education and the prison system, meaning programs for the poor could well be cut.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the spending blueprint engineered for Batt by former conservative state Sen. Dean Van Engelen, who put time in on the budget committee himself, will be a frugal one. There will be spending increases to cover campaign promises in the area of juvenile justice and prisons, but Batt told lawmakers shortly after his Nov. 8 victory that he hoped to offset those by slowing program expansion in other areas so that overall government growth is checked.

It is a view that has been espoused by Parry and many other Republicans over the years, but one that is essentially discarded when the state has been flush and the chance to funnel cash to home-district programs becomes more than even some conservatives can resist.

That same situation exists now. Under a revised state law, the basic state operating budget for the year that begins July 1 cannot exceed $1.36 billion, about $90 million more than will be spent this year.

Agencies say they need that much just to keep operating as they have been this year. But lawmakers and Batt administration officials have long believed agencies ask for more than they need.