Batt’s Blueprint Whittled Into Place Zero-Based Budget Effort Could Prove To Be Problem

As lawmakers move into the final weeks of a relatively conflict-free inaugural session for Republican Gov. Phil Batt, the new chief executive has to be pleased with the success of his economic program.

His property tax reduction is in place.

The cornerstone of his budget - a $664 million state aid package for public schools - is just a rubber-stamp vote away from his desk.

And while budget writers have occasionally strayed from the specifics of his bare-bones 1996 spending blueprint, their final draft strongly resembles what Batt handed to them 7 weeks ago.

It is a solid foundation for the lean-and-efficient philosophy Batt brought to the Capitol and wants to take even further next January when he unveils the results of his resurrection of zero-based budgeting.

His analysts will soon begin combing every state program in detail, looking for what he calls inefficiencies, waste and more effective alternatives.

“Each state program, and each position, will have to stand muster, if it is to survive,” Batt promised.

But while his success with a Legislature in overwhelming control of his party was impressive this winter, there were more than enough indicators of problems ahead for real assaults on specific programs.

“I’ve heard about zero-based budgeting for years,” says Melba Republican Atwell Parry, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

“That’s a program that’s easier said than done.”

Parry is a veteran of the easiersaidthandone wars over spending restraint and knows as well as anyone that for every buck in the budget there is someone out there who thinks it should be the state’s top priority.

Budget writers reversed themselves in two weeks on deletion of state support for production of the popular “Incredible Idaho” television program that they saw as an unjustified expenditure of public money on a commercial venture.

Pressure from veterans is forcing them to restore the job of administrator of Veterans Services that they maintained was needless bureaucracy.

Sheltered workshop operators again cajoled the panel into giving them more cash than the governor recommended to the program serving developmentally disabled.

And the deaf community successfully undermined Batt’s effort to eliminate the Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

“Continually we look at all these popular programs we have and we zap them,” Democratic Sen. Marguerite Mclaughlin of Orofino said. “Then we’re back two weeks later to reopen them.”

Even the governor had those kinds of problems in the budget he sent to lawmakers.

He not only recommended pumping another $150,000 into operation of agriculture’s Quality Assurance Laboratory in Twin Falls - which was never to need a taxpayer subsidy - but he recommended making the subsidy permanent.