Governor Defends His Lean Education Proposals

Republican Gov. Phil Batt defended his spending proposals for education on Monday, telling vocational education leaders his budget contains the kind of cash that proves it is his top priority.

“While it’s not a lavish budget at all, it’s certainly not cutting anything,” Batt said.

“In fact, in the area of education, the budget recommendations represent sufficient amounts … to put out a good education product.”

Obviously frustrated by the criticism engendered by his relatively skimpy 1996 spending blueprint, Batt said as a parent the education of his children was always his highest priority.

“I have not changed that priority,” he said. “The difference is that I am aware that my actions have the potential to affect all of Idaho’s children.”

As Batt spoke at a luncheon just a block from the Capitol, legislative budget writers were preparing to fashion a new budget for the year that begins in July that leaves them almost no room to maneuver.

They are trying to pass a package that stays within the limited revenues left after passage of last week’s $40 million property tax reduction plan, but still attracts the votes necessary to pass.

“Our work is cut out for us to keep a very lean budget,” Senate Finance Chairman Atwell Parry, R-Melba, told his colleagues on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, which is co-chaired by House Appropriations Chairman Kathleen Gurnsey, R-Boise.

“There’s hardly a day goes by that the members of this committee approach me wanting $100,000, $200,000, $1 million for this program or that,” Parry said.

Passage of the governor’s tax-cut plan has left the panel little alternative to the Batt budget that a number of its members are not comfortable with.

And that queasiness was clear again on Monday as several members of the conservative bloc tried to keep alive consideration of a $1.6 million plan to recharge the eastern sector of the Snake River Plain Aquifer over the governor’s opposition.

Led by Parry, the governor’s supporters on the committee headed off that effort, but only by a 9-8 vote. That vote also killed consideration of $2.5 million to cover underestimates of the cost for two major building projects at Idaho State University and Eastern Idaho Technical College.

But much of the uneasiness on the budget panel centers on the new governor’s recommendations for public, higher and vocational education. Members were again casting about for pools of cash to augment Batt’s spending levels.

The governor told vo-tech leaders on Monday that his proposals include the cash needed to handle enrollments and other expenses.

But educators have advised budget writers that the administration plan provides little more than the money needed to give teachers and other employees the 5 percent pay raise Batt has recommended for all government workers.

In public education, in fact, the administration’s budget analyst told the Senate Education Committee that the governor would not specifically include in his package for public schools a directive that teachers receive a 5 percent pay raise.