Eric Bradner of the Evansville Courier Press has good coverage of the special session as the budget works its way through Senate. The budget bill underwent second reading in the Senate yesterday. The bill is expected to be adopted today, the House will dissent to the changes, and it will be ready for conference committee. According to Mr. Bradner, the Senate proposal is closer to the proposal previously put forward by the Governor but it has concessions to the House Democrats, particularly with respect to education spending.
I particularly liked the history lesson tucked away in the article about Governor Oliver Morton (“He brought us salt” as my old boss used to say):
The only time Indiana hasn’t had a budget was in the 1860s during the Civil War era. Republican Gov. Oliver Morton, a staunch ally of President Abraham Lincoln, regarded Democrats as confederate sympathizers and feared the party would try to overthrow him and join with Confederate secession efforts.
When the Democratic-led General Assembly responded to several unconstitutional moves by attempting to weaken Morton’s control, the governor had his party’s legislators flee the Capitol to prevent the General Assembly from attaining a quorum and being able to conduct business.
Morton raised private funds to finance state government and the war effort for two years, without the General Assembly’s approval.
The inclusion of this tidbit in the article about the budget reminds me of a comment my assistant made of me. “Around Doug, you never know when a history lesson is going to break out.”
Gee, it’s good to know there’s a newspaper somewhere in the state covering the budget issue in depth. You’d hardly know there’s anything going on by reading the worthless Indianapolis Star. Kind of an important issue here, but the Star seems much more worried about who the Pacers are going to draft…
Hi Doug–For years I’ve been saying that Indiana hasn’t started a fiscal year without a budget since the Civil War, but last week at the State House someone gave me an article from the Indiana Law Journal dated March 1933 (by Frank G. Bates). It said that the legislature adjourned without passing a budget in 1873, and again in 1887. Apparently they muddled through using a combination of balances and borrowing, and a State Supreme Court ruling in 1889 (Hovey v. Foster) approved the use of debt. The author of the article disagreed, writing that the court had rationalized its decision “with some violence to logic and the plain meaning of words.” I’ve still got a lot to learn about Indiana government, I guess. We all may be learning a lot in the next couple of weeks.
I’m not sure about “everybody’s favorite economist,” by the way. There was a website comment on the Muncie newspaper article about my local income tax talk there last week that said “Digit-boy should go back to Purdue and count beans.” –Larry