Legislature sends state budget bill to Gov. Walker
By Adam Korbitz, Government
Relations Coordinator, State Bar of Wisconsin
June 17, 2011 – The Legislature has finished its work on the
proposed 2011-13 biennial state budget, sending the bill to Gov. Scott
Walker for his review.
Gov. Walker is expected to sign the bill, along with any vetoes, by the
end of the current biennium on June 30, 2011.
The state Senate gave the bill final passage on Thursday, June 16,
2011, on a 19-14 party-line vote, a day after the Assembly passed it on
a 60-38
vote that was also along party lines. Legislative leaders introduced
the budget bill, Assembly
Bill 40, at Gov. Walker’s request in March 2011.
While posing difficult challenges to Wisconsin’s justice system,
the budget bill does contain some initiatives the State Bar of Wisconsin
supports. The budget bill also contains several provisions that the
State Bar opposes, such as the elimination of all state funding for
indigent civil legal needs and the elimination of public financing for
Wisconsin Supreme Court campaigns.
The good
When the previous Legislature enacted
2009 Wisconsin Act
164, which expanded financial eligibility for public defender
representation from the antiquated 1987 Aid to Families With Dependent
Children limits to current W-2 limits, it also authorized 45 new
SPD staff positions to handle the anticipated increased caseload. The
budget bill fully funds those new positions, which under Act 164 are
created effective June 19, 2011. However, as passed by the Legislature,
the budget bill also locks
in SPD financial eligibility limits to 2011 W-2 limits and does not
index them for future W-2 increases, as originally provided in Act
164.
In addition, the budget bill proposes increased funding to help fill
the hole in the perennially underfunded SPD private bar appropriation,
which has repeatedly run out of money during the first half of
odd-numbered years. The budget bill increases the private bar
appropriation by $3.6 million, which will not cover the entire shortfall
in the next biennium.
The State Bar’s Board of Governors has long-standing public
policy positions in favor of both expanded SPD eligibility standards and
adequate compensation of private bar attorneys who take SPD cases.
The budget as passed by the Legislature also extensively
modifies a provision Gov. Walker originally proposed to provide pay
progression for assistant district attorneys (ADAs). Gov. Walker had
proposed using $1 million annually from the justice information
surcharge to fund a pay progression plan worked out by district
attorneys and the Office of State Employment Relations (OSER).
The Legislature eliminated this plan and proposed instead that during
the 2011-13 biennium, district attorneys would retain the base funding
for ADAs who have retired. Under the budget bill, the difference between
the salaries of attorneys who retire and the salaries of new attorneys
who replace them will be used to fund a pay progression plan.
The plan can use savings from retirements that occurred on or after
Jan. 1, 2011. The union representing the ADAs, the Association of State
Prosecutors, and OSER is to submit a pay progression plan to the
Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee by Sept. 30, 2011.
The State Bar’s Board of Governors supports a proposal to provide
increased compensation to ADAs. For years, district attorney offices
have incurred turnover from ADAs who leave public service due to low
compensation rates. The lack of pay progression causes strain on
district attorney offices when they are forced to replace and train new
ADAs.
Unfortunately, the proposed state budget does not contain a similar
compensation provision for SPD staff attorneys. As President Jim Boll
recently stated,
the State Bar supports adequate funding for both prosecutors and public
defenders.
The budget bill also increases biennial funding to reimburse counties
for court interpreter services by $366,700. The State Bar supports the
continued funding of the court interpreter program.
The bad
Unfortunately, the budget bill completely eliminates funding for two
initiatives the State Bar also strongly supports, indigent civil
legal needs and data collection to study the extent of racial
profiling in Wisconsin.
The Legislature first provided
funding for civil legal services for low-income individuals in the
2007-09 state budget when it included $1 million for that purpose, a
move long-supported
by the State Bar. A study released by the State Bar in March 2007
(Bridging
the Justice Gap: Wisconsin’s Unmet Legal Needs) showed
that more than 500,000 state residents routinely cope with evictions,
divorces, and other critical legal issues on their own.
The state budget for the current 2009-11 biennium, which ends on June
30, 2011, significantly boosted
state funding for indigent civil legal needs by adding $4 to the justice
information fee and designating that money be used to provide grant
funding for civil legal services through the Wisconsin Trust Account
Foundation, Inc. (WisTAF).
The budget bill also eliminates funding for data collection and
analysis to study the extent of racial profiling in Wisconsin. The
Legislature has also passed separate
legislation to eliminate the study of racial profiling, which is
awaiting the governor’s signature. The State Bar supports measures
to study the extent of racial profiling in Wisconsin and opposes efforts
to eliminate funding for the study.
The Legislature’s budget bill also eliminates public funding of
Wisconsin Supreme Court campaigns. Under Gov. Walker’s original
budget proposal, funding for the program would have been limited to the
amount of money generated by a voluntary income tax check-off, but the
Legislature modified the bill to completely eliminate the program.
Under the public financing program, enacted
in 2009, money from a $3 check-off on individual state income tax
returns is placed in a Democracy Trust Fund. Under the current program,
which is eliminated by the budget bill, if the check-off did not
generate sufficient funds, money would be transferred from the
state’s general fund to fully fund the program.
The State Bar’s Board of Governors has long
supported public financing for supreme court campaigns using general
purpose tax revenues as under the current program.
Finally, the budget bill as passed by the Legislature maintains
the Wisconsin Judicial Council as an independent agency but cuts half
the funding for the council’s staff attorney position. Under the
bill, the other half of the funding would have to be transferred from
the budgets for the Director of State Courts, the State Law Library, or
from some other source under the supreme court’s control. Gov.
Walker did not propose any similar changes to the Judicial Council, but
the cuts were inserted in the bill by the Legislature’s Joint
Finance Committee.
Continue to monitor WisBar.org and visit the State Bar’s Government
Relations page for updated information on these issues.
Related articles
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© 2011, State Bar of Wisconsin
