Baraboo Mayor on State Budget

Veto pen could impact city funds. (Baraboo News-Republic, 6/18/2011)

Excerpt: Mayor Liston said Friday he has followed the budget battle closely and said what passed is not much different than he anticipated.

"They did a projection of the loss of revenue from some of the state aids and it looks like it's about 36 percent," Liston said. "This is all prior to the governor's veto pen, and as we all know the governor has a very powerful veto pen."

Wisconsin's governor may veto parts of a bill, an act sometimes referred to the Frankenstein veto, which requires a two-thirds vote of the both houses of the legislature to overturn.

One provision in Walker's proposed budget was elimination of state support for recycling, which was expected to cost Baraboo about $52,000 a year. That proposal was overturned by the legislature and the current budget agreement continues to mandate local recycling programs and much of the funding to operate them.

Liston welcomed the decision to keep recycling programs, but noted the reduced funding level.
Walker has said he intends to complete any veto decisions and sign the budget by the end of the month. That is when city officials will know how much state support they will have to work with over the next two years.

"We really just need to wait and see what the result is," he said. "Roughly in 10 to 12 days we should have a pretty firm handle as to where we are at, how much money we're going to lose via state grants. At that point we sit down and figure out where we're going to go, how we're going to cover the loss of revenue."