Posted on 04/24/2003 6:03:46 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Perry denies knowledge of draft budget increases Associated Press
AUSTIN (AP) — Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday said he never saw draft budget documents from his office that show tentative plans to raise education and social services funding while suggesting accounting delays Perry now criticizes as budgetary "sleights of hand."
The Associated Press examined the working papers after the Republican governor's office made the hundreds of thousands of pages available to reporters who requested them under the Texas Public Information Act.
The papers detail plans Perry's staff were working on when Texas was expected to have a $5 billion budget shortfall. When that was doubled in early January, Perry scrapped it and released a budget full of zeros as a way to encourage lawmakers to write the 2004-05 spending plan by cutting spending and not raising taxes.
"That was a draft budget. That was a lot of different peoples' ideas that were being pitched up. As a matter of fact, that wasn't even a complete document," Perry said after a news conference at the Governor's Mansion where he repeated his message to hold the line on state spending.
"I never saw that document. It never got to my desk," Perry said. "My cautionary note would be don't read too much into it. It was a draft document that was a working document."
The documents show Perry's staff was preparing a $118 billion all funds budget for 2004-05 with increases to education and human services. It included $59.5 billion in state general revenue spending and some of the very accounting ideas Perry has criticized Republican senators for supporting.
Texas is facing a $9.9 billion shortfall through 2005, causing no-new-tax pledging lawmakers meeting in Austin to draft 2004-05 budget bills with cuts across state government.
House and Senate budget writers drafted their bills from scratch after Perry submitted his zero-based budget Jan. 17.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Senate Finance Chairman Teel Bivins, R-Amarillo, and others want to delay $1.6 billion in state payments to schools, pensions and other programs and use money from some state funds such as the emergency Rainy Day Fund to balance the state budget.
"Each of these so-called solutions can be traced to one root cause and that's a refusal to rein in spending. We must attempt short-term solutions that come at the expense of long-term prosperity," Perry said while surrounded by members of conservative groups he said represented the views of most Texans.
Perry's budget advisers recommended in the draft that he propose accounting changes that would have saved more than $100 million in three health and human services agencies in the coming two-year budget cycle by causing a one-time delay in payments to nursing homes and foster parents.
The documents show the Governor's Office of Budget and Planning considered a change in bookkeeping in at least three social programs.
Perry, who supports the House's $117.7 billion all funds budget that includes $58.6 billion in state general revenue, said Wednesday he doesn't believe a budget with the accounting maneuvers will reach his desk.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn also is against the moves and has said she won't certify a budget she believes is fiscally irresponsible.
Many of the cuts passed by the Republican-led House mirror proposals in Perry's draft budget documents, such as changing Medicaid eligibility rules for children that would make them re-enroll more often and complete a more complex application process.
The documents show a recommendation of a $691.4 million increase to public education and a $3.1 billion increase to human services.
But there were cuts, too.
The records show recommendations to slash spending at the Texas Department of Health, including eliminating $2.3 million from a $30 million HIV prevention program and cutting $47.2 million for vaccinations.
At the mansion, Kelly Shackelford, president of the Free Market Foundation, was among those with Perry.
"It is high time that the Legislature does what almost every Texas family has had to do — live on a real budget," Shackelford said.
After the event, some of the supporters left in a black limousine.
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