Late, secretive Wisconsin budget proposals increase

MADISON – The number of proposals added to Wisconsin's state budget during a secretive, last-minute stage of the legislative process has significantly grown in recent years, records reviewed by Gannett Wisconsin Media show.

In the past three budget cycles, legislators have introduced far more proposals through so-called "999 motions," a final collection of technical, fiscal and policy revisions before the budget is sent to the full Senate and Assembly for vote.

Before 2011, this kind of motion advanced by the Joint Finance Committee typically spanned fewer than 10 pages and included fewer than 20 new changes. Some items were mostly honorary in nature while others dealt with millions in funding.

Since then, however, the committee has used 999 motions to introduce an increasing number of changes late in the budget-making process, giving fellow legislators and the public little time for react before final votes and the governor's pen.

This year's motion was 24 pages long and included 81 modifications to the budget – more than any year since 2001. (Gannett counted changes each year based on the number of itemized and sub-itemized issues.) The State Assembly approved the budget early Thursday morning and sent it to Gov. Scott Walker for his review.

The Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee approved the motion 12-4 along party lines before the Fourth of July weekend and with little explanation from proponents. A few legislators defended sections of the motion but most of the document was ignored before passage.

Counting pages and itemized sections isn't a perfect measure of the 999 motion's use or impact over time. Short proposals may have much bigger ramifications than longer ones, depending on the wording, and some items are later deleted. But Gannett's review underscores the growing reach of the 999 motion and a consequential scramble by legislators, advocates, reporters and others to gauge its potential impacts in the final hours of budget deliberations.

This year, surprise changes to Wisconsin's Open Records Law drew fierce public backlash and attention to the 999 motion's secretive role in the budget process. While it took just two days for lawmakers to verbally retreat from the changes, the public waited another three days before confirming the name of any lawmaker involved in crafting them.

The open records revisions have since been removed from the budget bill, but the outcry has left some lawmakers bruised. In a recent email to constituents, Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, apologized for voting in favor of changes, saying he misunderstood the 999 motion's scope and that he would support modifying the budget process to increase transparency.

"In the coming days I will be seeking a Senate co-author to change Wisconsin law in the other direction," Kooyenga wrote. "I firmly believe that process and democracy would be better served by requiring all budget motions to be posted 24 hours in advance of committee adoption."

There is no formal public notice about what may be contained in 999 motions – just rumors in the days or weeks ahead.

Another response to this year's 999 motion by Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, was rejected on the Senate floor on Tuesday. Erpenbach, also a member of the budget committee, argued that legislators should be named alongside the proposals they draft.

Told Wednesday about the number of increasing proposals in 999 motions, Erpenbach called the trend a problem and argued that greater public disclosure of the motion's authors would help bring the number down.

"The trend isn't good," Erpenbach said. "There are some big things that happen that don't get the scrutiny that's needed."

The Joint Finance Committee is currently led by two Republicans, Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills and Rep. John Nygren of Marinette. Darling's office said she was unavailable to comment and did not return a message. Nygren provided a statement to Gannett Wisconsin Media highlighting the need to make technical revisions to the budget while ignoring policy modifications also wrapped into the package.

"Even with careful attention to detail, it's inevitable that mistakes are made along the way. For this reason, we have traditionally used the '999 motion' at the end of the budget to correct these mistakes," Nygren said. "As such, a significant number of provisions in the 999 are technical fixes and the motion is necessary to ensure our legislative intentions match the language in the budget."

Sen. Rob Cowles, the sole Republican member of the Senate to vote against the budget that cleared that chamber Tuesday, said the number of non-fiscal items included and the 999 motion factored in his opposition.

"This thing has really gone over the top," Cowles said. "I do believe there are going to be several embarrassing — I call them 'clinkers' — in this (budget).

Cowles called Kooyenga's 24-hour proposal to address 999 motions "window dressing" and argued that non-fiscal items instead need full committee hearings outside the budget process. Assembly Democrats are distributing bill language this week along similar lines.

"The basic principle of stuffing policy in the budget is wrong," Cowles said. "Oh, we're just going to have the 24-hour notice? That doesn't create the kind of transparency we need."

Though the recent rise of 999 motions occurred under a GOP-controlled Legislature, good government advocates said both parties have inserted last-minute proposals. Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, said Democratic majorities famously used them in the 1970s and 80s.

"There's always been this kind of catch-all at the end and hope that nobody notices very much," added Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. "It's bipartisan abuse of the system. It's always the party in power that displays its arrogance, and it usually comes back to bite them."

The Joint Finance Committee's final budget revisions haven't always been called the 999 motion. Its name has sometimes been based on the number of motions preceding it. Only in recent budget cycles have legislators consistently used the number 999 for the last motion, cementing the term in statehouse jargon.

We've uploaded each of the committee's 999 motions since the 2001-2003 budget cycle. You can read them by clicking these links: 2001-2003, 2003-2005, 2005-2007, 2007-2009, 2009-2011, 2011-2013, 2013-2015, 2015-2017.

— Keegan Kyle: kkyle@gannett.com or on Twitter @keegankyle.