cuts

State government technically shuts down after deadline passes

October 1st, 2009 at 12:24 am by Tony Tagliavia under News

The state budget deadline has officially passed with no agreement, meaning state government is technically shut down with no money appropriated to run it.

In the last hours, the budgets for K-12 education and general government appeared to be the sticking points.

The Republican-controlled Senate could forward a temporary or continuation budget to the governor but Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, had said he did not want to do that in favor of passing a permanent 2009-10 budget.

At last report, the Democrat-controlled House was voting on the K-12 budget, which includes a $218 per-student funding cut. It appeared not to have the votes to pass.

On the Senate side, Republicans have gone into caucus.

Tempers flared in that chamber after some Democrats refused to give “immediate effect” to some budget bills they opposed and Republicans put an income tax up for a vote. (Immediate effect is a sort of supermajority required to send the budgets on to the governor.)

The tax increase — an income tax hike — put up for a vote by Republicans — was not the sort of budget-balancing revenues most Democrats had in mind. The measure was roundly defeated and Democrats cried foul, saying putting up the income tax for a vote — and not a more narrow tax such as a bottled water deposit — was political.

Afterward, Bishop said Democrats were playing politics because of their refusal to vote for immediate effect. Bishop claimed it was the governor — and her control of Senate Democrats — that blocked budget progress.

Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi, D-Ishpeming, called the income tax vote “crap” and said his caucus could not support the all-cuts budgets proposed by Republicans.