The Legislature Should Follow Candidate Walker's Transparency Rules When His Budget Is Debated

To: Republican State Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald - - he of the insufficient Open Meetings notice and quick gavel FUBAR that made his management and passage of the Budget Repair (sic) Bill illegal, creating FitzWalkerStan and all that came after it, as I recall.

From: Scott Walker's Campaign Website.

Subject: Candidate Walker's promises about transparent budgeting.

Candidate Walker posted a campaign interview he did with the Lakeland Times in which which he criticized previous legislative procedures and promised an amazingly open budget debate.

So Scott Fitzgerald and brother Jeff running things over in the Assembly might want to brush up on what are surely now-Governor Walker's budgeting expectations and rules, which include some excellent, Good Government practices, like open caucuses, and consideration of fiscal items only and reasonable hours to accommodate media and the general public.

Here's what Walker said:

"In fact I've even proposed - in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything - other things that would help transparency," he said. "I don't think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue. If a county board or school board can't discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget."

What's more, he said, the budget should only entail budgetary items; there shouldn't be any nonfiscal items in it.

"And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can't vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning," Walker said. "They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight. But they did it on purpose because not only do they not want average persons to know, they don't want reporters with deadlines to know - after 10 you miss the nightly TV news and you're not in print for the daily newspapers. They push it back on a Saturday, hoping people won't read about things like that"