Dick Pettys wrote a pretty good analysis of the Governor’s budget vetoes for Insider Advantage. Most of the reported “vetoes” were not vetoes at all, rather statements of his belief that state agencies should not feel bound by language in the state budget directing them to spend funds in certain ways. With a “veto,” an appropriation is disapproved, meaning that the funds cannot be spent and are returned to the unappropriated reserve. But by simply ignoring the language laying out legislative intent, the appropriated funds can still be spent, just differently than contemplated by the General Assembly.

I spoke to the Governor briefly yesterday about a specific appropriation, and he told me that he supported it and would find a way to fund it, but that he would do it his own way and not necessarily as instructed by language in the state budget. Under his theory of how the state budget should work, he will have plenty of money to do so.

It is unclear to me how this issue is resolved. Over the last several years, the General Assembly has been much more assertive in the budget writing process. To his credit, the Governor invited this assertiveness through his introduction of program based budgeting. The General Assembly, particularly the Senate, took advantage of the Governor’s laudable new emphasis on “bringing spending in line with priorities” to give detailed guidance to state agencies on how funds are to be spent.

Some of this guidance is apparently unwelcome.  By disregarding it in this fashion, the Governor seems intent on adjusting the constitutional scales which balance the budgetary powers of the executive and legislative branches. There will be much more to follow as the General Assembly determines its response. In the meantime, here is the Pettys column that I mentioned:

State senators, like their House counterparts, are hopping mad over the budget vetoes Gov. Sonny Perdue cast this week, but not exclusively for the reason you might expect.

To be sure, quite a few are miffed over pet projects they lost, and it no doubt is particularly galling that by one reckoning, they lost more than the House: 42 Senate projects compared to 37 House projects with four joint ones, and 18 of the 25 bond programs. The Senate, after all, was the chamber that sided with the governor when the House staged that rebellion over the midyear budget during the last session, and senators felt that might give them a little protection from the line-item veto pen.

But aggravating as the loss of specific projects may be, the bigger irritant for many is the sharp slap which Perdue administered to budget writers in both chambers by instructing state agency heads, as part of his message on the budget, to simply ignore language legislators have inserted in the spending measure which expresses legislative intent on how specific appropriations should be spent.

“An appropriations consists of a recipient, a purpose and an amount,” Perdue said in his veto message. “Language added by the General Assembly in addition to these three criteria is not part of an appropriation and is non-binding. By adding additional criteria, the General Assembly engages in trying to authorize general law in an appropriation bill. In such circumstances, the added language is not operative and may be disregarded.”

Small wonder some of these folks are seeing red. They’ve been trying for years, a little at a time, to gain more power over the appropriations process through budget language and the appointment of separate House-Senate budget staffs, and now the governor has rebuked them, as any other governor likely would have done. To some extent, the struggle between executive and legislative branch has been part of the warp and woof of Capitol politics for decades.

So how does this change the dynamic at the statehouse after what many regarded as one of the most dysfunctional sessions in decades - a session filled with name-calling, budget vetoes (later rescinded), and an override vote, and now brimming again with threats of renewed override attempts next session?

“Some senators were hit pretty hard,” one lawmaker acknowledged. “He is sort of alienating his allies.”

Indeed, the Senate under freshman Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle thwarted a House-led attempt to override the governor’s midyear budget veto, averting a major political embarrassment for Perdue. He later relented and “un-vetoed” the measure after threatening to call a special session that he eventually decided would be fruitless.

He got some payback against top House leaders in the budget items he vetoed on Wednesday, but he also struck out some projects and language of keen interest to members of the Senate, including technical schools, libraries and rail lines.

Cagle, who proved a staunch Perdue ally during the session, even lost at least one major project with which he was identified - $40 million in improvements to the Peachtree Street corridor. A $2 million parking deck in Gainesville, Cagle’s home turf, also got the ax, but the project was more closely identified with the House than with Cagle.

According to some with whom we spoke, there was plenty of grumbling Thursday as lawmakers assessed the damage. The general sentiment, he said, was that the Senate had helped save Perdue and he, in turn, showed no gratitude.

That being the case, what happens now and next year?

That’s a long way away, time for things to calm down. Or not. But since this goes beyond mere projects and involves a fundamental struggle for power, the fight will not go away.

Will the Senate now be more willing to join the House in overriding gubernatorial vetoes?

Depends on who you talk to.

“The appetite in the Senate for any type override stuff hasn’t gone up at all, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t options,” one knowledgeable source told us. One option could be for lawmakers to warn state agencies that they will disregard legislative intent at their peril, no matter what the governor says. In other words, he said, “You spend the money on what we told you or we’re going to take it out of next year’s budget. There are a lot of options”

And that’s not the only one. Through a slight re-arrangement of the way next year’s budget is written, lawmakers could make mandatory the “intent” language which Perdue now insists can be disregarded.

And over in the House, Speaker Glenn Richardson already has set up another challenge to Perdue’s budgetary authority with his announcement at the state Republican convention that he will now require state agencies, on a rotating, three-year basis, to submit zero-based budgets to the House. And those which fail to comply will find the House zeroing-out their budgets and forcing them to justify every expenditure. Not exactly something to make glad the heart of any governor, especially of one’s own party.

It’s a fight that looks to be with us for some time, and the governor could use an ally on his side. He won’t find help in the House and until tempers cool a bit, he may not find it in the Senate, either.

And it’s not just on budget matters that he may face a threat. There’s already talk of an override attempt for his veto of SB 15, the measure that would impose strict new penalties for driving without a license. Stay tuned. Next year’s election-year session promises to be riveting.

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