It's not the money, it's the dance

By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Page Editor

Comes now that part of a legislative session when the "mystery money" begins to appear.

It is a phenomenon particularly obvious in years when new wage contracts with government workers are being bargained. Lawmakers have come to expect contract agreements to be reached in the final days of the session, so they can be funded before everyone goes home for the year.

Some money has to be reserved for those contracts, but you can't be too obvious about it.

If there were an item in the draft budget setting aside "X" millions of dollars for collective bargaining contracts, that would immediately become the baseline union position.

Instead, wiggle room is tucked here and there into the budget in the form of dollars for programs that will no longer exist or appropriations for new programs that can be thrown out at the last minute.

At the same time, lawmakers also identify special funds that can be "raided" to make up the difference between what they have and what the contracts call for.

Finally, and this is where the real money is, alternative sets of assumptions of future spending scenarios are developed. This ranges from revised estimates on debt service through changes in the assumptions used for fund programs such as retirement and health benefit plans.

Untold millions of dollars of slack can be found here by a creative or inventive budget analyst.

For instance, how much should the state set aside to put into the retirement system? In an ideal world, there would be enough money in the retirement system to fully pay for the maximum obligation possible for each and every government worker now on the payroll.

That's the meaning of fully funded, and in private pension plans it is an important protection against an employer who might just go out of business.

But government is not going to go away. So it is possible to argue that there is no immediate, pressing need to fully fund the retirement system. After all, is every worker now on the payroll going to stay with the government for the maximum number of years and then live out his or her actuarial life expectancy?

Probably not.

So it is entirely possible to take some of the cash that would be parked in the retirement system and instead use it for more pressing needs, say, union pay hikes.

The plain fact is that both sides know there is room in the budget for pay increases, even if it appears on the surface to be maxed out. Whether there is enough money to satisfy union demands is another question, of course.

But it helps make the point that the current impasse between the state and the teachers and university faculty is about more than mere money. The two sides are engaged in a delicate and difficult dance around issues of accountability, productivity, management rights, union rights and our changing labor climate.

As those issues are resolved, a price tag will be developed for the contracts and — by hook or by crook — money will be found to cover the price tag.

Count on it.