Spending cap can't just be ignored

Should the state Legislature try to repeal or just ignore a statutory spending cap?

That's the prospect raised this week by a Schweitzer administration official.

The proposed $7 billion budget is $121 million beyond what's allowed by a 24-year-old spending limit.

Budget director David Ewer suggests the administration may ignore the "arcane" cap, partly because of the court-mandated requirement to improve school funding.

To override the cap, either the governor has to declare an emergency or he has to get two-thirds of the members of each house to sign on. We aren't sure if the desire to spend more money qualifies as an emergency or not, but the governor certainly has a lot of latitude there.

One alternative is to repeal the law establishing the spending cap, which would apparently just take a simple majority, but might anger voters. Another alternative is to actually trim the budget enough to get in under the spending limits.

We suspect Republicans are going to be less than enthusiastic about simply ignoring the law. And it may be hard to convince them to help reach the two-thirds vote required for the override, so that gives them a certain degree of power in the matter,

Arcane or not, it is the law, and it shouldn't be ignored lightly. While there may be good justification - school funding - to override the spending cap this session, what does that do to future budgets?

The surplus available to spend this time won't be available forever, so the Legislature needs to be very aware of the kind of spending precedent it sets as it considers challenges to the spending cap.

And while schools form the biggest piece of the budget puzzle this session, there's a major budget-buster on the horizon, too: fires.

Given record-low snowpack and a drought that won't go away, this doesn't look like a good year to ignore the possibility of the state accruing some serious firefighting costs.

. . .

There's a somewhat related issue in play as the Legislature wrestles with money issues regarding education.

The Legislature (and the rest of us) still are waiting for the Montana Supreme Court to explain why it declared the state school funding system unconstitutional.

So far, all the court has released (last November) is a three-page order saying the current system is illegal and inadequate, but no explanation of the reasoning behind the ruling. A full ruling was promised for later.

Well, it's later now and the Legislature is midway through a session largely centered around answering the court's mandate.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, made a personal visit to the high court last week to try to push the court along. Chief Justice Karla Gray's response was cordial but devoid of any firm timetable.

Legislators, perhaps too optimistically, hope the full ruling will give them better direction as they try to craft a new school funding system.

But we won't know whether that's the case until the high court releases its rationale, which we hope will be soon.