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Public Benefits dodges bigger of two bullets
As the Wisconsin Legislature's Joint Committee on Finance
wrestled with modifications to the state budget bill in the closing
weeks of May, members declined to act on a proposal to drain another
$34 million from utility Public Benefits—a move that, coupled
with earlier trips to the well, would have siphoned off all but
$1 million of the anticipated energy conservation funds for the
2004– 05 fiscal year.
But the program did not escape some additional shrinkage
in the late rounds of budget balancing.
Finance Committee members voted 14–2 to pull
an additional $2.4 million from the energy conservation programs.
The bulk of the money would go to the Department of Workforce Development
for a multiple-step funding shift designed to shore up the state's
Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers.
As of press time for The Wire, if all the fund transfers
from Public Benefits that were in the budget package were to become
law, just under half the program's anticipated 2004–05 revenue
would be used to balance other parts of the budget.
The good news, from the program's perspective, was
that the lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee seemed disinclined
to tap it further, and any idea of using the budget bill to kill
it outright appeared to lack momentum.
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