AJR 100 Would Make Wisconsin the Only State to Constitutionally Require GAAP Accounting
Tonight the Assembly voted by a sizeable margin, 69-25, to approve AJR 100, which would put key details of fiscal policy into the Wisconsin Constitution. An amended version of the resolution now moves on to the Senate. If it is approved there, AJR 100 will still need to be approved by the Legislature in 2013 or 2014, and will then have to go to a public referendum.
A Wisconsin Budget Project Blog post explains the resolution and the amendment to it that reduced some of the opposition to AJR 100 in the Assembly. That blog post also lays out a number of significant questions about the resolution that Senators and the public should grapple with over the next couple of weeks, before it comes to a vote in the Senate.
Often times, people on opposite sides of an issue will frame that issue differently. But in this case, the proponents and opponents describe the fundamental question in essentially the same terms, yet arrive at opposite answers. That question is whether Wisconsin should become the first state to tie the hands of future legislators by prohibiting them from passing any bill that would cause or increase a GAAP deficit in any budget fund, regardless of the state’s economic and fiscal circumstances. Read more in the new Budget Project Blog post.
Jon Peacock
