What Assembly Republicans Plan To Change In The State Budget

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Assembly Republicans are planning several changes to the state budget that’s up for debate today.

Those changes include the reinstatement of a property tax credit for veterans and a delay of a plan that would make it easier to permit high-capacity wells.

The Joint Finance Committee wanted to cap Wisconsin’s property tax credit for disabled veterans at $2,500, a move blasted by veterans groups. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Burlington, says Republicans were concerned about the cost, but that they’re not anymore.

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“We realized that we have done such a good job managing the structural deficit from where we wanted it to be, that we would choose to…reinvest and make sure that property tax credit continues for our veterans who have served the state so nobly.”

While GOP lawmakers did shrink the structural deficit, it’s still pegged at about a half-billion dollars headed into the next budget.

Vos says Republicans will also delay a plan that would make it easier to site high-capacity wells until July 1, 2014. He says that will give lawmakers who took issue with the provision’s language a chance to craft an alternative. If legislators don’t agree on another option by the deadline, the high-capacity well provision in the budget becomes law.

Vos said most other pieces of the budget as it passed the Joint Finance Committee would stay there. The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (WCIJ) would still be evicted from the University of Wisconsin, though Vos said that item was changed to have “no impact on public radio and public TV.” Employees of public broadcasting partner with WCIJ.

So far, only Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, has announced he plans to vote no on the budget. Vos brushed that off, saying he hoped to talk about the 59 other GOP lawmakers who will approve the budget.