Seasons of spending.

• Author: Zelio, Judy
• Position: NCSL: The First 25 Years - State budgets

In the past 25 years, some budget categories have grown, others have declined, and the technology has improved. But the main ingredients are just the same as they always were.

State budget recipes use pretty basic stuff - mostly meat and potatoes, with a few plums thrown in. State policies and politics, of course, make every budget session different. A smorgasbord of familiar spending decisions is laid out along with a dessert tray of new proposals.

Lawmakers balance the palatability of tax cuts and new spending against fundamental state financing responsibilities in the process of budget creation. In this process, what are the main ingredients? What determines the size of the pieces? Who decides how the budget pie should be cut? Seasoned legislators and fiscal directors watching the budget process observe that at least some of the answers have changed over the past 25 years.

WHAT'S IN THE PIE?

Education, health and welfare, corrections and transportation are a state budget's major ingredients, with education the largest piece. Spending on education has grown significantly even though its portion of the state budget pie has declined over 25 years, according to the Census Bureau. New cost pressures include early childhood education, all-day kindergarten, smaller classes, before- and after-school care, bilingual and special needs education, and new technology, as well as court decisions on equality and adequacy.

Census figures also show that corrections costs, though a relatively small part of overall state spending, have grown steadily over the past 25 years. Societal pressures to crack down on crime with mandatory and longer sentences have led to burgeoning prison populations and the need for new prison construction.

"The most notable change in spending priorities is how much more spending is in the crime area," observes Minnesota Senate President Allan Spear, first elected in 1972. Concern about a rising crime rate (that has now leveled off) also is reflected in increased spending on crime prevention efforts such as early childhood programs.

Elizabeth Hill, California's nonpartisan legislative analyst, has worked for the Legislature since 1976. She confirms that when she began, corrections was 3 percent of the state's general fund budget; now it's 8 percent. California's 12 correctional institutions have grown to 33, with inmate populations increasing from 24,000 to 170,000. And changing social conditions and expectations definitely have...