* Rich posted earlier earlier on the House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon 21st Show interviews. Here’s another moment from Brian Mackey’s interview with Speaker Welch on the budget process…

Mackey: The reason I’m pressing on this a little bit is, I guess the larger issue I’m trying to get at is that you have talked about a different kind of process in the General Assembly. And here was still a budget that’s passed in the middle of the night, maintaining what I’ve heard referred to as the sort of ‘undergraduate work habits.’ I wonder if we’ll ever have a budget that passes you know, say, two in the afternoon and that will have been out there for the public to scrutinize for days and days, or weeks, potentially before it’s enacted.

Welch: Brian, let me take issue with the way you phrased your question. I think that’s poor journalism. But let me say this, it doesn’t take into account anything that we’ve done the last three years to address the concerns about bringing more light into this process. We intentionally engaged in a process. The House did not give the Senate an appropriations vehicle. We intentionally embarked on what we called a trust exercise, where the Senate would pass us an agreed budget on a Senate Bill, which under our Constitution has to in the House sit for three readings on three separate days before it can get passed. In previous years, budgets have come over from one chamber or another and the minute you get it you put it on the board and you pass it. We have tried to address the concerns from members of the Democratic caucus, members of the Republican caucus, folks like you in the media and create a process that would give more time. The budget was posted about eight o’clock on Wednesday night. People had the rest of Wednesday night to read it. They had all day Thursday, all day Friday. And we passed it at about 2-2:30 in the morning. As opposed to coming back at 10, 12 o’clock on Saturday afternoon, a holiday weekend, when folks wanted to go home. But that budget was out there three days to read. More than any budget in my 11 years in the General Assembly. And so yes, I take issue with the way you frame that question because I’m proud of the fact that we slowed the process down very intentionally. Give folks more time to read this budget. And rather than read it, the Republicans took the budget and wrapped it in a bow. But what I suggest is people use the changes that we put in place, read the budget and let’s have an honest discussion about it.

Mackey: Well, I’ll take your criticism on it. I will think about that. But I will say yes, it is an improvement over the past. I think other states have even more time. Maybe we’ll get there in the future.

* Senate President Harmon…

Mackey: I had a little back and forth with the House Speaker on this very point, because he talked about the idea that the budget was sort of hanging out in public, right? I think it was from Thursday afternoon, was it until the House voted on it early Saturday morning. So I guess one business day, maybe two days, depending on how you want to look at it. There are states though, where the budget process is much more open, and it’s out there for public input. Why not actually pass a budget over the course of a week or two weeks instead of this still where it’s sort of negotiating, negotiating, and it all kind of comes together? It used to be in a few hours, now it’s in maybe a few days? I mean, is that a trend? Are we going to ever see a process where it’s just kind of slow and calm and out in the open?

Harmon: Well, I would argue that’s the process we have. And Brian, you’ve been around Springfield a long time. Every single bill passes the chamber in about 60 seconds when the roll call is called. It’s the work that leads up to that and we began our budget process with the governor’s budget address. The House and Senate both had countless appropriation committee hearings, where we heard from the state agencies that are funded as well as all of the stakeholders that wanted to testify. We have a very, very public process. I reject the premise that the budget itself is the introduction of the final budget with the roll call on the floor. There’s so much work, public work that goes into that. It’s easy to criticize the last 60 seconds, but it’s not fair to the work that people do over the months of the spring session.

Thoughts?