Representative Jim Patrick

It has been a very difficult session and all of want to go home. I believe the end is near with the governor possibly willing to compromise further. I do believe we need to maintain the huge investment in bridges and roads, however the voters are simply are not able to bear the additional costs these economic times.

While the economic situation and our lack of funding to address the transportation issues has caused controversy throughout the session, it is important to remember that there are other issues out there too, and we can't develop tunnel vision. Cuts are hard, but we don't want to loose sight of the gains that we have made, or become so focused on budget shortfalls that we fail to recognise those projects we HAVE funded.

One issue I would like to clear up is the misinformation on education funding. We did use less general funding this year for the first time in history but k-12 schools received a total of 1,703,059,500 in total funding including the stimulus funds. This is the largest budget in history even though we did have to cut some general fund sponsored programs. Last year education received 1,695,948,400 which calculates to a 7111100 increase. I think 7 million dollars is a lot of money when almost all state agency's received cuts including higher education.

We are all ready to go home. We have jobs and families to support, this is no fun for anyone. However, we are here to do the job we have been sent to do, and it is crucial that we represent our districts to the best of our ability. I am optimistic that we are going to come to a compromise that protects voters, while investing in our future through transportation funding as well as other important projects.