(In keeping with GMD’s policy of front-paging diaries posted for state-wide office, here is the latest from Susan Bartlett. – promoted by Sue Prent)

This coming week I will bring the budget to the senate floor.  It has been a difficult year and when I was presented with an additional $17 million in deficits as the bill came from the house, I was worried about how we could make ends meet.  

The new $17 million hole was caused mainly by the non-certification of the state hospital and the cost of the new federal health care bill.  I am happy to say the budget is balanced, without making more reductions in services to Vermonters.

Read on …

Without a doubt, this budget is the most difficult that I have ever had to construct.  Balancing the needs of Vermonters of all kinds is never easy.  It appears that our revenues are holding and that there are definitely signs of a turn around in the economy.  But Vermonters are still hurting.  The business community is seeing some good signs, but we are still in the woods.  Next year will be just as difficult.  

This budget balances the needs of all Vermonters. One does not profit at the expense of another and no one gets everything they want.

There is an old saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  That certainly applies to looking at the state budget.  The job in appropriations, the job that I have had as chair for many years, is to balance the well-being of the whole, not just the parts.

It is always easy for one part of our society to say, “If you don’t do this for me, you don’t support us.”  Sometimes you have to say no to an idea that in isolation sounds good, but doesn’t work as part of the whole.   This is when leadership is difficult, you have to not only say no to good ideas, you have to convince others to say no.

Now more than ever we have to carefully watch our spending while maintaining important programs that work. As I have said for many years, “Prove to me that it works, not with nice stories, but with results.”  Fiscal responsibility means paying for the programs that work and being willing to end programs that do not work.   I believe that by working together we will come out of this recession stronger than we went into it, working smarter to do more with less.

Difficult times require difficult choices.  Difficult times require calm, reasoned leadership.