The compromise budget hammered out by Dem legislative leaders would drop four earmarks added by the Senate or Assembly and tweak four others, according to a WisPolitics review of budget documents from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

But it leaves intact millions of dollars worth of earmarks both houses inserted into the document as well millions more added by the Joint Finance Committee, including controversial measures providing money for new recycling bins for Wrightstown and an opera house in Oshkosh.

The provisions removed by the conference committee from either the Senate or Assembly documents -- added after JFC -- include:

-- $3.75 million in SEG funding to cover the City of Oak Creek's share of constructing an interchange at I-94 and Drexel Avenue, which was included in the Senate budget.

-- $500,000 in GPR the Assembly proposed for school district consolidation grants. The proposal includes a requirement that the Department of Public Instruction award grants in certain circumstances specific to consolidation between Rusk and Barron counties.

-- $257,000 in GPR the Assembly added for a Racine County child care facility pilot program.

-- And a Senate provision requiring DOT to mark the US-41 bridge over I-94 in Milwaukee County as the Gulf War Veterans Bridge.

The four earmarks the conference committee altered include: increasing the GPR contribution to grants for Madison to start 4-year old kindergarten from $500,000 to $1.5 million; upping a supplemental payment to Trempealeau County -- which would reimburse the county for its payment of the nursing home bed assessment -- from $295,700 to $300,000; modifying the allowable "Class B" liquor licenses in a Senate provision classifying Oconomowoc as "capital improvement area"; and adjusting the Assembly provision allowing additional taxation by the Milwaukee Transit Authority.

According to preliminary numbers, that still leaves at least $16.4 million in state funding added by the chambers for local earmarks, including $10 million for construction at the Marquette University School of Engineering, $2 million for a grant to the Milwaukee Workforce Investment Board, and $700,000 for a grant to the Pleasant Prairie Technology Incubator Center.

See a list of location-specific projects remaining in the conference report:
http://www.wispolitics.com/1006/090626_conference_committee_earmarks.pdf

See the memo on the JFC budget earmarks:
http://www.wispolitics.com/1006/090626_JFC_earmarks.pdf

-- By Andy Szal