(Note: this column appears in Community Newspapers.)

By Charles Sykes

Politicians steal money for the same reason that dogs lick themselves: because they can.

Last week’s state budget was generally business as usual; $58 billion in spending; more than $800 million in new taxes, pork up the ying yang; a Frankenstein veto that made up words and numbers by crossing out individual letters and digits.

But what the budget may be best remembered for was the brazenness with which politicians of both parties stole $200 million in cash from a fund set up for injured patients.

The cash in the Injured Patient and Families Compensation Fund was not tax money. It was money paid into the fund since 1975 to help pay medical malpractice claims. The law is clear on this. The money is to be “held in irrevocable trust for the sole benefit of health care providers… and proper claimants.” Governor Doyle had originally proposed a $175 million raid of the fund to pay for his budget, but the ante was raised to $200 million in negotiations with the legislature.

In other words, the fund was “irrevocable” unless politicians wanted the money. Lawyers or other professional who raid “irrevocable” trusts to pay their bills end up in jail. The pols hold press conferences.

Largely because of the fund, Wisconsin is of only seven states in the country where doctors are facing a malpractice crisis of exploding insurance premiums. Without the fund, some experts say that malpractice premiums could rise from an average of $15,000 a year to more than $80,000. As a result, the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians warns that medical professionals may “reduce services, close clinics, retire or move to other states.”

In effect, the fund raid becomes a heavy new tax on doctors, but the price is likely to be paid by sick people.

“States with higher medical liability premiums and higher medical malpractice awards have more difficult time recruiting physicians, especially those in high risk specialties such a surgery and obstetrics,” the academy warns.

This is bad enough. What it says about the state of political ethics, however, is even worse. The raid was naked cash grab and probably illegal. A similar fund raid by former Governor Tommy Thompson was thrown out in court and the doctors are planning to sue the state. If they win, the governor and the legislature face a $200 million hole in a budget already hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole.

Unfortunately, the rest of us will get stuck with the tab for their dishonesty.