Wednesday, May 6, 2009

2010 County Budget Preview, Or Guess Who's Running For Governor

Inspired by Dan Cody, I chose to attend tonight's budget listening session at Wilson Park.

Walker was a no show, supposedly tied up in the pension trial. Instead, he had his budget director, Steven Kreklow, to give the presentation, which was about a 30-40 minute Power Point show.

The attendance was low, about 30 people, total. If you subtract Kreklow, Cynthia Archer, Fran McLaughlin, and the dozen or so upper administration people, you had maybe 10 people. If you take out the union people (including myself), blogger Ken Mobile, and the two County Board Supervisors, there might have been five or six people.

Although they did not give a lot of definitive answers, it was easy to see where they were coming from and where they were trying to go with it.

Here are some of the highlights, followed with a translation from Walkerese to plain English:

--One of Walker's accomplishment claims was that the metro area unemployment rate was slightly below the state's average. Given that there have been massive lay offs in Janesville and Kenosha, that's not saying a lot for Milwaukee County.

--Another bragging point was how Walker cut the number of county employees by some 1,700 over the past six years. This would explain why the Income Maintenance program was having so many problems and had to be taken over by the state.

--Talking point #3: Introduction of a Wellness Program and an increase in employee paid share for health care. What they failed to mention was that this was part of the contract written by David Riemer, who had run against Walker in 2004, and was darn near the same as the proposal offered by the unions. They also failed to mention that millions of dollars were wasted because Walker dragged his feet on signing the contract because, as you might have guessed, he was running for governor at that time too. Incidentally, the county and the unions are at the same impasse again.

--The fourth bragging point was the county's aggressive management of debt. Kreklow wouldn't answer when I asked him if this included the hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure problems. I didn't even ask him about the hundreds of millions the county is in debt for because Walker consistently shorted the pension fund.

--Next up was how the county controlled overtime spending. Again, Kreklow didn't answer when I pointed out that it was record years for overtime at the House of Correction and at the mental health complex. This overtime spending is related to the shortage of staff, which Walker's team had earlier pointed out as being a good thing.

--Another talking point was the increased use of technology. One word: Ceridian.

Kreklow then went on to tell us that Walker had developed a plan for long term sustainability that involved four points:
  1. More layoffs (see overtime and income maintenance above),
  2. Service Delivery, meaning privatization, which is of course more money for less services,
  3. Use of County Assets (no word if Walker plans on giving away a vacuum with every sweetheart land deal),
  4. Budget process: Walker wants to implement performance evaluations (I wonder if it would include himself), establishing a rainy day fund, and improve grant proposal process (ignoring the fact that he had cut the grant application writers a long, long time ago).
The important dates to watch for is July 1 and 2, when department heads offer up their budgets to Walker; September 24, when Walker presents his proposed budget; November 9, which is budget adoption day; and November 18, when the Board considers Walker's vetoes.

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