As The County Begins To Crumble

When the County Board and County Executive got done trying to come up with the 2010 county budget, we warned of the giant black hole that they had built into it.  The County had illegally budgeted a non-existent contract with the unions into it.  As a result, the budget was not balanced, as is required by law.

Unless the unions were to immediately capitulate to the concessions demanded by the county, the budget was doomed to fail from day one.  As we predicted, the unions did not immediately capitulate.  In fact, they filed lawsuits against the county and against specific Supervisors, which has held up any contract negotiations.

Weeks after we issued our warning about the county budget, the local newspaper caught on and also announced that the budget was already in trouble.  The paper also quoted Rob Henken, President of the Public Policy Forum, who warned that Walker’s usual fix to budget issues, laying off hundreds of workers, would no longer work:

Rob Henken, president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Forum, said it was unlikely the county could avoid another budget crisis in early 2010. The county is beyond the point where layoffs can be used as a patch for the county’s revenue woes without having “significant service cuts,” he said.

Despite all of these warnings and calls for action, Walker and the County Board failed to act in a responsible manner.  Now , their game playing is catching up to us.

JSOnline is reporting (in an altered story*) that the Board’s Finance and Audit Committee just approved more cuts in staff and in services.   The article goes on to give a laundry list of services that are being proposed to be cut, including in the courts, the correctional system, and other departments.

Results will be in a slowed up legal system, a more unsafe correctional facility, and longer lines for people wanting to get birth certificates, wedding licenses and other similar documents.

Ironically, Supervisor Johnny Thomas is now lamenting the results of his actions and the actions of his colleagues:

Supervisor John Thomas said he wasn’t happy with the cuts but noted the 2010 budget approved in November forced the issue by its furlough provision. He said the full $8 million savings assumed for the furloughs across county government would not materialize. The work of furloughed employees will wind up forcing more overtime and other unanticipated costs, he said.

“There’s a domino effect, and it’s going to lead to overtime and inefficiencies,” Thomas said. “Public safety is in jeopardy.”

Of course, to be fair, it is not entirely the Board’s fault.  A great deal of the responsibility lies at the feet of Scott Walker, whose recommended budget was so faulty that there was no way for the Board to even be able to fix it without doing a drastic overhaul, as they did for the 2007 budget (which not so coincidentally, corresponds with the other time Walker ran for governor).

It should also be noted that there are growing rumors that there will still be massive lay offs in either late March/early April and or in late June/early July.  If this were to happen, we will be witnessing a systematic failure in county government, much like they are currently witnessing in Colorado Springs, who is being victimized by their own irresponsible behaviors:

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

“I guess we’re going to find out what the tolerance level is for people,” said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. “It’s a new day.”

Some residents are less sanguine, arguing that cuts to bus services, drug enforcement and treatment and job development are attacks on basic needs for the working class.

“How are people supposed to live? We’re not a ‘Mayberry R.F.D.’ anymore,” said Addy Hansen, a criminal justice student who has spoken out about safety cuts. “We’re the second-largest city, and growing, in Colorado. We’re in trouble. We’re in big trouble.”

Unfortunately, thanks to Walker’s political grandstanding and showboating, and the Board’s ineffectiveness, we are also in trouble.  Big trouble.

The question is quickly changing from how can we prevent the damage from happening to how much more can we tolerate before something breaks.

*As I was preparing for this post, the JSOnline article ended with Supervisor Patricia Jursik also complaining of the looming disaster.  She was quoted as saying “We did not pass a balanced budget.”  That quote, or any mention of Jursik, is now missing.  It would be nice to know why the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel made the decision to take that line out of the story.