Abele, Ladwig among new county execs working to boost morale

New county executives from throughout Wisconsin said that while times are tough and they all understand the need for austerity, they’re looking for a greater partnership with the state to help them weather a tough state budget.
At a recent WisPolitics luncheon, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele lamented the current environment for public employees. And Abele said blanket statements from policymakers that government is a problem aren’t helping.
"Public service is an honorable thing, and if you want to get the sort of people we all want in government, we don’t make blanket statements," Abele said.
The county execs at the luncheon – Abele, Racine County’s Jim Ladwig, Dane County’s Joe Parisi and Outagamie County’s Tom Nelson – each said their counties would be able to get through the budget crunch in the short term, but they were split on the impact of the state budget, likely to include a strict property tax cap and collective bargaining changes.
Ladwig, who identified himself as the lone conservative on the panel, said his county’s outlook is good despite facing a shortfall of about $400,000 under the budget.
He said state aid cuts would amount to $2.2 million for his county in the budget proposal, while he would save $1.8 million in pension costs from county employees under the collective bargaining changes. But Racine County workers already pay 15 percent toward their health care costs, which exceeds the levels required under the budget repair bill.
"I think it provides us a lot of opportunity, because often in government, government doesn’t look to partner with local municipalities, to partner with neighboring counties until times really are this bad," Ladwig said.
The new county executives also said the budget repair bill controversy – still fresh in voters’ minds in early April – had differing impacts on their respective races.
Ladwig and Abele said they had to fight to stay above the collective bargaining fray.
"That’s how our media was trying to make it out to be, was a partisan issue, and basically trying to make the budget repair bill a focal point of the campaign," Ladwig said. "And we just refused to get into that."
Ladwig said that while wages and benefits are an issue for his employees, "a lot of it is just basically valuing their input, acknowledging the fact that they’re a vital part of providing services to the citizens of Racine County and basically not demonizing them."
Ladwig said ongoing negotiations between the Wisconsin Counties Association and members of the Joint Finance Committee show that partnership can still work.
Ladwig said the JFC might be open to a budget change that would allow counties to consolidate human services while maintaining the approximately $50 million needed in savings to the state.
"Instead of going to Finance and saying, ‘We can’t have a cut, we can’t have a cut, we can’t have a cut,’ we have to go to Finance and say, ‘OK, what type of savings are you looking for, and we can come up with a proposal that provides you right about those amount of savings,’" Ladwig said.
But while Ladwig said his county would always strive to keep property taxes low in the face of a potential cap on them in the budget, he added, "I’m not enamored with people telling us what we can or can’t spend."
Abele also said he wasn’t happy with the cap, saying, "I think we’ll find the limits pretty quickly of how much we can get through efficiencies."
"Nobody is for higher property taxes, and nobody is for diminished services, and everybody gets punished for it," Abele said.
– WisPolitics.com