Budget Is Status Quo At SEWRPC For 2009

There are no earth-shaking fiscal changes in the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Comission 2009 budget.

Overall annual spending from grants, contracts, agreements and receipts from the agency's seven member counties, based on their share of the region's equalized property value, falls 1.38% from 2008's budget, to $6,816,105 for 2009.

Consultant fees are down, salaries and other staff and building overhead costs are up, but the the implications of the spending are off the public radar because agency's budget for next year has been approved in typical, SEWRPC low-profile fashion.

Milwaukee County's share of the agency's $2,370,000 operating budget for 2009 is $841,885, virtually unchanged from 2008.

That continues to be the largest among the counties in total dollars and as a percentage of the SEWRPC annual operating budget - - 35.51%.

The Milwaukee County contribution reflects a miniscule drop of $3,640, or less than half a percent, from 2008.

No change either in the political structure at SEWRPC's Pewaukee-based offices, which basically shafts the City of Milwaukee.

Why?

The City of Milwaukee, with a population of more than 600,000 people, still has no representative on the SEWRPC board of 21 commissioners, but its residents, caught in a classic "taxation without representation" situation, supply through their property taxes close to half the Milwaukee County annual appropriation to SEWRPC, records show.

SEWRPC commissioners are chosen for six-year, appointed terms by the counties and the Governor - - three to each county.

Milwaukee's city population exceeds the individual population totals of SEWRPC's six, non-Milwaukee counties - - Walworth, Racine, Kenosha, Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha Counties.