We're all hip to the game now.
Milwaukee County residents learned in his early years as County Executive not to trust Walker and budgeting:
In his past two budgets he has systematically over-estimated revenues, causing a fiscal crisis that will automatically trigger by mid-summer. This mechanism allows Walker to keep his tax freeze pledge and true to his extremist ideology, cut programs and employees mid year. This past year there were several mid-year cuts with the pool closings gaining the most attention.
Luck played a large part in the 2003 Walker budget. Walker under budgeted snow removal costs and with little snow this past year in January through April, projections were on target. He also eliminated lifeguards at Milwaukee County beaches. Normally this would have been a crisis, which could have led to drownings. But again Walker dodged the PR bullet since beaches were closed due to high bacteria counts that made swimmers stay away from the water...
He wasn’t so lucky with overstated parks revenues...Walker dictated the artificial inflation of revenues to match projections, ordering the parks department to increase revenue estimates by $2,000,000 but providing no means for the increase.
As the deficit became clear Walker ordered then-Parks Director Sue Baldwin to lay off employees and to recommend mid-year cuts. On Walker’s request, Baldwin had already made drastic cuts to personnel and there was nowhere else to cut but services. On the list of cuts he could make was the early closure of pools that are open for the summer.
Walker ordered the pools be closed and when the temperatures rose, so did public outrage. Walker used Baldwin as his scapegoat and fired her, but not before he invited television news cameras to the Parks department to transform the firings into a media circus.Hat tip, Jim McGuigan.
Yeah, it's BS. Especially when it's based on 2 good months of revenues (which are still below the U.S.'s growth), and completely ignores the fact that Wisconsin is last in jobs and income growth.
ReplyDeleteIf you ignore reality, you can make numbers say anything you want. But much like DOA Secretary Huebsch's $7.5 million Capitol damage estimate, Huebsch's "surplus" has little basis in fact, but a lot of basis in politics and ideology.
Just claiming there is a surplus doesn't make it so. The "evidence" of the surplus comes from this memo from DOA Secretary Mike Huebsch (http://www.thewheelerreport.com/releases/May12/0510/0510doamemo.pdf). Revised revenue -- how does that happen, with reduced income and reduced personal purchasing? "Structural refunding" refers to $78 million of debt that will not be repaid in the biennium (in addition to several hundred million more dollars that was taken care of earlier, to get the budget "in balance") -- i.e., kicking the can down the road. And I wonder where that $137 million transfer into the highway fund comes from. Hm, it's just about the same amount as the "surplus."
ReplyDeleteYet another salient figure for me in the 2013 budget is nearly $600 million in lapses. These are planned budgeted expenditures (and agencies already budget for position vacancies) that agencies will not be able to make. Like the lapses that were forced on the UW System this year, causing them to cut classes in the middle of the academic year and increase class sizes. It means that about $600 million of planned agency programming will not take place.
Where will the lapses occur? Who knows? The Governor won't tell us ahead of time, just as he didn't share his plans on collective bargaining before he was elected.
This is a bogus surplus and the Republicans know it.
Classic... he dodged a bullet because the beaches were closed due to bacteria. Hello... ah, where exactly did that bacteria come from?
ReplyDeleteMaybe he is in cahoots with MMSD?
While claiming there is a surplus does not make a surplus, it is better than the forecast of bankruptcy that Doyle had us under. You guys would have also complained if he projected a deficit, so what is the point? You guys whine and complain about everything.
The beach pollution in Milwaukee came from County parks and pipes called outfalls running straight across the sand - - during Walker's tenure: Read and then write:
ReplyDeletehttp://staff.onmilwaukee.com/visitors/articles/wispol010405.html
This issue reminds me of asr hip recall cases too.
ReplyDelete