“Something’s gotta give” on local budgets
Members of the Courier Sentinel editorial board include publisher Carol O’Leary, general manager Kris O’Leary and Star News editor Brian Wilson.
“Something’s gotta give, something’s gotta break. But all I do is give, and all you do is take” ~ Something’s Gotta Give, by Camila Cabello
In Wisconsin, August brings many things. It brings the sounds of sports practices starting at school fields. It brings lines of traffic with boats and campers on the highways heading “up north,” to get one last vacation in before the school year. It brings cool warm days and cool evenings, perfect for sitting around a campfire.
It also brings with it the beginning of the municipal budget season.
If money makes the world go around, then it is budgets that say how fast and in what direction that turning goes. At their most basic, budgets are a spending plan, saying that so much will be designated to go toward road repairs, while wages will take another chunk.
Beyond that, budgets also reflect the priorities of communities in areas that go well beyond simple dollars and cents arithmetic. Many town governments keep things simple, with roads and fire protection as their major focus.
At the city and county level, public safety takes a dominant role, along with roads and mandated services. Wages and benefits take the largest chunk in many local budgets, although it may take wading through a dozen different line items to figure out how they are broken down by department and task.
The budgetary crumbs left over go to those things which set a community apart and make it a place you might want to live, work and play. These types of things include parks, playground equipment, walking and bike paths, pools and splash pads, and investing in tourism, to attract people to the area.
When budgets are tight, it is these amenities that are always the first to go on the chopping block. Year after year, budgets continue to remain tight and artificial state-imposed levy limits, whittle away the amount spent on these amenities. Little by little, communities slide backward, providing less to residents, while demanding more in taxes.
Budgeting is about making tough choices, made even more difficult when Madison calls the shots, rather than allowing local elected officials to be responsive to the needs of people in their communities.
This year, the budgeting process is made even more challenging, with inflationary pressure on everything from fuel to building materials. In addition, given labor market conditions, governments face the risk of losing their best workers chasing paychecks and better benefits in the private sector, because they are not able to be competitive in filling vacant positions.
Something has to give. Either the state needs to loosen the reins on local government, or lawmakers need to re-evaluate the shared revenue system. The state, through partisan paralysis, is sitting on more than $3.5 billion in surplus funds. This money needs to come back to local government, to allow them to respond to economic conditions and ensure that residents still see some benefit from paying their taxes.
Something has got to give, because as things stand now, taxpayers are the ones getting squeezed, paying more and getting less in return for it.
