Then last week, when most people were off for the Thanksgiving weekend, Walker quietly announced that he was rescinding* the third of the four furlough days. The cause was finding some "unexpected savings" in health care costs.
Today, Walker announced that he is eliminating the fourth furlough day as well. Now the savings, again in health care costs, ballooned from $3 million to $8 million. More than enough to cover John Chianelli's incompetence**.
Also noted was that Walker is also claiming that the County could see a "slight surplus" for the 2009 budget. Coincidentally, said "slight surplus" is almost exactly the cost of the two furlough days that workers did have in November.
This latest development raises many questions and concerns.
One is whether this "deficit" was just another contrived political stunt. If so, I did not authorize any of my money to be used to promote his campaign, and I want my money back. He owes me two days worth of pay.
Secondly, if there is indeed a surplus, that means he has overtaxed the county tax payers. If so, as a tax payer, I want my money back.
Third, is he really this incredibly incompetent? He started out 2009 by claiming there was a $15 million deficit. But when he illegally tried to impose an indefinite reduced work hour plan, he was unable to prove that there was even a deficit. Then in October, during the budget process, Walker found a "sudden and unforeseen deficit" which is directly attributed to one of his department heads, John Chianelli, being unable to do his duty with any hint of competence. Now he is claiming a surplus? If he can't handle the County's $1.4 billion budget, how in the world would anyone trust him to run the state's budget, which is exponentially bigger and more complex?
Something else worth noting is when Walker was bragging about again leaving many positions unfilled:
The county also has kept hundreds of vacant jobs unfilled over the past year. That also contributed to fewer health claims, said Walker.As a county employee, I guess I should be upset about this. However, because Walker refused to fill these positions, it created many staffing shortages. This opened the door for many workers, including myself, to take advantage of overtime projects. Not only did I keep up with the loss of income due to the furloughs, I am actually coming out ahead.
On the other hand, this news should also tick of the tax payers. Due to the staff shortages, many departments needed to bring in contract workers to help pick up the stuff that needed to get done. These contract workers are former county employees that had already retired. So, in Walker calls a cost saving measure, tax payers are now paying for the pensions of these workers, as well as their lifelong free health care coverage (to which the retired workers don't have to contribute) and another salary on top of that. He would have been better off hiring new workers that at least would have been contributing to their health care costs, and only receiving one salary from the county instead of two.
Not good management at all on Walker's part.
The article also includes a quote from Beth Werve (the president of my union local), who accurately points out that while many workers are happy to not have the income loss, there were many who had planned their out of town trips with that day off. This is not only now an unnecessary inconvenience to the workers who had planned accordingly for this day off, but also for management who is now scrambling around to make sure there is adequate coverage for the now rescinded furlough day.
Again, not good management at all on Walker's part. Nor does it do anything to address the greatest deficit the county has ever faced.
*There have been some who are questioning whether Walker even has the authority to rescind the furlough days, since they were enacted by the Board, and might require another resolution by the Board to cancel them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for the cancellations to be canceled, but just found that interesting.
**Chianelli still hasn't been held responsible for his failure to perform the most basic of his duties. The responsibility for the sudden deficit then falls squarely on Walker's shoulders.
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The county also has kept hundreds of vacant jobs unfilled over the past year
ReplyDeleteMakes Lubar look pretty good.
So if there is no need for the furlough days and there may now be a surplus why are about 20 park employees receiving notices that they will be layed off as of December 26?
ReplyDeleteProbably because they don't need them.
ReplyDeleteNo,Aaron, it is simply that Walker is doing it as a political stunt. One that will end up biting him in the butt.
ReplyDeleteDaddio, you really need to learn to read the entire post first before commenting. Unless you are OK with them "union thugs" double and triple dipping.
Uhh, wrong Dano. It makes Walker and his staff look like they don't know how to maintenance the budget. If you keep positions vacant, you shouldn't have the deficit problems, and you should have a much smaller need to lay off because you reduce by attrition. It's high school level business management.
ReplyDeleteUnless your goal is to create a deficit, screw up the provision of services, and then cause layoffs and furloughs as a political stunt to "solve the problem." Most people with any kind of leadership ability would try provide needed services in an efficient manner, without having these crazy swings in policies due to easily foreseen circumstances.
But most decent people don't make their livings cynically trying to trick suburban and rural rubes either.
I just heard that the park employees who received layoff notices have the option to work for the public works. Is that true?
ReplyDeleteoh my god,how many times does scotty the clown have to pull this s--- before people realize what a joke he has been managing the county.i think his followers know it but enjoy seeing county workers laid off.now trotting out SHELDON FUBAR again makes me sick.
ReplyDeleteArod,
ReplyDeleteYes and no. Only about a quarter of them were offered the chance to move, but they have not been doing it by seniority, so the County's offer is moot until the seniority has been worker through first.
Chris, there is a line in Tombstone where Doc Holiday tells Ike Clanton that a spelling contest might suit him better since he cannot win at cards. Your posts about Milwaukee County's finances remind me of that, since I have yet to see you post anything that's accurate. In that way I guess you're a lot like Patrick McIlheran, ironically enough.
ReplyDeleteI won't defend the lack of communication and attempt to work with the Board to alleviate the estimated deficits, because I would have handled it much differently. I will point out that when the Board made its own estimate, it included about $5 million in land sales revenue that wasn't due to the County until April, 2010 at the earliest, though you probably don't understand why that's problematic.
Your complaint about Chianelli stems from ignorance. He's one of the best administrators the County has. He was told by the state that a reimbursement policy would hold the County harmless. If he was told that, then the State screwed the County. You've been around long enough to know that happens like clockwork.
The real issue with the bouncing surpluses and deficits is the fact the County cannot maintain a fund balance. I doubt you understand or accept what that means, but I'll try anyway. Basically, the County cannot keep annual surpluses in a rainy-day fund to use in the case of deficits in future years. It has to carry deficits into future budgets, meaning cuts would have to be made to the following year's budget to account for the deficit. In any other County in Wisconsin, a shortfall of a decimal point would be mostly taken care of with reserves and you'd probably never hear much about it. Milwaukee County doesn't have that luxury.
So, when you stupidly opined that the County should just deficit instead of harming employees, you were advocating cutting services and employees in the future to avoid pain now. I think that's the George W. Bush school of budgeting.
The current surplus is the result of lower health insurance costs. Had the County hired all those people as you demand, there would have been more salary and more health insurance costs to the County, meaning no surplus, no canceled furloughs, and a deficit (and cuts) carried into the 2011 budget.
In other words, almost everything you advocate would make the problem about which you complain worse.
Simply put, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry, I know you really care about this stuff, but I haven't seen you be right once.
AnotherTosaVoter,
ReplyDeletePart of the problem is Capper's partisan inclinations. We are all partisan to a certain extent, but some of us fact-check our work so it doesn't bite us in the butt when it's proven to be wrong.
Capper makes so many assumptions and attributes so many ill motives to politicians that I wonder out loud if his blog would be better served as a personal journal of Capper's gut reactions to what goes on in the county. After all, he is a county worker, so we can't expect much objectivity here.
Also, TosaVoter, do you happen to have a blog? You seem to know the inner-workings of the county fairly well.
ATV and Arod,
ReplyDeleteYou accuse me of being inaccurate?
Chianelli himself admitted that he did not check the numbers, except casually, until late into the year. In a budget this tight, why didn't he do that? He could have caught the problem much, much earlier. And that is far from the only problem that he as caused.
If that is one of the best administrators that Walker could find, no wonder the County is going down fast.
The problem with the budget, as in each of the previous ones, is that Walker included revenue that he knew was impossible. Why in the world would he expect $7 million in land sales when he eliminated the economic development office?
Most of Milwaukee County's money comes from the state and the feds for it's social services and safety services. But by doing these duties, there are requirements to be met, and with Walker's short staffing departments, they are not being met. The take over of the income maintenance program is a prime example. By Walker trying to save you $5 on your taxes, he raised taxes by $5 M when the state had to take over. That makes no damn sense.
It is like saying you don't need to spend that $30 on an oil change for your car, but then having to spend $5,000 replacing the cracked engine block.
And Aaron,
I am fully aware of my partisan side and the impression people could have that it is just "union thuggery" or "lefty lies." That is why I always back things up whenever I can. Maybe you should try that sometime.
another tosa voter blinded by walkers ineptitude.if you know so much about the countys' finances maybe you could check out management costs. nimrod, "inner workings" when you or anyone figures out the "inner workings" of walkers management please let everyone know. this dopes been a disaster since day one.
ReplyDeleteWRT to land sales you are right about how it should be budgeted - however in the 2010 budget Walker took out all such land sales and the Board put the UWM landsale - one time revenue - into the operating budget to cover ongoing expenses. And you need to stop pretending that only Walker includes fake revenues in the budget to avoid cuts - see the fish hatchery, the Parks Department, and many others.
ReplyDeleteWRT Income Maintenance, you're wading into a topic about which I know little, so I cannot comment. I will say that whatever policy decisions were made by Walker, I can pretty much guarantee the State is not providing the necessary support and that any additional resources could have been added by the Board and probably would have required cuts elsewhere since even a majority of the Board won't accept the kind of tax increases your policy positions require.
Chianelli never said he checked the numbers "casually". He - and his fiscal people - checked the numbers appropriately. The lag in reimbursements - something about which you ought to know - meant the problem was not visible immediately.
Aaron, I tried blogging for a while but it's not my thing. Reading the likes of this blog, or Owen Robinson's, or Plaisted's, or most others, it's obvious that you need to keep providing content which means opining on this about which you know next to nothing. I prefer to know what I'm talking about.
The farm and fish hatchery has been detailed in various media and in county records. There is expense in running it, but most of that is compensated by Hunger Task Force, not to mention their other contributions such as extra staff and equipment. On top of that, the numbers you are listing is no where near the millions that Walker has projected.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the income center, what is the guarantee? Because you would owe me big. I was talking to some of the workers today, by chance. The staffing ratio is exponential compared to Walker's and the State is bringing in new equipment and technology that is far better than what they were using, per the people I spoke with.
Do you really expect anyone to believe that the $3 million dollar hole didn't show up until the end of the year?
As far as the Fish Hatchery, you have to remember that Walker corrected that took land sales OUT of the 2010 budget. The Board subsequently put the UWM land sale into the operating budget - using one-time revenues for ongoing operating expenses, requiring cuts next year - and also put quite a bit of fake revenue into other areas, such as the fish hatchery.
ReplyDeleteYou're sort of making my point - the State is providing more resources, resources the County didn't have because the State didn't provide sufficient funding and the County would have had to cut other areas to provide additional resources since there wasn't political support to raise additional taxes.
I don't expect you to believe anything that doesn't fit your pre-conceived ideological assumptions that anything bad that happens is due to incompetence or conspiracy on the part of Walker. The fact of the matter is that the State told the County it would be held harmless. The County routinely takes up to 90 days to bill Medicaid for the services, which in turns can often take 90 days to make payment. That's as long as 6 months for the first payments after the change to show up in the revenue column. I wonder if, even though someone has the audacity to work for Mr. Walker, you might someday give them the benefit of the doubt that things might get screwed up through no fault of their own.
Just try to think about it for maybe a minute, that perhaps your assumptions are wrong and that a good civil servant had something blow up on him despite his best efforts.
Can you do that?
ATV-
ReplyDeleteI'm not denying that both the Board and Walker are playing smoke and mirrors with the budget. However, this year, what they are trying is of such magnitude that it will cause big havoc when it implodes.
Even I know better than to trust anything the state says. I think it was Reagan that said "Trust, but verify." That would be very applicable when dealing with any level of the government.
Still, there are two problems with your assumption. One, does the county not have any more CPAs that could have crunched the numbers beforehand? Two, this is by far the only screw up that Chianelli has done.
I know some of Walker's people are honorable. Rob Henken is a good example. Also note that Henken got out pretty quickly.
Chianelli really lost me at the final public budget hearing when he was too busy joking around with his buddies and texting to pay attention to what was being said by the voters.
Indeed, the magnitude is what it is for two main reasons: employee/retiree benefits are unsustainable, and would be so with a good economy; and the economic downturn. You play the same games in your MCF post on the UWM land sale - you propose using one-time (unknown) land sales to pay for ongoing operating costs. Oh and a card that will pay to get into some place that, while a good idea, would represent a drop in the bucket in terms of revenue.
ReplyDeleteIt's the basic math I keep trying to teach you. And it's the day of reckoning that a lot of governments nationwide face. I don't say that as an anti-government idiot like our favorite clown Calvin, I say that as a public sector finance professional.
On BHD, the changed reimbursement rates didn't start until April in some cases. April + 180 days = October, when the deficit was reported.
I find it hard to take your complaints of other screw ups seriously, since you don't know what you're talking about with this one.
Maybe a spelling contest?
Oh, I readily admitted that the pass idea wasn't going to resolve any fiscal issues. But there are always other things that it can do. I'll let you try to figure those out.
ReplyDeleteAnd no doubt there is going to be pain for us workers. I fully expect to get laid off at the beginning of next year. But there will be other pains that go with it, far greater than the minor fiscal setback I will experience.
If the County decided to do things the right way, they probably would have gotten much of what they wanted. Now, the unions will be taking on a role of damage control and trying to help those of us that will get the axe in Walker's campaign.
There is more coming on BHD. And you still have not touched Chianelli's other shortcomings.