No Runny Eggs

I’m surprised that the Journtinel didn’t split this into umpteen stories instead of the two they did split it into, or do this in a day-by-day drumbeat. Let’s explode this one by one:

– “Wah! Milwaukee just can’t spend less than it did last year!” – NRE has issued a Crying River Flood Warning for Milwaukee City Hall and Milwaukee Public Schools headquarters. Since Milwaukee Public Schools doesn’t maintain old budgets online, let’s take a look at the city of Milwaukee budget between FY2003 (the year before the first Doyle budget took effect) and FY2006 (the last year population estimates are available for proper comparison). The city conveniently has a page on their site that summarizes the main budget numbers between FY1988 and FY2006, and that includes not only the amount of total authorized spending (the “Total City budget” line), but the amount of state shared revenue. Despite a drop in state revenue from $249,921,000 in FY2003 to $239,725,000 in FY2006 ($10,196,000 for the math-challenged among you, or 4.08%), and a drop in population from 585,059 in July 2003 (the day after FY 2003 ended) to 573,358 in July 2006 (11,701, or 2.00%), total spending increased from $1,062,827,429 in FY2003 to $1,211,186,519 in FY2006 ($148,359,090, or 13.96%). Inflation was 9.57% over the same period, so if one were to factor both inflation and population loss, if spending were to have remained constant per person, Milwaukee should have increased spending by only 7.38%. Instead, spending increases outstripped the combined effects of inflation and population loss at a 1.61% annual rate.

Somehow, I doubt that MPS showed any more restraint than the city between 2003 and 2006, and I know neither showed restraint last year. They could both use a trim, and a 3.5% trim to put them back at per-taxpayer/per-student FY2006 levels is a good start.

Oh, and Milk Carton. Where were you and your concern for the taxpayers of Milwaukee when your buddy Craps slashed and burned shared revenue to Milwaukee County to try and punish Scott Walker as he was contempating a gubernatorial run? Oh that’s right; unlike you, Walker knows how to live within his means, even as he gets sabotaged by a tax-and-spend County Board.

– “Wah! Without massive state subsidies, we won’t have Ambert Alerts anymore!” – NRE has issued a Crying River Flood Warning for Wisconsin Public Radio and a Crying River Flood Watch for Dane County Public Safety Communications Center. While WPR is currently the main dissemination source of statewide activations of the Emergency Alert System, the main EAS system is designed to be quite robust. Indeed, WTMJ-AM/WKTI-FM (Milwaukee’s Local Primary-1 stations) have the same direct link to the state Emergency Operations Center, which creates the statewide activation of the EAS outside of Amber Alerts, that the WPR stations that are the State Relay stations have through WPR’s dedicated monitoring studio (I don’t know if Rhinelander’s SR station, a non-WPR station, has that link to WPR’s monitoring studio yet). All the other LP-1 and LP-2 stations monitor WTMJ, either through a dedicated ISDN line or through a satellite, and have a spare monitoring slot that can be hooked into the state EOC.

Why the lawmakers chose to bypass the state EOC and create a separate activation authority for Amber Alerts, and incorporate only one dissemination channel through WPR, is beyond a sane person’s comprehension. Further, seeing that there already is one private radio station that is a SR station, there needs to be no requirement that the remainder remain welfare radio stations.

– “Wah! We won’t be able to make UWM/Wisconsin State University into a rival for the Madistan campus!” – NRE has issued a Crying River Flood Warning for UWM. News flash; we can’t afford two huge public universities, especially with UWM undercutting UW-Madison’s tuition.

– “Wah! We can’t possibly make those getting into the most-lucrative business in Wisconsin pay anything approaching what their education is worth!” – NRE has issued a Crying River Flood Warning for the University of Wisconsin Law School. Lawyers, especially in Craps’ Wisconsin, stand to make a mint. Why in the hell can’t they pay $17,000 in tuition? And don’t give me the “It would make Madistan’s law school among the most-expensive in the Big 10.” Last time I checked, Northwestern was the only private university in the Big 10.

– “Wah! We can’t possibly keep overpaying nutjob lecturers and offering everybody backup jobs on just a 3.1% annual increase in taxpayer subsidies!” – NRE has issued a Crying River Flood Warning for the entire University of Wisconsin system. In a high-tax, low-income state, we can’t afford the 8.7% annual increase in the subsidy to the money pit known as the UW system the ‘Rats want.

Revisions/extensions (10:17 pm 7/13/2007) – Corrected something related to how the EAS operates.