No Runny Eggs

First things first, if you haven’t seen Patrick’s video of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker’s veto announcement, go do so. I was there, and I doubt the TV news will do the announcement justice.

Next, realize that, if the County Board overrides this veto and refuses to have a “do over” on the budget, here’s the cold, hard facts that will bite those of us who live in Milwaukee County:

• This budget includes a $9 million levy increase.
• Despite this levy increase, the fact that the County Board put back into the budget a whole slew of positions, but only funded a couple months’ worth of pay puts the county $6.55 million in the red on January 1, 2007.
• Further, by not accepting Walker’s plan to issue bonds to cover the pension obligations, but assuming the savings from the issuance of those bonds, the county will fall another $6.25 million in the red by the end of the 2007 budget.

The County Board did pass this budget by a vote of 14-5 (with my supervisor, Paul Cesarz, among the 5). However, we can possibly sway three members of that majority to do the budget over: Ryan McCue, Lynne De Bruin, and Roger Quindel. Upholding this veto will give both the taxpayers and the county another chance to get the budget right by everybody.

There is not a moment to lose. The County Board will vote on overriding the veto of the budget tomorrow. Get a hold of your supervisor, especially if you live in the districts of the three I listed above, by callling 278-4222.

In case you haven’t heard the news, Scott Walker is now going to veto the entire County Board “budget” later today. While he did find a way to bring the levy back to a zero increase through line-item vetoes, he couldn’t solve the pair of time bombs Lee Holloway and company threw in through the line-item veto pen – the re-adding and partial funding of the jobs Walker wanted to outsource like janitors for a few million (if memory serves, and it’s a bit hazy, somewhere around $6 million), and a shortfall in the pension funding caused by the board’s rejection of bonding the obligation and still taking the savings (again, if the hazy memory serves, right around $13 million).

For those of you with a sense of Bruce Lee films, this quote from Enter the Dragon is definitely appropriate – “What was that? An exhibition? We need emotional content. Try again, this time with feeling.” I can easily see Walker saying that.