Mayor Paul Soglin said something extraordinary the other day. In introducing his capital budget (borrowing for streets, buildings and other kinds of durable items) the mayor said that “somebody has to be responsible around here.”
That seems to imply that somebody else isn’t being as careful as he is. He wasn’t specific on who he was blaming, but the likely culprits are the current Common Council or previous administrations, including mine. I served as mayor for eight years before Soglin, and he beat me in the 2011 election, in part, by making the argument that I had borrowed too much.
It was a peculiar comment because Soglin has been mayor for longer than anyone else. He’s served 18 years total so far, and he’s been back in office the last four years. So, if there has been a lack of discipline in borrowing, wouldn’t that mostly fall on him?
In fact, in the five most recent years when Soglin has been in charge of the borrowing, the city has borrowed $347 million. In the previous five years, when I was mayor, the city borrowed $249 million. That’s just short of 40% higher under Soglin. I include 2011 in Soglin’s total because although that budget was passed under my watch, the actual borrowing took place after he took office. As I’ll explain later, mayors can — and do — delay or otherwise alter the actual borrowing that happens in any given year.
The city has a guideline that paying back debt should not exceed 12.5% of the city’s operating budget, and before Soglin’s most recent comeback it never did. Now it is at 14% and climbing to a projected 17%.
So, if Soglin is trying to make a case that he did what he promised he would do in the 2011 campaign, well, the facts just show that he did the opposite. Borrowing has been much higher under Soglin than it was under me.
But maybe he was blaming the council. That too would be false. Mayors in Madison arguably have more power over the capital budget than almost anything else. The mayor is the architect of that budget to begin with and whatever changes the council makes are only at the margins. And even then the mayor could veto the budget and send alders back to the drawing board.
But most importantly, whatever the council finally passes, the mayor can actually borrow much less if he wants to. That’s because the budget passes in November, but actual borrowing doesn’t take place until the following fall — almost a year later. In the meantime, projects get delayed or sidetracked, so the actual borrowing package that the mayor sends to the council is almost always lower than what that body passed almost a year earlier. If the mayor wanted to he could simply refuse to send projects to the council when it came time to actually borrow the money.
So, it is just not plausible to blame record borrowing on the council. The mayor has almost complete control over how much the city is on the line for in the end. Soglin is right that the city is borrowing more than ever, and the responsibility for that sits squarely with him.
