A couple looks at their house with increased tax price stickers on it.
Madison’s mayor and city council seem intent on wasting a good crisis.
Faced with an unprecedented $22 million deficit, city government looks to be on track to ask voters to exceed state levy limits before they even try more innovative solutions.
The council will vote on Aug. 20 to put a referendum on the November ballot asking voters to increase their taxes by another $250 on the average Madison home, which is valued at $457,300. It looks very likely that the council will go ahead with the referendum.
This is risky. While you would have to go back almost two decades to find the last time Madison voters shot down a referendum, this is different for two reasons. It’s the first time the city has exercised its option under state law to go to the voters to exceed state limits and they would be doing it at the same time the Madison schools are asking for more money on the same ballot.
The school board has already approved two questions for November, one to spend more on operating and another for capital improvements to elementary and middle schools. The effect of the school referendums would be to ramp up spending over three years, resulting in an increase of $1,370 on the average tax bill by 2028.
So, you see the problem, which is sticker shock. It’s possible that this will just be too much all at once and all three, or at least one of the three, questions will be defeated.
It would be better to use this budget crisis to do a deep dive into city processes, organizational culture and overall mission. We could use this problem as an incentive to ask if the city is being as efficient as it could be, is as focused as it should be on results for its customers, and if there are things the city is doing that it just doesn’t need to do.
Because Madison’s rainy day fund is flush, the city could buy a year or two by going deeper into savings while it works on broader reforms. As long as the road forward was made clear, it’s extremely unlikely that the city would see its AAA bond rating changed.
Here are four big questions the city might explore.
First, is it being as efficient as possible in doing what it already does? Without occasional shocks to the system, bureaucracies tend to fall into a comfort zone. Things are done this way because they’ve always been done this way. A process that might have made sense 20 years ago lives on simply for lack of incentive to have a fresh look at it.
Second, is the city focused on its customers? The city of Madison, like most big bureaucracies, has a tendency to ask first how a new initiative will impact itself, rather than how it might benefit the people paying the bills. The city could dust off a program called Madison Measures which required every department to explain how a budget provision would improve services to city residents.
Third, could the city merge services either internally or with other units of government, mostly Dane County? This has already been done when two departments were merged to form the Department of Civil Rights and when the city and county merged health departments. Along these lines, the city and county could push the Legislature to reestablish a county transit authority. If the Democrats could take back the Assembly, that would remove Speaker Robin Vos, who has been an intractable opponent of RTAs.
Fourth, what could be cut altogether? Most of us would probably agree that police, fire, streets, parks and maybe transit are all basic services that we don’t want to see cut. But every department can be more efficient and there are some things the city does that it doesn’t need to do. A prime example is the Independent Police Monitor. That program was duplicative from the start as the police are already accountable to a Police and Fire Commission, the Public Safety Review Board, the mayor and the council. Moreover, the execution of this project has been a mess. After three years it doesn’t even have a formal complaint process. It’s a half million dollars absolutely wasted. It could go away tomorrow and nobody would notice.
On this last point the city has issued a list of cuts that could happen if the referendum doesn’t pass. Some of the proposed cuts make sense, but the fact that the police monitor is not on that list (except for a small pro forma cut required of all agencies) and a 52% cut to street maintenance is on the chopping block suggests that this is more of a political document designed to scare voters into submission than a serious attempt to cut things that aren’t needed.
This is not intended to be a criticism of this mayor, this council or city staff. I actually think the city is pretty well managed. And, in fact, if faced with a referendum question in November I’ll most likely vote "yes" while I will certainly vote against the school referendums because I think that organization is horribly run with predictably awful results.
But, lacking the profit incentive that can keep private businesses lean and focused, even well-run public entities need some other force to sharpen them up. This budget crisis could be just the thing.
[Editor's note: This post was updated to reflect the fact that there is a proposed $23,000 cut to the police monitor's budget.]
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
