Notes from the West Wing
By
State Representative Garey Bies
State Contracts and Sportsman Licenses
As the coldest weather of the season has set upon us, I’d like to talk about a couple of issues that have been in the news here in Madison and around Wisconsin: State employee contracts and the proposed increase in hunting and fishing licenses. For this edition of Notes from the West Wing, I want to briefly talk about these two items. As always, if you have some thoughts on this column or questions about anything else you might see or read in the news, I can be reached by e-mail at Rep.Bies@legis.state.wi.us or by telephone, toll-free at 1-888-482-0001.
The lack of contracts for state employees has been major news in the last couple of weeks. Our state’s employees are hard workers and deserve to have a contract. As a former county employee, I understand their frustration over not having a contract. But the contracts are very complex and as they were delivered to us on Christmas Eve, we must not rush to approve them. Given the condition of our state budget, careful review of the contracts is warranted.
After the contracts were submitted to the Legislature, we asked the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau to analyze the cost implications of the contracts. We learned a great deal as a result of that analysis. Included in what we learned was that the contracts would cost more than twice the figure of $58 million that was originally indicated and would thus exceed the available funds in the compensation reserves. This means that to fund these contracts, the state would have to raid some other fund and the current state deficit would increase by over $60 million. Given the state’s current fiscal condition, I do not feel it would be prudent to spend this additional money.
While these contracts are very similar to those offered to and rejected by union leadership during the summer of 2001. The economy has changed dramatically since then and we need to carefully judge whether these contracts are still appropriate. We must realize that any dollar spent in excess of that available in the compensation reserves will be a dollar cut from some other program or service.
In addition, newly elected Governor Doyle and his administration have not had the opportunity to participate in the discussions of the contracts. As Governor, it is only appropriate that he be given that opportunity. It would be unfair to his efforts to remedy the state’s fiscal crisis if we were to impose this further budgetary constraint upon him.
Lastly, I would like to briefly comment on the proposed increase in hunting and fishing licenses for Wisconsin residents. I think it is unfortunate that one of the first actions being undertaken by the new Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is to raise fees to cover a projected shortfall in the Department. The DNR should, I think, first look internally for cost-saving measures. It is this mentality of raising a fee that typifies an out of control bureaucracy. The DNR is one of the state’s biggest bureaucracies and for the DNR to first look to the wallets of our state’s sportsmen for more money is not the right thing to do.
Given the condition of the state’s budget, I as your legislator, the rest of our state’s legislators, and our state agencies, must first look to ourselves to save money by cutting costs. The easy option is to spend money and then ask our residents to open their wallets and checkbooks. As the 4th highest tax state, I think it is high time that we start making the hard decisions.