Far-reaching impacts
The contours of a Marathon County budget squabble later this year are beginning to emerge, but, as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, the board’s favorite target for budget cuts, the Start Right family support program, will likely not be on the table. Some supervisors may still wish to end the $1 million program to send nurses and counselors to at-risk families of newborns, but, we predict, not a majority. The result will likely be a different budget debate this year, one focused more on who should pay more to maintain existing programs, including highway maintenance, and less on cutting programs.
The county’s budget squeeze continues. As in previous years, supervisors face a deficit. They must deal with higher health insurance costs and annual employee raises. This year, too, the county must fund a new, expensive computerized finance system. It also may need to increase, as the result of a wage class study, various worker salaries by a total of $2 million to be competitive with the private marketplace. Finally, the county will need to deal with a projected $333,385 funding gap in the county’s highway maintenance program.
In the past, fiscally conservative supervisors have faced similar budget challenges by proposing to either end or significantly cut the Start Right program. The program is a budget cutter’s dream. It is not mandated and, if cut, frees up a large chunk of money to stick in other places within the budget.
To date, conservatives have not succeeded in cutting Start Right. A board majority has continued, year after year, to feel an investment in young families and infants will pay off with reduced childhood trauma, less drug abuse and, in the end, fewer arrests and jail bed days.
The county has a new, more conservative board and, with more votes on that side of the political divide, opponents of Start Right would have their best chance in years to terminate the program.
But we don’t think that’s going to happen. That’s because the U.S. Supreme Court this past month reversed the landmark 1973 Rose v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. The result of the decision is that a mothballed 1849 statute banning abortion in Wisconsin is now the law of the land. The practical upshot is that Marathon County will likely see an increase in children being born, including children of at-risk families. Given these developments, we don’t see even a conservative-leaning county board taking away services for parents with newborns. Things have changed.
Without Start Right to plunder, the board faces a new budget reality. The board, committed to providing constituents with parks, libraries, highways and police protection, won’t be able fulfill these increasingly expensive commitments by shredding programs for the needy. Instead, it will have to start talking about raising revenues. It can do that by instituting fees. Otherwise, it can borrow for things and raise the county’s debt service levy.
Many supervisors will have a hard time accepting this reality. They will look at the county’s $165 million budget and believe they can pay for all of their budget priorities by just trimming away the budget fat. But that’s not the way it is. The county has been under strict state levy limits since 2006. These limits have had their impact. County departments run lean, not fat. The county board acknowledged as much when it agreed to borrow $24 million this year to take care of a long backlog of maintenance projects. Budget surpluses have been too thin in past years to take care of the county’s capital needs.
The new budget reality demands a new conversation. And that conversation will turn on who should pay for all of the county services we both like and depend on.
One of these services, for instance, is highway maintenance. The county maintains 614 miles of county trunk highways. They are a lifeline for rural county residents. A long-range study, however, projects ongoing funding gaps to keep rural highways in good shape. Does, then, the county cut other basic services to pay for new county blacktop? Like libraries? Or parks? Or police protection? Perhaps a better option is to increase the existing $25 county wheel tax.
The U.S Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will have far reaching impacts across America. That includes how the Marathon County Board of Supervisors will set its 2023 budget. Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review
