The political style of state Rep. Frank Lasee (R-Green Bay) often seems straight out of vaudeville, but he has launched an intriguing proposal to cut the number of counties in Wisconsin from 72 to 18. This would reduce the number of local governments in Wisconsin (estimated at 1,900) and save taxes without cutting any needed services.
Lasee argues that Wisconsin created its 72 counties in the horse-and-buggy days so that constituents wouldn’t have to travel far to get county services. In the era of the automobile, all that has changed.
Lasee also notes that voters have no particular allegiance to their county governments. Voters have strong loyalty to their city or town government and to their school system, which often makes them resistant to mergers of any kind. But until the recent pension scandal in Milwaukee, few voters in the state even knew who most of their county representatives were.
Wisconsin’s counties range in size from Milwaukee (about 940,000 people) and Dane (426,000) to tiny ones like Menominee (4,562) and Florence (5,088). There are 44 counties that each serve less than 50,000 people. Would anything be lost if these smaller counties were merged with one next door?
Data from the National Association of Counties shows that nearby Midwestern states have about the same number of counties as Wisconsin, from 102 in Illinois to 83 in Michigan. But there are many western and eastern states with a much smaller number of counties, from Arizona (15) and Nevada (17) to Maine (16) and New Hampshire (10). Many states get along with far fewer counties than Wisconsin. And as I’ve written before, Wisconsin also has bigger county boards and a total number of county board members that surpasses every state in the union. Cutting the number of county governments would help address that problem as well.
Media Bias on Health Care?
Statistics show both Milwaukee and Wisconsin have some of the nation’s highest health care costs, and we know the U.S. leads the world in the cost of care. In short, we are global leaders in the cost of health care.
This could be the biggest issue facing Wisconsin. Health care inflation is driving up the cost of government benefits and the cost of doing business here.
SalariesReview.com recently sent Milwaukee Magazine a list of the top five salaries for nonprofit employees in Wisconsin. All five were medical professionals, including three in this metro area: Aurora physician Charles S. Nordell (who earned $1.3 million in 2003), Medical College of Wisconsin physician John G. Thometz ($1.1 million in 2002) and Aurora executive vice president Donald J. Nestor (just under $1 million in 2003). This is small potatoes compared to former Aurora chief executive Ed Howe, who topped out at $2.9 million annually just a few years ago.
Aurora, of course, keeps gobbling up market share. Its decision to buy Advanced Healthcare, the region’s largest physician group, will give it control over more doctors and their hospital referrals, thus generating ever more revenue for Aurora. Because patients usually just go to the hospital their doctor chooses, market forces don’t really operate in the health care field. Meanwhile, despite the high cost of care, a big chunk of Wisconsin citizens have no coverage.
The Democratic-led state Senate believes it has a solution called Healthy Wisconsin, a far-ranging plan of government coverage that would replace much of the patchwork private and public system. A key architect of the plan is David Riemer, once a policy analyst and efficiency expert for former Mayor John Norquist. But every couple Sundays, John Torinus attacks the plan in his weekly columns for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel business section.
Torinus is a former Milwaukee Sentinel reporter who is now CEO of Serigraph, which gives him an interesting perspective. I’m a pretty faithful reader. Torinus believes a system that forces employees to make more cost-effective choices is the cure for the health care crisis. Meanwhile, he has relentlessly attacked Riemer’s plan – with no balancing commentary in the newspaper.
Riemer has complained about this in an e-mail to the JS editors. He notes the paper’s Madison reporters took a while to start reporting that the $15 billion assessment of his health care plan would actually be offset by larger reductions in individual and employer premium costs. He notes the paper quoted researcher Devon Herrick, a fan of health savings accounts (much-loved by Republicans), saying that families earning less than $40,000 to $50,000 a year who cannot afford health insurance are a “slim, slim group of people,” when there are more than 1.2 million such Wisconsinites. Despite this, Riemer says, the paper’s coverage has been “reasonably balanced.”
But he complains that Torinus has done three columns attacking Healthy Wisconsin in the business section with nothing to balance this commentary. “I’m not asking for special treatment,” Riemer writes. “Just equal time … an op-ed column in the main section or an op-ed column in the business section.”
That’s a pretty reasonable request. The issue is too important to be covered in such a biased fashion.
Scott Walker Confesses
In response to my column of last week questioning whether Scott Walker had done enough to reform the Milwaukee County pension system, he had this to say: “Per your question … should we have been more proactive, the answer is simple: YES.”
Walker also noted that he changed the composition of the pension board, formerly controlled by the county executive. Today the executive appoints only three of nine members, with two appointed by the County Board chair, three elected by employees and one by retirees. That, indeed, is a big improvement. Walker said he likes the idea of adding a member appointed by the governor, a suggestion I made last week. (I’d favor as many as three.)
Walker also defended his decision not to sue the Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren law firm for the advice it gave county officials on the pension plan. The head of the firm, back when Walker made this decision, was then-state Republican chair Rick Graber, who had donated campaign money to Walker. But Walker says the county corporation counsel did not recommend a suit against Reinhart and says the firm “raised serious concerns [about the controversial pension plan].”
Last week, a reader offered a comment with an excellent suggestion: Create a position of county comptroller, much like the city of Milwaukee has – an independent financial analyst who could review any self-serving benefits proposals. Walker said he favors the idea.
The Buzz:
– On Sunday, the JS ran a very shortened version of a New York Times piece on pet projects “earmarked” for funding to the district of a particular federal lawmaker. Amazingly, the JS left out the graph showing that Wisconsin Rep. Dave Obey, the Democratic chair of the Appropriations Committee, was second-highest when it came to feasting on pork: Obey had 50 earmarks that gained $85 million in funding for his constituents.
– Bloggers have accused Sheriff David Clarke of spending $30,000 to replace the seven-pointed sheriffs’ badges with five-point stars. Why? Because Clarke has a five-point star tattoo. Is this true? I asked Clarke’s media representative, Kim Brooks.
Of course not, she says. Brooks says Clarke is simply replacing a damaged stock of badges and that replacement is cheaper than repair. Brooks, however, wasn’t able to give me the cost of replacing the badges.
And why five points? “Most sheriff departments use a five-point star,” Brooks notes. As for the tattoo story, she added, it was untrue and showed how inaccurate these blog items were.
Uh huh. So does the sheriff have any tattoos? Yes, Brooks answered, a Dallas Cowboys tattoo.
A sheriff in Wisconsin is wearing a tattoo of a hated enemy of the Green Bay Packers? That may be the real scandal here.
But it’s worth noting: The Cowboy logo is a five-point star.
And don’t miss critic Ann Christenson’s Dish on Dining.
