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Gov. Scott Walker’s budget would cut about $43.3 million a year in transportation aid to local governments – money that’s used to resurface local streets, fix potholes and repair aging bridges – while increasing state highway funding by $410.5 million over two years. Milwaukee officials say the cuts to local aid would starve local streets while enriching the state highway system.

Walker campaigned last year as a road builder, and he’s making good on his promise. His proposed 2011-2013 biennial budget increases state highway funding by almost 15 percent. Much of it would benefit Southeastern Wisconsin: $225 million would be dedicated to speeding up the Zoo Interchange project, and another $195 million would fund “vital interchange construction” on the project widening Interstate 94 between the Illinois border and Milwaukee’s Mitchell Interchange.

filled potholes (photo by adrian palomo)

State highway maintenance would also get a shot in the arm: It would increase 2 percent (“to partially alleviate the impact of recent winters”) and the State Highway Rehabilitation program, which resurfaces state highways and repairs bridges along the highway system, would get $110.8 million in new funding over the biennium.

Meanwhile, transportation aid to counties and municipalities funding local road repairs would take a 10 percent haircut.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett questions these priorities. “I could go to any neighborhood in this city, and people are more interested in repaving streets than adding new lanes to highways,” he says.

Can Milwaukee absorb the cut?

Walker’s executive budget summary says it protects “small communities with many miles of road (while) shifting reductions to larger communities with both the tax base and the employee compensation savings to absorb larger reduction amounts.”

More populous counties and municipalities in the state, including Milwaukee, would take a larger hit from the 10 percent cut in local aid because the budget figures in a smaller reduction (only 3 percent) for smaller communities. The city’s funding could be cut as much as 15 percent, according to Barrett. That would mean a reduction for the city of $4.1 million, according to city estimates.

tom barrett

“To ask us to absorb this in our current fiscal situation is just implausible,” Barrett says.

Walker’s budget would also limit increases in local government property tax levies to construction of new homes, preventing the city from raising taxes to make up for lost state aid.

As for savings from employee compensation cuts, Barrett says the city may be able to save $6 million by increasing employee health plan contributions, “However, it is unclear whether we will be able to take advantage of the proposed pension change since the city attorney has questioned its constitutionality.”

Overall, “The employee compensation savings certainly do not provide a level of relief that offsets this cut,” he says, considering the budget’s other cuts to local government funding and its levy limits.

Ald. Bob Bauman, chair of the Common Council’s Public Works Committee, says the budget’s suggestion that larger communities could absorb the cut in local transportation aid is “a flat-out lie,” citing City Attorney Grant Langley’s opinion that the city would be unable to implement the increased employee contributions to pension plans recommended by Walker.

As for absorbing the cut via the “tax base,” Baumann says, “What tax base do they claim we have?” According to the Public Policy Forum, Milwaukee County has the lowest average property values in Southeastern Wisconsin.

Bauman says the influx of federal stimulus funding is expiring as Walker is proposing new cuts to local transportation aid. “We’re going to go back to the bad old days when we can’t keep up with the deterioration,” he says. “That’s kind of the Walker theme: Kill the city; kill the infrastructure in the city and kill the businesses in the city … Road maintenance is not a welfare program.”

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