We are a couple of weeks away from the County Executive releasing her proposed 2026 budget, but it’s already causing much consternation throughout the district, the city, and the county. So, I’d like to address some of it head on.
First, going forward there is a $31,000,000 deficit. What does that mean? That means that on a (mostly) permanent basis, the county’s expenses exceed our revenues by $31,000,000. How did this happen? Well, that’s a very long story, and while I’m reluctant to throw anybody under the bus, I’ll just say that we didn’t have this deficit when Kathleen Falk left office in 2013, and it was already a fait accompli by the time Interim County Executive Jamie Kuhn took over. So read into that what you will.
The problem facing County Executive Agard is how to fix it. There are “a lot of headwinds” (economist speak for: the economy is about to head into the shitter) that will make a “natural” recovery difficult. What does that mean in normal human language? Most of the county’s revenue (income) comes from a .5% sales tax and property taxes. Property taxes are relatively stable, so we get more money (budget surpluses) when the economy is good and people are coming to Dane County and spending money. That’s not likely to be happening for the foreseeable future (call it 3 years at the earliest).
That means we don’t have an easy way of raising more money. So, we need to find expenses to cut. To her credit, the Executive, to date, has continued to say she wants to solve this problem without “reducing headcount” (i.e. firing people) or reducing salaries. So, where does the county spend its regular, on-going (operating) money1? Two places: internal people doing internal projects (e.g., medical examiner’s office, jail, Badger Prairie, highway services, etc.) and external people doing external projects (service providers like shelters, mental health services, etc.).
The Executive has asked every department in the county to cut 4% from its requested budget and to do so without cutting people. Largely these cuts comprise cuts to projects that haven’t been terribly successful (good!) and to positions that either aren’t needed or haven’t been getting filled for a variety of reasons.2 This 4% cut will save the county approximately $14,000,000, leaving approximately $17,000,000 more to be cut (expenses) or filled (revenue).
The Executive is currently proposing, and the Board will vote on Thursday (tomorrow), to cut employee healthcare by $6,000,000.3 You can find my public comments on this cut in a variety places, but I’d look here (video of 9/8/2025) and here (9/15/2025; video is not yet up)4, if you are particularly interested in the debate and hearing what I have to say.
The debate to cut $6M in healthcare costs is extremely complex. First, it does not, of itself, solve the remaining $17,000,000 hole. If fact, it doesn’t even cover half of it and barely covers 1/3 of it. Where will the other $11M for the hole come from? I don’t know. Nobody except the Executive knows and she’s not telling anyone. I am very not happy this5. I also don’t know what else was considered before the Executive came up with cutting health care. So I have to evaluate this cut entirely on its own merits.
The county’s employee group representatives (“EGRs”) have presented a lot of data that this money can be made up elsewhere and they have a strong preference for NOT cutting health care. For example furloughs; county administrative calculations are that every employee would suffer approximately 7 furlough days (unpaid days off). Obviously, this is not a sustainable cut, unless we are going to make the furloughs permanent and the entire county just works 7 fewer days a year. The EGRs insist that the $6M can be made up through negotiation of a new health care plan and better Request for Proposal (“RFP”) for the next health care plan negotiation in 2 years. Amongst other ideas (none of which are permanent solutions).
So, tomorrow I will have to vote on whether to accept the Executive’s proposed $6M cut to health care, or whether to back the employee groups efforts to convince the Executive to find the money through furloughs. Keep in mind, that the furloughs are the EGRs’ proposal; the EGR does not represent 100% of employees, nor does the Executive have to agree to the furloughs.
In fact, the Executive has declined (so far) to even negotiate furloughs with the EGRs. Moreover, it’s not clear that all employees even back the EGRs’ plans; there is evidence to suggest that some employees would prefer the health care cut to furlough days (recall: they are unpaid days so are, in effect, pay cuts).
The Executive’s office is proposing that instead of furloughs (which are not ideal from a county services perspective), she will ask departments to cut an addition 2-3% of their budgets to cover the $6M (recall: nobody still knows where that other $11M is coming from…). But even her office admits that this cannot come equally across the county because some critical departments simply do not have another 2-3% to cut. Meaning, some departments will lose 0% more and others will lose 6% (averages…). It seems inevitable that this could more than likely result in positions being cut and potentially filled positions being cut.
How would you think about this problem? Send a message, leave a comment, or discuss in chat.
We don’t really look at capital projects (building things like buildings) because they are one-time expenses, though sometimes the debt-service from the building is part of the equation. We might decide NOT to build something, but it’s pretty difficult to stop building things once we’ve started.
When the county decides to create a new position the money is allocated to the position whether it is hired or not. So money is “cut” when that empty position is simply removed from potentially being filled.
You’ll hear a bunch of different numbers, but I’ll round it to $6M. The “real” savings is more like $6.1M. The cost of the county to Dean (our health care provider) for health care plan payments will reduce by about $5.6M, and as a result of the reduction in plan costs, the county’s payment of premiums over the year will be reduced by about $.5M, so total this a savings of approx. $6.1M. You might recall that I am Vice Chair of Personnel and Finance, and I happen to sit on the county’s Insurance Advisory Committee.
Personnel and Finance Committee Meetings.
Very, very, very not happy about this.