Is Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele committed to implementing the 2015 budget?
That question cropped up last Thursday as members of the county board’s Judiciary, Safety and General Services Committee heard testimony on the portion of the county budget dedicated to the Sheriff’s Office.
The Abele administration isn’t allowing all of the new deputies added to the budget to be hired, according to testimony provided last week.
Committee Chair Tony Staskunas said Abele’s refusal to carry out the budget’s directives was a fight worth having.
“My view is that sometimes we pick fights here that are really sort of meaningless or needless,” Staskunas said. “This is really a fight I think we ought to have. This goes to the balance between the executive and the legislature. It’s our budget. He has to implement it.”
The situation is so dire that board members are considering going to court to force Abele to carry out the policies adopted by the board of supervisors, the county’s legislative branch.
“If he’s going to continue on this path of not carrying out policies, then I think that’s where we’re headed,” Supervisor Theo Lipscomb told the Shepherd. “I wish it weren’t necessary. It should not be necessary. But it seems to be the path we’re on given his behavior and apparent indifference to the adopted budget.”
Abele’s office didn’t respond to the Shepherd’s request to comment for this article. [UPDATE: See below.]
Dispute Over Deputies
Abele famously worked to reduce the power of the board and dramatically boost his own power by working with suburban Republican legislators to pass Act 14, which cuts supervisors’ responsibilities and salaries. The board will likely go part time after next April’s elections, and a number of experienced supervisors are expected not to run for another term.
Act 14 didn’t affect the board’s role in crafting the budget or the rights and responsibilities of the sheriff, however.
The latest dust-up between Abele in the board is over the budget’s addition of 25 deputy sheriff positions, which were added to the budget but Abele seems to be reluctant to fill. This is an issue of public safety.
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Inspector Richard Schmidt testified that the office has requested to hire more deputies, but Abele’s budget director, Josh Fudge, has nixed that request and is ignoring the county’s final adopted budget.
“I received a message back personally from Josh Fudge that he was ordered not to allow us to hire any more than five deputy sheriffs,” Schmidt told the committee. “We put in and the county board graciously put in the positions that we requested, many of them, that is. And quite frankly the county exec’s office shut down the county board’s approval to hire those individuals. I think it’s imperative that the board knows what’s taking place. That your budget is basically being overridden by the county executive’s office at this time.”
Schmidt said the office needs between 30 and 40 new deputies, not five. Schmidt said the office is projecting a surplus this year.
“We’re not getting the ones that were literally funded at this point,” Schmidt said.
Budget Director Fudge, whose last day in county employment will be May 1, said that only 10 of the 25 deputy positions were funded.
Lipscomb, co-chair of the Finance, Audit and Personnel Committee, told the Shepherd that the board approved enough funding to allow the sheriff to hire the deputies, and that the sheriff said he could work within his budget to reduce overtime costs.
Fudge told the committee his office looked at funding and staffing projections “and informed the Office of the Sheriff we’d allow five positions to go forward” and would allow more hiring if there were any retirements. He said he hadn’t heard that the sheriff would run a surplus this year and would look into whether more deputies could be hired.
Supervisor Willie Johnson, co-chair of the Finance, Personnel and Audit Committee and a member of the Judiciary, Safety and General Services Committee, called Abele’s directive to hire only five deputies “unacceptable.”
“The budgetary process should be honored,” Johnson said in committee.
Judiciary committee member Mark Borkowski said Abele’s refusal to implement the budget is part of a larger pattern of ignoring board-set policy. In 2013, the board voted to cap the salaries of some of Abele’s top staffers to bring them in line with their peers at the state. Abele is ignoring that policy, Borkowski said. In fact, this year Abele unilaterally gave Hector Colon, the director of the Health and Human Services Department, a nearly $50,000 raise, increasing his salary 39% to $175,000.
“Unfortunately this county executive has precedence as far as ignoring the will of the board and the budget, simply ignoring it,” Borkowski said.
Borkowski, usually a staunch Abele supporter, said the administration’s lack of communication about not following the board’s policies is part of a bigger pattern.
“It’s by design,” Borkowski said. “It’s not coincidental anymore. There is a disconnect where the county executive’s office and the people that report to him are being ordered not to work with the county board.”
Supervisor Gerry Broderick, a member of the judiciary committee, told the Shepherd that even Scott Walker, Abele’s predecessor as county executive and Abele’s political role model, carried out board policy, even when he and the board differed ideologically.
“We could work with Scott Walker,” Broderick said. “Scott Walker never used these tactics.”
Looming Lawsuit
Adding to the conflict is a lawsuit filed in February by Sheriff David Clarke Jr. and the Milwaukee County Deputy Sheriffs Association against Milwaukee County over funding.
But Borkowski also hinted that the board might look into taking action against Abele himself over his rejection of the board’s policies and adopted budget.
“I think the board needs to say we’ve got to put an end to this,” Borkowski said. “This might be our test case to say you know what, the board takes on the exec. I hate to even be saying this because it seems so ridiculous that we have to start looking at legal action for what the public would say, why aren’t you working together?”
He added, “It’s almost like he’s egging us on to do something.”
UPDATE: Abele's spokesman responded after our deadline:
In his 2015 budget request, the Sheriff asked for a 34% increase in his Office’s budget, an amount that reached nearly $27 million dollars, along with 181 additional FTE positions. When the County Board-approved final budget gave the Sheriff’s Office budget a significant increase of over $6 million dollars. The Sheriff filed suit against the County Executive and County Board, requesting “an order declaring that the County Board of Supervisors and the County Executive’s 2015 budget is arbitrary and unreasonable.”
The Sheriff is responsible for determining how to best structure and manage his department. However, he has to do that with the funds allocated to him by the County Board. The budget of the Sheriff’s Office is a part of Milwaukee County’s budget, which the County Executive is tasked with implementing. State law prohibits the County Executive from authorizing new positions without adequate funding for those positions. Although the County Board-approved 2015 budget provided for the hiring of additional deputies, that budget did not provide full funding for those positions. Eleven command staff positions went unfunded, as well as 15 of the additional deputy sheriff positions. Meanwhile, the increased funding provided in the 2015 adopted budget was less than the deficit the Sheriff’s Office ran in 2014, which is currently projected at $6.8 million dollars. The County Executive will approve the hiring of additional deputies if the Sheriff can demonstrate that his budget is and will be balanced in 2015.
