A city audit says the city is not spending enough to fix its roads.

That is not exactly news.

People are quick to blame the absent man, former Mayor John Norquist, for cutting road maitnenance spending, although none of those people are quick to name the budget areas Norquist should have cut — libraries? police? firefighters? restaurant inspections? — to fund the repairs and none have themselves proposed sacrificing those services on the altar of road repair.

Milwaukee, in case anyone has not noticed, is a financially distressed city caught up in the horrible situation of increasing poverty, hard economic times and stagnant revenues. Can we be realistic here? There simply is not enough money at the local level to keep up with street repairs.

There is, however, money for local road repair at the state level. Unfortunately, this particular budget has been under-funded for years while the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has been busy chasing unneeded highway projects and road-builder campaign contributions. WisDOT, in its 2009-11 budget request, again is shorting Milwaukee and other local governments on local road repair funding while pumping millions and millions of dollars into unneeded freeway expansion and a study that may well result in Milwaukee losing tens of millions of dollars in property tax base.

So do the sensible thing. Increase local road aids and decrease wasteful highway spending that can only hurt the city.

And quit pointing at governmental ghosts.