Tag Archives: Milwaukee County

County pension obligation bonds: too risky?

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The county’s pension obligation bond work group is holding an informational session today (at 9:30 a.m. in room 203-R of the courthouse).  It would be fun to attend just to see if there is a quorum of any County Board committee and then to ask if the meeting has been noticed as a potential County Board committee meeting. It would also be interesting, if there is not a quorum of any committee, to wonder why the hell not and why there is so little interest on the part of supervisors.

County Supervisor John Weishan is skeptical of the plan to issue $400 million in county pension obligation bonds. The county’s proposal is to issue the bonds at 6% and invest the proceeds to get an 8% return. That’s all fine and dandy as long as the county can get an 8% return, but the market hasn’t been kind to investors lately and yesterday fell to a 12-year low. Yes, the market will rise again some day, but when? And what risks should the county take until then?

Weishan’s concern is not only risk, but the county’s plan for the bonds — or more accurately, it’s lack of a plan. If a 95% funded plan is the goal, he said, “this isn’t going to do it.”

In addition, experts on this topic advise that “you have to make a commitment that you’re not going to allow another unfunded liability to develop,” he said. Can the county, with all its huge fiscal problems, actually do that?

Weishan believes that one reason the bond issuance looks so attractive right now is that the timing of the deal and the influx of bond funds, could allow the county to skip a pension payment next year — a payment, according to the JS, that could be as much as $80 million. That one-year break would give the county the illusion of a little bit of financial stability, which County Executive Scott Walker likely would appreciate as he runs for governor.

Walker can’t be serious, can he?

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Didn’t anyone provide County Executive Scott Walker with a copy of the federal stimulus legislation? Is he pretending to be totally unfamiliar with it? Or is he really such a dolt he hasn’t bothered to become at all informed about what is in it?

The bill says what the stimulus money can be used for. Across-the-board tax cuts, such as Walker proposed yesterday, isn’t among the approved purposes.

Tax cuts also don’t fix the county roads that are falling apart, or the huge deferred maintenance backlog that has only grown worse since Walker took the helm.

It’s a shame that when the country, county and their citizens are bleeding, Walker is out there pandering to his ever-narrower base instead of working for the broadest common good.

Scott Walker, pretzel man

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County Executive Scott Walker is twisting himself all around trying to get away from his own stupid statements regarding the federal stimulus package.

Earlier this week he said he wasn’t interested in federal stimulus money except when it might magically be delivered, without his having to ask for it, for infrastructure projects.

In today’s JS he says he might be interested in federal stimulus money if it is for “programs where we have legitimate needs,” but only on certain conditions: the funding not require any unusual local match; that it not go for a service that would require county taxpayers to pick up the bill in the future; and that it not have hidden operating expenses.

He won’t help prepare a list of projects that could use the funding, though. That would be beneath him. Walker, then, will graciously take the cash that could help the county climb out of the deep hole he’s dug for it, but he will only take the money under certain conditions, and he won’t help identify the projects that meet those conditions.

What a doofus.

Be wary of Walker’s corrections proposal

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Transferring the Community Corrections Center from the House of Correction to the Sheriff’s Department would give Sheriff David Clarke, who proved himself so incapable of running the County Jail that the county was found in contempt of court, more power over more inmates.

Bad idea.

The proposal, reported today in the JS, would require more work-release inmates to be held at the House of Correction in Franklin, according to Sheriff’s Inspector Kevin Carr,  That means they would either lose their work-release privileges or be housed where transit isn’t exactly plentiful, which would amount to pretty much the same thing as losing their work release privileges.

While the move could put the health and well-being of inmates at risk, it would benefit the one person County Executive Scott Walker cares about most: Scott Walker. The Community Correctional Center is a pit. Running it is a losing proposition. Simply running a work release program carries the risk that participants will do something bad while they are in the community, with great political consequences for any elected official standing nearby.

So why not dump the whole, entire steaming mess on some other independently elected official? Why not dump in on the sheriff?