Budget Motion Threatens Future of County Highway Department

UPDATE:  County Fires Back at State

At a special meeting of the Door County Board of Supervisors Sunday night, Door County Highway Commissioner John Kolodziej said a provision in the state budget bill could cost his department more than $500,000 a year in revenue and jeopardize its future viability.

The rare Sunday meeting was called by County Board Chairman Leo Zipperer to discuss Motion 352, which was passed by the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee June 2. The motion would prohibit county highway departments from doing road projects costing over $100,000 if a share of state or federal funding is used to pay for the work. It would also prevent one unit of government from doing construction for another.

The motion concerns county board supervisors and county officials because the highway department’s primary purpose is to plow snow. To provide that service, Zipperer said, it must generate revenue in the spring, summer and fall by paving roads and performing other work and maintenance, much of it for towns and villages on county and town roads.

That revenue allows the department to employ a year round, well-trained workforce and maintain its equipment and infrastructure.

“If we can’t do construction, then we might as well get rid of our highway department,” Zipperer said. “But then, what do we do when it comes time to plow snow?”

Door County is one of 24 Wisconsin counties that perform road construction and maintenance. Door County Administrator Michael Serpe said the county has a lot invested in the department that could go to waste if it deteriorates.

“We own a fully functional asphalt plant and quarries that I don’t know what we’re going to do with,” he said.

In a memo to supervisors sent June 9, Kolodziej presented a line-by-line analysis of the impact the motion will have on Door County if the motion is included in the final budget.

“It appears that there is an attempt to eliminate inter-government or cooperative provisions of the state statutes and that construction projects will have to go out for public bid which will increase the cost to local governments,” Kolodziej wrote.

Serpe said Motion 352 would bring a slow death to the county highway department.

“They’re selling us out to the road builders and operating engineers,” Serpe said. “They don’t want counties in the business of doing road work. In five years we’ll be out of the road business altogether.”

In an email to Serpe, Kolodziej said the department may not be worth maintaining if it can’t generate year round revenue.

“If this motion in its current state is approved by the state legislature, we should seriously consider elimination of the maintenance of the state road system, including snow and ice control,” Kolodziej said in an email to Serpe. “We will no longer have a way to pay for the equipment and personnel they want year round for their system.”

Door County Board Chairman Leo Zipperer called the special meeting of the board to discuss the issue prior to the Assembly’s action on the budget bill, scheduled for Tuesday, June 14.

State Rep. Garey Bies (R – Sister Bay), Sen. Frank Lasee (R – Bellevue) and Wisconsin Counties Association (WCA) Executive Director Mark O’Connell were all in attendance.

Private road builders have lobbied for years to limit the amount of road work that county highway departments can do. O’Connell said Monday that Motion 352 came out of a continuing discussion about what work should be performed by highway departments versus what should be performed by the private sector. The WCA participated in those discussions, along with representatives of the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association, Operating Engineers International Union, and the Wisconsin County Highway Association.

Calls to Rep. Robin Vos (R – Burlington) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R – River Hills), the co-sponsors of the motion, were not returned.

“We expected this eventually to come up, but not in this form or in this fashion,” said John Reinemann, the WCA’s legislative director. “Motion 352 is not necessarily a result of the discussions we had.”

He termed the motion a policy matter, not a budgetary item.

Michael Birkley, president of Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Inc. urged that the motion be removed.

“Local and county highway departments perform $1.5 billion in road construction each year,” Birkley said. “The cost of those projects would rise by five percent if contracted out, diverting $75 million in property taxes each year.”

After Sunday’s meeting, Serpe was optimistic about getting an amendment to the motion put into the Senate version of the budget.

“The best bet is in the Senate,” he said. “I think if we can’t get the motion pulled completely, I’m hopeful that we can get it amended when the Senate takes up the bill.”