Highway Dept. Spared Steepest Limits

The Wisconsin Legislature removed provisions that would have severely limited the work the Door County Highway Department could perform when it passed the state budget yesterday.

The department didn’t escape the process unscathed, however. The legislature cut $35 million in local road aids, which Door County Administrator Michael Serpe said will cost the county about $300,000. The legislature also included a provision that bars county highway departments form doing projects for city’s with a population over 5,000 people. That means the county highway department can no longer perform work for the City of Sturgeon Bay.

On June 2 the Joint Finance Committee added a provision, Motion 352, to the budget that would have prohibited municipal and county highway departments from doing projects that cost more than $100,000 and prevent them from doing work for other municipalities. Door County Highway Commissioner John Kolodziej said that provision would have cost his department $500,000 to $700,000 a year.