The leaking began over the weekend . . . but wait before you jump to conclusions about this budget! This is just the beginning. And there is spin to be examined!
THE GAME
Yeah, here’s how the game is played. Leak the story, so everyone does your spin on the budget and of course, no one can rebut cuz they haven’t seen the budget. Get the council president to say supportive things before they have seen the budget. Let them help craft the message. Remember, you only know what they tell you. Then, the rest of us scramble to see what is really in the budget. This is where some really good reporting would be awesome. Take what the mayor says and see how true it is. We know how that worked on the capital budget . . . and again, thank you Kristin for spotting this issue.
BUT I HELPED THE NEIGHBORHOODS
[Disclosure: I am the Executive Director of the Tenant Resource Center, we receive city funding. We actually fared well – kinda. We’re getting flat funding from what we got this year, but we got a bump this year for our Latino outreach. Well, if the Mayor kept it in the budget, that was what was recommended by Community Services Commission. But let me foreshadow a rant that is coming, flat funding, is a cut. You can’t continue services for the same amount of money when costs go up every year, most non-profits have already cut to the bone everywhere possible.]
. . . and he’s continuing the same “for the neighborhoods” line with this press conference at Kennedy Heights. When, in reality, the Community Services budget is something like $750K* short to get groups to their 2010 funding level alone, then add 3% to the funded services (I’m not even going to try to put a number here*) for cost of living (COLA) increases, and about $2 – $3M for the $5M* of the additional requests that were submitted, because we were told to ask for what we need. And, there are several agencies I know that didn’t even bother to apply, as they saw the trainwreck a comin’. My post on the winners and losers* here, with the long list of projects that didn’t get funding. Word on the street is he’s restoring $200K of the $750K, and people will probably think its a victory . . . when, in reality, once again, the non-profits are faced with flat funding or cuts, when the population has increased, the economy has made the needs increase and our rent and health care costs aren’t flat, and we are required to increase wages due to the living wage ordinance. Oh, and $135K of the $200K was money the council added last year in the budget and for the SW side of Madison. In short, only $65K is added, unless he characterized his leak to the State Journal wrong . . . .
* The numbers in all this are difficult to nail down. Some of the winners look like losers, some losers look like winners and it data isn’t easily accessible – we’re all kind of guessing at the numbers because some of our base data is flawed.
MORE ON THE LEAKAGE
Ooops, I digressed.
Here’s the leaked coverage.
State Journal
Channel 3
MAYOR’S PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY
I’m guessing the Mayor’s press conference at 1:00 at Kennedy Heights won’t make as much news at Falk’s press conference yesterday! The line is going to be, snooze, we’re maintaining basic services, nothing to see here, move along, and hey! neighborhoods are fine . . . but the real numbers tell a different story . . .
REMEMBER, DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE
Just cuz one or two non-profits benefit, and are held up as poster children, doesn’t mean all the rest are doing ok. Neighborhood House is losing funding after this year, the sexual assault and domestic violence groups had their funding shaken up, there are new workforce development programs getting funded, but at the expense to other services. There are winners and losers, but you’ll only hear about the winners. Ask who the losers are . . . its not the agencies that will spend even more time figuring out what to do after they wated all this time on the process . . . but the people who need the services in this economy. The unemployed, the 17% living in poverty (1 out of 5 or 6 in Madison), the people’s who’s houses are getting foreclosed on, the people being evicted and the people who had their wages decline as government and private businesses ask for concessions on the backs of the workers, etc.
