This is in response to the repeated calls from the Wisconsin State Journal for a smaller county board. As usual, the FACTS matter.
They say all politics is local. I say, the more local, the better. Which is why I take exception with your contention that the Dane County Board of Supervisors be substantially reduced in size.
Your editorial asserts that greater competition will be achieved and democracy better served by drastically downsizing the County Board. In fact, downsizing will have a negative impact on true grass-roots representation and only a negligible effect on competition.
Making county board districts significantly larger will require more emphasis on fund-raising in order to campaign in larger districts, bringing about more costly elections, less reliance on grass-roots campaigning and a heavy emphasis on expensive TV and radio ads. That will open the door to special interest money. I strongly believe that smaller districts that allow candidates to be competitive with only a little bit of money and some hard work better represents the citizen legislature our Wisconsin founders envisioned.
Your proposal to downsize would have serious financial implications as well. A 2003 study by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance found that “an increase in county board size of one supervisor was associated with lower spending of $8 to $10 per resident.” In Dane County, using this analysis, reducing the size of the county board by only one member could cost taxpayers $3.4 to $4.3 million per year! Imagine that analysis with a reduction of the magnitude your paper endorsed.
Your recent editorial, like many before it, compares Dane County to other counties in terms of County Board size. But you’re comparing apples and oranges. You fail to take into consideration anything but Board size when considering the major, sweeping changes you endorse. For example, a smaller board requires more time from each board member, and compensation must be adjusted accordingly. Committees would need to be consolidated due to fewer board members. In fact, in many counties our size, being a County Board supervisor is a full-time job.
While Dane County supervisors are paid $7,000 to $8,000 annually for their service now, county boards with few supervisors pay much more. Hennepin County (Minneapolis) pays its seven members more than $90,000 per year, and Ramsey County (St. Paul) recently approved an annual salary of $80,000. St. Louis County (Duluth) and Dakota County (Twin Cities area), both smaller than Dane County, pay $50,500 and $61,600 per year, respectively.
If we cast a wider net and look at the 10 counties across the country closest to Dane County in size, the average County Board size is nine members, but the average compensation to each those members is nearly $38,500 – more than five times the annual pay for Dane County supervisors. If Dane County were to downsize to 19 members, as your paper has previously suggested, and paid them only half the average of comparable counties, it would actually require a budget increase of 25 percent.
Let’s not fix something that’s not broken. Right now County Board races are competitive. Citizens serve and do not see themselves as professionals. Meetings are efficient and done in time to put the kids to bed on most nights. I believe in keeping the vision of a citizen legislature handed down to us by our founders – a vision of democracy that keeps elected officials as close to the people as possible.
