Dane County on cost-cutting rampage

Paul Soglin discusses the county’s decision to shut down the Tenney Park Locks for three days a week to save Dane $5000 a year.

“It may not sound like much in terms of service reductions and savings, but it is the beginning of a series of significant changes Madison and Dane County residents can expect in the next eighteen months.”

What I find more interesting about the post is Soglin’s discussion of Madison as a primarily “public sector” town.

“Even as recently as the 1970’s, only one of the ten largest Madison employers was from the private sector – Oscar Mayer. The rest were government (the State of Wisconsin, Dane County, the City of Madison), educational institutions (the UW and the Madison Public Schools), and health care (Madison General, St. Mary’s, Methodist and the UW hospitals).”

How much has this changed and who in Madison will fare better in recession – the public sector or the private sector? This question overlaps with my discussion yesterday, of Madison being chosen as one of the best cities to live in the country. The study seemed to indicate that Madison benefitted from education, technology and research. As the post below indicates, state employees in Madison have already taken a hit in the form of pay cuts, and the governor is aggressively pursuing attempts to cut back on state jobs and is even proposing 16 day furloughs for state employees to reduce this deficit.

Also, seriously, when is this country going to get back to the war bond tradition? Granted, you could say we’ve been doing it all along, since so much of our stimulus money is funded by Chinese investors. But what about low interest bonds for ya know…patriots? All we need is one rich guy to ponie up $5000.