Opponents of Gov. Scott McCallum's Budget Reform Act are alleging fuzzy math.
The governor announced in his budget speech before a joint session of the state Legislature Jan. 22, that state agencies will be the hardest hit under the bill, absorbing cuts totaling 11.5 percent, while local governments will only face on average a 4 percent loss in revenue.
However, according to an analysis done by the Wisconsin State Journal, local governments will take a 5.8 percent cut in general operating revenue, while state agencies will face an average cut of 2.4 percent.
\The governor announced these figures in his speech ... but he didn't show us how he did the math,"" said Phil Brinkman, a state government reporter for the State Journal, who reported on the story. ""The more I talked to local officials, the more I realized the 4 percent figure he set for local government was probably understated.""
Assembly Minority Leader Spencer Black, D-Madison, said the report brought to light the numbers game McCallum is playing.
""Governor McCallum has been using different methodologies in each case to buttress his own arguments,"" Black said. ""A fair calculation would show that the cuts to local levels are in fact double what they are for state agencies.""
The primary difference between the two sets of numbers is that the governor included cuts made to state agencies in Act 16, the original budget proposal, according to the David Schmiedicke, budget director for McCallum.
""If you add the cuts that were in Act 16 and the budget reform bill ... most state operating budgets take an 11.5 percent cut,"" he said.
Brinkman said McCallum should have used the same methodology and included all the cuts local agencies made in their budgets this year.
""To make an apples to apples comparison we decided to look at the cuts the governor is proposing right now,"" he said.
According to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, The governor's plan also does not accurately portray the effect the loss of shared revenue will have on local governments since it judges the reduction against the total revenue of cities and counties, a large part of which is restricted by the state and federal levels.
The State Journal analysis compares the cut to municipalities' operating budgets since it is more representative of the amount of ""free"" money the local governments have on hand, Brinkman said.
""[The governor] distorts how important shared revenue is for the kind of across-the-board programs people really care about,"" Falk said.
Despite the criticism, state Assembly Majority Leader Scott Jensen, R-Waukesha, said the budget was correct to include the cuts in state agencies for the current fiscal year but added that legislators would probably find a way to cut state government to an even larger extent.
""From the point of view of the recipients, we have all ready made significant cuts in state agencies,"" he said. ""We will probably have greater cuts in state government than the governor wanted.\
