Highlights Archives
Budget Cuts of Historic Proportions Endanger the Society's State Mandates, Core Mission
![]()
Facing massive budget cuts of $1.5 million in each year of the 2003-05 biennium — and the loss of thirty jobs — the Society's Board of Curators on March 22 approved in concept a plan for dealing with 60 percent of the reductions. The board also discussed strategy for achieving the remaining 40 percent of the cuts spelled out in the Executive Budget presented to the Legislature in February by Gov. Jim Doyle. The board asked staff to develop a plan with several options for making the additional cuts, and will consider that plan at a special meeting on April 12. The $1.5 million cuts come on top of a $1.3 million cut to the Society’s budget for the current fiscal year that has already led to the elimination of 15 permanent positions. The strategy for achieving 60 percent of the proposed budget cuts eliminates nearly $904,000 in state tax-supported general program revenue (GPR) from the Society’s budget and cuts 16.5 permanent positions. Eleven of those positions are either vacant or soon-to-be-vacant as a result of retirements, and 5.5 filled GPR-supported positions will be shifted to non-GPR funding sources.
 The Wisconsin Historical Society, already working with the same size staff it had twenty years ago, faces budget cuts that could cut thirty more permanent positions. Next come the far more painful decisions to deal with the remaining 40 percent of targeted cuts, without additional vacant positions available for elimination. Unless the Society succeeds in efforts to soften the blow by working with key legislators to reduce cuts called for in the Executive Budget, the remaining 40 percent of reductions will result in layoffs, damaging cuts to programs and services, and the possible elimination of state-mandated programs, said Society Director Bob Thomasgard. "With the loss of the full complement of 30 positions, we simply will not be able to carry out some functions mandated by state law," said Thomasgard. "As it stands now — even before these proposed additional cuts — the Society has the same level of staffing it had 20 years ago, this despite steady growth in state-mandated responsibilities," he said. Examples of state-mandated obligations include collecting government publications, collecting and preserving state government records, documenting and preserving burial sites, managing the state archives, operating historic sites, and preserving archaeological resources.
The impacts of the proposed cuts don’t stop there, said Society President Patricia A. Boge. "Cuts of this magnitude would have other drastic consequences, such as cessation of collecting in major areas, thus endangering the Society’s core mission," said Boge. "We understand that the Society must do its fair share to help solve the state’s budget crisis, but these cuts are far deeper than those ordered for other state agencies with educational and cultural missions, and they stand to do irreparable harm," she said.
The board and members of the Society’s management team discussed the ongoing trend in declining state support and the need for the Society to become less reliant on state tax dollars in future years. Through gifts, grants, endowments, gift shop sales, admission fees and other private funding sources, the Society already earns 40 percent of its total budget. The private non-profit Wisconsin Historical Foundation, which exists solely to support the work of the Society, operates its development and membership programs, and has increased the Society’s membership four fold — to more than 12,000 — in the past five years. Still, while such public/private partnerships can go a long way toward supporting Society programs and services, they cannot fill the gap when the state cuts deeply into its support of fundamental, day-to-day operations, according to the Foundation’s Executive Director John Singer. "Philanthropists have no interest in providing replacement dollars," said Singer.
:: Posted March 24, 2003
|
