City Council passes budget... Journal Times snoozes

Mayor Gary Becker must be feeling pretty good these days. Serving his second term - a four-year term he won uncontested - he just ran a budget through the City Council where he got everything he wanted (and then some) with little or no accountability.

Consider some of the issues raised in the city's 2008 budget:

* The city outsourced its information systems department for little savings (and plans to contract the work without taking bids). Wonder how that makes other city employees feel ... your job could be eliminated any year.

* Or your job could be cut, like what the mayor did to the head of the city's human resources department. Perhaps it's an afterthought, but Sylvia Coronado-Romero was the only woman and only Hispanic in a department head role with the city. Some are questioning if the move was even legal, but again, little oversight on this issue.

* Starting next year, every property owner in the city will be charged $50 to fix sewer laterals. Because it's a fee, the money doesn't count against the state-imposed levy limits, which makes it a sneaky way to increase city spending without calling it a tax increase. There's an argument out there that efforts to hold the line on property taxes are forcing municipalities to use end-around tactics to raise money - tactics like hidden fee increases. You'd like to think someone would want to write about an additional $1.1 million in city revenue next year (including a new $90,000 per year position), but apparently not anyone at Racine County's daily newspaper.

* Other cuts that received little to no attention: the loss of a parks position means longer waits for snowplows to clear sidewalks and alleys; a $2 increase in parking tickets; the loss of a city firefighter (remember when the firefighters worked against Becker for shutting down a fire station? The mayor does...)

There are people to blame here, starting with RacinePost. We're here to fill the gaps of our daily newspaper and we got to a few of these stories, but clearly we weren't on top of the major issues coming out of the budget. Heck, we were even surprised the budget got passed so quickly. But we're two people working part time for peanuts, and a website to boot. It's clear a greater focus is needed on city government - the bedrock of journalism for most daily newspapers.

The Journal Times has fewer excuses. There are basic, obvious questions about the budget that were never asked. As far as we can tell, the paper wrote a non-critical story when Becker released the budget (including his entire budget address), a non-critical story about him eliminating the HR director, a brief about two alderman holding budget listening sessions (but no coverage of the sessions), a short story on aldermen wanting to restore a police officer and, to top things off, a 204-word story a day late on the council passing the budget. The story had such little significance to the JT that it didn't even make the front page.

The folks at 212 Fourth Street gave similar, though less comprehensive coverage, to budgets passed by the County Board, Mount Pleasant, Caledonia and Burlington. Someone over there has to get reporters asking critical questions on critical stories - and not just budgets. We need a serious daily news source to get a better understanding of what's happening in the community.

We'll help out as much as possible - and sure hope we have something of value to offer. But we can't do it on the level of a multi-million dollar operation that's been working on the community for decades. We need the JT to shape up as much as anyone - and hope the reporters and editors come around soon. (Hint: It's not too late! There are several story ideas above.)