Transcripts

MARK STEIL: Winona Fire Chief Ed Krall wants a new fire truck, a nice red one.

ED KRALL: Sky is blue, grass is green, and fire trucks are red.

MARK STEIL: That's the easy part. Krall will tell you the difficult part in acquiring a $300,000 fire truck is finding money to pay for it. He's asked city planners to include a new truck in their budget for several years but has been turned down. This year, city council approved the plan. But Krall says, nothing's ever certain in the world of government budgets.

We're preparing the specifications hopefully to go to the council with it, which would allow me to advertise for bids on the truck. I still don't know if they will allow me to do this or not. I certainly hope they will, but they're always concerned about unknown funding sources.

That questionable funding source is the state of Minnesota. Governor Arne Carlson wants to reduce state aid to local governments like Winona. The uncertainty over how much state money the city will get puts the red fire truck and other city projects in doubt. What upsets Winona Mayor Tom Slaggie is the governor wants to take back money already approved for local government.

Slaggie says if the legislature agrees and cuts funding, Winona could be in a real bind. It's too late for the city to replace that money by increasing local taxes since this year's property levy is set and can't be changed. He says instead, the city will have to cut services.

TOM SLAGGIE: I don't know what they expect us to do. To start firing policemen or firemen, stop doing snowplowing in roads or what? But this makes absolutely no sense.

MARK STEIL: He says the latest budget threats come after years of city economizing, much of it because of state aid reductions. He says there's not much left to cut.

TOM SLAGGIE: Oh, I think we're doing an outstanding job. We have squeezed our resources unmercifully.

MARK STEIL: People, city workers, make up the largest part of the budget. In the last two decades, the number of Winona city employees has actually declined by 20%.

TOM SLAGGIE: I would challenge the state government to even approach that. Unfortunately, they don't.

MARK STEIL: Slaggie says state government should deal with its budget problems as Winona has, by cutting staff and programs, not by reducing already promised aid to local government. Governor Arne Carlson says the state is cutting back and challenges local government to impose an employee wage freeze as the state has done.

Carlson also says any recent growth in state government is mainly to provide services which directly help local communities such as building prisons to deal with crime problems. Winona City Manager Eric Sorenson says the state has a lot to learn about cutting waste. He says Winona city government has become more efficient by involving employees in decision making.

ERIC SORENSON: All employees should be encouraged to find new ways to do things. There shouldn't be any fear of expressing oneself. There shouldn't be any set of bureaucratic hoops that people have to go through in order to get their idea heard.

MARK STEIL: Sorenson says employees are allowed to implement cost saving ideas on their own without going through layers of bureaucracy for approval. The city has also saved dollars by restructuring staff. The number of full time firefighters has been cut in half with part timers filling the gaps. The city has bought machinery to help get more done with fewer employees. Sorenson says if you want to see somebody really reducing the size of government, come to Winona.

ERIC SORENSON: We don't see any great effort to make great strides in efficiency at the state level. I mean, the sheer number of employees have increased dramatically over the last couple of decades at the state level. At the same time, there's been decreases at the local level. So I don't know how anybody could argue that at the state level, that they're efficient.

MARK STEIL: Sorenson says budget considerations forced the city to overhaul its bureaucracy, something he predicts state government will soon learn about. This is Mark Steil, Main Street radio.