Assembly Committee Cleans Up Inconsistencies in Assembly Bill 85

Before approving Assembly Bill 85, Representative San Felippo’s bill to reform Milwaukee County government, the Assembly Government Operations Committee cleaned up a number of inconsistencies in the text of the original bill.

First and foremost, they made all of the clauses that used county population as a trigger for implementation use the population of 750,000 rather than 500,000. In the original bill some clauses used the lower figure while others used the larger. As I pointed out here late in March, the 500,000 figure would mean parts of this bill would need to be implemented in Dane County after the 2020 US Census.

The other two items:

Another amendment took out the word “exclusively” in saying the Milwaukee County executive would administer, supervise and direct county departments.

Another change said that the cap on the board’s budget would not apply to pension and health care costs that supervisors, board staff and retirees have already accrued.

This last item has been a talking point for Rep. Sanfelippo in every forum that he has participated in although the actual language wasn’t spelled out in his bill. Another reason to make one wonder how much authorship he should actually be claiming.

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