The Shawano County Finance Committee found out earlier this week that establishing a zero-based budget system for the county could be a long time coming.
Jay Moynihan, community resource development educator for the county’s University of Wisconsin-Extension office, told the committee that it would probably take a minimum of three years to implement the system. He said he knew of no other governments in Wisconsin that adopted the philosophy, and there are no examples of it in the private sector.
“Of all the different types of budgeting you can do for a government or a business, it is the most complex,” Moynihan said. “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors out there right now regarding this because the words ‘zero-based budgeting’ periodically become attractive and then lose their luster.”
The committee had directed county officials in May to look at developing a method to convert to a zero-based budget by the time the 2015 budget work started. Administrative Coordinator Tom Madsen said staff started to look into it before realizing the concept was too complex to tackle without help.
“We looked into this, and we realized, ‘Whoa! This is really big,’” Madsen said.
Zero-based budgeting requires a well-planned implementation process, according to Moynihan. It calls for a complete re-evaluation of all programs and activities, and it relies on the subjective judgment of decision-makers in ranking the budgets.
It requires that decision packages be prepared for each separable activity or level of activity. This can be difficult to do, Moynihan said, because there are some things that can not be defined in black-and-white numbers.
“You have to have priorities, and that has to come from the board, from the supervisors,” Moynihan said.
Finance Director Diane Rusch questioned whether the county should go to zero-based budgeting, con sidering all the work done at supervisors’ requests to pare down the amount of paperwork required to complete the budget. With zero-based budgeting requiring justification for every activity in the department, more paperwork would be required, and more staff might need to be added, OVERSET FOLLOWS:Rusch said.
Supervisor Marlin Noffke suggested having an expert come in to provide consultation and possibly move into a leadership role to make the transition possible.
“They might have to take charge of the budget to get it done,” Noffke said.
Supervisor Arlyn Tober said he found the process to be much more complicated than he felt it should be.
“What I figure zero budgeting should be is, when someone wants something extra in his budget, he’d better show why he needs it and some figures showing why it’s good,” Tober said.
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