Top County Jobs No Longer Needed?

Back in 1988, former Milwaukee alderman and bank executive Kevin O’Connor ran for and won the position of County Treasurer simply to prove what a joke the job was. He quit after a month or so, announcing to the media that the job took 45 minutes a day to perform, meaning that at a salary of $42,517, he was earning $234 an hour.

The treasurer job was long known as great place for a guy with a hobby. Tom Zablocki worked on his stamp collection, and in the late 1980s was clocked by reporters as spending less than four hours a day on the job. His successor, Paul McCormack, was said to favor crossword puzzles. Tom Meaux, who served in the ’90s, played a lot of golf.

Dorothy Dean, who held the position from 2000-2005, told me in a 2002 Milwaukee Magazine story that all three county constitutional officers – county clerk, county treasurer and register of deeds – could be combined into one job.

“The County Board is on record several times to eliminate them,” as former supervisor and personnel committee chair Robert Krug told me. “I believe they are all archaic positions.” The positions date back to the state constitution, approved in 1848, and really aren’t needed any more, resolutions by the county board suggested.

But this required state legislative approval, and the Legislature repeatedly refused to do so, since other counties want to retain their constitutional officers and feared the precedent of Milwaukee eliminating them.

O’Conner suggested reducing the pay for treasurer to $1 which (since no one would run for the office) would essentially eliminate the position. Instead the county board continued to hand out pay hikes for the three officers it declared were unneeded, even as vital county services like the parks and transit system suffered huge reductions in funding. All three now earn $91,483, which is very nice for County Treasurer David Cullen, County Clerk George Christenson and Register of Deeds Israel Ramón.

And last month a report by the county’s Department of Human Resources recommended that their salaries be raised to $102,004, a whopping 11.5% hike. County Executive David Crowley supports the idea, according to his spokesperson Jonathan Fera.

The report did what it called a “market analysis” of similar elected positions and determined that Milwaukee’s officers were underpaid. In fact, the report found that these three officers were paid less than $91,483 in three Wisconsin counties (Waukesha, Brown and Racine) and considerably more in Dane County, Lake County, Illinois and Oakland County, Michigan. Not the most wide-ranging search.

Moreover, the whole idea of doing a market analysis for elected positions is a bit fraudulent. Yes, the county might have to compete with the private sector to fill appointed jobs, but elected positions are in an entirely different class. There has never been a problem attracting people to run for these three elective positions — there will always be legislators and other politicians looking for a cushy job which has no particular requirements.

County Treasurer Cullen has no degree in finance, but has a Deputy Treasurer, Rex Queen, who has a degree in accounting and worked in the accounting departments of both the Medical Complex and the Sheriff’s Department. Ramón is a longtime lawyer who has Deputy Register of Deeds, Steve Kroll, who has served in the office for 19 years after serving in the banking industry specializing in mortgage servicing, default administration, risk management and real estate disposition.

The report by Human Resources seems to recognize this, noting that “constitutional officers can, and will, hire deputies and other staff members with additional education, experience, and subject-matter expertise to aid in the execution of department/office operations. Due to credential requirements, some direct reports of constitutional officers have higher salaries than the elected official.” It’s those more “credentialed” employees that might merit a market analysis, to make sure they aren’t lost to other employers.

Rather than doing a market analysis of pay for the constitutional officers, Human Resources might have done an analysis of duties for these positions. Because going back several decades there is evidence the jobs have required very little work.

Daniel Diliberti, who as county supervisor joined colleagues on a resolution asking the state Legislature to abolish the positions of treasurer, county clerk and register of deeds, later served as county treasurer from 2005 to 2014, and argued that the position should become an appointed one. In a 2011 Op Ed he noted “national studies that recommend combining county treasurer and controller [or comptroller] functions and/or placing it under the county budget office in counties with a chief executive officer.”

A similar approach might be taken for the other two constitutional offices and might determine there is no need for both county clerk and deputy clerk, register of deeds and deputy register of deeds.

Nationally only 24 states still have elected county clerks and 34 states have elected county treasurers. Comparable data on the position of county register of deeds could not be found.

There has been so much turnover on the Milwaukee County Board that there is likely little institutional memory of the board’s push to eliminate these constitutional officers. Perhaps that’s true of the Human Resources office as well and of Milwaukee County Executive Crowley, who joined county government in 2020. But they might want to reconsider the idea of handing big raises to county officers whose positions might in fact be outmoded.