Milwaukee County’s debt nearly doubled to about $900 million over seven years through “reckless” borrowing that put a crimp on an already super-tight 2012 budget, County Executive Chris Abele says.

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Michigan lawmakers are on the verge of approving a bill that would enable the governor to appoint “emergency managers” — officials with unilateral power to make sweeping changes to cities facing financial troubles.

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For more than a year, Arizona’s parks system has been working to keep the state’s recreational areas operating in the wake of ongoing budget cuts. Users now pay higher fees to visit many of the spaces. Some parks are open fewer hours, and officials are increasingly relying on partnerships to cover costs.

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With tight limits on increases in property taxes, the county should brace for having to cut services, supervisors said. Supervisor Patricia Jursik said unless the county gets a new separate funding source for transit, the county may have to drastically curtail or even eliminate local bus service. “We ought to start planning right now as a board to tell our constitiuents, ‘You are going to lose your bus system,’” Jursik said.

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Cities and states across the country are grappling with potentially crushing health and pension obligations for their current and future retirees. And as they do, stories of excess and gaming of the system are getting more attention than they have in the past, causing problems for unions as they try to win the battle for public opinion in states where lawmakers are trying to cut worker pay and benefits.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel opinion editorial by Julia Taylor, Maria Monreal-Cameron and Wallace White

Milwaukee County stands at a crossroads. We are facing urgent fiscal challenges. Without bold reform, whole areas of service to our community will be eliminated.

It is time to make the tough choices about what path to take and what we want Milwaukee County’s future to be. This is why we have come together to develop and support recommendations for bold change: the Make it Your Milwaukee County Initiative.

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It is no secret that major changes are needed in the operation of Milwaukee County. But, for the most part, politics have slowed reforms even though the county has suffered significant financial problems in recent years, forcing reductions in important services. That’s why it is important that community leaders and Milwaukee County elected officials take action on many of the ideas put forward last week by a group led by the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

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On his main point, though, Walker is dead on: State and local workers should pay a larger share of their benefits. At one time, Wisconsin taxpayers perhaps could afford fat benefit packages. That’s no longer the case.

The governor faces a $137 million shortfall for the rest of this year alone and a much larger budget hole over the next two years. The state simply must get labor costs under control, and that starts with ensuring that health and pension contributions are reasonable. Right now, they’re not.

Legislators will be under tremendous pressure in the coming days. They should be wary of some of Walker’s more radical ideas. But they must not shrink from taking a first step toward the land of fiscal integrity – a place Wisconsin hasn’t visited in a very long time. If they fail, they won’t likely get another chance anytime soon.

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As states groan and stumble through the recession, some politicians are trying to exploit their financial crises for ideological purposes. Many Republicans want to use hard times to fundamentally reduce the role of states and public employee unions, in the same way federal tax cuts forced a debate on how to cut the deficit.

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Moody’s Investors Service has begun to recalculate the states’ debt burdens in a way that includes unfunded pensions, something states and others have ardently resisted until now.

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