In a remarkable move, former longtime Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, once an ally of and supporter of current Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, held a news conference Wednesday to urge voters to reject a $22 million budget referendum that will be on the Nov. 5 ballot. The referendum, backed by Rhodes-Conway and approved by the city council in mid-August, aims to plug the city’s budget hole and avert deep cuts to services and staff.
Soglin opened the news conference at the Park Hotel noting that the room contained an array of “unconnected” folks who are “connected by their concern for the city.” Audience members included former Alds. Nino Amato, Dave Ahrens and Dorothy Borchardt; Lisa Veldran, who led the city council office for 30 years; and Alex Saloutos, a real estate agent and staunch opponent of the referendum who recently started a blog where he addresses city issues.
Soglin, who has publicly denounced his various successors over the years, has ramped up his criticism of Rhodes-Conway and her administration this past year. In November 2023 he wrote a guest column for Isthmus arguing that Madison was facing a fiscal crisis “unprecedented in scope and depth.” And in recent months he has railed on Facebook against the referendum, charging that Rhodes-Conway and the council have been fiscally irresponsible and have failed to adequately engage lawmakers to increase state funding. But Wednesday’s news conference signaled that opponents were moving more aggressively and collectively to defeat the referendum in the final weeks before the vote.
Sam Munger, Rhodes-Conway’s chief of staff, questioned whether Soglin, who lost a bid for reelection against Rhodes-Conway in 2019, was preparing for another run for mayor.
“It was one thing when he put a thing on Facebook here and there, but the fact that he’s organizing press conferences — it’s basically campaigning. It makes me wonder, was he trying to run for mayor again?” Munger says in an interview. “Is it that he’s that bitter about the last election? What’s the motivation for putting in all the time?”
Soglin denied he was interested in running for another term, answering “Oh, please,” when asked at the news conference about any electoral plans.
The property tax referendum, a first for the city of Madison, would raise taxes on an average value home ($457,000) by around $20 dollars a month. Last week Rhodes-Conway released two versions of her proposed 2025 operating budget — one based on voters approving the $22 million referendum and the other assuming the measure fails. The latter budget proposes $5.6 million in cuts across city departments, including the elimination of a minimum 18 positions from various agencies.
At the news conference, Soglin stood in front of yard signs that urged “No Referendum” and “Vote No on extra spending.” He said they were created by different groups involved in the effort opposing the city’s referendum, but, when asked, said he did not know which groups. When a reporter noted that there was no “Paid for by” wording on the signs, Soglin said he was prepared for the question: “In a referendum, as long as the expenditure is under $2,000, there is no requirement.”
The former mayor traced the city’s troubles to the current administration’s elimination of a full-time lobbyist and the cancellation of a contract lobby firm that had worked with the city when Soglin was mayor.
He pointed to an infographic made by Saloutos that compares the number of lobbying hours put in by Milwaukee and Madison officials during the last budget session at the state Capitol. At the time Milwaukee, which was facing bankruptcy and mass layoffs, was lobbying heavily for increased state aid.
Soglin said that Madison officials seem to be unwilling to meet with Republican legislators, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, due to partisan differences. “Maybe it is difficult talking to somebody on the other side who you’ve been calling names all these years,” Soglin said to laughter. “In my whole experience — 27 years between the city council and the mayor’s office — I’ve only met one person who you could not have a constructive conversation with,” he added, referring to former Gov. Scott Walker. “He’s gone. He hasn’t been governor for five years.”
Munger, who served as a policy advisor to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers from 2018-20, says the idea that Rhodes-Conway could grab coffee with Vos and “suddenly get $50 million out of the state” is a “laugh line” among his former colleagues in Evers’ office and the Legislature.
“It’s like saying, ‘If you just went to [former President Donald] Trump and explained to him reasonably that he lost the 2020 election, he’d obviously come around and would concede immediately, right?’” Munger says. Munger adds that Soglin, throughout his most recent tenure as mayor, publicly feuded with Vos with little to show for it.
And Munger says that while Rhodes-Conway did not keep Nick Zavos, one of Soglin’s former deputy mayors whose job included lobbying state lawmakers, as part of her administration, the city continued to work with Zavos as a contracted lobbyist from September 2021 until recently, when Zavos took a job with the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. Munger also notes that he, like his predecessor, Mary Bottari, works on government affairs as part of his duties.
Soglin argued that there were ways to plug the city’s budget gap other than through a referendum. He said the $22 million budget gap could be made up by using $16 million in investment surplus from 2023 and $7 million already accounted for in 2024. He also said the city was owed millions of dollars from the state for municipal services.
“There is every reason in the world,” Soglin said, “that we should say no to this referendum and expect our elected officials to work with the state on some relatively simple solutions that are not extremely costly to the state.”
Speaking alongside Soglin were former Madison Ald. Sheri Carter and former Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney. Noting that half of all students in Madison’s public schools are eligible for free and reduced lunch, Carter argued that many Madison families are already financially stretched. “Can they choose between eating and saving the city?” Carter said. “They should not have to have reduced services and still pay high property taxes.”
Mahoney, who served as Dane County sheriff from 2006 to 2021, shared that he has lived in Madison for 50 years and has been a homeowner for 40.
“I’m part of this ‘no’ movement because I’m concerned about transparency in our city,” Mahoney said, adding that the city could lose out on shared revenue payments from the state if its cuts to police and fire department staffing are too steep. Under the 2023 shared revenue deal, municipalities that fail to maintain specific levels of law enforcement, fire protection and emergency medical services face a 15% reduction in shared revenue payments.
Though the Madison Police Department and Fire Department identified $300,000 and $200,000 in cuts respectively, Rhodes-Conway said in her budget summary that those cuts should not affect public safety or maintenance of effort requirements.
Veldran, who oversaw the administration of the city council office from 1991 until she retired in 2021, says that starting in 2010 she observed the city’s elected officials adding programs to the budget that were deemed “minor” at the time, but added up in expense later. Now she sees city employees are in the crosshairs.
“I feel for city employees having been a city employee, having been through Act 10,” says Veldran, referring to the 2011 state law that eliminated collective bargaining for most public employees under Walker. “That angst and that fear.
“But I also think there is also a responsibility from our electeds not to be creating that fear in terms of creating a budget that is sustainable. To me it’s pitting city employees against the taxpayers. That should not happen. No city employee should be angry at taxpayers who oppose this referendum.”
