This week the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel did an expose' on the state of housing for mental health patients but they missed one key thing — who has been at the helm as more is being asked with less resources.

County Executive Scott Walker bears responsibility here.  Just from 2004 through 2006, the County's budget for the Behavioral Health Division has been cut more than $1.8 Million.  If you adjust for inflation (estimated at 5%) the true impact is a $6.8 Million cut.  It's just not possible to maintain the same services with less funding.

Sadly, the squalor that many mental health patients must live with is not measurable in the county budget.  Patients will continue to suffer despite all the good intentions of some of the administrators who struggle to find creative ways to save the limited resources that Walker has given them.

Walker has been very successful at deflecting blame for the County's woes and unfortunately the Journal-Sentinel has been complacent in letting him get away with it.  Failing infrastructure, declining parks and even a filty and littered courthouse have become the new paradigm for Milwaukee County under Walker but the connection has not been made by our local media.  Instead, they have focused on the department heads in these troubled departments. 

When parks started showing their problems, the media focused on Parks Director Sue Black.  Now that mental health has shown problems, the focus is on has been on the Director of Behavioral Health, Jim Hill.  It is neither Black nor Hill that made the decision to cut funding for their departments.  Both received direct orders from Walker that their departments must come in with lower budgets than the previous year or at least show a flat tax levy request.  This has caused problems.  These problems do not occur in a vaccum.  There is a reason these things happen and that reason is inadequate resources to get the job done.  One person, and one person alone, bears that responsibility — County Executive Scott Walker.

Walker is more than happy to take the credit for not raising taxes.  If the media wants to give him that credit, as they have for years, they have a jouralistic responsibility to lay the problems on his doorstep also.