Abele, board disagree on best way to pay down debt

With Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele and the County Board eager to tout their credentials as debt hawks, their latest financial argument is over who had the best idea for using $ 2.3 million to pare down county debt.

It all started when figures were released last month showing the county had posted an $ 11.5 million surplus last year. That got some wheels turning on using some of the surplus to pare down debt, a notion often espoused by Abele and embraced lately by supervisors.

The board in June approved using $ 2.3 million of the surplus to pay back early two 10-year loans the county took to finance housing for people with disabilities, for a savings of $ 424,000 in interest costs.

Great idea, Abele says.

“I’m glad the board is embracing my focus of paying off debt,” he said. But he prefers an alternate plan to use the same $ 2.3 million to instead put a dent in the county’s nearly $ 400 million in pension borrowing from 2009.

That would have yielded $ 1.8 million in lower interest costs over 20 years – more than four times the bang for the debt-reduction bucks, according to an estimate prepared by the……………. continues on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel