State Bar passes $30 dues increase (UPDATE)

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Wisconsin attorneys will pay $30 more in yearly dues starting July 1.

The State Bar’s Board of Governors passed the increase as part of the bar’s $12 million Fiscal Year 2014-15 budget, approved Friday afternoon by a voice vote during the BOG’s meeting in La Crosse.

A small group of BOG members voiced their opposition and made attempts to amend the budget by removing or reducing the amount. Those efforts, however, failed.

Come July, full dues will amount to $254 a year, which goes up to $490 with mandatory court assessments. The $30 is expected to net the bar about $592,000 in revenue during the next fiscal year and $500,000 of that will be used to help close a gap between proposed revenue and the bar’s needs.

It’s the bar’s first dues increase since 2005.

“We’re talking about fiscal responsibility,” BOG member Ray Dall’Osto said. “We’re talking about fiduciary duty that we owe to this organization and all lawyers.”

The approved budget is about $144,000 larger than the one for FY 2013-14. The approved budget includes a 4 percent raise for bar staff members, as well as money to hire two people for the bar’s continuing legal education programs and its practice management help division.

And while the BOG overwhelmingly voted for the increase, those who opposed it made themselves known.

The vote was preceded by an hour of discussion that centered around two failed amendments BOG member Rich Summerfield proposed to strike the dues increase or decrease it to $18.

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Summerfield told the board that his constituents in northwestern Wisconsin have told him that they don’t want a dues increase. BOG member Nick Zales also said several Milwaukee attorneys expressed dissatisfaction with the dues increase.

“I just personally feel we haven’t done enough to cut costs,” Zales said.

Others, such as BOG member Ann Molitor, bemoaned what they saw as a lack of transparency by bar staff during the budget process. She said the budget was a “product of the take it or leave it form of the proposal.”

“We weren’t given any options,” Molitor said. “When it’s a mandatory membership and you have to pay your dues, I think you do have more of a right to see a financial picture as a whole than if you did if it was just a regular business.”

Still, BOG and finance committee member Paul Swanson told the board that the increase – and the entire budget – was made to ensure that the bar will be on firmer financial footing in the coming years. Investing in programs is an attempt to make sure that the amount attorneys pay each year isn’t even higher, he said.

He also said that “it’s agonizing work trying to cut fat out of the budget.” Swanson and bar Executive Director George Brown said the bar continues to cut costs in an attempt to trim as much as they can without resorting to layoffs. And Bar President-elect Bob Gagan said that it will only have one out-of-town meeting next year as well, in an attempt to save money.

BOG member Jill Kastner pointed out that the amendments did not include any mention of cutting other parts of the budget to accommodate for the shortfall it would cause.

“The worst thing we can do is pass the budget without a dues increase,” Kastner said.

The dues increase means the bar will put more money into its reserves, which Swanson said were depleted in the past few years. The bar also is expected to have about $140,000 more than it budgeted for, due to the state Supreme Court’s denial of a rules petition that would have restructured the amount in dues that emeritus and younger attorneys would pay. Follow @eheisigWLJ