MADISON, Wis. - The state is spending nearly $165,000 to contract out a job keeping track of road signs, rather than keep the work in-house for about $51,000 a year, a newspaper reported.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Sunday that the state Department of Transportation is paying HNTB Corp., a consulting company, nearly $80 an hour to maintain a road sign inventory that until recently was overseen by a state employee making $11.38 an hour plus benefits.

Department officials said they did not analyze how much it would cost to keep the job in-house rather than privatize it. But the newspaper said a DOT budget formula shows it would cost taxpayers about $51,700 a year to pay a state employee $16 an hour with full benefits to do the work.

"The cost of the contract does not appear to be a very good deal for the state," said Dan Leistikow, spokesman for Gov. Jim Doyle.

Leistikow said the governor has directed the department to find a more cost-effective way to handle road sign inventory.

The state was paying about $30,000 a year plus benefits to pay limited-term employee Kevin Duerst. Duerst now works for HNTB doing the same job, in the same state-owned warehouse where he has always worked.

The company expects to make $13,103 in profit from the $164,692 state contract.

Randy Romanski, executive assistant to state Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi, said the department could not continue to have Duerst do the job because of state statutes limiting short-term workers to 1,044 hours for any given job.

"Once we've reached that limit that we can spend on that position, that's it," he said. "The option is that job's not going to get done anymore or we contract it out."

But others say the department could have extended Duerst's contract or converted the job to a full-time position.

State Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, co-chairman of the Joint Finance Committee, said state agencies routinely rewrite job descriptions slightly to keep short-term employees on for longer periods.

"Don't use the statutes or Legislature as a crutch," Kaufert said. "That just sounds like a cop-out."

Transportation Department spokeswoman Peg Schmitt said administrators decided Duerst's job was not part of the agency's core mission. She said he took on the job after a full-time worker left, but the department was concerned about hiring a long-term employee for the position since it long ago stopped manufacturing its own signs.

Duerst also now has more duties than before, Schmitt said.

But state Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, co-chairwoman of the finance committee, said the department should have done a cost analysis.

Ken Weaver, president of Wisconsin State Employees Union Local 758, criticized the automatic raises in the contract, while talks between labor unions and the state remain stalled.

Department officials "can give out these raises (to contractors) without answering to anybody, yet we have to jump through every political hoop just to get increases of zero percent and 1 percent," Weaver said, referring to a proposed two-year contract.

---

Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, http://www.jsonline.com