Like any other state-run agency, the Wisconsin Historical Society will have to absorb funding cuts included in the budget proposal that is currently under review of the state legislature.
But those who work to maintain and develop the Society’s resources and those who utilize those resources feel the association is unlike other state agencies. The Society’s public information officer Bob Granflaten said there was a different organization and mission to Society.
Granflaten said one other thing makes the Society different: its share of cuts in the next state budget — which are proportionately larger than any other state agency with an educational or stewardship mission.
“The Society makes some money from members and things like admission to Society run sites, tours and such, and grants,” said the Society’s Public Information Director Bob Granflaten. “But that only makes up about 60 percent of our operating budget.”
Although not yet finalized by the legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, the budget proposal presented by Gov. Jim Doyle would force the Society to cut 30 of 125 positions paid for by state funds and cut funding for the Society by $3 million during the 2003-2005 biennium.
April 7, the Society sent a letter to legislators with the endorsements of 72 organizations asking for consideration as they work over Doyle’s budget.
“The Joint Finance Committee is taking up the matter of the budget in the very near future. Hopefully, they’ll take the content of the letter to heart,” Granflaten said. “We realize we have to absorb cuts just like any other state agency; we’re just asking that we get a fair, even share of the burden.”
Major concerns surrounding cuts to the Society are not necessarily about the number of staff members that would be eliminated, but the purpose of that staff, which despite growth in the Society has not increased in size since 1982.
Richard Pifer, director of public services for the Society and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, said that decreased staff size would be detrimental to the accumulation of the Society’s archives.
“With many kinds of collecting, if you don’t collect it when it happens, the opportunity is lost,” Pifer said. “I’ve been in situations that if we hadn’t responded immediately, for example if a building is being torn down and the contractor finds some archaeological artifact, the information would’ve been lost.”
Pifer said a decrease in the Society’s collecting abilities would create significant gaps in what people will understand about the present and make it increasingly difficult to preserve collective heritage.
“When a student wanting to research the present in 20 or 50 years, they will not have a complete picture,” Pifer said. “When we are unable to hang onto the present we lose the future.”
Pifer said that he would personally lose a few staff members and that staffing positions might have to be altered or rearranged in a way that would not be beneficial to UW staff and students trying to do research at the Society.
“I think about what we see on the news, people ransacking the national heritage museums in Iraq, and that stuff is gone. Now, nobody is ransacking the State Historical Society, but letters from U.S. soldiers writing home from Iraq, that’s important stuff,” Pifer said.
Tuesday, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns sent a letter to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calling the Society a national treasure and echoing Pifer’s sentiment that in times of war collective heritage takes on additional importance.
“I know that the Wisconsin Historical Society has nothing to do with the actual defense of our land. It only makes our land worth defending,” Burns said in the letter.
The Society is currently displaying newspapers containing some of the first reprints of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution and original autographs of five Constitution signers in its archives. Pifer said possession of these items is possible because of collecting Society staffers were able to do in the Twentieth Century.
