Adding it up: Bob Lang's nonpartisan number crunching helps Wisconsin legislators navigate tough financial times.

• Author: Walters, Steven

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For 31 years, Wisconsin state government has run on Robert "Bob" W. Lang's numbers.

As director of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, and the nation's longest-serving senior budget adviser to legislators, Lang has seen it all: New leaders with new priorities when party control flips. Recessions that turn tax collection forecasts into guesstimates. The inability of elected officials to close a chronic budget gap. A Legislature growing more partisan by the day.

But Lang, who turns 65 in August and has no plans to retire, has more than survived.

Bob is a Capitol institution, like the badger statue outside the governor's office whose nose is shiny from school children rubbing it for good luck.

In his 2005 budget address, Democratic Governor Jim Doyle may have paid Lang and his staff the ultimate compliment.

Although he has his own budget staff. Doyle said: "I've based my budget on the conservative estimates of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau," which Lang has directed since 1977.

Lang says he lives in a world that doesn't care whether a legislator is an R or a D.

"Facts aren't partisan," Lang says from his office a few steps from the Capitol. "There are some 60,000 people who have sent each member of the Assembly here, and 180,000 for each member of the Senate. We really think it's important that we do the best that we can for that individual to represent those people."

NONPARTISAN NUMBERS

With the Legislature split between the parties--and Republicans fighting to keep control of the Assembly--the numbers and materials produced by Lang and his 34 staff are crucial.

But, Lang says, "Leadership recognizes that as soon as the Fiscal Bureau starts to shade its analysis, or shade its information in favor of one position or another, we lose our credibility. Once it's gone, it can never come back."

Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, a Republican, says he turns to Lang for nonpartisan numbers and materials to brief members of his party and negotiate with Democrats. He calls Lang a "rock" he relies on for "straight and direct information."

The Legislature's top Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, said Wisconsin is "very lucky" to have Lang.

"He is a true professional whose knowledge and skill have rightly earned him the respect of everyone in our state government," Decker says. "His ability to answer any question we throw at him, combined with his talent for recruiting a great team for his department, have earned him well-deserved...