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| Scott Walker |
The popular liberal view of Gov. Scott Walker is that he is simply a tool of industrialist David Koch, cynically crushing the unions to please his overmasters. I don’t buy it.
I think Walker truly believes in what he is doing. He is a small town boy, raised in Delavan, an Eagle Scout and son of a minister who was raised to believe in quite conservative values. If he was not such a true believer, he might be more modulated in his views, something I suspect many Republican legislators would secretly welcome. For the governor could be leading his party to disaster.
Walker’s big mistake is that he seems to be judging the proper policy for the state based on the lessons he learned as Milwaukee County Executive.
The 2002 pension scandal ignited a firestorm of taxpayer protests over huge lump sum payments to county employees, with hundreds of employees leaving with back drop payments of $300,000 to $1 million (plus an annual pension). Taxpayers were outraged and are probably still suspicious of county employees. So they didn’t care if Walker ran roughshod over unions and the normal process of collective bargaining.
Walker also never bothered trying to build bridges to county board members. Budget after budget, he refused to compromise, repeatedly vetoing any budget changes that might increase property taxes, even as the parks were deteriorating, the courthouse was filthy, and the bus system was cutting routes and losing passengers. And each time the board overrode his veto, and restored funding. So Walker looked like a budget cutter, even as the budget kept rising, and was twice reelected. He was rewarded for his unwillingness to compromise.
But state government is a quite different matter. While many Milwaukeeans were easily persuaded its public employees were the enemy, the attitude of state residents is quite different. One of 11 employees in the state is part of the state pension system: That includes workers in every county, city, town and village, every school district, the University of Wisconsin System and the vocational-technical colleges. (Only the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County are outside the system because they have their own pension plan.)
Then add to that all the retirees in the system. All told, there are more than 500,000 participants in the state’s pension system. Then add all the spouses of public employees who also depend on the public pension and health insurance benefits. There is a huge constituency for these benefits and a natural concern as to how public employees will be treated.
Milwaukee voters were repulsed by county employees on the gravy train. But it’s not as easy to demonize teachers, when the average one in Wisconsin earns $49,000. As the Rasmussen poll found last week (and this poll is typically seen as leaning Republican), 77 percent of those polled had a high opinion of teachers. Among households with children, 67 percent disapproved of the governor’s performance.
Overall, the poll found 57 percent of respondents disapproved of Walker’s performance. The conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute found 53 percent disapproved (versus 43 percent who approved).
Walker has pointed to Ronald Reagan as his hero, but Reagan compromised often, even if it meant running up historically unprecedented budget deficits. Walker is in a position where he could have accepted the offer of union leaders to give back all the benefits he asked for, and probably could have coupled that with some limitations on union power in collective bargaining. But he has been unwilling to compromise even a little.
Such stubbornness can often elicit admiration. But it has been coupled with disingenuousness. Walker has claimed he can’t negotiate because the state’s broke, which the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact operation rightly called untrue. And he has insisted that the elimination of collective bargaining rights is a fiscal bill that needs quorum of 67 percent of senators – apparently to preserve the charade that this bill is about the budget. In fact, the Republican senators could pass the bill with no Democrats because it is a non-fiscal bill that only needs a quorum of 50 percent of senators.
Right now, organizers are working to recall eight Republican and eight Democratic senators. Legally, they have just 60 days to get enough signatures, and odds are, not every effort will succeed. But the four most vulnerable senators, as JS reporter Craig Gilbert has noted, are Democrat Jim Holperin (who won in 2008 with just 51.2 percent of the vote) and three Republicans: Alberta Darling (50.5 percent of the vote, Dan Kapanke (51.4 percent) and Randy Hopper (50 percent).
Politicians hate recall elections because they are “throw the bum out” affairs. A regular election is a contrast of two candidates’ vision for the future; a recall election is about one question: throw the bum out or not? Voters these days can be easily persuaded to say yes. This has to be worrying some of the Republican senators Walker needs to pass his proposal.
Walker is unlikely to get recalled. And he can probably hold out longer than the Democrats holed up in Illinois. But if the recalls overthrow the GOP control of the senate – and a net swing of three senators could do it – Walker would be forced to negotiate absolutely everything he does. That would be a huge loss in his power and all due to insistence on getting everything, rather than most of what he wanted.
How MPS Gets Crushed
Walker’s proposed two-year budget calls for ending the cap on school choice and even allowing city students to attend choice schools in the suburbs. This could crush Milwaukee Public Schools.
State funding for schools is equalized, meaning more aid goes to poorer districts with less property tax base per students. But Milwaukee currently gets $36.5 million less than it should under this formula. That’s because the 20,000 city students who now attend choice schools do not count when the state computes the amount of property value per student. This artificially raises Milwaukee’s property value per student, and to make up for this difference, the average Milwaukee homeowner is forced to pay $166 more in annual property taxes to make up for the loss of state aid.
The end of the cap could greatly increase this inequity as the number of voucher students increases. Should the number go up to 30,000, it would increase the amount of state aid lost to Milwaukee by nearly $33 million, almost doubling the total.
But Walker also wants to cap property taxes, meaning MPS couldn’t increase taxes to recoup the loss of $33 million in state educational aid. When added to an estimated $74 million MPS expects to lose under Walker’s budget annually, the district would have to absorb a loss of $107 million annually. The number of teacher layoffs and school closings this will require is almost unimaginable.
The Buzz
-This is bizarre. A New York Times story on Wisconsin’s labor history notes that Milwaukee’s socialist mayor Frank Zeidler and red-baiting Republican Joe McCarthy used to meet for lunch.
-Kudos to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for its coverage of the ongoing battle in Madison. It’s been even-handed, timely, and its Politifact columns have generally been on target.
-Some have accused the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce of operating like a wing of the Republican Party under its longtime executive director James Haney. But in announcing that longtime banking industry lobbyist Kurt Bauer would succeed Haney, the WMC board’s chairperson, Wausau Paper Corp. Chief Executive Thomas J. Howatt, seemed to go overboard to suggest that won’t be the case in the future. “Importantly, (Bauer) believes that a nonpartisan approach is the most effective means to ensuring that Wisconsin is competitive and encourages business investment and job growth in the state,” Howatt volunteered.
-What is the mysterious malady the Milwaukee Bucks have that Coach Skiles won’t discuss publicly? The Sports Nut investigates.
