Category Archives: Politics

South Milwaukeeans: Get ready to feel the pain from Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget.

While we’re still sorting through all of the potential impacts of Walker’s plan announced Tuesday, it’s very clear that the governor has decided to balance the state budget on the backs of local governments (in addition to the poor, middle-class teachers and other public employees, unions and countless other constituencies who dared not support him during his campaign).

Does this surprise anyone? It shouldn’t.

My biggest objection: The further erosion of local control through new and ridiculous mandates on local communities from a governor who somehow claims to be in favor of smaller government while at the same time loves telling local leaders what we must do to govern local residents.

Among my biggest complaints with his hypocritical plan:

• Shared revenue cuts. As expected, Walker is using cuts in shared revenue to local governments as a key part of his plan to balance the state budget, and why not? Passing the buck like this is easy. The average cut is expected to be more than 12 percent … which for us could quickly punch a nearly $400,000 hole in our budget. And it could be more. Just what will that mean for services in the short and medium term? Stay tuned.
• Levy limits. At the same time he slices state aid to local governments, Walker wants to limit how much communities can increase their tax levies to fund the services facing the cuts. His proposal: Allow local governments to only raise property tax levies equal to the amount of new construction. For South Milwaukee, where new construction is almost non-existent, that likely means we will not be able to raise taxes at all going forward. Now, I’m no fan of large tax increases, nor could I see supporting one, but I stand behind the approximately 2% percent increases we’ve delivered in our last two budgets – fair and reasonable increases that reflect the fact that costs to deliver our first-class city services go up every year. In Scott Walker’s world, apparently there is no such thing as inflation.
• Recycling. This is perhaps the most hypocritical part of Walker’s plan. He is proposing that the state no longer help local governments pay for their recycling programs – while removing the mandate that communities offer these programs at all. The state now provides South Milwaukee more than $120,000 for this purpose. Without it, we will likely have to pass on the full cost of our recycling efforts to residents, resulting in higher fees for this service. The alternative? Get out of recycling altogether, which simply can’t be an option if you at all care about the planet. Plus, we recently signed a long-term deal with Veolia to run the South Milwaukee recycling program, so that can’t happen anyway. When you see this increase on your bill, I ask you to remember that it is brought to you by a Republican governor who campaigned against higher taxes and fees.

Couple all of that with Walker’s “budget repair bill” — his attempt at killing public unions and providing so-called “tools” that likely won’t come close to closing the shortfall he would create with the three items mentioned above — and you have a terrible piece of legislation that will deliver nothing but pain to local residents.

And it will be painful. Count on it. South Milwaukeeans will see real impacts from Walker’s budget through cuts in services, and there is simply no way around it. Our budget is so tight already – our staffing so lean – that it is inevitable. I wish it weren’t, but it is.

Yet, it could be worse. I can’t even begin to get into the potential impacts of Walker’s budget proposal on local schools. That’s another post for another day.

But rest assured that our kids will feel the pain even worse than we will at City Hall thanks to Scott Walker’s “reform budget.” As the parent of a Rawson Elementary kindergartner and husband of an ESL teacher for the Whitnall School District, that scares the heck out of me.

Obviously, I’ve made my objections to the Republican plan to kill public unions in Wisconsin pretty clear, and I’ve tried to focus many of my arguments on its potential impact locally.

The decision to separate out police and fire employees from the benefit cuts and restrictions on collective bargaining may have the biggest impact of all.

For starters, exempting these groups seriously weakens the “tools” Gov. Scott Walker said he wants to give local governments to help offset the looming cut in state aid. Since spending on public safety employees is such a large part of our city budget, as it should be, not forcing them to pay more for benefits like everyone else will do little for the city when it comes time to making the hard choices with which we’ll be faced after the legislature is done here.

In other words, in choosing this path, Walker undermined a key point of his own reasoning for the “budget repair plan.”

(Of course, I have many other concerns with the reasoning behind the legislation that I’ve laid out on this blog.)

Also, think of the complexity this adds to the work of our administration, staff and others in negotiating different contracts for different unions, as well as managing completely different work rules and pay and benefits packages for different types of city employees.

Then there is the biggest reason of all to hate this: The “haves vs. have nots” discontent that can be bred when one city worker is working under different rules, and with a different pay and benefit structure, than another. This hurts employee morale and productivity. That in turns impacts city services.

How is that good for anyone?

Of course, this is clearly part of the Republican strategy here. It’s “divide and conquer,” pit one union against another with a clear endgame in mind: killing all public sector unions.

Indeed, police, fire and other public safety unions should not feel safe simply because they were spared the pain this time around. Walker is coming for them next as he continues his assault on workers’ rights and the middle class.

Thankfully, local public safety workers get this, and it’s a big reason why many of their unions did not support Walker in his election bid.

Milwaukee’s did. Many others didn’t, including the parent unions of our local workers. So I am happy to hear that they are standing side by side with their union brothers and sisters in Madison — and back home — as this struggle continues. Keep up the fight.

Check this video out from Wisconsin Eye, courtesy of the Wisconsin State Journal, showing just how eager Republicans were on Friday to strip 50 years of collective bargaining rights away from public workers.

How eager were they? So excited that they decided to move Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill toward final passage without waiting for Democratic lawmakers to even enter the chamber and vote.

Amazing. Unprecedented. Insulting. Disgusting.

Public employees, including teachers, will apparently agree to Gov. Scott Walker’s request of benefit givebacks if Walker and legislators agree to take the removal of collective bargaining rights off the table.

That’s according to State Sen. John Erpenbach, a Middleton Democrat, in today’s Journal Sentinel.

This is a fair, common sense compromise that should win the support of lawmakers. Of course, I highly doubt it will.

Walker and Senate and Assembly Republicans are out to bust the unions, plain and simple. What they’re seeking to do is about 10 percent “budget repair” and 90 percent sticking it to the unions. I just wish they would admit it.  At least that way it can be an honest debate.

At this point, both sides are so entrenched that compromise seems a distant dream.