Wrestlin' in Wisconsin

Not with you.

That wouldn't amount to much of a revenge victory for the Democrats.

It’s bad enough that Scott Walker has been forcing county workers to take an excessive amount of furlough days, in violation of labor laws and the contract that he had signed. These furloughs are nothing more than mandatory contributions to his campaign. Unfortunately for the tax payers, they could very well end up having to reimburse the workers for the extra days, which will add up to millions of dollars.

But Walker doesn’t care, since he is planning on being gone by the time that hits the fan.

Now we are learning that Walker has added insult to injury to both the workers and the tax payers.

In an “money saving” stunt, Walker ordered his Human Resources director to contract with a temp agency for some extra help. The problem is that the temp that comes to work for the County is unscrupulous. This worker, Starlita L. Sims, is allowed to confidential information about current and former county workers.

She steals this information and gives it to her boyfriend, who is living in a federal halfway house. Said boyfriend then uses this data to commit identity theft of more than 30 workers.

Now, there are some that will argue that the use of a temp agency worker in this matter was simply being cost effective and fiscally responsible.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The article doesn’t say what steps the county has taken to help the workers who were victimized by these crooks. However, based on what other companies have had to do when something similar happens, the County should be paying for the credit reports and credit checks that need to occur when one’s identity is stolen.

Then there is the cost of the Sheriff’s Office staff that did the investigation and subsequently arrested and booked the two suspects. There is also the cost of housing these two, even if Ms. Sims was released on bail soon after. Plus her boyfriend still remains in the House of Correction.

One then can add up the court costs including the judge, the prosecutor and court staff. Both suspects will also probably qualify for public defenders, who are also paid for with our tax dollars.

If they are found guilty, there is the costs associated with any sentencing they receive, whether or not it includes jail time and/or supervision by a parole/probation officer.

I am sure there are other possible costs, such as if the victims decide to sue the county for failing to protect their identities.

When you add it all up, Walker’s cost cutting measures sure do get expensive.

Posted by Chris Liebenthal on October 20, 2010, at 1:08 am | Tags: Scott Walker | Category: Uncategorized

He is working on breaking the unions so he can sell the state to big industry

He is working on breaking the unions so he can sell the state to big industry.

There is no more "big industry" left in the midwest. They companies all died of union sclerosis.

After decades of population decline, the city population has basically stabilized over the past 10 years as a result of major growth in the Hispanic population and the continuing, though modest, growth in the African-American population, which balances off the declining white population, said Margo Anderson, professor of history and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The most rapid growth in Milwaukee's African American population, however, occurred between 1956 and 1960 when the community grew from 22,000 to 62,000.

The Sky is Falling, Says Scott Walker

by Bruce Murphy | Tuesday 5/16/2006
Call it the “gloom and doom tour.” That’s what Journal Sentinel reporter Steve Schultze jokingly dubbed it, according to Scott Walker . The county executive has been playing Chicken Little, running around Milwaukee warning that the sky is falling. No wonder he wanted to flee to Madison.
It’s difficult to take Walker’s dire projections at face value because he has loaded the deck in every negative way, assuming annual increases in health insurance costs of nearly 20%, no increase in the contribution to health insurance by employees or retirees, no cut in the number of employees, a continuing drop in sales tax income and a drop in state-federal aid. It’s quite unlikely that all of this will come true and completely impossible if Walker provides some proactive leadership.

But Walker’s power point presentation, officially called “The Reality Tour,” doesn’t offer any real solutions. After hammering home how dreadful things are, suggesting that the county is nearly broke while noting it can’t go legally bankrupt, he asks us unlucky duckies to support, well, what? Walker doesn’t say. When asked it he had costed out some possible solutions, Walker said no.

There are times when Walker seems not like the county executive but the anti-county executive. This is the man who called Milwaukee and the six other counties of southeastern Wisconsin a pig. Walker said the effort to promote its economy was unlikely to succeed, declaring, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”

Tommy Thompson used the bully pulpit to tell us how great Wisconsin was. Mayor Tom Barrett calls cheerleading for Milwaukee a key part of his job. Scott Walker’s style is to blacken the reputation of the county he runs.

Yes, it’s disgusting to see the kind of pensions some county employees have gained. But they appear to be legally protected (not that Walker’s administration ever put much effort into researching its legal options on this issue). So at what point do you quit bellyaching and start making improvements?

The fact is the County Board has passed considerable legislation to roll back benefits (most of this before Walker was elected), and there has been some progress working with the employee unions. Two-thirds of the current employees are no longer eligible for lifetime health insurance and few remaining employees will ever see a big back drop payment because the retirement age was moved back to 55. More recently, Walker and the board restructured the health insurance plan so that employees and retirees have an economic incentive to choose a plan that costs the county less.

Are there other things that can be done? Of course. The county might ape the City of Milwaukee, which got its unions to agree to require out-of-state retirees to contribute more to their health insurance coverage. The county might join the state prescription drugs pool. Walker might go to city officials and the business community (which is also getting killed by the cost of healthcare in greater Milwaukee) and push for a public/private effort to address the problem.
Walker’s entire approach to governing has always been short-term, given his intention to run for governor. Thus he has refused to raise property taxes enough to fully fund the pension plan, in defiance of actuarial recommendations. This means citizens will someday have to repay not only the several years worth of pension contributions that should have been made, but the compounded stock market return on the money (about 8% per year) because the money wasn’t invested in a timely manner.

There’s no doubt the county faces tremendous challenges. It may have to consider selling some asset (a sale of the airport is already being floated), it may need to petition the state for permission to raise the sales tax

and it must find every way to cut costs. But it doesn’t help to run around town exaggerating the crisis while offering no plan to solve it.

The governor, on his own initiative, can declare an economic emergency in any town and appoint an administrator. The administrator can be any person, including a corporate person.

The administrator has the power to do anything in the name of economic stability, including void contracts, void collective bargaining agreements, dissolve the town council, dissolve the school board, fire anyone including elected officials, hire private security, unincorporate the town, and sell off public property.

The people of the town have no say in this. They can neither demand nor turn away the administrator. That is because this provision is meant to be used against the people.

This is outrageous, why are there not any protest about it?

What might constitute an emergency in the Governor’s eyes?

A labor strike is the first thing that comes to mind. Too many foreclosures. Crime! In short, anything he wants it to be–and with billionaire backers, any controversy can be created.