Not Innoculated Against Stupidity

By Keith R. Schmitz

Who knows how bad the Swine Flu invasion will eventually be? Are people being crazed about the prospect of a plague sweeping the country or right acting like too much is being made about this?

Nevertheless like many things politics pokes in.

With the debate we've been having over sick pay in the metro area this argument takes on a new complexion. The United States and Milwaukee in particular has no state mandated policy on sick pay. Here's where this issue could hit home.

In other countries when a worker starts to feel the aches and sniffles that may indicate the onset of that or another disease, there isn't this agonizing decision about staying home or dragging through a day or two of work.

Here, many people have to suck it up. Remember the lozenge commercial that ran recently of a woman working the frozen food aisle and an officer blows into the scene out of no where. Dumb concept, but the woman pleads the to fantasy officer that she's sick. But this is America, land of having to drag your sorry behind through the shift. And she's handling food.

There will be countless people that many people who we could encountering through this health incident handling our food, making our beds, taking care of our elderly parents. None of them can take the recommended three days off when symptoms become present, or if members of their family because this would be bad for business.

The Swine Flu outbreak could be overblown. Or, if you want something that is bad for business, this is it.

Let me get this straight

by folkbum

Two years ago we were supposed to be upset that our public servants weren't taking their sick leave, and today we are supposed to be upset that they are taking their sick leave? How come no one ever gives me a heads up that we're changing our position? I end up so far out of the loop ...

This is going to blow some minds

by folkbum
UPDATED within!

It'll blow righty minds, that is:

District attorneys around Wisconsin rarely claim sick leave, allowing them to boost their retirement benefits like lawmakers, judges and other state elected officials.

Last year, just one of the 62 district attorneys who get state benefits claimed sick leave, according to records for all but the last three weeks of the year.

Like other state employees, district attorneys may buy health insurance in retirement with unused sick leave. For former Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, in office for 18 years, the benefit is worth over $158,300, more than for any of his peers.

Bucher, of course, is a hero to many of the Charlie Sykes Stormtroopers down here in the Milwaukee Media Market; recall, for example, the Right Cheddarsphere's lauding of Bucher's "crackdown" on vote fraud, a crackdown that consisted of a single plea-bargained case in two decades of District Attorneying. And it's the Charlie Sykes Stormtroopers who have been among those beating the drums loudest for the end to these sorts of accumulated sick-leave bennies for elected officials. Puts them in an awkward spot, I would bet--especially since the anti-Bucher, former Milwaukee County DA E. Michael McCann, has no sick leave benefit at all.

(I have occasionally wondered, though not out loud, of course, why Jessica McBride is the only WTMJ radio talker not to have gone off on sick leave, and now it kind of makes sense: She's married to $160k of sick leave benefits. LATE UPDATE: Oops, I guess she has!)

Look, I've made my case before. I understand that there are people on both sides of the aisle who disagree with me--conservatives who feel the benefit is too much for our budgets and unrealistic compared to the real world of the private sector; and liberals who can't believe lawmakers are willing to perk themselves but won't fix health care for the rest of us.

But the fact is that I have been, and will remain, consistent here: Paul Bucher could probably have made three, four, eight times his DA's salary working in the private sector (the coming years will undoubtedly be his most lucrative now that he's out of public life). If part of what kept him in the job--a job that our conservative friends think he did well--is that he knew he could pay a portion of his health care costs in retirement with accumulated sick leave funds, then that incentive worked, and we kept a solid public figure in office doing work for we the people.

I don't want to ignore the question of whether he legitimately accumulated those days; he might have, I suppose, skirted some of the ethical bounds that compel people to call in sick when they are, in fact, sick. But I don't have enough information to judge whether that really happened and, from my reading of the article, neither does the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They seem perfectly happy, though, to keep claiming scalps of all ideological stripes in their never-ending war on sick leave benefits.

In the meantime, pass the popcorn--some righty heads may be exploding Thursday. (It's days like this I wish I could listen to Sykes . . . wonder what he'll say?)

Sick leave, briefly

by folkbum

I don't have a lot of time this morning, so I have to be quick: An initiative to kill Wisconsin legislators' sick leave has died, again, and the blame is placed squarely on Democrats this morning:

The Republican-controlled Assembly was poised to pass the measure late Tuesday but was held up by a procedural move by a Democrat. Meanwhile, Democrats who control the Senate indicated the bill is going nowhere in that house. And Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle said that with changes to the reporting process, the sick leave benefit should continue. [. . .]

Just before the Assembly was to take a final vote on the measure, Rep. Marlin Schneider (D-Wisconsin Rapids) objected and pushed it off until the Assembly meets next on March 1. The bill's author, Rep. Pat Strachota (R-West Bend), said she expects the bill to pass then.

Schneider declined to say why he had objected to a final vote, although he has been a vocal opponent of efforts to end the sick leave benefit. Schneider has more than $110,000 worth of sick leave accumulated, although the bill wouldn't affect what elected officials have already earned.

The issue has been a whipping post for the conservatives who live in your radio and in your computer, and this will give them plenty of fodder for the next few weeks. Never mind that the chief champion of the idea to tank the benefit is Democrat Sheldon Wasserman, and never mind that a Republican-controlled legislature sat on its thumbs about it for years before Democrats even had the kind of authority to stop it that they do now.

But more importantly, I think conseratives' reflexive hatred of all things Benefit--like sick leave and health care and pensions--is short-sighted in general and particularly stupid in this case.

Just thinking about legislators, never mind the "constitutional officers, justices, judges and district attorneys" who would also be affected by the measure, the policy is one that makes sense to me. Consider that if I were to run for the legislature and win next year, I'd be taking a pay cut (depending on how, um, flexible I was with my use of the "per diem" money). Many of the most-qualified people to be legislators--attorneys, academics, business leaders--would be in the same position. It would be a tremendous cut for your Charlie Sykeses and Mark Bellings, even your Owen Robinsons. And, face it, not everyone can be Bob Ziegelbauer and hold two elected offices at once. In other words, no one goes into state government to get rich, and no one comes out rich, either.

What the sick leave benefit offers legislators (and the others listed above) is not some grand cash payout upon retirement or the kind of golden parachute companies provide for a CEO who lost his company profit and market share (later, please, can someone explain how that even remotely makes sense?).

Instead, what the sick leave benefit allows retirees to do is pay for a part of their health care when they retire. That's it. That's the whole thing, the entire bug that has crawled up the behinds of the conservatives. It's true that some of the legislators have accumulated totals that seem astronomical; but the biggest of those stockpiles will never get completely used up, with the unspent balances remaining just that, unspent. The total real cost to taxpayers, no matter how often the Journal Sentinel repeats its $3.2 million number, is negligible.

But it makes it just a little bit easier to talk someone into serving the public interest. Knowing that the benefit is there may be enough for someone like me (though not me, since I don't want to) to take the plunge into public life and accept that pay cut.

Look, if Wisconsin's conservatives can can complain about how low pay is dangerous for the federal judiciary, then surely they can consider how a similar case can be made for those--and not just legislators--who serve the state as well.