The Joint Finance Committee could stop MPS teacher layoffs by simply fixing the funding flaw

by folkbum

Last weekend I was working on a post--the one that I put off when OBL news took over for a while--about the Milwaukee Public School's proposed budget cuts nearly 1000 positions, news that was bubbling through the grapevine at the time but that didn't hit the media until this mid-week story (and accompanying tsk-tsking editorial*).

I was writing in the context of Governor Scott Walker's absurd promise to create 250,000 jobs in his first term, and the ridiculous nature of promising that while knowing full well he'd be gutting public employment. Though MPS isn't producing 1000 new unemployed people--many of the eliminated positions will be, as the district points out, simply unfilled empty positions after retirements and resignations--hundreds of other school districts, villages, towns, cities, and counties will be cutting, too. By the time the state budget is final and fall rolls around, the ranks of the unemployed will be many thousands larger than it is.

And the kicker to that is the simple fact that the worst enemy of any unemployed person--those disgruntled voters Walker courted with his inflated promises--is another unemployed person, which Walker is about to create in spades.

(Wisconsin is not isolated in this trend. While the US economy broadly has added jobs over the last two years, more than 40,000 public employees have lost theirs, not counting temporary federal census workers. Cuts planned to education and local governments across the country will spike that number over the next six months.)

As to Walker's claim that his budget repair bill gives local governments "tools" to deal with his devastating proposed budget cuts, MPS and virtually every other municipality that has weighed in has said, simply, that cutting employee pay and screwing with their working conditions without fear of reprisal simply isn't enough. MPS would still be $40 million in the hole from where they were expecting to be before the state budget cuts were announced.

But here's a simple way for the legislature fix a long-standing wrong and save a ton of MPS jobs in the process. All the Joint Finance Committee needs to do is fix the voucher funding flaw. In short, because of the Milwaukee Parental Parental Choice Program--the voucher program--the state undercounts Milwaukee's students, making MPS seem more property rich than it is, and therefore deserving of less state aid than the state's funding formula would normally allow. The result, according to MPS,is more than $50 million less for the state's largest and poorest district. (This money is not returned to taxpayers--it's distributed out across the rest of the state to other districts, which is why non-milwaukee legislators are not terribly interested in fixing the flaw.)

If you're doing the math, that adds up to about 500 teaching positions, more than the 468 positions MPS expects to eliminate. Even if the flaw is only partially fixed--say, $30m worth--would stop every layoff. Every teacher layoff, anyway, as MPS is also making steep cuts in administration, contra some local complaints.

MPS last week released a companion document about the proposed budget, and it notes that MPS did not go into this budget year lying down. The district settled contracts** with pay freezes and significant health insurances changes (new administrator, drug plan changes, increased contributions) that will save nearly $20 million next year, in addition to pension savings with some bargaining units. The all-important benefit-to-salary ratio, despite the salary freezes, is falling 7% next year. Such savings had left MPS in a pretty good spot before budget cuts, even counting the ever-present voucher funding flaw.

JFC could spend not one additional dime of tax dollars in this upcoming budget, and simply correct--or at least lessen--that funding flaw. In the process, MPS teachers don't end up on the unemployment line competing with everyone else struggling to get by in this this still-wretched economy. And MPS's students don't bear the brunt of Walker's devastating cuts.

* The editorial falls into the growing oeuvre of complaining about the fallout from actions taken by the gubernatorial candidate they endorsed last fall--the one whose decimation of the state the editorial board, in Walker's own words, should have seen coming.

** There are calls, including in the editorial referenced above, to re-open the contract with teachers. I earlier made such a call myself. But should the budget-repair bill that bans collective bargaining be upheld in the courts, its effective date of mid-March would make any changes made after that simply illegal. It would take a single complaint to unravel all of it. Smartly, the union is having none of that.

The deadofnight boogeyman

by folkbum

A hundred years ago--heck, even fifteen years ago--news traveled slowly and the public's right to know something quite often was thoroughly let down by a deficit in the public's ability to know something. Sneaky legislators could collude on underhanded bills, pass them in the middle of the night once the public was sleeping and the press was meeting sources in the parking garage, and only weeks, months, or years later would the full depths of legislators' malicious mendacity come to light.

A hundred years ago--heck, even fifteen years ago--would have been a great time to pass a law prohibiting legislators from having the kind of middle-of-the-night votes that, if not actually reflect such malice, at least arouse the suspicion thereof. Scott Walker, who of course was a legislator fifteen years ago and participated in his share of end-of-session late-night legislative bacchanalia, never proposed such a restriction when he had the chance or, to my knowledge, voiced his concern over the practice. [UPDATE: via capper in comments, Walker not only didn't complain, he voted to eliminate an 8 PM stopping time!]

But Scott Walker apparently finds it convenient to complain today, as he's in the middle of a campaign and needs something more than just lunch bags to talk about for a while. And "OMG! They're passing bills in the dead of night!" can be made to sound quite frightening and earn Walker some free media for the day. (None of the media that I saw or heard asked Walker why he didn't push to stop late-night legislating when he was a state rep. Disappointing!)

But here's the thing: I don't think today, with the kind of media that exist and the easy availability not just of legislative text but legislators themselves, that something completely surprising and tinged with evil could possibly make it out of a session without people knowing, or at least having a good idea about it, before hand. And while I don't believe that voting late at night ought to be the norm--I'm one of those people who likes to be in bed by 9:30 and is pretty sure the rest of the world should just stop working completely until sunrise (except those making the the donuts, they're okay)--the reason why you've seen such votes lately in Madison and Washington have nothing to do with trying to hide from the public and avoid, as Walker accuses, comment from constituents. Instead, you're seeing the inevitable result of filibuster rules (which pushed a lot of US Senate votes to after dark) and an archaic state legislative calendar.

The 24-hour news cycle, the internet, the ability to TiVo WisconsinEye, email alerts and tweets--these things all make every minute of a legislative session anymore just as visible as every other. No one should be surprised at which bills were passed overnight in Madison this week--DPI power grab, raw milk, payday loans, for example--because these are the bills that have been hashed, re-hashed, and hashed again in public and legislative debates for the last six months or more. Final language may have been tweaked during party caucus meetings the day of the vote, but to suggest that the public had no chance to comment or contact their legislators about the issues involved is just false.

Is late-night legislation ideal? Probably not--in no small part because apparently "it passed in the dead of night" is now a legitimate critique of the substance of a bill, if our experience lately, particularly reaction to the Affordable Care Act, is any guide. But it is an utterly phony campaign issue, and insulting. Insulting not just to the media (new media included) who have done a fantastic job using new technology to follow this schedule, but also to the voters who have access to so much more information now and don't need Scott Walker to protect them from boogeymen anymore.

I hope it's not a ...

by folkbum

When the headline "Legislator arrested on OWI, pot possession charges" flashed up this morning, my first thought was "I hope it's not a Democrat, I hope it's not a Democrat." I am quite certain that my colleagues in the right half of the Cheddarsphere were thinking, "I hope it's not a Republican, I hope it's not a Republican."

Turns out, we can all breathe easy:

Rep. Jeffrey Wood, an independent from Bloomer, was arrested early Friday by the Wisconsin State Patrol. [. . .] Wood became the first independent elected to the Wisconsin Legislature in decades in November after he quit the Republican Party. Democrats who took control of the chamber recently made him a committee chairman.

Congrats to Sandy Pasch

By Keith R. Schmitz

Open seats always make for interesting elections, and in the 22nd we sure had that. We weren't lacking for attention this summer. Four people campaigning hard to take over the Assembly seat from Sheldon Wasserman who hopes to move up in the State Senate.

Very much neck and neck last night between candidates Sandy Pasch and Andy Feldman in the Milwaukee northshore as returns came in between 9:00 and 11:00. In the end Sandy squeaked by. She will go on to face the Republican in November.

Sandy will bring her great experience in health care to Madison, particularly in the area of mental health. No doubt she will do a good job representing us.

Tough loss for Andy, but he has a packed resume and will be a fine addition to our local politics.