The Kick The Can Champion Of Fitzwalkerstan

As Milwaukee County Executive, Scott Walker was a master of kicking the can down the road at budget time. He'd do things like let repairs slide; not pay the bills; lay off workers until programs stopped working, knowing that any lawsuits would be months or even years down the line; dip into reserved funding; and even just draw up illegal budgets knowing that the repercussions wouldn't be felt until he was safely out of that office. Then he would declare a surplus when there was nearly a billion dollars in debt taxpayers were facing.

As governor, we see that Walker is still the Kick the Can Down the Road champion of Fitzwalkerstan. Again we see him extending the state's debt, raiding the transportation fund (not to mention preparing to raid the pension fund), and cutting services which are leading to greater expenses.

But Walker has learned a new twist. Not only is he kicking the can down the road, but he is kicking it to trip up the local governments and school districts.

To exemplify this, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently had an article about the future budgets of a "Fairly Normal" school district:

A year ago, Borch's analysis showed that things were going to be OK in Fairly Normal in the first year of the new financial realities. State aid went down, but employees paid a bigger share of health and retirement costs. The bottom line actually improved from what it would have been under the old system of increasing state aid and generous employee benefits.

In the second year, things weren't so good, and Fairly Normal had to dip into its "fund balance," which is pretty much like its long-term savings account. Years Three and Four get worse. By Year Five, which would be 2015-'16, Fairly Normal is running a big deficit, has used up all its savings and can't pay all its bills. I'm not exactly sure what we would call that when it happens to a unit of government in Wisconsin, but in other circumstances, I believe it's called bankruptcy.

Why did this happen? This is how I'd put it: Let's say your boss cut your pay. But he also helped you cover some of your expenses. For a year, it worked out to be pretty much a wash, and things were generally OK.

The next year, the boss gave you a little bit more pay, but your expenses started going up again. Things were not quite so OK. Same thing in the third year and fourth year. By the fifth year, it was ugly. You'd used up all your savings and you still couldn't pay your bills.

That's what is developing for Fairly Normal. As things stand, revenue stays pretty flat. But even without teachers unions having a say, expenses start climbing again. There are some modest raises, increases in health costs, costs for retirees and so on. Borch factors into his model that a lot of senior teachers retire due to changes in benefits and are replaced by younger teachers with lower salaries. (This is happening, in general.)

It's now a year since Borch first showed what he forecast for Fairly Normal. Things are developing pretty much as he envisioned, except a little less cheery on the bottom line. His forecasts now extend out an additional year and are looking like big financial problems loom for Fairly Normal.

The article goes on to cite a number of different possibilities to avoid the inevitable bankruptcy, including cutting even more teachers, cutting benefits even more (which would also reduce the number of good teachers), raising taxes and major program cuts.

I'd bet my bottom dollar that Walker is thinking that he will be out of the governor's chair by the time his bill is due, either in someone's cabinet or even as president himself.

But while Walker gets to celebrate being champion can kicker and parties hearty, we get stuck with the tab and the hangover.

Robbing Peter To Pay Peter

I've covered the whole issue of Scott Walker, while Milwaukee County Executive, making use of illegal furlough days against county employees, such as myself, in order to cement his image as an anti-union, anti-worker teahadist and as a dress rehearsal for Act 10.

But now I will flesh it out a little more and give the gentle reader an update which really shows Walker's depravity.

To make a long story short, while crafting the 2010 county budget, Walker illegally installed concessions from workers for higher contributions to health care costs and to start paying twice for pension benefits.  It was repeatedly pointed out by county board members and staff that this was illegal, since he never even sat down to try to reach these concessions, much less actually achieve them.  Inexplicably, even though they knew it to be illegal, the county board went along with the illegal budget.

Before people were even recovered from their 2010 New Year's hangovers, Walker then used this artificially constructed budget hole to declare a fiscal emergency and implemented 12 furlough days for all workers except for deputies.  A few months later, he said it was not enough, and jumped it up to 26 days for some workers, including myself.  Due to his ineptness, he even ended up giving the previously spared deputies eight days of furlough.

But Walker's furloughs had unintended consequences.

One was that many county workers would have to put in overtime to make up for the work missed during their furloughs and/or to cover for coworkers who were on furlough.  Thus any savings Walker might have claimed from his attack on workers were negated by the skyrocketing amounts of overtime.  Many county workers were able to work enough overtime to make up for the lost day of pay and then some.  It was more like working a 4-40 schedule (40 hours in 4 days).

Furthermore, when the unions grieved the excessive furlough days, it was found that there wasn't really a deficit at all, or at least not one which required emergency actions.

The unions ended up taking their complaint to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC), which ruled in favor of the unions.  They said the county needed to immediately cease and desist from the implementing the illegal furlough days and to repay the workers.  To give the county incentive to address this issue sooner rather than later, WERC also ordered the county pay 12% interest, compounded daily.

Despite the high interest, the county chose to appeal the decision.  And appeal it some more.  And then one more time.

After losing in court hearing after court hearing, the county finally conceded that they will need to pay the workers back for Walker's campaign stunt.

But then came a twist to the story:

It wasn't all bad budget news for the county. Supervisors found out they had an $11.5 million surplus from 2011 and - even more surprising - county Comptroller Scott Manske had stashed away millions more in case the county lost a case over back pay.

"I'm glad you squirreled away $4.1 million, but there should have been some disclosure of it," said Supervisor Theo Lipscomb.

Manske said he quietly accounted for the payment, informing his bosses but making no public statement because the county hadn't yet decided whether to appeal an arbitrator's ruling, upheld in circuit court. The ruling said the county had to pay workers $4.1 million for furlough days illegally imposed as an emergency measure in 2010 by then-County Executive Scott Walker.

Having suddenly found this "windfall" the Milwaukee County Board voted on Thursday to pay back the workers for the illegal furloughs from 2010.  The estimated cost is over $4 million.  Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele has already issued a statement saying that he believes this should be paid out and is expected to sign it.


The only thing left is for the county comptroller to get direction from the court on what date the interest should be considered to start accruing so he can figure out the payments.  Reports say that the average payout will be $2,600 per worker, plus interest.

So all is good, right?

Wrong.

There are a few issues still at hand.  One is that this pay out is only for 2010.  Workers still had to take another 13 furlough days in 2011.  The cost of that pay out is over $1 million plus interest.  There has been mixed messages on whether the county has any intention of paying these days out.  This will probably result in yet another series of court cases adding even more cost to Walker's folly.

The other issue is that the surplus money which the county had suddenly found came from the county imposing the pay cuts allowed by Act 10 and then some.  (These pay cuts are so severe that they have made some Milwaukee County workers eligible for financial support from the government.  So much for the Republican meme that government workers are living high on the hog.)

In other words, the county is using the workers' own money to pay them back for the money which was illegally taken in 2010.  How lovely of them!

I still think they should go after the person who caused the mess they're left to clean up and sue Walker, his campaign and all of his henchmen who were campaigning on county time.  But that would require political courage, something which is very scarce in Milwaukee lately.

And to top it all off, some of the extra money that is being taken from the workers is going to pay off some of the debt that Walker racked up in order to present the misleading image of being a fiscal genius.  We get to pay for Walker's campaign many times over!  Funny, but I don't recall offering to make any donations.

And before any conservatives think that this is a good deal, remember, your taxes still went up and you're getting less bang for your buck.  On top of that, this whole sordid affair is having the same effect on a local level that Act 10 is having on the state level.  The reduced money being injected into the local economy is only serving to keep unemployment higher than it should be and causing businesses to falter.

To sum it all up, Walker's "money saving" furloughs didn't save any money, since the workers earned it all back and then some in the form of overtime.  But because of the illegality of Walker's actions, the county taxpayers accrued additional costs in the form of repeated court costs and the interest which was accumulating at a rate of about $35,000 per month.  Walker's fiscal "frugality" turns out to be more expensive than if he didn't do anything.

Meanwhile, workers were put unnecessarily into dire fiscal straits, some losing their homes and some facing bankruptcy.  The kicker is that the money was there all along. Walker just didn't want to allow the workers to have it and so he basically stole it.

Yet people bought into Walker's antics and thought that, even as they are being driven into the poor house, they were coming out ahead.  Go figure.

And for all the bellyaching the county board did about Walker's maleficent behaviors and current Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele's grandiose statements and campaign promises saying he wasn't going to be like Walker, they sure are acting a lot like him.