Whether Gov. Walker’s proposal to restrict public-employee collective bargaining is victorious or abandoned, cuts to state shared revenue are on the way, for Whitewater and its school district.
I have supported cuts to government spending, not as a matter of budget repair, but as a long term-goal — for smaller, more limited, more responsible government. That’s more necessary than ever. I don’t think collective bargaining has to go, but I do think small government should arrive, and the sooner the better. I’m not a Republican, but a libertarian – and I’d feel the same regardless of the occupant of the governor’s mansion.
(Of the current occupant, by the way, I am not a supporter. I voted for the LP candidate for lieutenant governor last fall. See, Libertarian Terry Virgil Runs for Lt. Governor (and Governor!) of Wisconsin.)
For my support of cuts, see On Whitewater, Wisconsin’s 2011 Municipal Budget.
Walker’s proposal is not offered in a vacuum: his reductions in collective bargaining are meant to give municipalities and school districts greater power over unions, so that city and school leaders may better manage inevitable cuts in state funding. Localities will get less, but presumably have greater flexibility and power to manage their own budgets.
If the bill’s passed, it will give local city and district leaders more authority only to balance the steep cuts they’ll feel from Madison. If the bill’s abandoned, they’ll still have to endure steep cuts from Madison.
Unfortunately, more authority won’t guarantee any additional local skill and insight.
City of Whitewater.
On Whitewater’s Common Council, there are four center-right aldermen, two center-left aldermen, and one libertarian. Of the two main blocs (those other than the new, libertarian member) there are three people who could assist any labor negotiations suitably (one on the right, and two on the left). Add in the libertarian, and that’s a majority (Singer, Winship, Binne, Butler).
Sadly, it’s a bare majority.
The challenge isn’t that majority on Council; it’s that Whitewater’s city manager simply lacks the ability for competent negotiation. All the press in the world can’t change the hash he’s made of project after project. Part of the problem is that he’s focused on project after project, and yet still comes up short. His penchant for citing his years of municipal experience is an admission of incompetence: hard to believe that after all these decades in the game, there’s one snafu after another.
Ignoring Whitewater’s gaping poverty, problems in the equitable administration of justice, failing to ease restrictions and taxes on merchants and residents, sending an entire tax incremental district into ruin, building a white elephant ‘Innovation’ Center for Whitewater, offering only ineffectual solutions to housing conflicts — these are serious policy failures from this administration’s neglect or causing, variously.
Compounding his troubles are two other problems. First, the city manager displays a laughable insistence that all is well, and from that insistence come excuses, distortions, and dodgy statistics.
Second, he has an expectation of deference to authority (his own and those of other failed leaders like Coan), but no touch for common people. Look at his municipal administration from a distance, and all one sees are a bureaucrat’s ideas of what similarly situated people would like.
I sometimes think that if the city manager were on a lifeboat, he would propose a standard for distribution of food and water than gave priority — coincidentally — to those who were middle-aged men occupying municipal management positions in Wisconsin cities with populations between 14,453 and 14,455.
That’s why, outside of an ever-smaller number, the city manager has little credibility or clout.
When cuts come, I’d expect him to start at the bottom, with sacrifices affecting common people and workers long before anyone else. I’d be astonished if he consolidated leadership positions, starting at the top. I’d guess he cannot imagine a city government without lots of positions at the top, and an off-limits approach to salaries of bureaucrats similar to himself.
(Note that I advocate the opposite approach — cutting at the top to reduce costs, the better to consolidate departments for savings, and to learn what other cuts might be possible after observing consolidated leadership posts).
Expect tension to be much higher in this situation than one where the municipal manager had a better feel for people, and a broad appeal.
The Whitewater Unified School District.
There are so many better and higher tasks than labor disputes, but neither the leadership of the district (administrator and board) nor the faculty (union leaders and other teachers) may have the chance to pursue them. Cuts will likely preoccupy the district, and leadership and negotiation will require more tactical skill than vision.
Neither teachers nor administration seem ready for protracted conflict, and they may be so unready that they prove unwilling, and changes come without much fuss. ‘Too skittish to fight’ is a possibility. Workers in the district (in more than one union) may not be as assertive as public workers elsewhere.
But if conflict does come, the heavier political burden will fall on the much smaller number of district leaders and board members who are front-and-center. The few district negotiators will be much better known and noticed than their union counterparts, and so publicity will fall more heavily on the statements of those district representatives.
There are enough talented people in the district and on the board, but then there are gaps, too. A board president, for example, will have to do better than to say that a referendum, for example, would be justified for ‘books and such.’
Nor will it be possible — no matter how tempting it seems — to paint all the opponents of additional spending as child-hating troglodytes. Union leaders will have to avoid that temptation in a wage/benefits dispute; the district will have to avoid that temptation whenever a referendum goes to the polls.
Senate District 15 and Assembly District 43.
The 15th Senate District is solidly Republican, and that’s not going to change. There’s no sure thing, by contrast, for the more marginal, back-and forth 43rd Assembly District. (See, from November, On the Wisconsin 43rd District Assembly Race.)
Voting for the 2012 general election in the City of Whitewater will surely offers margins more like 2008 than 2010. If cuts particularly inspire increased campus voting, the 43rd may flip again. Unless district boundaries change, this district won’t be secure for either major party.
Quite a year or two ahead, surely.
