It was announced today that Milwaukee County will be rescinding one of the mandatory furlough days. It was reported, off of a press release (I find it doubtful any of the supervisors were in today, and Walker already was tweeting from home), that this was due to previously unrecognized savings from health care costs.

The savings are in relation to the creation of the Employee Benefits Division, which was created due to a proposal by Board Chairman Lee Holloway.

Lack of oversight causing fiscal problems is not something new under Scott Walker’s watch. In 2004, there was a justifiable uproar over the Department of Aging running consistently millions of dollars in the red. This was only resolved when Walker caved in and reinstated an accountant to the department, a position that he had previously eliminated.

And we are still waiting for Walker to do something about John Chianelli, whose ineptitude led to the deficit in the first place.

But the skeptical side of me wonders if there might be more to these furloughs than what is being reported. After all, Walker already admitted that the 200 lay offs he was about to do was nothing more than a publicity stunt. How can we trust that there is a real need now for these furloughs?

So Milwaukee County may be facing deep funding cuts in its federally-funded drug outpatient treatment program. People are being put on waiting lists. Are you kidding? You really think the county government will let a nationally recognized (and relatively cheap) program die?

The county will seek to have the Access to Recovery grant renewed, but the county must prepare for the possibility of a reduction or even complete cutoff of federal money, Walker said.

Oh right.

Wisconsin has been clobbered by the recession, 153,600 jobs vaporized since December 2007. That’s a stunning 5.3% loss of all state jobs, according to the Center On Wisconsin Strategy.

How bad are things? COWS says the economic downtown is  even worse than  the early ’80s recession that devastated the state’s manufacturing base in southeastern Wisconsin.

All the more impressive, then, is the performance of  the Oshkosh Corp. The manufacturer of military all-terrain trucks  recently  secured federal contracts  worth more than $3.2 billion. While competitors have challenged the awards, the Fox River Valley manufacturer is gearing up to build 1,000 of the heavily armored trucks by this month.  Press reports say the company has already  hired several hundred factory workers at the Oshkosh plant.

I don’t think you could find more graphic evidence of how important federal spending can be to the hard-pressed Wisconsin economy. I recently examined the state’s dreadful record in securing federal dollars in pieces written for Milwaukee Magazine and Isthmus, my old paper in Madison.

Here is the  start of the Milwaukee Magazine column:

Too Pure for Pork

Our politicians do a wretched job of attracting federal spending to Wisconsin. Why do we let them get away with it? by Marc Eisen

Tuesday 9/1/2009

Here’s a story that tells you something about politics in Wisconsin: In January, Madison utility executive Gary Wolter was named the head of Gov. Jim Doyle’s stimulus office to work on securing federal funding. Within 24 hours, he was dubbed Wisconsin’s “pork czar” in repeated blog postings.

As Charlie Sykes pointed out, what could be weirder than fierce partisan antagonists like Democrat and liberal Ed Garvey and conservative blogger Deb Jordahl both sniffing their noses at Wolter’s appointment? Then again, even the whiff of “pork” gets proper Wisconsinites red-faced and indignant.

Take Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. His initial response to federal stimulus funding made it sound as if the dollars were secretly dosed with smallpox, like those horse blankets the Army supposedly gave Indians in the 19th century. He’d have none of it! (Not, at least, until the County Board said otherwise.)

There’s something deep in the Wisconsin character, a Badger thriftiness and sense of political rectitude, that seems to recoil at the notion that politicians should bring home the bacon. No one understood that better than the puritan Bill Proxmire, whose long senatorial run was marked by his temperance crusade against government waste. Ever since then, Democrats and Republicans alike (take a bow, Jim Sensenbrenner, Paul Ryan, Russ Feingold, John Norquist, et al.) have anointed themselves with magical oils to protect the state from the corrupting influence of federal dollars.

They’ve been wildly successful. And that’s a problem. Wisconsin, as you no doubt know from first-hand experience, is mired in an economic slump. In per capita income and new jobs created, we badly trail some of our neighboring states. Ditto for economic growth. Meanwhile, we pay way more in federal taxes than is returned to us via federal jobs, research grants, aid to state and local government, and other programs.

The gap in fiscal 2007 was a staggering $5.6 billion, according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. That’s right: We sent $5.6 billion more to Washington than we got back in federal spending. Read more here.

Here is the start of the much-longer  Isthmus story:

State of chumps
Wisconsin has only itself to blame for losing out on its fair share of federal aid
Marc Eisen on Friday 10/09/2009

The Yankees who first settled Wisconsin, he says, “were suspicious of large, autocratic central government.” The Germans and Scandinavians who followed weren’t much different: They were “independent, hardworking, self-reliant…and suspicious again of a distant central government.”

I think the late Sen. Bill Proxmire — not genetics — is mostly to blame. But however you apportion responsibility, the legacy is the same: Wisconsin does wretchedly as a recipient of federal spending.

There are lots of bad measures to point out, but the key one is this: We rank 48th among the 50 states in federal aid, saved from last place only by Nevada and Utah.

This dreadful performance has a real-life impact on Wisconsin’s economic well-being. It means fewer jobs, poorer public services and a heavier state and local tax burden.

Federal spending in Wisconsin came to $7,132 per person in fiscal 2008, according to federal data newly analyzed by the Northeast-Midwest Institute. The national average was $8,904 per person — a $1,772 difference.

Do the math. Wisconsin’s population numbered about 5.6 million in 2008. Multiply each person by that shortfall and you come to $9.9 billion. That’s how much more money would have sloshed around the state economy if we had just hit the average for federal spending in fiscal 2008. Perish the thought we should score high, like Alaskans and Virginians. Read more here.

Team Neumann, on their twitter feed, has a link to The Kiplinger Letter’s website, which has a piece doing a preview of some of the upcoming governor’s races. This is what Kiplinger said about Wisconsin:

Wisconsin. Republicans have the edge with former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann likely to be nominated.

That should get Team Walker sputtering. I’d say Walker issues another warning about lay offs, just to show how tough he is, in 3…2…1…

Also note, it only said nominated, not winning the whole thing. They must have heard about “Battling” Tom Barrett.

Last night, I wrote about Scott Walker’s fumbling and bumbling his way through the County budget, where he furloughed the deputies and jailers he said that he wasn’t going to furlough.

Today, Mike Tate of the DPW sent out a press release that makes me look like a member of the Scott Walker fan club:

After hasty vetoes of 2010 Milwaukee County budget provisions, Scott Walker admitted that he doesn’t even know what the budget contains. Walker claims he mistakenly added eight unpaid furlough days for the Milwaukee sheriff’s deputies and jailers next year and is seeking legal advice to sort out his mess.

“Wisconsinites don’t expect a lot of foresight from Walker, but he should at least know what is in his own budget,” said Mike Tate, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair. “Although, this could explain many of Walker’s past policy decisions.”

In his own veto message, Walker wrote that his actions were meant, “to increase the number of furlough days from eight to 12” while making no reference to an exemption for law enforcement. Walker has since claimed that he meant to include an exemption.
[Source: “Walker, critics argue over furloughs for deputies, jailers” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11/23/09]

“Pleading ignorance is not good enough for the people of Milwaukee or the people of Wisconsin,” said Tate, “Wisconsin deserves someone who understands the consequences of their actions and has the capacity to think before they act.”

Ouch. But at least I had the cool picture of Walker and his giant veto crayola:

The impeccable Emily Mills’ take on Scott Walker being opposed to equality for all Milwaukee County citizens:

Open Memo to Milwaukee County Executive / Candidate for Governor Scott Walker:

You recently vetoed a measure that would have granted same-sex domestic partner benefits to county employees, arguing that, “At a time when we are seeking concessions from employees in both wages and benefits, it is improper that Milwaukee County grant new benefits to any class of employees.”

So when would be a good time for you?

I don’t see you asking that heterosexual couples give up any of their benefits in order to help balance the budget (well, aside from your desire to just cut and/or privatize some of their jobs).

Gov. Doyle, by no means the greatest governor that ever governed, was able to see the inherent justice in at least insuring partnership benefits to those currently denied equal marriage rights in Wisconsin. But you, Walker, don’t seem terribly concerned with the fact that some of your fellow citizens have little to no access to some of their most basic rights. Worse still, you appear to be hiding behind the current fiscal crisis to cover for what I suspect has more to do with either bigotry on your part, or at very least a desire to pander to bigoted voters.

That’s not someone I’m interested in having become governor of my state.

Scott Walker has been having a tough go of things during the last couple of weeks.

First, he has the popular and charismatic hero-mayor “Battling” Tom Barrett announce that he will be seeking the the Democratic nomination for governor. This spells bad news for Team Walker due to Barrett already have statewide name recognition, especially due to his hero status. Barrett has also proven to be a more effective leader who can get things done, such as when the Private Industry Council was transferred from Walker’s control to Barrett’s due to Walker’s inability to run it, or when Barrett outmaneuvered Walker on the transportation money that had been languishing for years.

Then Walker just passes a budget that has broken all of his previous records by having a fiscal emergency even before it is enacted. To make matters worse, the fiscal emergency was from Walker’s own inability to create a balance budget.

Now we are learning that he mucked up the budget even worse than previously thought, breaking a campaign promise in the process:

The savings for applying the county furloughs to deputies and jailers were included in a $3.1 million budget amendment, according to county fiscal analysts. Walker said Monday if the 2010 budget comes up short because of an exclusion for law enforcement personnel, he has authority to assign more furlough days to the rest of the county work force to make up the difference.

“I believe we can do it,” Walker said, though he has requested a legal opinion on the issue from county Corporation Counsel William Domina.

County Board Chairman Lee Holloway said that Walker was skewing his interpretation of the final budget provision on employee furloughs to try to cover a mistake he made with a budget veto. The plain language of the vetoed provision was to subject all county employees to eight “floater” furlough days next year, including deputies and jailers, according to Holloway.

There’s no dispute that all other employees have to take four additional, date-certain furlough days off without pay.

During a meeting last week, Walker seemed to endorse the same interpretation the board and county budget staff had of the furlough provision – that law enforcement personnel had to take eight unpaid days next year along with everyone else except elected officials, Holloway said.

Under that interpretation, all employees other than deputies and jailers would have a total of 12 furlough days – the equivalent of a 4.6% yearly pay cut.

Walker changed his tune “so he doesn’t look bad across the state” while appealing for conservative support for governor, Holloway said. Walker is competing against homebuilder and former congressman Mark Neumann for the Republican nomination for governor.

Supervisor Johnny Thomas, the vice chairman of the board’s finance committee, said Walker had stumbled on the furlough issue and was now “playing to his political base” by insisting deputies would be excluded from furloughs.

The question that needs to be asked is: How did this happen?

Was it that his veto crayola was too cumbersome? Was it that he is just that inept? Or is it simply that he has been too busy campaigning and appearing at CRG-sponsored rallies/campaign events that he is not capable of meeting key requirements of his current position?

Whatever the reason, now Walker has given county law enforcement officers four times the furlough days that Barrett gave to the police. Not good for him since he wants to take a law and order enforcement. I also wonder if the other elected officials and department heads will be pointing out that they are also part of the public safety network, especially those involved with the mental health safety network.

So, even though Walker had two weeks to go over every detail and check and double check everything, and has 20 staffers to help him to do so, he still couldn’t do it the way he meant to. This is not exactly something that would strike confidence in anyone’s heart on his ability to manage the county, much less the state.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has just figured out that Scott Walker has been running for governor the past seven years.

Stay tuned for their six week series on “Water is wet.”

Scott Walker, 1966, by Jan Persson

Both seek to get out of Dodge before the house burns down.

From Milwaukee County First:

From one of my anonymous readers, in the comment thread to a previous post on my personal blog:

ode to skippy

skippy skippy
youre such a stud
the C.R.G. people
believe your crud

skippy skippy
you must be proud
“I got rid of the janitors”
he screams aloud

I should have got
meters at the lake
before people realize
I’m a fake

standing up for the taxpayer
is his pledge
many people wish
he would jump of a ledge

running the county
is now out of the way
I’m running for gov.
day after day

skippy wants everyone
to think he’s the man
bow hunting and harleys
he thinks that’s the plan

skippy can’t believe
those dopes on the board
fell for his plans
they’re all out of their gourd

Scott Walker was first for prioritizing the north-south corridor of I-94 over the zoo interchange, and then against it? Why, why, that would be hypocritical!

But what else would we expect from him? No one has ever accused him of consistency or integrity.

Cory Liebmann has the details.

A bunch of union thugs had a hissy fit in Milwaukee County and stayed home on a pretend sick day to protest the decision by the County Board and County Executive Scott Walker to privatize their jobs.

One day after the Milwaukee County Board agreed to privatize scores of county housekeepers, 19 of the 25 custodial staff at the courthouse complex called in sick, county officials said Thursday.

Jack Takerian, the county’s interim director of public works, said he didn’t know for sure the reason for all the sick calls, but he said it probably was a reaction to the news about their jobs going to a private firm.

“They were disappointed, and they certainly have a right to be disappointed,” Takerian said. “It’s difficult for us to prove whether someone is sick or not.”

Guess what? All they did was prove that Walker and the County Board were right, that those union jobs were really unnecessary and could be contracted out to save county taxpayers money.

Patrick at Badger Blogger observes:

I’d mail their last check to their home address.

Kevin Binversie at Lakeshore Laments concurs that all the action of the union thugs is prove Walker was right. And Owen Robinson at Boots & Sabers thinks their action is rather self-destructive.

A personal observation on how much work was done by the government union workers courtesy of a commenter at Badger Blogger.

In a ho hum statement from Team Walker, they proudly announce that Walker now has the endorsement of Rick Graber:

Scott Walker, Republican candidate for governor and Milwaukee County Executive, today announced the endorsement of former GOP Chairman Rick Graber. Graber served four terms as state party chairman and served as Ambassador to the Czech Republic in the Bush Administration. Rick Graber joins the six other former state party chairmen in supporting Scott Walker’s candidacy for Governor.

“I have been proud to watch Scott cut spending and fight for taxpayers in his county and I know he’ll bring that same commonsense approach to Madison,” said Graber.

“I am very excited to welcome Ambassador Graber and each of the other former chairmen to our team,” said Walker. “Their support shows the tremendous excitement our campaign has generated and I am proud to now have the endorsement of such an accomplished and respected man as Rick Graber. These former chairmen bring unique and diverse backgrounds to the table and their voices will help drive our campaign to victory in November of next year.”

What the announcement didn’t include is that Milwaukee County tax payers have already paid for that endorsement:

However, as noted in the cited section from MJS, Walker refused to go with a lawsuit against the legal firm that was supposed to be giving legal advise about the pension enhancers, Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren.

There were a couple of reasons for Walker’s resistance. One reason was pointed out by Bruce Murphy:

He declined to pursue legal action against the Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren law firm for the advice it gave county officials on the pension plan. The head of the firm, back when Walker made this decision, was then state Republican chair Rick Graber, who had donated campaign money to Walker.

The other reason is covered by Gretchen Schuldt at her old Story Hill site:

A judge has rejected plaintiffs in a lawsuit related to the county pension scandal have no standing to pursue their claim that lawyers with the Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren firm have a conflict of interest in the case, according to Journal Sentinel.

Reinhart lawyers helped design the pension package and are defending the county in the lawsuit, filed on behalf of county employees who claim the enhancements were improperly enacted, among other things.

If one keeps reading, the gentle reader would see how the law firm is tied up into the whole pension scandal. Yet due to his own political aspirations, Walker refused to seek all of the potential remedies available that he could have used to help the County in desperate budgetary times.

So, Graber gives donations to Walker’s failed first attempt at governor. In exchange, Walker stiffs Milwaukee County tax payers for millions of dollars by refusing to sue Graber’s law firm, even though they were deeply involved with the pension scandal. Now Graber throws an endorsement Walker’s way as a “thank you for not suing us” gesture.

I wonder if Walker will claim the millions of lost dollars from tax payers on his campaign report now.

Also worth a chuckle from Team Walker’s statement was the endorsement of Michael Grebe. It would only be note worthy if Walker’s campaign chair didn’t endorse him, no?

From a blog called Jake’s Economic TA Funhouse:

Speaking of “What planet are you from?” Silly Scotty Walker is trying to get the endorsement of SARAH PALIN???? I mean, it’s not like anyone with any sense of decency or brains would vote for that toolbag, but did he not notice the election results in Wisconsin last November? That 17% victory wasn’t all Obama, it was also a lot of people in a thinking state saying “We aren’t letting THAT near the White House.” Combine that with Scotty’s “money is more important than equal partner benefits”, and you’ve just turned off anyone under 40 with a brain.

And that’s not going into Walker’s disastrous budget for the County. The County’s already more or less bankrupt, they’re just gambling that somehow the market turns around to make their pensions somewhat funded. But the un-negotiated job reductions, ridiculous levels of outsourcing, and fake revenue sources (you’re not selling the Park East next year for that amount, bud), and then joking about fake layoff notices are Goldman Sachs-level shameless douchebaggery. I work in the biz, and we had every bit the challenges that Scotty’s boys had, without anywhere near the conflict. We eneded up with a more responsible budget that didn’t triple our borrowing, nor did we guarantee the municipality’s insolvency to hit the year after the exec leaves. There’s a reason competent people from my grad school don’t sign up to work for the County (at least areas under Walker’s control). It’s the GOP affirmative action program in full effect.

This past Thursday, a majority of the housekeeping crew at the Milwaukee County Courthouse didn’t show up to work. Thursday was the day after the County Board chose to sell them out in order to support Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. I’ve heard a similar thing happened at other facilities, like the mental health complex.

While I can’t condone their actions, I can appreciate their lack of motivation knowing that their careers and their livelihoods were sold out from under them, just so Walker could score some cheap political points that no one will remember in a few weeks. It was probably emotionally harder for the ones that did show up, since Walker had his HR people pouncing on them with pink slips and offering them “other chances” at County employment, even though they are already one of the lowest paid groups.

What I found more interesting is the reaction of the right wing bloggers to this bit of news.

The unemployed Kevin Binversie thought it only verified why the workers should be laid off. If not showing up to work correlated to worthiness, then I’m sure old Kevin would agree that Walker deserves to be laid off too.

Patrick Dorwin said that he’d mail their last checks to them at their home. That’ll really show them, since that is what they were going to do anyway. Well, that is what they would do, except they required everyone to go into direct deposit when Walker contracted out for the over-budget-but-still-not-working-right-a-year-and-a-half-later Ceridian system.

But the oddest post was by Owen Robinson, who worried that this won’t make them attractive to the private company that would eventually take over. Take it from someone who has seen the county lay off hundreds of people before. The private companies wouldn’t hire them because they would be required to offer them the same salary.

Furthermore, based on our observations of the privatized housekeeping at the Coggs Building where I work, the turnover rate is incredibly high, both for the employees within said agency, and even for the agencies that are contracted to do the cleaning. I can’t imagine where the County is saving money by having to constantly going through the process of contracting with a new agency and then having to orientate each company to what to do and then monitoring them to do what they are supposed to.

And we have already seen how much more money privatizing costs anyway. So much for them being fiscal conservatives, eh?

Scott Walker again makes a promise to do something as governor that he can’t even do now.

As I had predicted, there are a lot of Milwaukee County employees looking at retiring before the end of this year or at the very beginning of the next year. They also see how Scott Walker is going to have a scorched earth campaign and that the County will be the earth that gets scorched. They also see it is going to be so bad that some of them are even considering an early retirement even though they will be greatly reducing their benefits by doing so.

Many of them attended a retirement seminar earlier in the week. A number of them have approached me this week to make sure that I was aware that one of the first things that Walker’s HR people were telling the prospective retirees was that one of the first things they should do when they retire is look at moving out of Wisconsin.

Nice way to Believe in Wisconsin, eh?

As one friend put it: What good it is to save a couple of bucks in taxes when you spend ten times on the basic services that aren’t as good as they in Wisconsin?

My question is whether this was a symptom of Walker having his HR people taking not so subtle jabs at Governor Doyle (we already know that Walker has no qualms about using county time or personnel for campaign purposes), or that they were warning people that they think that Walker actually could win?

From Milwaukee County First:

Last week, I mentioned that Scott Walker’s bragging about winning the straw poll in the GOP’s 8th District was less than impressive, due to the simple fact that there were only 39 people that bothered to vote.

After having had a chance to further read the article in question in further detail, it became less impressive. Said straw poll failed to include fellow Republican gubernatorial hopefuls Mark Neumann and Tim Michels. The only other Republican gubernatorial candidate that was there was Mark Todd, the first person to enter the race. With no name recognition or budget to speak of, Todd was still able to get 7% of the vote.

The article goes on to have a little chat with each candidate. Walker’s piece was the usual misleading confabulation that we have all come to expect from Walker, with little, if any, resemblance to reality.

What I personally found much more interesting was the piece on Mark Todd. It was one of the few pieces I’ve found that went anywhere near him to let people know who he was and what his ideas are. I will transcribe that section of the article here, since the Waupaca County Post neglected to post it on their website (emphasis on last line mine):

The first candidate to announce his bid for the governor’s mansion is also the only candidate to propose turning the governor’s mansion into a bed-and-breakfast as a way to generate income for the state.

Todd is an Appleton business owner who says that part of his personal income comes from credit card processing.

“All our money in credit card processing goes to four banks on the East Coast,” Todd said. “My suggestion is that we do our own credit card processing here in the state.”

Todd said that no private bank in Wisconsin is currently generating revenues from credit card prcessing, so he believes the state should set up its own financial institution to prcess credit cards.

“It would make us less reliant on taxes,” Todd said.

He also proposes that the state establish a gift card program that can be used at stores throughout Wisconsin, with the state government collecting transaction fees.

The state could also sell less expensive bonds “that grandma can buy for the kids to go to college,” Todd said. “We need to make our government self-sufficient.”

Todd also sees opportunities to generate revenues by selling sewage to make fertilizer.

“We don’t need to cut jobs or cut wages,” Todd said. “We just need to develop incomes and make ourselves self-sufficient.

In other news from the same issue of the paper, it was noted that the Waupaca County government approved a 6% tax hike. Waupaca is a very conservative county, and like most other counties in the state, they found it necessary to raise taxes by even more than the Milwaukee County Board had proposed. This shows how out of touch Walker and his thug enforcers at CRG are with the rest of the state.

From Milwaukee County First: