Sunday Reading

The US Has A Lot Of Money, But It Does Not Look Like A Developed Country
Young People Bear The Brunt Of A Long-Term Decline In American Job Quality
Milwaukee City Workers Moved Out In Droves After The Residency Rule Ended. It Was A Boom For The Suburbs.
The Link Between Declining Middle-Wage Jobs, Rising Wage Inequality, And Worker Welfare
The Bee Has Been Declared The Most Important Living Being On The Planet
How FedEx Cut Its Tax Bill To $0
Big Borrower And A Giant Corporate Tax Dodge? How To Best Describe The US External Balance Sheet
Why The 2020 Census Should Matter To You
Act 10 Caused Big Decline In Unions
The Great American Labor Paradox: Plentiful Jobs, Most Of Them Bad
Trump Has Spent $115 Million On Golf Trips - Or 287 Years Of Presidential Salary

Weekend Reading

The Deepening Crisis In Evangelical Christianity
USA's formidable women's soccer team is no accident. It's a product of public policy
What You Need To Know About The Citizenship Question And The Census
Are Beyond Meat And Impossible Burgers Better For You? Nutritionists Weigh In.
The Tool That Local Economic Developers Should Rely On
Wanted: Public Employees Who Live Where They Work

So Much For The Local Control Republicans Are Always Preaching

Here they go again. Republicans love to say one thing and do another. They love to accuse the Democrats of doing something that the Republicans are actually committing. Republicans are always giving lip-service to local control, the will of the people and localities being able to govern as they best see fit. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Republicans are opportunistic, duplicitous, self-serving liars.

Republican Bills Prohibit Local Labor Rules

In Wisconsin, especially the administration of Scott Walker, the state feels an endless need to meddle in local control. Again, the exact opposite of the bullshit they spout when they're in front of the camera, stumping during campaigns or writing their opinion pieces in the local papers.

Just as they meddled in Milwaukee's residency requirement (against their supposed dogma), they now want to forbid local rules for wages, hours, overtime, benefits and discrimination for businesses being contracted by those localities.

This only benefits labor exploitation. This suppresses wages. As usual, this gives the upper hand to those who've already got too much hand.

For Further Reading:
What Will Local Control Hypocrisy Cost The GOP In North Carolina?
Local Control Takes Backseat To Power For State GOP
GOP Abandons Local Control For Top-Down Governance
Hypocrisy In GOP-led State Government Overreach
Conservative Hypocrisy On Local Power
States Rights For Bathrooms, But Not For Marijuana
Blue Cities Want To Make Their Own Rules. Red State Won't Let Them.

Privatization, Increased Costs And Income Inequality

The Journal Sentinel recently reported that, State of Wisconsin's Spending On Private Workers Up 57% Since 2010.

From laundry and legal services to computer upgrades and health care, state taxpayers spent $653 million last year on private workers, part of a growing reliance on outside firms to do public business. 

In the final term of Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, these payments dropped, falling from $490 million in 2006 to $417 million in 2010, according to figures from the state Department of Administration.

But under the first six years of GOP Gov. Scott Walker, spending on contractors rose by 57%, or several times the rate of inflation for that period. Contractors are often more expensive than state employees — but not always, officials said.

Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse) said that she would seek a nonpartisan audit of the spending on contractors, saying she's worried taxpayers are paying more than they would for state workers.

"Positions have been cut and outsourcing has happened and we have seen the price tag increase," Shilling said.

Overall, state jobs haven't been cut under Walker — they've actually risen by nearly 3% during his time in office to 70,400 full-time positions, according to the Legislature's budget office.

But outsourcing has risen more quickly. The Walker administration says the increase has been driven in part by a once-in-a-generation overhaul of state computers and by a shortage of state workers in some jobs.

And, this really isn't news. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) found:

The government actually pays service contractors at rates far exceeding the cost of employing public employees to perform comparable functions.

POGO estimates the government pays billions more annually in taxpayer dollars to hire contractors than it would to hire public employees to perform comparable services. Specifically, POGO’s study shows that the federal government approves service contract billing rates—deemed fair and reasonable—that pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the total compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services.

The Journal Sentinel actually researched the privatization issue years ago and found that Wisconsin transportation contracts would have been cheaper in 125 out of 214 cases if the work would have been done by state employees rather than a private contractor.

Good Jobs First's research into the privatization issues has discovered:

Creating Scandals Instead of Jobs: The Failures of Privatized State Economic Development Agencies 

“In 2007 we consolidated Wisconsin’s economic development efforts, including terminating a state-created private economic development entity, Forward Wisconsin, in order to reduce political favoritism and misuse of public funds,” said State Senator Mark Miller. “Unfortunately we reverted to old-style cronyism in 2011 with the creation of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation which has been plagued with predictable ethics improprieties and gross mismanagement.” 

The report finds that: 

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) was accused of spending millions of dollars in funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development without legal authority, failed to track past-due loans, and hired an executive who owed the state a large amount of back taxes. 

Based on this persistent pattern of abuses, the report concludes that the privatization of economic development agency functions is an inherently corrupting action that states should avoid or repeal. With the “economic war among the states” already dominated by corporate interests and bargaining dynamics made worse by a long-term drop in job-creation deals, taxpayers are best served by experienced public-agency employees who are fully covered by ethics and conflicts laws, open records acts, and oversight by auditors and legislators.

There is no free lunch. This boils down to a choice between living wage, public jobs or siphoning that money to less accountable and more costly private actors, where most of that money goes to fewer workers or even fewer private business owners.

Continuing this "privatizing will save money" charade only benefits the select few receiving the contracts at the expense of the community and the good jobs that could be created for residents.

If we're really concerned about good jobs and good neighborhoods we would be wise to allow public workers to provide the needed services rather than contracting more costly private companies.

Aside:

This privatization scam also ties in with the recently overturned City of Milwaukee residency requirement. For 75 years, if you wanted to receive a paycheck from the City, you had to live and pay taxes in the City.

But Republicans are racist (not all, but seemingly most) and don't want to live near people with darker skin than them. They like the good paying job, with good health care and retirement benefits. They just don't want to live near all those undesirables in the City. And, just because the City pays their way, they still have no responsibility for anything that happens in the City.

Yet, they also love to belittle government as out-of-touch, inept and over-reaching. But they'll gladly cash that check and enjoy those pension benefits. David Clarke and his $100,000 pension is a great example of this hypocrisy.

So, they should be able to have all the benefits but none of the responsibility. So much for the mouthpieces of personal virtue and duty to your fellow man.

And, just as the City predicted, 22% of City workers now live in the suburbs. In essence, 22% of labor costs for the City, which could have been spent, most likely, back in the City, now goes outside the City. Thus less revenue (those 22% of workers spending their earnings) percolates within the City, which ends up costing taxpayers more in the long run.

Holiday Reading

The FDA Is Cracking Down On The Shady, $3 Billion Homeopathic Drug Industry
How Many Taxpayer Dollars Is An Amazon Warehouse Job Worth?
22% Of City Workers Live In Suburbs
Study: Rich Kids 10 Times As Likely To Become Inventors, Creating 'Lost Einsteins'
Math Says You're Driving Wrong And It's Slowing Is All Down
State Of Wisconsin's Spending On Private Workers Up 57% Since 2010
Eau Claire Lawsuit Could Impact Foxconn, Other Developments
In Defence Of The Labour Theory Of Value
Can We Cut The Crap On The Debt From The Tax Bill Hurting Our Kids?
7 Reason To Be Thankful For Social Security
6 Reasons for Progressives to Stop Worrying and Love the GOP Tax Scam

Worlds Apart

Even living within 15 miles of the City of Milwaukee is too much for the Milwaukee Police Department.

Police sue over new residency rule

For decades, all city employees, with few exceptions, had to live within Milwaukee boundaries. In 2013, the state Legislature passed a law that undid all such strict residency requirements but did allow for cities to require certain employees, including police and firefighters, to live within 15 miles of city limits. Milwaukee did not adopt a new rule but instead continued to enforce its longtime rule of residency within city boundaries. 

The police union sued. One judge agreed the city requirement had been eliminated by the state law, but the Court of Appeals reversed and sided with the city's right to make employees live in the city. 

But ultimately, in June, the state Supreme Court sided with the Legislature and the police that the state law blocked the city's historic residency requirements. 

Only in July, in light of that court ruling, did the city adopt a new rule under the state law setting the 15-mile limit for police and firefighters.

We can trace some of the problems which recently came to a head in Milwaukee to this entitled, unaccountable attitude of the Milwaukee Police Department. Law enforcement used to be part of the community and know their neighbors. Now they just want a paycheck from the community but to live in some exurb.

How can the police really serve and protect a population and community that they want nothing to do with? 15 miles isn't enough of a buffer?

An "occupying force," as Mayor Barrett phrased it, does not produce trust and respect. What else can a group of armed enforcers be called? Paid mercenaries patrolling a neighborhood during their well-paid shift, only to return to their home many miles away and, often, worlds apart.

The Politics (and Principles) of Convenience

In the recent residency requirement Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling,

... Justice Michael Gableman wrote for the majority in a 5-2 ruling upholding the Legislature's ban on municipal residency requirements.  "The Legislature has the power to legislate on matters of local affairs when its enactment uniformly affects every city or every village, notwithstanding the home rule amendment," Justice Michael Gableman wrote for the majority. "Because (the 2013 law) uniformly affects every city or village, it trumps section 5-02 of the city's charter. Milwaukee may no longer enforce its residency requirement."

So when the Democrats at the Federal level use the same argument to impose environmental, economic and other regulations in opposition to state or local ordinances, I'm sure the Republicans will quietly accept this natural order. Oh wait, Republicans believe every city or state should be able to make their own educational, environmental, transportation and literally every other rule for themselves without any interference from the Federal Government. Except when they don't.

Lets substitute "state" for "city or village" in the Gableman writing:

The Legislature Federal Government has the power to legislate on matters of local state affairs when its enactment uniformly affects every city or every village state. Because the [Federal] law uniformly affects every city or village state, it trumps the city's any state's charter.

Again, yet another example of Republican (lack of) logic eating itself. For some bewildering reason, they're allowed to continually get away with such ridiculousness.

But, on the bright side, hopefully the Feds are reading these State decisions. In such rulings, the States are giving the Feds the legalese they need to impose their will upon the states - for stricter environmental regulations, for country-wide public transportation improvements and greater connectivity, for nation-wide educational standards, for a standardized minimum wage and for stricter regulation of predatory lending, amongst other issues where our country would be better off having a nationalized standard.

Local Yokels

Republicans have long pretended to be the protectors of local rule. No matter what the topic was, it was best left up to the most local body of government to decide their own rules. If a State had a certain view, the Feds should just butt out. If a locality had an idea, the State should just buzz off.

The more local the rule, the better is was, according to Republicans. Except when Republicans are being their usual full-of-shit, crony-laden selves. Yes, Republicans are all for local control, except when they're not.

After a long back-and-forth court process, the police and firefighters of Milwaukee workers and freedom have prevailed. Freedom won the day. Down with residency requirements. God bless America. This is a great day for all freedom-loving people. Because, now, public workers employed by the City of Milwaukee don't have to live there. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Yes, I know the police and firefighters have a tough job. (A lot of people have tough jobs.) But they also knew what they were getting when they accepted the job. Most of which is great pay, great benefits, and a great pension. Their average salaries: $65,649 for sworn police employees. $67,554 for sworn fire employees. Police can retire after 25 years of service, regardless of their age. Firefighters can retire at 49 with 22 years of service. Oh, the humanity! (Other city employees must wait until age 60, or 55 if they have 30 years of service.)

In 2013, 59% of the City of Milwaukee budget went to just the police and fire departments.

Nonetheless, it's probably not a big surprise that a conservative Wisconsin court ruled in favor of their conservative friends.

Wisconsin Supreme Court rules Milwaukee can't require workers to live in city

In the 5-2 ruling, the court found a 2013 law prevented the city from enforcing a long-standing rule requiring workers to live within its boundaries. The city had argued it could continue to enforce the 75-year-old residency requirement because the state constitution grants local governments broad powers...

The dissenters wrote that the decision would make it easier for lawmakers to meddle with the policies of a targeted city by writing laws that, at least cosmetically, appeared to apply to all local governments. 

"Instead of freeing municipalities from interference by the Legislature when dealing with local affairs, the majority limits the power and restrains the ability of municipalities to self-govern," Ann Walsh Bradley wrote. 

The majority stated lawmakers could set policies affecting local governments if they were for matters of statewide concern or if they affected all cities and villages uniformly, at least on their face. 

On this point, Rebecca Bradley wrote separately to say she believed the Legislature could get involved in local matters only if they were both of statewide concern and affected all cities and villages uniformly. That put her in line with the liberals on that point. 

Republicans who control the Legislature included a provision in the 2013 state budget prohibiting local governments from maintaining residency rules other than those requiring police and firefighters to live within 15 miles of their borders. That conflicted with Milwaukee's policy, enacted in 1938, requiring employees to live within the city.

Yes, for some odd reason, even though the residency requirement is known by anyone applying for a job at the City of Milwaukee, somehow the freedom of the job applicant was being trampled. How this influences anyone other than the City of Milwaukee is beyond me. How does this infringe on anyone's right to apply for a job or live anywhere they would like to? Only if you want a job at the City of Milwaukee are you impacted.

I get that people should be able to choose where they live. Live wherever the fuck you want. But you don't get to choose where you work. The employer hires the employee, not the other way around. So after 75 years of having residency requirement in place, and every single person applying for that job knowing the prerequisites of employment, to now claim freedom or whatever other bumper-sticker bullshit slogan they've come up with, this is total partisan, cronyism, garbage.

My boss says I have to be at work by 9, but that's intruding on my freedom to come and go as I please. So is the 9-5 typical work day an affront to freedom? My boss also isn't paying me enough which is infringing on my freedom to buy more shit. This can't stand! In fact, I shouldn't even have to work. Freedom!!!

But, as is or should be well-known by now, bullshit and hypocrisy are Republicans' bread and butter. The Republicans have no principles left. They will do anything and say anything. They will flip and flop. The means justify the ends. If you can help elect Republicans and keep them in power, they'll do anything for you.

Since taking over the state Legislature, Republicans have moved to restrict local control

"I remember back in the day when Democrats had control of the Legislature, the clarion call for the Republican Party was 'Local control, local control,'" Dane County executive and former Democratic state Rep. Joe Parisi said. "It used to be virtually part of their platform. But as soon as they got into power, they began moving very quickly on a number of fronts to take local control away."

GOP lawmakers passed 128 measures limiting local control since 2011

Republican lawmakers have passed more than 125 measures since 2011 restricting the authority of local government, according to the state’s nonpartisan budget agency. 

Over the past three legislative sessions, since the GOP gained control of the Legislature, lawmakers have enacted 128 provisions that represent unfunded mandates or restrict the decision-making power of local governments, according to a May 16 memo released by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau at the request of Assistant Assembly Minority Leader Katrina Shankland, D-Stevens Point. 

Shankland said in a statement that of the 128 provisions, 80 were passed without Democratic lawmakers’ support. 

“From restricting county shoreland zoning ordinances passed by county boards, to banning municipal governments from passing container ordinances that make sense for the well-being of their community, legislative Republicans repeatedly used their majority in a blatant government overreach,” said Shankland.

On the GOP's own website they laud the power of local control regarding education:

Today’s education reform movement calls for accountability at every stage of schooling. It affirms higher expectations for all students and rejects the crippling bigotry of low expectations. It recognizes the wisdom of State and local control of our schools, and it wisely sees consumer rights in education – choice – as the most important driving force for renewing our schools.

Wis. Republicans hand over local control to corporate America

A memo issued earlier this year by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau detailed more than 100 ways in which the Republican Legislature and the governor have eliminated local control while also increasing the number of unfunded mandates — i.e., costs — passed on to local communities. The Republicans’ actions have made it impossible for many local elected officials to balance their budgets while providing services for their constituents. That’s one of the reasons your potholes don’t get filled.

At this point, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the blatantly partisan and hypocritical policies of Republicans. I'm just wondering, at some point, doesn't the public notice this barefaced cronyism? How much can we allow them to just shit all over the rule of law, common decency, accountability and democracy? This is yet another travesty of the Walker administration and another farce in the long line of Republican absurdities.

For Further Reading:
Unfunded mandates and items that would restrict local control 
State Supreme Court guts local control

The Most Precious Of All

Tom Barrett is walking a precarious line by talking about expanding Act 10. Barrett believes that by reining in the police and firefighters unions he could eventually aid both departments and make the city safer at the same time. A noble, yet circuitous and confrontational proposition.

The police and firefighters are holding to the rationalization that they are The Public Safety and thus completely different from and above other public employees.

James Palmer, the executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, bellows, "The mayor should understand that his public appeal for an expansion of Act 10 to police officers and firefighters ignores the reality that public safety employees are already paying toward their health insurance and their pensions in largely the same manner as general municipal employees. Since the 2011-2013 state budget was enacted, public safety employees can no longer negotiate over their health insurance benefits and costs. In addition, the vast majority of public safety contracts require police and fire employees to pay their share for pensions."

Other public employees also pay toward their health insurance and retirement, and they also can't negotiate their health insurance benefits or costs. And, these other public employees haven't seen the 3 and 4 percent raises the police and firefighters have seen over the last six or seven years.

Palmer goes on to decry, "Any assertion that expanding Act 10 will free up funding that could be used to hire more employees is without any reasonable basis."

If Act 10 can't free up funding, why was it a good idea when it was used to bludgeon the other public employees? Wasn't the initial point of Act 10 about saving money and saving budgets? Is Mr. Palmer admitting the Act 10 emperor has no clothes? Or is he just willing to throw other union members under the bus as long as police and fire members are exempted?

The police and fire protection departments are responsible for roughly 50 - 75 percent of most city budgets. These two departments are where most taxpayer dollars go. If there is anywhere to find efficiencies, these would seem to be the departments. In Milwaukee, police and fire account for nearly 59 percent of the budget. And, as we can also see, their budgets have increased almost 16 percent over the last decade.

Share of budget for general city services:

                                            2003            2013
Fire Dept.                            16.1%          17.9%
Police Dept.                         34.6%         40.6%
Protective Services total      50.7%         58.8%

Palmer persists, "It's important to recognize that public safety employees are unique, both in the challenges that they face and in the critical role that they play in our communities." Sure, but teachers, mental health care workers, social workers, engineers constructing our bridges, scientists providing our clean water supply, and a host of other public workers play a pretty critical role, too.

As James Rowen details, "The City of Milwaukee currently employs 6,865 employees. 4,168 are general city employees (including fire and police civilian staff). 2,697 are sworn fire and police employees...their average annual salaries. $41,361 for general city employees. $65,649 for sworn police employees. $67,554 for sworn fire employees." The average police officer or fight fighter makes over one and a half times as much as a general city employee.

Palmer's revisionist history continues, "He [Barrett] now appears to have abandoned the very principles that once drew WPPA's support, thus causing us to question whether that support was misplaced."

"...That once drew the WPPA's support"? Yeah, as I remember, the WPPA supported Scott Walker. Which is why they were preferentially carved out of Act 10. It seems the police and firefighter unions support whomever gives them preferential treatment. 59 percent of the entire Milwaukee budget already goes to these two departments, how much more do they want?

Maybe Barrett is on to something here. Maybe the police and firefighters should learn to live with the same rules as their other union brothers and sisters.

This Kitten Has Claws

City to block raises for many public workers who leave Milwaukee

For Further Reading:
Residency Requirement: Reading & Facts
Residency Requirements
Logic Requirement

Wisconsin Reading

Amid 1,000 Layoffs In Wisconsin, Scott Walker Gets No Love From U.S. Chamber 

Other critics, though, say the job cuts suggest that waging war on public-sector worker unions, cutting funding for public education and proclaiming the state “open for business” won’t magically turn Wisconsin into a new economy powerhouse. 

“What it says to me is that political rhetoric is irrelevant,” says Jack Norman, past research director at the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future. 

Norman says companies make hiring and other decisions based on demand for their products and whether they can do business better in a different location. The effect of government policies is somewhere on the fringe, he says. 

On the other hand, Norman says one could argue the cuts to public worker take-home pay and other cost-savings measures under Walker have actually made Wisconsin’s economy worse. Here is a graphic showing job growth in Wisconsin before and after he took office. 

“I think we’re seeing a local version of the austerity vs. investment debate going on across the capitalist world,” says Norman. “And right now, some countries are getting rid of their austerity policies because they aren’t working.” 

Wisconsin Business Tax Burden Ranked No. 35

Just Follow The Streetcar Track Of Money

Republicans Move To Kill Milwaukee Streetcar

Light rail from downtown Milwaukee to Waukesha? Republicans at the state killed it. 

Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee (KRM) commuter rail? Republicans at the state killed it. 

Extending the Amtrak Hiawatha Service to Madison at 110 mph (with stops in Brookfield and Watertown)? Republicans at the state killed it. 

Building a maintenance base for trainsets the state had already purchased from Talgo? Republicans at the state killed it. 

Rebuilding the train shed at Milwaukee Intermodal Station? Republicans rejected federal funds to fix the non-ADA compliant shed and are now left with a situation that will cost Wisconsinites millions. 

A streetcar starter system in downtown Milwaukee? Republicans killed it. 

The common link? All the projects were proposed by Democrats, had a presence in the City of Milwaukee, and involved steel wheels on steel rails. 

Since becoming Governor in 2010, Scott Walker will have effectively rejected over $1 billion in federal money for rail transportation projects. The loss of high-speed rail funds to connect Chicago, Madison, and Milwaukee represent $823 million. The KRM funds would have beenat least $140 million. Assuming Walker (who has made clear his opposition to the Milwaukee streetcar) ultimately supports the amendment proposed by the Joint Finance Committee, he will also be rejecting $54.9 million for the Milwaukee Streetcar, which is the last of a $289 million 1991 federal grant.

In Rail-Free Wisconsin, More Good News Selling-Points

Alternatives Offered To Gov. Scott Walker's Proposal To End Residency Rules

The Fiscal Bureau reports that case law is on the side of Milwaukee on the subject of residency, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court and various state courts "have tended to uphold the constitutionality of the municipal residency requirements, generally siding with the public interests of governments and its policy reasons for such requirements."

State Budget Panel OKs Residency Rule Based On Distance

Sweeping aside a 75-year-old City of Milwaukee residency ordinance and others like it, Republicans on the Legislature's budget committee voted Thursday to allow police and firefighters to live at least 15 miles outside of any community in the state and bar utility ratepayers from having to bear any costs for a proposed streetcar in the city - potentially killing the project. 

On several votes Thursday, the Joint Finance Committee loaded up the state budget with policy items that had little to do with Wisconsin's finances. Many of the other policy items also limited the powers of local governments, such as a measure barring them from regulating the size of sodas.

GOP fakes up a controversy over the UW system's financial reserves

Opposition Group Zones In On Walmart's New Berlin Plans (Other Walmart reading: 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Facts Are In And Paul Ryan Is Wrong

Logic Requirement

Since firefighters, police officers, and their Wisconsin political operatives believe public workers should be able to hold a job in one place while also being able to live in another, one has to ask, should the same hold true for Aldermen? Senators? State Representatives? Mayors? Where does it end?

Does the President even have to live in the U.S.?

Can a police officer - or any person assumed to be working for the benefit of a specific community which employs that person - really be committed to serving and protecting a place where he/she doesn't want to live and doesn't know anything about?

If we extrapolate this "freedom" argument [because it's all about freedom!] against the residency requirement, these are the logical conclusions. Regardless of whom one's employer might be, that employee has the "freedom" to live wherever he/she wants.

The post-Great Depression history of this country was about working together, helping each other out, improving our schools, and improving the country. We built infrastructure that was globally admired. Income inequality shrank and the middle class was born. We established labor laws, unemployment insurance, Social Security, 40-hour work weeks, workplace safety laws, Medicare, the minimum wage, and a host of other policies and programs that helped this country become the envy of the world.

The past few decades modus operandi has been: bash-the-poor, decrease worker wages, cut programs and provisions for the majority of citizens, and do everything we can to ignore the national and local problems facing us. We've been making it easier for the well-to-do to evade their social responsibilities, alongside a general disinterest and dismissal of what policy (like the residency requirement) does, and can do, for everyone's quality of life.

Instead, we see the remaining members of the middle class running away, hoping to carve out their own little paradise adjacent to the gated communities of the mega-rich.

But there's only so far to run. Eventually, we have to address the problems, start fixing schools, start repairing infrastructure, and start thinking about good jobs with stable retirements. People need food and water, health care, and shelter. The U.S. ignore's this growing income inequality at it's own peril. Eventually the oppressed will rise up. And now, thanks to Republicans, they will all have guns.

When Social Security and Medicare are gone, when the minimum wage is abolished, when every last crumb of income the ill, elderly, poor, downtrodden, and retired had is gone, who is going to pay the bills? Who is going to fix the roads and bridges? Who is going to be able to buy all the crap stuff the rich are selling?

A residency requirement, in part, tries to address this flight from a specific community. By requiring workers live where they work, the majority of the money they earn (paid for by the taxpayers they work for) is re-spent in the community. Thus, helping to improve the quality of life for all in the community.

Our bipolar political vision seems to operate under the assumption that we can either get blood from a stone (keep cutting programs for the poor and middle class) or that there really isn't anything we need to be spending on (especially of it helps the poor or the middle class). Pollyanna didn't suffer delusions of this extent. Logic requires us to think differently.

About The Residency Requirement Stifling Potential Job Applicants...

Huge Crowd Turns Out For MPS Teaching Jobs

School district officials estimate more than 1,000 job candidates turned out hoping to land one of the roughly 700 teaching job openings for the next school year in a district that recently bumped its starting teacher pay up from $37,721 to $41,000.

Residency Requirements: Reading & Facts

Scott Walker Calls For Ending Residency Requirements

In Milwaukee, city officials are expected to vigorously contest the governor's effort to end the city's 75-year-old residency law. 

Barrett said the effort to end the residency law and the freeze on state aid come at the same time as the city continues to struggle with the ongoing foreclosure crisis. The city is now the largest residential property owner in Milwaukee because of tax foreclosures and has hundreds of homes it says it must raze because they've become magnets for crime.

"There are many homeowners in parts of the city who are currently underwater in their mortgages," Barrett said. "And what this will do is put more downward pressure on property values in the city of Milwaukee." 

The city will argue that the ability of Wisconsin cities, towns and villages to determine their own affairs via home rule is outlined in the state Constitution and in state law. 

They also will be expected to cite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 1976 in which the high court upheld Philadelphia's residency rule. In that case, the court said the law did not violate the due process clause, the equal protection clause or the right to travel interstate.
The issue, at least for the mayor and other top officials, is an issue of local control and say that should appeal to Republicans. 

Moreover, the city has argued that the residency law has never impeded the city's ability to retain employees. According to city records, the voluntary separation rate in the city was 1.2% or 83 resignations in 2010. That's out of a city payroll of 6,846 part- and full-time workers. 

The city also is a magnet for candidates for the police and fire departments. Even with a residency law in place, the city received 5,743 applications for firefighter jobs in the most recent recruiting period and 3,691 applications for police officer.

How To Crush Milwaukee

As for those cities who ended the requirement, the survey found, Minneapolis repealed the requirement in 1999 and 70 percent of its employees now live outside the city. Detroit did so in 1999 and 45 percent now live outside the city. Baltimore repealed in 1995 and 65 percent now live outside the city. Huge numbers of government employees also left St. Louis and Washington D.C. after residency rules were relaxed. 

Based on these figures and the fact that in Milwaukee, 50 percent of its retired employees now now live outside the city, Milwaukee officials estimate that it would lose about half of its employees — some 8,700 middle class residents — to the suburbs. Compared to other residents, city employees are more likely to own their homes, homes that on average are worth 20 percent more in assessed value than those of other residents. 

The city, in short, would lose a big chunk of its middle class. Housing values and the property tax base could tumble as a result, and spending in the city could decline, hurting businesses and the city’s overall economy. The exodus could transform neighborhoods like Jackson Park, where many police live, or the areas near the airport or far Northwest Side, where many city employees live. 

Supporters of ending the residency requirement have argued this will enable the city to hire better employees. But city statistics show there are 42 applications for the average job. In its most recent recruitments, the city received 5,711 applications for the position of fire fighter and 3,569 for the position of police officer.

Walker in particular has argued that ending the residency requirement will help Milwaukee Public Schools to hire better teachers. But a 2006 study by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute found residency did not have a major impact: just five percent of the 4,699 teachers who had left MPS since 1992 did so because of the requirements. Even so, the Milwaukee School Board has passed a recent measure to address the issue, giving teachers hired for hard-to-fill positions up to two years to move into the city. 

The ability of Wisconsin municipalities to tinker with such rules and determine their local affairs is spelled out in the state constitution. Milwaukee’s employees have been subject to a residency requirement since 1938. Is Walker suggesting Milwaukee hasn’t been a great city for the last 75 years? And why would Republicans who support local control change their stance in this instance? 

Sykes and others have argue this is a matter of personal freedom. But these employees are free to seek other jobs at any time. And their unions have long had the option of taking less wage and benefits increases in return for ending residency, and declined. Twice in recent years the police and fire unions made a wage concession to end residency and the arbitrator (whom Republicans have often complained tend to favor unions) ruled that the offer was inadequate. 

Police and fire workers often grumble about property taxes in Milwaukee, which are higher than many surrounding suburbs. But the major reason for that is the wages and benefits they are paid, which accounts for 60 percent of the entire city operating budget.

Since unions are no longer recognized and collective bargaining a thing of the past, thanks to Walker's Act 10, and since other long-standing rules, it appears, are free to be thrown out the window, what's to keep the City from completely reworking police and firefighter pay? As the number of applicants for those positions illustrates, there are plenty of people willing to live in the City to obtain police and fire fighter jobs.

So, turnabout being fair play and all that, what better way to save money in the City budget than by cutting the largest cost, police and fire fighters pay packages. If a police officer, a fire fighter or any other public worker doesn't like the residency requirement, he or she is free to live in another location of his/her liking and to apply for a job somewhere else.

 [source]

Scott Walker Defends His Plan To End Residency Rules

In his first expansive comments on his plan, Walker rejected Barrett's charge that the governor was rewarding the Milwaukee Police Association and the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association Local 215 in return for their political support, saying he had favored ending residency rules when he served in the Assembly. However, as a candidate for county executive in 2002, Walker said he supported the county's residency requirement, though he said Sunday he did so because he felt the County Board wasn't going to change it. 

But Barrett said in a statement Sunday that the city was not facing the same issue MPS faces. "The city has thousands of individuals who apply to be city firefighters or police officers," Barrett said. "These applicants are screened, undergo written, physical and psychological testing. They are offered employment based on merit. If the governor believes that only city residents are eligible to apply for city employment, he is wrong. Individuals who apply for employment with the city are informed that, if offered employment, they will have to reside in the city. No one is hired based on where they live at the time a job offer is made." 

Barrett said no one's personal freedom was being violated. "People are free to apply for a job and are free to accept the job at the time an offer of employment is made," Barrett said. "If this is an oppression of freedom, then why do we get thousands of applications? The governor's rationale doesn't hold up and doesn't make sense."

Remember during Walker's campaigning, he pushed the idea of overpaid public employees. Public workers were a major cause of Wisconsin's (supposed) budget crisis. So, it seems odd when he now says, "Nobody who's a public servant has enough money to just walk away from their home. They're going to sell it. If they do choose to sell . . . they're going to want to cover the amount that they've invested, that they put into that home. So the argument that property values are just suddenly going to shift I don't think matches up with reality."

Got that? Now, to support his political payback to the police and fire unions, suddenly Walker believes public workers are too poor and underpaid to afford taking any type of loss in selling their homes.

For Further Reading:
Attack On Residency Continues Governor's "Divide & Conquer" Strategy

South Side Leaders Blast Residency Proposal

Battle Lines Drawn Over Scott Walker's Move To End Residency Requirements

Ald. Murphy Rips Walker's Residency Plan

Walker Says He Faked Being In Favor Of Residency

Residency Requirements

Much (in the last year) talk about ending the residency requirement for City of Milwaukee (especially for police and firefighters) has been bandied about. Primarily by persons whose motives, and interest in this topic, are unclear. The residency requirement has been in place since 1930. Why is the state interfering with a City of Milwaukee employment policy?

Recently, Gary Kraeger, a Wind Lake appraiser, weighed in - The Principles Of The Residency Rule. He opines, "Milwaukee is everyone's business in the state, especially since Milwaukee is very dependent on state money [state aid to Milwaukee has actually plummeted]... On a third hand, Milwaukee is the fourth-poorest big city in America [not sure where this number comes from, Kraeger doesn't say], at last word, and I suspect it might move up a bit if we dump the residency rule. In which case, I expect Milwaukee to need even more of our money. On another hand, it sounds sensible that if you want taxpayers to pay your salary in a community, you should be one of them. In that way, if your compensation benefits from high taxation, at least you're pulling the cart, too. Also, normally you care more about the community you live in."

Kraeger states, "On principle, however, the residency rule should be lifted and lifted by Milwaukee itself." Um, yeah, so if it should be up to Milwaukee, why are so many people outside of Milwaukee concerning themselves with Milwaukee governance?

"The biggest hand of all is the principle of freedom," claims Kraeger. When it comes down to it, Americans should be able to do what they want, when they want, and where they want. No rules, no questions.

Kraeger continues on describing how removing the requirement could hurt property values in the City. So, he has laid out numerous economic examples of why the residency requirement is in place. Numerous reasons why it should be there. But he then concludes that it should be ended. Why? Freedom.

If the ultimate rationale for an argument one poses is "freedom," one really doesn't have much of an argument or a rationale.

The residency requirement is a pretty simple, straight-forward policy - as a public worker, you should live in the city that employs you. The economic idea of "leakage" is addressed by such a policy. Much of the dollars earned by these public employees will be spent back within the community. Which also addresses the economic multiplier effect - money earned and spent in the same area, thus percolating and rippling throughout the local economy, over and over. As opposed to City of Milwaukee tax dollars funding a Milwaukee Police Officer who now lives in Waukesha and spends most of his/her money there.

There are 2,697 City of Milwaukee fire and police employees. The average police employee earns $65,649; for fire it's $67,554. This a potential $177 million dollars of earnings "leaking" out of the city, including property taxes, sales taxes, and other spending.

The possible loss of property taxes, spending at local businesses, and neighborhood stability are more than sufficient reasons for maintaining the requirement. The economics behind the requirement make it a no-brainer.

Governing is a set of rules. If you want to live or participate in certain communities you have to follow their rules. Some subdivisions make homeowners have 5-acre lots. Others require certain facades or materials be similar amongst the homes. If you don't like those rules, you go somewhere else. That's freedom. Freedom isn't doing away with things one doesn't like.