Remember the unity and bi-partisanship of the pre-Scott Walker days of Wisconsin politics? Neither do I.

Yet supporters of the Governor’s recall effort are increasingly appealing to voters’ desire for a return to the good old days that presumably can only come with the removal of Scott Walker from office.  Several recent statements from One Wisconsin Now list among the recall-meriting sins of the governor the claim:  “Scott Walker tore Wisconsin apart.”

Did he?  Where was the state before Scott Walker won the 2010 governor’s race with 52% of the vote?

• In 2008, conservative Supreme Court Justice Mike Gableman beat Louis Butler with 51% of the vote.
• In 2006, Governor Jim Doyle defeated Mark Green with 53% of the vote. That same election saw Republican J.B. Van Hollen win the Attorney General’s race with 50% of the vote.
• In 2004, Russ Feingold won his Senate race with 55% of the vote.
• In 2003, Pat Roggensack prevailed in the Supreme Court race with 51% of the vote.

And consider that WPRI’s latest public opinion poll found that 47% of Wisconsinites support recalling the Governor.  Not a surprising number given that 47% of the state voted against candidate Walker in 2010.

No, Walker did not tear the state apart. He is simply the latest in a long line of Wisconsin politicians that won a statewide election with a slight majority.  Wisconsin was one of the most politically divided state in the country before Governor Scott Walker, and will continue to be so after Governor Scott Walker.

A real return to normalcy would be the rejection of a recall effort that has created an ongoing political circus fueled in part by money and interests far from Wisconsin.

In 2009 I attended a public hearing on the proposed mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).  One of the members of the Senate Education Committee asked proponents of the plan, including Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, what exactly a mayoral appointed school board would do differently than the elected board.  No specific answer was given.

And what would have been done differently?  Likely nothing.

Wisconsin school boards have for decades been constrained by state law, federal law, and union contracts that limit their ability to manage district resources.

Take for example the issue of taxes.  Since the implementation of revenue limits in 1993, the majority of school districts have simply levied the maximum allowed under state law.  This amount is determined by state aid to the district, student enrollment, and spending in the previous year.  If the board wants to levy more than allowed under revenue limits, they must go to referendum.  Short of trying to attract more students to the district, there is not a lot that local boards do to impact the tax levy.

Another issue is academics.  The standards to which districts teach come from the state.   The assessment system used to measure achievement is determined by the state and federal government.  Even the number of days and hours that students must spend in school is dictated by the state.

The ability of Wisconsin school boards to manage their most important and most expensive resource, teachers, has also been heavily constrained by collectively bargained union contracts.  However the passage of Act 10 is changing that.  Boards across the state (including MPS) are already using their new power to get their fiscal houses in order.

What remains to be seen is whether boards will begin to address issues like tenure, teacher compensation, and teacher assignments in ways conducive to raising academic achievement.  As important to watch is if school boards hire superintendents willing to use the flexibility enabled by collective bargaining reform to better manage teachers.

Constraints on Wisconsin school boards will remain, but they are better positioned today to be a positive force for impacting student achievement than any time in recent history.  Now is their moment to prove those critical of the institution in Milwaukee and elsewhere wrong.

Alan Borsuk’s education column this week focused on the overall quality of private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP).  Specifically, Borsuk laments that there exists “little evidence that the rise of voucher and charter schools have, in themselves, brought rising quality.”

In one-way Borsuk is correct, a governance reform in and of itself is not enough to raise achievement.  A school voucher, charter contract or mayoral run school board does not actually educate students.  The worth of a governance reform is the extent to which it enables the creation of quality schools and provides a mechanism to shut down low-performing ones.

Unfortunately yesterday’s column makes no mention of the ongoing state-mandated evaluation of the choice program being conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP).  Instead, Borsuk relies on snapshot test scores that show similar scores for choice and low-income Milwaukee Public School (MPS) pupils.  A review of the SCDP reports gives a more complete picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the MPCP.

The biggest disappointment in the state-mandated evaluation is that MPCP and MPS student growth scores are similar after three years.  So yes, on aggregate the choice program is not improving choice pupil test scores.  However, students in the choice program do have a higher graduation rate (76.6%) than similar students in MPS (69.4%).   Choice students also attend college at higher rates.  Both are positive findings worthy of mention in any discussion of choice program quality.

Also important is the connection between the choice program and independent charter schools in Milwaukee.  Over half (11 of 18) of the City and UWM authorized charter schools in operation are former participants in the MPCP.  This is noteworthy because the SCDP found that students in schools that converted to charter from choice are driving overall achievement gains in the sector.

The SCDP evaluation also shows schools that left the MPCP show a “pattern of lower student achievement” compared to those that continue to participate.   This finding is especially significant because targeted regulations developed and supported by MPCP schools and advocates are the reason schools are leaving the program.

In 2006 Governor Doyle with the support of MPCP advocates signed into law a requirement that participating schools be accredited by an approved agency.  Milwaukee Democrat Chris Sinicki in particular praised this effort, writing in a February 17, 2006 press release:

“Milwaukee parents and taxpayers deserve to know that the $93 million we are currently investing in the voucher school program is money well spent on quality education for our kids. These solid accountability measures will accomplish that.”

Though accreditation does not guarantee quality, it has proven effective at closing low-performing schools.  Since 2006 11 schools have been expelled from the MPCP for failing to comply with the accreditation requirement.

Even more successful is a set of fiscal accountability requirements passed in 2003 that, among other things, gives DPI a kill switch to cut-off funding to any school it deems unhealthy or unsafe.  Thirty schools have been kicked out of the MPCP because of these regulations.

The common complaint about the targeted regulations mentioned is that they are not explicitly tied to academic performance.  True, but if they are still accomplishing the task of cutting off funding to low-performers why is this a problem?

It is also worth mentioning that since 1990 48 participating choice schools simply shut their doors.  Research shows these schools were experiencing significantly lower rates of enrollment growth compared to schools that stayed in the program.  While the MPCP marketplace is imperfect, there is evidence that it exists, and that it has been a factor in shutting down schools.

No doubt there exists a subset of schools in Milwaukee that are not up to par; efforts to identify and eliminate low-performers should be encouraged.  However, the latest phase of Milwaukee education reform plans reduce their chances of success if not informed by the full body of existing evidence on education reforms in Milwaukee.  That body of evidence is larger than most realize, particularly when it comes to the MPCP.

Today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel features a story about how “civility” has been lost in Wisconsin due to the conflict over collective bargaining rights.  The article goes out of its way to show that both sides are guilty of incivility, with UW-Madison political science professor Dennis Dresang declaring that “nobody’s got a monopoly on rhetoric and threats and incendiary language.”

Of course, this attempt to find equivalency between the actions of the Right and the Left in Wisconsin is pure nonsense.  The attempt to show “both sides do it” falls apart if the reader has any recollection at all of the events of the past eight months.  Let’s take a quick look at the Democrats’ “profiles in civility:”

• Democratic state Rep. Gordon Hintz yelling at fellow Rep. Michelle Litjens “you’re f***ing dead.”
• Sen. Spencer Coggs said Walker’s bill was “legalized slavery” and Rep. Joe Parisi said Walker was “calling the National Guard out on the people of Wisconsin.”
• Fourteen state senators fled the state to block passage of Walker’s collective bargaining bill (including Tim Cullen, who decries the loss of civility in the MJS article.)
• Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on the Capitol, many with profane signs comparing Walker to Hitler, bin Laden, etc.  (Remember this lady?  (Language Warning.) See anything like this at Tea Party rallies?)
• Aggressive, militant activists have been following lawmakers everywhere they go, filming them, verbally harassing them, and pouring beer on one.
• The “solidarity singers” have been yelling every day in the capitol rotunda, forcing things such as blood drives to move to places other than the Capitol.
• The chief justice of the Supreme Court likely leaked a story to the press accusing one of her colleagues of choking another justice – a story that was completely debunked, and the accused justice was eventually exonerated.
• Committee hearings have been disrupted, with people being dragged out by their feet – one woman chained her head to the railing of the state senate parlor with a bike lock.
• Illegal activity has been rampant, whether it is liberal activists providing  ribs for votes doctors providing fake sick notes notes, or otherwise.
• Protesters disrupting every Walker public speaking event, including a Special Olympics ceremony.
•  In the most toxic campaign ad of 2011,the Left tried to make it seem like Supreme Court Justice David Prosser was the best friend of pedophiles, digging up a case Prosser prosecuted as a district attorney 30 years ago.  (There were no similar ads run by any Republicans either in the Supreme Court race or the state senate recalls.)
• Teachers pulling their kids out of school, shutting down Madison schools for 4 days, and bringing the kids to capitol rallies.
• The desecration of the state capitol, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cleanup costs.
• Marching not only at Scott Walker’s home, but at the homes of individual legislators that don’t have any police protection.
• And probably most uncivilly, Democrats refused to participate in this year’s staff versus legislator softball game.

I am really making an honest attempt to find anything from the Right that matches anything on this list.  At one point, a friend of former State Senator Dave Zien allegedly tried to punch a solidarity singer.  The reports of collecting signatures and shredding recall petitions is merely a rumor; there’s no evidence anyone on the Right caused the “cyberattack” that liberals are complaining about.

And honestly – let’s say some right-wing hacker caused this “cyberattack.”  What’s worse – that, or the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court likely planting a fake story in the paper in an attempt to smear a fellow justice?

So the real story here isn’t that civility on both sides has been lost; it is that Walker supporters have maintained their composure amid an avalanche of poisonous actions by union loyalists.

Wednesday I wrote about some of the ways collective bargaining can have a monetary cost.  Last night the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) provided an example of how its reform has given local governments a path to financial stability.   The MPS board, reports Erin Richards in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, approved by a vote of 6-3 a set of reforms projected to reduce the district’s post-retirement benefit liability by $900 million over the next thirty years.

As WPRI reported in a 2009 report, A Critical Element of Reform of Milwaukee Public Schools: The Escalating Cost of Retiree Health Insurance, the district’s health care liability was projected to grow from $2.2 billion to almost $5 billion by 2016.  The liability is a massive non-education cost and an issue that, as Superintendent Gregory Thornton told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,  “we’ve pushed…aside for years.”

The approved plan requires MPS employees to pay between 7% and 14% of their health care premiums depending on their salary.  The examples given in MPS board documents (see page 37) shows MPS employees will pay between $33.50 to $222 per-month for health insurance depending on their marital status and chosen health plan. The approved plan also requires employees to take four unpaid furlough days and eliminates salary increases in 2013, 2014, and 2015.  None of these changes will be implemented until district union contracts expire in 2012 and 2013.

Thornton and the board were able to address this problem only because of Act 10.  As you may recall the Superintendent’s attempt to save jobs over the summer by increasing teacher pension contributions was rebuffed by the MTEA. Given MTEA president Bob Peterson’s reaction to the proposal approved last night, he called it “catastrophic,” it is safe to assume it is not something the board could have negotiated through.

It is understandable that MPS employees dislike having to pay more tomorrow for the same benefits they receive today.  However, not addressing the issue keeps MPS on the road to financial ruin to the determinant of all involved, especially students.  The Superintendent and board deserve praise for approving this plan, as does the Governor for giving them the tools to make it possible.

The comments section over at Rick Esenberg’s Shark and Shepherd blog got a little heated yesterday in response to a post on Governor Scott Walker.  The topic of debate: Was curbing public sector collective bargaining necessary or punitive?  The case for punitive was that healthcare and pension concessions were enough to balance the books, the rest was union busting.  A quick review of public sector union contracts shows that yes, there are financial costs to collective bargaining.

In the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) for example 71% of the district budget is used for salaries and benefits, yet items in the teachers contract limit MPS’ flexibility to distribute this money efficiently.  When faced with the need for layoffs, the district, because of seniority requirements, let its youngest and least expensive teachers go.  Certainly money could have been saved had teachers been targeted across all age (and salary) groups.  The contract prevented this approach.

Another example is the class size and load limits in the Madison teachers contract.  The contract states:

“No class should have more than thirty (30) pupils.”

And

“No teacher should be assigned the class responsibility regardless of the size of his/her classes, for more than one hundred and thirty-five (135) pupils.”

 

Increasing the workload of a willing and able teacher to save money is a non-starter under the contract.  And do not even think about giving a teacher more compensation for taking on more students.

Those are two obvious examples.  Public sector union contracts are also full of small provisions that are not conducive to a work culture of efficiency.  Madison teachers for example cannot be asked to move teaching materials from their classroom:

“Teachers will not be required to pack, and/or unpack, teaching materials either during the school year or during a school recess period due to major cleaning, construction projects, repairs, electrical upgrades, etc. due to their classroom being moved at management’s request or when the District deems it is necessary to utilize the teacher’s classroom for classes or other activities during a school recess period. The District will arrange for the teacher’s materials to be moved to his/her new assigned location by a person not represented by MTI. If materials are relocated during a period when school is in recess, they will be returned by the District for the resumption of school.”

So instead of asking a teacher for a small favor, a maintenance man or other employee must be located and pulled away from another task.

Or take “Show Up-Pay” for unionized City of Milwaukee nurses, which is exactly what it sounds like:

“All employees who report for work at a regularly assigned time and who are officially excused and sent home due to lack of work or inclement weather before completing two hours of work, shall be credited with two hours’ pay at their straight time rate, except that the time credited for employees who work less than full-time shall be prorated.”

And

“All such employees who report to work for an emergency overtime assignment at the direction of competent authority and who are officially excused before completing three hours of work shall be credited with three hours’ pay at time and one-half; such credit shall be given in cash or compensatory time off…”

Act 10 gives local governments options formerly prevented by collectively bargained contracts. It creates a path for sustaining necessary local services over the long-term.    But more importantly, it can be an opportunity to build a culture where public employees are respected and protected because of the essential work they do to keep Wisconsin running, not hundreds of pages of bargained rules based on addressing worst case work scenarios.

While campaigning for president in 1912 as the candidate of the Bull Moose Party Teddy Roosevelt was shot by an anarchist just before giving a speech in downtown Milwaukee.  He gave the speech anyways, quipping to the audience: “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

Herman Cain, after apparently missing the biggest foreign policy story of the year, stumbled a bit when asked about President Obama’s handling of the NATO intervention in Libya.  Then Cain seemed to remember the golden rule of candidate media training, answer the question you want to answer and not the one that was asked.

Cain’s response: “No, I did not agree with Gaddafi killing his citizens, absolutely not.”

Good to know.

Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 campaign created an interesting piece of Milwaukee history but did not end with a President Roosevelt.  I have a feeling next year a similar statement could be made of Herman Cain’s campaign for the 2012 presidency.

William Holohan and Charles Kroncke make a defense of “double dipping” in Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  Their first point is that the practice of “double dipping,” as recently described in the Green Bay Press-Gazette and elsewhere, is not actually “double dipping.”

They are technically correct; the practice that Assembly Bill 318 seeks to end is not the simultaneous holding of two-public jobs.  The offending practice is, to quote the op-ed, “when a state employee retires, begins to collect on a pension and then returns to state employment while continuing to receive that pension check.”

Holohan and Kroncke argue that employee pensions are deferred compensation to which the retiree is entitled regardless of their current employment; the practice is only harmful to taxpayers if a superior applicant is passed over so the retiree may return to their prior position.  Hence the need for a 30-day waiting period after the retirement to ensure no superior candidate exists.

This makes technical sense if retirees are cajoled back to their former jobs only in rare instances where a suitable internal or external candidate cannot be found.  But the practice is not rare, it has happened more than 6,000 times since 2005.

Perhaps a diligent search was conducted in each of these cases; perhaps none of these rehires were pre-discussed.  The public perception, however, is that 6,000 public employees have found a way to dramatically increase their income for doing the same job.

Public employees fall victim to enough false stereotypes, continuing the practice of “double dipping” (or whatever you want to call it) only gives the public reason to find more.

WPRI polling shows that more Wisconsinites support charter schools than oppose them (42% vs. 32%).  But what exactly are charter schools?

The concept of charter schools is all the more confusing in Wisconsin because we have three types operating in the state.  However, all three types do have some basic similarities.

• First and most important they are all public schools.
• Second, they are all free from many traditional public school regulations.
• Third, they all operate under a contract with an authorizer that can be no longer than five years.  It is this contract that specifies their regulations and goals.
• Fourth, all contracts must contain fifteen specific pieces of information (see pages 5 and 6 of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau informational paper on charter schools for a detailed description of the provisions.)

The Wisconsin Charter Schools Association has additional basic information on Wisconsin Charters on their FAQ site worth checking out.

The most common type of Wisconsin charter school is an Instrumentality Charter.  There are 189 of these schools currently operating in Wisconsin.  Instrumentality Charters:

• Are authorized by district school boards;
• Are staffed by union teachers employed by the district;
• Enroll pupils that are counted by school districts for state aid purposes;
• Receive funding directly from the authorizing school district; and
• Receive per-pupil funding at a rate specified in their charter contract.

The second most common type of Wisconsin charter school is a Non-Instrumentality Charter.  There are 27 of these schools operating in Wisconsin this year.  Non-Instrumentality Charters:

• Are authorized by district school boards;
• Are staffed by non-union teachers that are not employees of the school district;
• Enroll pupils that are counted by school districts for state aid purposes;
• Receive funding directly from the authorizing school district; and
• Receive per-pupil funding at a rate specified in their charter contract.

In Milwaukee, enrollment in Non-Instrumentality Charters is limited through a Memo of Understanding between the teacher’s union and the school board to 8% of total Milwaukee Public Schools enrollment.

The least common type of charter school in Wisconsin is a 2R or Independent Charter.  There are 19 of these schools operating in Wisconsin this year.  Independent Charters:

• Can be authorized by the City of Milwaukee, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), The Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (UWP);
• Are limited to Milwaukee and one school in Racine;
• Are staffed by non-union teachers that are not employees of the school district;
• Enroll pupils that are not counted by school districts for state aid purposes;
• Receive funding from the state through an equal percentage school aid reduction in all Wisconsin school districts; and
• Receive per-pupil funding of $7,775 per-pupil.

In 2011-12 UWM authorizes 11 Independent Charters, the City of Milwaukee authorizes 7, MATC authorizes zero, and UWP authorizes its one allowed school in Racine.

Though the details are a bit confusing, the basic concept of a charter school is simple and promising: Create innovative schools whose continued existence is dependent on their ability to raise student achievement.

Jefferson County, Alabama filed this week for the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States.  The county, which includes the city of Birmingham, has accumulated over $4 billion in debt through a series of bad decisions, corruption, and circumstance.  Just last month Harrisburg, Pennsylvania filed for bankruptcy to deal with its $400 million plus debt.

The issues leading to these two filings are not rare.  The Washington Post reports that state and local governments in the United States currently have over $2.4 trillion in debt. Local governments in Wisconsin, according to 2008 data from the Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance, have over $12 billion in debt obligations:

• Counties: $1,810,466,153
• Cities: 4,085,332,430
• Villages: $1,277,530,145
• School Districts: $5,105,583,283

Holding debt is not necessarily a problem and certainly does not mean Wisconsin governments are on the verge of bankruptcy.  The Wisconsin constitution actually limits the amount of allowable debt to 5% of the equalized value of a municipality or a county.   The Department of Revenue reports annually on debt margins and shows that all Wisconsin municipalities are below their allowable debt ceilings.

The more pressing problem facing Wisconsin governments is not debt, but rather unfunded and underfunded liability costs.  WPRI reported in 2008 that large Wisconsin municipalities have over $6 billion in unfunded benefit liabilities.   The problem is particularly bad for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) where unfunded healthcare liabilities are projected to reach about $5 billion in 2016.

The MPS unfunded liability is a massive and growing cost driver for the district that is totally unrelated to education.  It is non-education cost drivers likes these that make MPS teachers and principals react with disbelief when told the district receives $14,863 per-member. And it is not just MPS. City and county governments face the similar problem of increasing costs unrelated to service delivery.

So could bankruptcy be an option for MPS and other local governments struggling to deal with their unfunded liabilities?  There are five basic criteria in Chapter 9 of the federal Title 11 bankruptcy statutes that must be met for a municipality to file for bankruptcy:

1.  The entity filing must be a municipality.  In Wisconsin this includes cities, villages and towns, counties, and school districts.

 
2.  Municipal bankruptcy must be allowed by the state.  The Wisconsin state statutes are silent on municipal bankruptcy.

 
3.  A municipality needs to meet the definition of insolvent.  Insolvent is defined in the federal statutes as: “…financial condition such that the municipality is (i) Generally not paying its debts as they become due unless such debts are the subject of a bona fide dispute; or (ii) Unable to pay its debts as they become due.”

 
4.  A municipality must desire to affect a plan to adjust its debt.

5.  A municipality must do one of the following:

• Obtain agreement with creditors holding the majority of debt;
• Negotiate in good faith but fail to reach agreement with its debtors;
• Be unable to negotiate with its debtors because it is impractical; or
• Reasonably believes that a creditor may attempt to obtain a transfer that is avoidable under section 547 of chapter 9 of the bankruptcy statutes.

The most obvious barrier to bankruptcy filings in Wisconsin is the lack of a state law allowing municipal bankruptcy.  If a law were on the books the big question for a willing municipality is whether having substantial unfunded or underfunded healthcare liabilities meets the definition of insolvency.

To answer the question posed in the title to this entry, no, Wisconsin governments could not as of now go the way of Jefferson County, Alabama.  However, the concept has been floated here recently making the experiences of Jefferson County and Harrisburg worth watching.