Progressive Thinking

With state revenue growth flat, Gov. Walker is trying to spend his way out of problems he created to distract voters and provide massive giveaways to the wealthy. Real state revenue growth under the Walker/Trump tandem may make this budget proposal unrealistic.

MADISON - Last week, the Department of Revenue (DOR) released the monthly revenue collection report for January 2017. The report shows a sluggish month of revenue collections, with January 2017 revenue growth up just 0.2% over last January.

The same report shows state revenue growth of just 2.1% through the first seven months of the 2017 fiscal year ending June 30. In January, the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) forecasted revenue growth for the current budget year 2017 at 2.7%, a number that was included in Governor Walker’s proposed budget. The difference would mean almost $90 million less in revenue for Governor Walker’s 2017-19 budget.

The month-to-month volatility in state revenue collections highlights the uncertainty of revenue forecasts and budget projections for the 2017-19 budget.

The wish list of proposals aimed at restoring cuts to education made over the past six years relies on fantasy budgeting. However, the basic arithmetic contained in the Governor’s own budget documents show his chronic budget mismanagement will result in a barely balanced general fund, with just $6.7 million remaining beyond the statutorily required end balance.

That balance will not be able to survive even the smallest dip in state revenue performance.

The revenue report also continues a recent and dramatic pattern of low corporate tax collections. For his last three budgets, Governor Walker prioritized massive giveaways for the wealthy that were passed with zero job creation requirements. In order to afford these tax giveaways, he slashed funding for public school classrooms, higher education, and local communities.

The most regressive of the Governor’s tax giveaways, the so-called Manufacturing and Agriculture tax credit, will cost Wisconsin more than $1.4 billion dollars by the end of the Governor’s 2017-19 budget. There is no job creation requirement for the credit, and data from the LFB shows that three out of four people who claim the credit on their income taxes are millionaires.

The Governor is trying to spend his way out of a problem he created to distract voters. Unfortunately, these numbers indicate this may be too little too late. Wisconsin continues to pay the price for the untargeted tax giveaway for the wealthy passed in 2011. Republicans cut over $1 billion from public schools, over $700 million from our university system, and borrowed money on the taxpayer dime for the last two years - just to keep the budget in the black.

With unpredictable state revenue growth under the Walker/Trump tandem, January’s revenue collections show how unrealistic Governor Walker’s budget proposal is.

Our freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment have never been more threatened than they are today. We have to stand up for a free press, and a first step is seeing through false choices.

ALTOONA, WI - Forty-five words. That’s all it took for our nation’s founders to grant us five bedrock freedoms. In just 45 words, they gave us freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition our government.

These five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment have never been more threatened than they are today. Press freedom is under assault as the president brands the news media an “enemy of the American people.” Both of the First Amendment’s religious freedom clauses are being ignored as non-Christians are subjected to increasing discrimination and even targeted for deportation. The first of the two, namely the establishment clause, is disregarded as more and more American taxpayers are being forced to fund religious schools.

Free speech has become anything but free as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech and corporations are citizens with speech rights, thereby blessing unlimited corporate election spending. Lawmakers in states all across the country are now trying to criminalize freedom of assembly and peaceful protest.

These are dangerous and threatening times for the First Amendment. The rise of fake news is a serious threat, but not the only one or even the biggest one. It’s not just that lies are being widely and quickly spread, it’s that a highly organized effort is being made to persuade the public that no news can be trusted, that no one is telling the truth. Journalism is being delegitimized.

Ongoing and escalating attacks on the separation of church and state gravely threaten religious freedom. State-endorsed religion is a small step from state-sponsored religion, which is another small step away from state-imposed religion. Heaven help us if we continue down this road toward the establishment of a state church.

The equating of money and speech is transforming a central First Amendment right into a commodity that must be purchased at great expense. Calls to limit the capacity of the rich and powerful to buy politicians and own our government are savaged as assaults on free speech. We are essentially being told we can try to deal with corruption in government, or we can have free speech, but not both. This is a false choice, and must be seen as such. We can have freedom and democracy. We can guarantee all people the right to speak freely without at the same time granting them a license to buy off our elected representatives and corrupt our government.

Rescuing the First Amendment begins with seeing through such false choices — and ultimately refusing to make them. But for the rescue operation to ultimately succeed, we the people are going to have to prove that the land of the free is truly still the home of the brave. We’re going to have to demonstrate genuine courage in defending dissent and condemning attacks on peaceful protest. We’re going to have to stand up for a free press and make it clear we do not see journalists as our enemies but rather as indispensable defenders of democracy.

If we don’t, those 45 words describing five precious freedoms won’t be worth the parchment they were written on.

Equal Pay Transparency Act tackles discriminatory practices that help create the pay gap in the first place by creating new protections for employees, wage transparency in the workplace, and a ban on employers asking job applicants for their salary histories.

MADISON – Senators Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Janis Ringhand (D-Evansville) and Representatives Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) and Tod Ohnstad (D-Kenosha) unveiled the Equal Pay Enforcement and Transparency Acts Monday, two proposals that aim to narrow the wage gap in Wisconsin.

The Equal Pay Enforcement Act first became law in 2009, only to be repealed by the Republican Legislature two years later. It strengthened enforcement of our job discrimination laws with stronger penalties on employers guilty of discrimination. Under the Act, employers may be held liable for compensatory and punitive damages, rather than merely providing back pay or reinstatement to victims.

“Paying women less because they’re not men is a version of wage theft and without the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, our Fair Employment Law is like setting a speed limit without giving police the tools or officers to enforce it. It just doesn’t work,” said Hansen. “We need to strengthen enforcement and the penalties for people and businesses that break the law. And our Equal Pay Enforcement Act does just that.”

“The Equal Pay Enforcement Act made a difference for Wisconsin’s working families,” said Rep. Ohnstad. Wisconsin’s wage gap for women narrowed from the 37th widest in the nation to only 25th under our 2009 law. Companies work harder to avoid discriminating if they face stiff consequences for breaking the law. Gov. Walker should never have repealed the law, but he and the Legislature now have the opportunity to correct that mistake by supporting this common-sense proposal.”

The Equal Pay Transparency Act tackles discriminatory practices that help create the pay gap in the first place by creating new protections for employees regarding information about their wages.

The bill creates wage transparency in the workplace, by first of all requiring employers to allow voluntary discussions of salaries among their employees. “Employers often forbid their workers from discussing wages or salaries with each other, and some enact penalties for doing so,” said Rep. Sinicki. “The Equal Pay Transparency Act helps employees find out if and when their pay is lower than that of co-workers doing equal work.”

The Equal Pay Transparency Act also includes an important ban on employers asking job applicants for their salary histories. “Many employers set salaries for new hires using past pay as a baseline,” said Sen. Ringhand. “If this happens to women in their early jobs, then their initially lower wages can follow them through their entire careers, cementing in for a lifetime and lowering their Social Security accounts and pensions.”

The Equal Pay Enforcement and Transparency Acts would protect Wisconsin workers of either gender and also cover veterans, people with disabilities, minorities and other groups that may also be subject to pay or other types of employment discrimination.

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Legislative writer Jay Wadd contributed this story.

Ed Garvey, Wisconsin Progressive, labor attorney, Director of the NFL Players Association, and Democratic leader died this morning at a Verona nursing home. He was 76. He had been battling Parkinson's disease, which led to his retirement in 2013.

TUCSON, AZ - Ed Garvey, the friend of many, the leader of "what could have been" and a good man has died and I am saddened.

When he and Barbara Lawton ran for governor and lt. governor in 1998, they were a fantastic team that offered hope and moxie to the people of WI. But big money talks. Gov. Thommy Thompson was running for his fourth term and as the ALEC (Am. Legislative Exchange Council) representative in the race, Thompson had most of the money.

Schools and local governments were already being financially strangled and local control had disappeared with the 1993 cost controls to rein in unions and stop local spending.

Here we are decades later and local control has been killed along with public unions. Barbara and Ed were right. We could have and still can create a WI good for families and the environment but not under Gov. Walker, a dour ALEC replay in some respects of Thompson.

I will not forget Ed in the drizzle.

US Rep Dennis Kucinich was running for president in the WI primary and Ed and I invited him to speak in Madison. The rally is set up at the small private airport in Madison early in the evening. A good crowd waited. Kucinich's plane is late. We had a speaker's platform set up, it's getting dark, looks like rain. I ask Ed to talk to take up time. Plane lands, drizzle starts, ends up Kucinich is exhausted, needs to eat, and we find some one to go get a vegan dinner while he rests!

I go back outside and get Ed's attention. I ask, "Can you speak some more while they get Dennis rested and fed?" Ed says "I already talked for 20 minutes," goes back to the mic and explains what is going on, laughs and says something like Buzz wants to know if I can speak some more. Crowd laughs, we held the media there, Kucinich gave a great speech and made the news.

Oh, Ed, you could talk, think, had no fear and you gave hope! Thank you! Your were and are an inspiration to many! You fought for progressive ideals for decades as we have to do now.

*****

Peace! Buzz Davis, fellow member of Veterans for Peace, formerly of Stoughton now of Tucson

Sen. Kathleen Vinehout writes about the “Reform Dividend” Gov. Walker first highlighted in his budget address and whether it is real. She adds the findings of her research, including a comparison of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

MADISON - “Overall, our common-sense reforms brought us here – to the point we have a significantly better budget outlook.” Governor Walker said in his recent Budget Address. “We call this the Reform Dividend. And wow, as the fiscal bureau pointed out, that’s a whole lot of money.”

What is the “Reform Dividend” the Governor spoke about in his budget address? Where is it? How much is it? An inquiring mind wanted to know.

Rita Brunkow from Mondovi asked me. “Do you know what this “Reform Dividend” is? Who’s reforming what and where is the dividend coming from?”

Rita did her homework, and before she emailed me, she wrote to the Governor.

“I asked what reform it came from and where the money (dividend) came from…I got back what appeared to be a short press release statement similar to what I had already read in the newspaper.”

Ms. Brunkow wrote a second time, “making it clear I was not seeking a vague general statement but looking for specific answers as to where this money was coming from. I did not get a reply a second time.”

So, I went looking for the elusive “Reform Dividend.”

I examined the details of ten “economic forecast” and “general fund tax revenue estimate” reports prepared by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB). I studied over fifty revenue collection reports from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.

I read the Governor’s Budget in Brief, the administration’s November “Agency Requests and Revenue Estimates” for the new budget and the administration’s 632-page summary of the Executive Budget.

To keep the numbers straight I created a spreadsheet.

I learned a few disturbing details. In Fiscal Year 2014, tax revenue actually dropped below the prior year. This almost never happens except in a recession. For the budget ending this year, the LFB revised expected revenue downward several times. If there was a dividend, numbers should be going up, not down.

By Saturday morning, I still had not found any evidence of a “Reform Dividend.” At breakfast, my husband suggested maybe I should look across the river.

I went looking at Minnesota’s budget numbers and revenue estimates, their jobs numbers and economic activity numbers. If Wisconsin has a “Reform Dividend” Wisconsin numbers should be better than Minnesota, where there was no “reform”.

Here is what I found. Since 2011, when Governor Walker first took office and passed his “reforms,” general fund tax revenue grew 18%.

In Minnesota, over those same years, general fund tax revenue grew 31%.

No evidence of a “Reform Dividend” there.

I looked at jobs numbers. Since the Great Recession (2008-09) Wisconsin did not gain back all of the lost jobs until 2015 – an entire year after the nation recovered and two years after Minnesota recovered.

No “Reform Dividend” there.

I then looked at state economic activity from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Most recent annual numbers (from 2015) showed that since 2012 the Minnesota economy grew faster than the national average and Wisconsin’s economy grew slower than the national average. No “Reform Dividend” there.

Where else to look?

I remembered a conversation from last week with a county official, who attended a County Association meeting, at which the state budget director talked about the extra money in the budget and how it would be spent. During the follow-up questions, someone in the back of the room pointed out the recently announced increase in expected revenue was only an increase over the governor’s own November estimates. Isn’t this new estimate actually lower than the estimates made in 2016 and 2015, the questioner asked, and is this really new money?

The state budget director smiled and congratulated the man for doing his homework.

The “Reform Dividend” disappeared. Replaced by a smile.