Robbing Peter To Pay Peter

I've covered the whole issue of Scott Walker, while Milwaukee County Executive, making use of illegal furlough days against county employees, such as myself, in order to cement his image as an anti-union, anti-worker teahadist and as a dress rehearsal for Act 10.

But now I will flesh it out a little more and give the gentle reader an update which really shows Walker's depravity.

To make a long story short, while crafting the 2010 county budget, Walker illegally installed concessions from workers for higher contributions to health care costs and to start paying twice for pension benefits.  It was repeatedly pointed out by county board members and staff that this was illegal, since he never even sat down to try to reach these concessions, much less actually achieve them.  Inexplicably, even though they knew it to be illegal, the county board went along with the illegal budget.

Before people were even recovered from their 2010 New Year's hangovers, Walker then used this artificially constructed budget hole to declare a fiscal emergency and implemented 12 furlough days for all workers except for deputies.  A few months later, he said it was not enough, and jumped it up to 26 days for some workers, including myself.  Due to his ineptness, he even ended up giving the previously spared deputies eight days of furlough.

But Walker's furloughs had unintended consequences.

One was that many county workers would have to put in overtime to make up for the work missed during their furloughs and/or to cover for coworkers who were on furlough.  Thus any savings Walker might have claimed from his attack on workers were negated by the skyrocketing amounts of overtime.  Many county workers were able to work enough overtime to make up for the lost day of pay and then some.  It was more like working a 4-40 schedule (40 hours in 4 days).

Furthermore, when the unions grieved the excessive furlough days, it was found that there wasn't really a deficit at all, or at least not one which required emergency actions.

The unions ended up taking their complaint to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC), which ruled in favor of the unions.  They said the county needed to immediately cease and desist from the implementing the illegal furlough days and to repay the workers.  To give the county incentive to address this issue sooner rather than later, WERC also ordered the county pay 12% interest, compounded daily.

Despite the high interest, the county chose to appeal the decision.  And appeal it some more.  And then one more time.

After losing in court hearing after court hearing, the county finally conceded that they will need to pay the workers back for Walker's campaign stunt.

But then came a twist to the story:

It wasn't all bad budget news for the county. Supervisors found out they had an $11.5 million surplus from 2011 and - even more surprising - county Comptroller Scott Manske had stashed away millions more in case the county lost a case over back pay.

"I'm glad you squirreled away $4.1 million, but there should have been some disclosure of it," said Supervisor Theo Lipscomb.

Manske said he quietly accounted for the payment, informing his bosses but making no public statement because the county hadn't yet decided whether to appeal an arbitrator's ruling, upheld in circuit court. The ruling said the county had to pay workers $4.1 million for furlough days illegally imposed as an emergency measure in 2010 by then-County Executive Scott Walker.

Having suddenly found this "windfall" the Milwaukee County Board voted on Thursday to pay back the workers for the illegal furloughs from 2010.  The estimated cost is over $4 million.  Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele has already issued a statement saying that he believes this should be paid out and is expected to sign it.


The only thing left is for the county comptroller to get direction from the court on what date the interest should be considered to start accruing so he can figure out the payments.  Reports say that the average payout will be $2,600 per worker, plus interest.

So all is good, right?

Wrong.

There are a few issues still at hand.  One is that this pay out is only for 2010.  Workers still had to take another 13 furlough days in 2011.  The cost of that pay out is over $1 million plus interest.  There has been mixed messages on whether the county has any intention of paying these days out.  This will probably result in yet another series of court cases adding even more cost to Walker's folly.

The other issue is that the surplus money which the county had suddenly found came from the county imposing the pay cuts allowed by Act 10 and then some.  (These pay cuts are so severe that they have made some Milwaukee County workers eligible for financial support from the government.  So much for the Republican meme that government workers are living high on the hog.)

In other words, the county is using the workers' own money to pay them back for the money which was illegally taken in 2010.  How lovely of them!

I still think they should go after the person who caused the mess they're left to clean up and sue Walker, his campaign and all of his henchmen who were campaigning on county time.  But that would require political courage, something which is very scarce in Milwaukee lately.

And to top it all off, some of the extra money that is being taken from the workers is going to pay off some of the debt that Walker racked up in order to present the misleading image of being a fiscal genius.  We get to pay for Walker's campaign many times over!  Funny, but I don't recall offering to make any donations.

And before any conservatives think that this is a good deal, remember, your taxes still went up and you're getting less bang for your buck.  On top of that, this whole sordid affair is having the same effect on a local level that Act 10 is having on the state level.  The reduced money being injected into the local economy is only serving to keep unemployment higher than it should be and causing businesses to falter.

To sum it all up, Walker's "money saving" furloughs didn't save any money, since the workers earned it all back and then some in the form of overtime.  But because of the illegality of Walker's actions, the county taxpayers accrued additional costs in the form of repeated court costs and the interest which was accumulating at a rate of about $35,000 per month.  Walker's fiscal "frugality" turns out to be more expensive than if he didn't do anything.

Meanwhile, workers were put unnecessarily into dire fiscal straits, some losing their homes and some facing bankruptcy.  The kicker is that the money was there all along. Walker just didn't want to allow the workers to have it and so he basically stole it.

Yet people bought into Walker's antics and thought that, even as they are being driven into the poor house, they were coming out ahead.  Go figure.

And for all the bellyaching the county board did about Walker's maleficent behaviors and current Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele's grandiose statements and campaign promises saying he wasn't going to be like Walker, they sure are acting a lot like him.