Knudson backs governor’s ‘budget repair’ bill

• State Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson

State Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson. Photo by Randy Hanson

Talk about it

State Rep. Dean Knudson supports Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to limit the pay of government workers and teachers, increase their share of the cost of benefits, and strip their unions of much of their power.

The new Republican governor unveiled his “budget repair bill” last Friday. The stated aim of the measure is to close a $137 million deficit in the budget that ends June 30, but its effects would be felt for years to come.

Unions would be prevented from negotiating anything but salaries — and any increase greater than the rate of inflation would require voter approval in a referendum.

Union dues couldn’t be collected by school districts or state and local governments. No one could be required to pay union dues.

Contracts could be for no more than one year, and bargaining units would have to vote annually on maintaining certification as a union.

The bill would require most public workers make half the annual contribution into their pension – typically about 5.8 percent of their pay. And they would have to pay at least 12.6 percent of their health insurance premiums.

The plan wouldn’t apply to police, state trooper or firefighter unions.

Knudson, in a visit to the Star-Observer office Monday morning, defended the plan as the only alternative to increasing taxes or layoffs of government workers and teachers.

“There is a huge budget deficit. And there are no games or gimmicks or stimulus money or anything that is going to come and bail us out of this,” he said.

The structural deficit in the next two-year budget beginning July 1 is estimated at about $3.6 billion.

Knudson said voters made it “very clear” in last November’s election that they are opposed to tax increases and want government to find a way to reduce spending.

That leaves reducing government employees’ compensation as the only alternative to massive layoffs or throwing thousands of people off Medicaid health insurance, he said.

“If we don’t do something that is a broad reform of this relationship with public employees, then we’re looking at cuts to programs and services on an unprecedented scale. Nobody wants to do that,” he said.

Knudson said that if the changes in public employee compensation aren’t enacted, 5,000 to 6,000 state employees and at least that many local government workers would have to be laid off to balance the 2011-13 budget.

What’s coming next, probably in about 10 days, he said, is the announcement of cuts in state aid and shared revenue to school districts and local governments.

He said he expects the reduction in state aid to be about equal to the employee cost savings.

“With this, the districts have a set of tools to let them adapt to their individual circumstances. They have flexibility,” Knudson said.

“To handle the kind of cuts that will be coming without adopting these cuts, that would be brutal,” he said. “This is painful, but it is not painful on the scale of what it would be like to deal with this deficit without these changes.”

Public and private unions were quick to denounce Walker’s proposal as a radical plan to bust unions.

“Make no mistake about it, war has been declared on unions in Wisconsin,” Teamsters representative Danny McGowan was quoted as saying in Monday’s Wisconsin State Journal. “The attack on public sector bargaining is viewed as an attack on labor, no matter what sector.”

City of Hudson public works and clerical employees are represented by the Teamsters.

The state AFL-CIO began a TV and radio ad campaign this week urging people to call their state legislators and tell them to stop the “radical government takeover of the rights of government workers.”

Knudson denied that the plan is radical.

“It’s really only just common sense, reasonable reforms,” he said. “…No one loses their job. No one loses their health insurance. And no one loses their pension.”

Asked whether Wisconsin might lose teachers, or fail to attract good teachers, because of the limit on compensation, Knudson said all states are struggling with budget deficits.

“Before it’s all over, you’re going to see pension contributions happening from all public employees. There’s nothing unusual about this in a national sense,” he said. “We’ll still have an excellent education system.”

Knudson noted that the Consumer Price Index cap on wage and salary increases doesn’t apply to non-union school and local government employees.

“If you’re trying to attract a top superintendent, for example, the market is still going to drive what the pay scale is. That’s an example of where we are often going out on a multi-state effort,” he said. “The same with local government if you need to hire someone who is a CPA (certified public accountant) or something like that.”

Why not the police?

Asked why police officers aren’t being required to pay for half of their pensions and at least 12 percent of their health insurance premiums, Knudson said that in his opinion they should be required to.

“At this point in time, the decision was made that they are frontline providers of emergency services and because of that they are exempted,” he said.

Police officers and state troopers receive annual contributions to their Wisconsin Retirement System pensions equal to 17 to 18 percent of their annual pay.

Police officers and firefighters in unions also will be exempted from the CPI cap on wage increases.

Union response

Scott Ellingson, leader of the Hudson teachers’ bargaining unit, called the budget repair bill a “blatant attack on workers’ rights.”

“Hopefully, others recognize that this would be devastating to Wisconsin public schools and Wisconsin workers — and Wisconsin and the community of Hudson, frankly,” Ellingson said in a phone call Monday.

He said the most objectionable part of the bill was the undermining of public employee unions.

“We all understand we’re in tough times and if we were to be able to sit down with Gov. Walker, I’m sure we could talk about things and probably come to some agreement,” he said.

Ellingson said teachers were prepared to make concessions on pay, health insurance and pensions, but Walker has refused to talk to them or the state employee unions.

“We’re very willing and motivated to talk. I think it’s a far better way to do it than going for the jugular like this,” Ellingson said. “I don’t think he was elected to undermine public education in this fashion and attack workers’ rights.”

He was especially critical of taking away teachers’ right to negotiate things like class sizes and working conditions.

“You know, we are the educators. We are the ones in the schools making it happen,” he said. “This is taking away our right to be at the table and have our voice in education.”

“The big thing I would really stress is, what kind of state will we be left with?” Ellingson asked. “What kind of schools will we have? What kind of teachers will ever want to teach in Wisconsin — especially new teachers? Do we really want to become a state that doesn’t have rights for workers, with corresponding lower test scores and lower quality of life?”

He said the Hudson School District is the largest employer in St. Croix County and the reduction in school workers' income would negatively impact the local economy.

The district’s more than 350 teachers would lose an average of nearly $3,000 in annual pay, about $1 million in total, Ellingson said.

He said the district’s 300 non-union employees would lose about $500,000 in annual compensation.

The liberal Institute for Wisconsin’s Future released a report on Monday estimating that the cuts in take-home pay for some 343,000 teachers and state and local government employees will cost the state $1.1 billion in reduced annual economic activity.

The governor’s office countered with a fact sheet saying that taxpayer contributions to state employee health insurance premiums grew from $423 million in 2001 to more than $1 billion in 2011.

From 2000 to 2009, taxpayers spent about $12.6 billion on public employee pensions, while public employees contributed $55.4 million, according to the governor’s office.

In Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio, public employees pay half of the annual contributions to their pension plans, the fact sheet says.

Quick passage planned

Gov. Walker has called for the Republican-controlled Legislature to pass the budget repair bill this week.

The Madison and Milwaukee newspapers reported that thousands of protesters were converging on the capitol as a public hearing on the bill began Tuesday morning.

Security was tight as the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee began a public hearing on the major labor legislation, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report.

The beefed-up security included capitol police, State Patrol troopers, Department of Natural Resources wardens and University of Wisconsin police, the newspaper said.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and his brother, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, announced Tuesday morning that they had to votes to pass the bill.

The governor raised eyebrows recently by appointing the Fitzgeralds’ father, 68-year-old Stephen Fitzgerald, head of the Wisconsin State Patrol.

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