The Financial Elite Succeeded in Busting the Private Sector Unions; Now They're Going After the Public Sector Unions, the Last Source of Middle Class in the Socialist States of America

Michigan Passes 'Financial Martial Law' Bill

March 16, 2011

Politico - Michigan legislators have approved a bill authorizing state-appointed emergency financial managers to break union contracts that struggling cities and school districts have with their workers.

Following up on the state Senate’s passage of the bill last week, the House passed the bill 62-48 on Tuesday, sending the legislation to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder for final approval. Snyder, who asked for the expanded powers for emergency financial managers, is expected to sign the bill into law.

Supporters say the bill gives the state a way to step into distressed municipalities and schools before they collapse. It also gives emergency financial managers broad authority to end employee union contracts, and to nullify elected boards and councils.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Al Pscholka, said Tuesday that it would give the state the power it needs to dig important institutions out of financial holes.

“For years we have allowed cities and schools to be on the verge of bankruptcy without any intervention,” he told Reuters. “When the state finally does arrive, in many cases we find the financial records in disarray and leave emergency managers with very few good options to balance the books.”

Republican Sen. Jack Brandenburg last week said emergency managers would be deployed only in communities that need “financial martial law.”

Democrats, meanwhile, consider the bill part of a broader attack on public sector unions and on collective bargaining that has also been the subject of debate in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and elsewhere.

“Michigan politicians have capitalized on our state’s budgetary woes in order to ram through legislation that rather than create jobs, takes away even more rights and resources from Michiganders and instead gives an unprecedented amount of power into those connected to the governor,” Michigan AFL-CIO president Mark Gaffney said in a statement. “As hundreds of thousands have chanted in Wisconsin, ‘This is not what democracy looks like.’”

The Detroit school system is currently under emergency financial management, and several Michigan cities have been under similar arrangements in the past.

Californians Side with Jerry Brown in Epic Budget Battle, Poll Says

Republican lawmakers are blocking Gov. Jerry Brown's attempts to put a tax-rate extension before voters this summer. But a new Field Poll shows Californians back Brown's plan.

March 16, 2011

Christian Science Monitor - California Gov. Jerry Brown received a boost today in his attempts to move forward on a key part of his budget plan.

The results of a new Field Poll amount to a rebuke of Republican state legislators who are blocking Governor Brown's bid to call a special election in June. Brown wants to put before voters his proposal to extend for five more years the one-cent increase in the state sales tax, the 0.5 percent increase in vehicle license fees, and the 0.25 percent increase in personal income taxes.

Some 58 percent of poll respondents said they supported Brown's plan; 39 percent said they were opposed to it.

The tax-rate extension is central to Brown's fiscal year 2012 budget, which seeks to address a $26 billion deficit. The taxes would account for $12.5 billion of the shortfall, and cuts set to go before the Legislature Wednesday would account for another $12 billion.

With time running short before a state budget deadline, Brown urgently needs four Republicans – two in the Assembly and two in the Senate – to back his plans. So far, he has won no converts.

“The poll indicates that there seems to be a disconnect between lawmakers and the electorate,” says Jessica Levinson, political reform director for the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. “While much of the electorate lives in the center, politically, lawmakers are more strongly liberal or conservative. Clearly a large percentage of the electorate does not feel at home with either party.”

Brown's plan has hit crunch time. He wants to hold the special election by June 7 so the Legislature can make the state-mandated budget deadline of June 15. But the state requires 131 days advance notice by law – though it has held a special election on as few as 88 days advance notice in the past.

The more worrying deadline, however, might be June 30, when the tax extensions expire. After that, they would need to be reimposed from scratch as pure increases – something that the poll suggests Californians might frown upon.

By a 55-to-43 percent margin, respondents said they did not want to pay higher taxes.

“However by a 61 percent to 37 percent margin, voters agree with the statement, 'I would be willing to extend the temporary tax increases enacted several years ago to help the state balance its budget,' ” the poll summary said.

Brown needs two-thirds of state lawmakers to back his plans, and Democrats are two votes shy of that supermajority in both houses. Republican lawmakers have said they are against any plan to put the extension before voters.

“We don’t buy into the myth that the answer for California’s budget deficit is half spending cuts and half tax extensions,” says Sabrina Lockhart, spokeswoman for Republican Assemblywoman Connie Conway.

Adds Mike Zimmerman, chief of staff for Republican Assemblyman Martin Garrick:

Democrats "don’t have the political courage to make the cuts that would bring our spending in line with the state of the economy."

Reports suggest that the California Republican Assembly, a conservative advocacy group, wants any Republicans who back Brown's plan labeled "traitorous Republicans-in-name-only." The group is expected to forward this proposal at the state party convention in Sacramento this weekend.

Negotiations between Brown and five Republican lawmakers ended in acrimony Monday.

“There is a stark contrast between the public and the Republican negotiators,” says Barbara O’Connor, director emeritus of the Institute for Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento.

Ohio 'Jobs Budget': Adding Insult to Injury for Labor Unions?

Ohio is already considering a Wisconsin-like bill to take on labor unions. Now Gov. John Kasich is proposing a budget that could significantly cut union ranks.

March 16, 2011

Christian Science Monitor - Ohio Gov. John Kasich's "Jobs Budget" for fiscal year 2012 includes no tax increases and makes significant cuts to local governments, school districts, and health-care providers to shore up a $8 billion deficit.

The budget has caught national attention because it follows the Ohio Legislature's effort to rein in unions through a bill similar to the one passed in Wisconsin. The bill has passed the Senate, and Governor Kasich says he will sign it if it passes the House as expected. Critics say Kasich’s budget would be a further blow to labor and is a stealth way for the government to erode union membership.

But labor is hardly the only target in Kasich's budget. It cuts state funding to local government from $665 million in 2011 to $339 million in 2013. State money to primary and secondary schools would be trimmed by 12.1 percent in 2012 and 7.6 percent the following year. Higher education funding would be cut 13.1 percent each year. And it would lower Medicaid funding by $1.4 billion by reducing payments to nursing homes and hospitals.

Kasich says statewide cuts are needed to make the state “much more efficient.”

“We’re going to take a look at how much government we have in this state,” he added.

Union supporters say the budget will lessen their ranks. Pete Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association, told the Columbus Dispatch Wednesday that the budget constraints will lead to the loss of 6,000 nursing home jobs.

“You can’t pull out that much without losing jobs – 70 percent of our costs are labor – and it’s kind of ironic that the governor is saying this is a jobs budget,” Mr. Van Runkle said.

The budget proposals also establish new measures for the hiring and firing public school teachers, such as no longer allowing seniority to determine which teachers are laid off. Additionally, they allow parents or teachers to take over a school district if performance levels put it in the bottom 5 percent of the state for three years.

Such proposals come in addition to a bill passed Friday by the state Senate but still being debated by the House. The bill limits public union rights, which will affect over 360,000 state workers, from local government employees to firefighters, police officers, and public school teachers.

Like the bill signed last week by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the Ohio bill limits collective bargaining rights for wages. The bill also eliminates the rights of public workers to strike and establishes pay increases by merit only, not seniority.

On Sunday, Kasich told reporters that the bill is “not an attack” on union workers in his state.

“What we are doing in this state is designed to make sure that your kids have a future in this state – that your kids can stay in this state, that they can have jobs in this state, and that your family can be prosperous,” he said.

A poll released Monday by the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati shows that the majority of Ohio residents disagree with how the governor designed his budget. Fifty-three percent reported they want “a combination of tax increase and state spending reductions” to balance the budget and that 35 percent want just “reductions on state spending on programs and services.”

Among those who chose answers that involved a reductions in programs and services, 33 percent said they wanted local governments to take the greatest hit in funding, followed by prisons and public safety, colleges and universities, and health care for the elderly.