In the wake of last spring's budget battles in Madison, many state officials and pundits are proclaiming how the "tools" given to Wisconsin's school districts and local governments have allowed those entities to offset cuts in state funding and avert the kind of massive layoffs and service cuts that have occurred in other states.
Fair enough. Whatever your view on the Budget Repair Bill and the changes to Wisconsin collective bargaining law that were approved by the Legislature, signed by the governor and ultimately affirmed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court — there's no question that these pieces of legislation have allowed school districts, counties and cities across Wisconsin to cut their labor costs.
But let's not forget that those "tools" were used to reach directly into the wallets of tens of thousands of state and local employees. And these employees — good, hard-working folks, most of whom weren't getting rich from their jobs in the first place — within the past month began feeling the impact of those changes.
All state and local employees (with the exception of police and fire — more on that later) are now feeling the pinch of a mandatory 5.8 percent pension contribution that amounts to a 5.8 percent pay cut. For many city of Two Rivers union employees, the pay cut follows two years of pay freezes. For our non-union supervisors, the pay cut follows four years of wage freezes.
Public employees who participate in the state health insurance program also are feeling the impact of a mandatory 15 percent employee co-pay on health premiums. Two Rivers city employees are not impacted by this mandate.
Moreover, it's a shame that we aren't allowed to use the mandatory pension contribution tool to reduce costs in the departments that make up about half of our tax-supported local budgets: police and fire.
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