| Alliance on Board AFL-CIO Health
Plan Members of the Wisconsin
Alliance of Cities voted unanimously Nov. 7 to endorse the AFL-CIO's proposed Wisconsin
Health Care Plan, which would create a system patterned after the Worker's Compensation
Program to provide health insurance to all employed people in the state.
Mayor John O. Norquist of Milwaukee asked
fellow Alliance members to endorse the AFL-CIO plan, which was analyzed by Milwaukee's
employee benefits department and found to be actuarially sound.
"We have a system (today) that's very expensive, very inefficient, and it's killing
us," Mayor Norquist said. He said the AFL-CIO plan would be "really good for
municipal governments."
The package would subsidize benefits to employees of small businesses and the
self-employed without causing a significant increase in premiums for other participants. |
Mayor Norquist
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The AFL-CIO is still working to garner support from
businesses and others for its health-care plan, and asked the Alliance not to reveal
financial specifics of the plan.
But generally, the plan promises:
- significant savings in drug costs, even without importing
drugs from Canada;
- a substantial drop in the number of uninsured people in the
state.
- major reductions in administrative costs.
"It's scaring the health insurance people and it's
waking up the press," Mayor Norquist said.
Alliance members did have questions about specifics of the plan, and —
understanding that the proposal is likely to spark extensive discussion — endorsed
the concept rather than all the specifics. More than two dozen of the Alliance's 38 cities
were represented at the meeting.
Recognize Regional
Economies, Summit Told
MILWAUKEE — State and
local governments in Wisconsin must partner to create jobs with a focus on the strengths
and weaknesses of the state's varied regional economies, Wisconsin Economic Summit IV was
told Oct. 28.
Ed Huck
Terry Ludeman
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"We need to challenge an area to
recognize itself as a regional economic area," Ed Huck, executive director of the
Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, said at a summit workshop. "We need to create some type
of regional institution that can nuture and continue the work of regional thinking over a
long period of time." Terry Ludeman, chief
economist of the Department of Workforce Development, told the same workshop, "A
Regional Economic Growth Strategy: Does it Make Sense for Wisconsin?," that
California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts and North Carolina have organized regional
economic development efforts.
The state's economically diverse regions mean a
one-size-fits-all method of jump-starting job creation and new business in the state won't
work, he said. A regional jobs strategy would accomplish that as well as eliminate
competition among neighboring communities for the same jobs, he said.
"A regional economic focus fits Wisconsin pretty much
like a glove," Huck said. "It can and it will harness local energy and
commitment. It will reduce the Balkanization of local decision-making."
By decentralizing the state focus on economic development
and regionalizing the local focus, Wisconsin will be breathing new life into the
state-local partnership, a r evitalization that local officials across the state have been
striving for for a decade, Huck added.
"Years ago, local autonomy meant local control,"
he said. "Today it means...regional focus."
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Labor Shortage Seen in Western WisconsinWestern
Wisconsin will face labor shortages beginning in 2006, and should start planning now to
prepare for the challenge, the Western Wisconsin Workforce Development Board said in its
first annual report.
The region should deal with the changing racial and ethnic complexion of Western
Wisconsin if it is to continue to grow.
The gap between available workers and jobs is expected to be especially acute in the
health-care industry. See the La Crosse Tribune story here.
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Regionalism Cont'd
Our System of Governing is Behind
Michigan suffers from the same governmental fragmentation
that plagues Wisconsin, which exacerbates sprawl, spawns inefficiencies, stymies planning
to manage growth and hits taxpayers where it hurts the most — in the
pocketbook, according to Bruce Katz, director, of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan
Policy at the Brookings Institution.
In a speech to the Michigan Future Forum, Katz made three
points that fit Wisconsin like a glove:
- There is a fundamental disconnect between
how we live and work in America and how we govern.
- This mismatch between governance and the economy
undermines the competitiveness of places, raises the cost of doing business and delivering
services and exacerbates sprawl as well as patterns of racial and class separation.
- Change is possible and is already
occurring. States and regions can advance regional collaboration in a politically feasible
manner.
Bruce Katz
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His prescription for Michigan —
and, the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities would assert, Wisconsin as well:
- Change our culture of governance. "Governing is too important to
be left to government alone," Katz said. He said decisions on such things as
transportation should be made in concert with corporate, civic and community leaders, not
by an "insular" state Department of Transportation.
- Bolster existing regional organizations.
- Strengthen the metropolitan governance of transportation, which does as
much as any other governmental program to influence our daily lives and our social fabric.
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See a summary of Katz's speech, and a link to the full
speech, here.
| Campaign Finance
Reform — Moribund in Madison The
promise of campaign finance reform falls into the same category as a lot of politicians'
promises: it takes on a life of its own around election time but becomes moribund as soon
as the votes are counted, says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin.
Heck had predicted that reforming the way politicians pay
for their elections would be the centerpiece of the fall legislative session. Now, he
acknowledges, gay marriage, concealed weapons and special-interest give-aways
elbowed their way to the top of the legislative agenda instead.
Supporters of SB 272, the bill that would place municipal
cable and broadband services in a competitive straitjacket, have given more than $205,000
to legislators, the Capital Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
reported. |
Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
adapts famous cartoon to 2003
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| Supporters of AB 417, chiefly
contractors, have contributed nearly $1.3 million to current legislators, including
$226,856 to the bill's 17 sponsors, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign reported. And supporters of the so-called Job Creation Act 0f 2003 have
contributed nearly $7 million to legislators in the last decade, says the Democracy
Campaign, which dubbed the 114-page bill —
which was introduced one day and reported out of committee the next — the Public Input Suppression Act of 2003. See the Democracy
Campaign's press release here.
"In 1977, Wisconsin had the cleanest elections and
the most honest and untainted public policymaking process in the nation," Heck says.
"Today, our politics are conducted in a special interest cesspool, and public policy
is made behind closed doors with a campaign cash register."
See his assessment of the situation here. |
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 SB 272
Ignores Lession of Economic Summit
By Rich Eggleston
At Wisconsin Economic Summit IV last month, John C.
Morgridge, chairman of Cisco Systems Inc., told business and university leaders that
states must ensure that high-speed Internet service is available everywhere within their
borders.
"I think Wisconsin has done some of that," he told the summit. "You have to
do more."
In fact, state government in Wisconsin has failed to do what Morgridge said is essential,
and now the Legislature is moving to prevent local governments from taking his advice as
well.
SB 272, which is headed to the Senate floor, would place new roadblocks in the path of
local governments that want to fill the vacuum that exists in providing high-speed
Internet service in some parts of the state.
The bill also would protect the cable industry aginst the
possibility of increased competition, even though few cable television subscribers in
Wisconsin believe they receive good value for their subscription dollar.
The bill would further eliminate leverage that communities need in order to negotiate
better franchise agreements with cable monopolies.
The Tenuta-Hermes Corp., which the Alliance has hired to
lobby some issues, commissioned a poll on public attitudes toward cable television that
indicates that the Legislature should be enhancing consumer interests and competition in
cable television, not choking them off.
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The poll asked: "Do you consider
the price you pay for cable television to be a good value, a fair value or a poor value
for the services you receive?" Of
those who responded:
- 40% said cable was a poor value
- 29% said it was a fair value
- 9% said it was a good value
- 20% did not subscribe to cable television
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"The results of the poll are consistent
with anecdotal evidence offered by Alliance members who report abuses by cable companies
while attempting to negotiate franchise agreements," Jim Tenuta, managing partner of
Tenuta-Hermes Corp., said.
SB 272 "would eliminate the only tool a few communities have to negotiate fair
franchise agreements with monopoly cable companies," Tenuta added in a Nov. 10 memo
to Ed Huck, Alliance executive director.
Internet a Win-Win for Waupaca
By Patrick Phair
Alderman
City of Waupaca
To spark business growth and offer competitive prices to
its residents, the city of Waupaca initiated a wireless Internet service, an
infrastructure utility, much like sewer and water.
Waupaca On Line has grown steadily in the last 18 months and will be a money-maker for the
city within a couple years. Highlighted in several state newspaper and magazine articles
as “innovative,” several communities have inquired of Waupaca how they too can
provide Internet services to their residents.
Unfortunately, the local legislators are not among the interested. State Sen. Bob Welch
(R-Redgranite) and Rep. Jean Hundertmark (R-Clintonville), both representing Waupaca, have
sponsored a bill to prevent municipalities from creating their own Internet service and
force the existing ones to sell to the large cable companies.
I thought the Republican mantra was free enterprise. I thought it was an American ideal to
create competitive products with minimum governmental interference. I thought the fact the
city would earn money and help reduce the tax burden was Republican logic.
Either I’m misinformed or the telecommunication interests have contributed more than
$4,000 in political contributions to Welch and Hundertmark. I think I’d bet on the
latter.
(Editors Note: The above appeared as a letter to
the editor in the Appleton Post-Crescent.) |
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