JS goes all in for anti-Milwaukee drive

The JS today calls for lifting residency requirements for all school district and city employees, on the theory that many of them won’t move out of the city.

Yup. And the paper should give away its content on the Internet, on the theory that some people will still subscribe to the dead tree edition.

Oh, wait!!! The JS did that! We can all be relieved that there are still some subscribers to the paper paper and that the JS suffered no negative consequences from the change. It’s all about freedom! People should be totally free to take what they want from the paper and give absolutely nothing in return, just like city employees should be able to take their paychecks to the suburbs and give Milwaukee nothing in return!

The JS also opines that an MPS teacher won’t be any less dedicated if he or she lives in a suburb.

Yup, and those Internet JS readers are no less dedicated, either. It’s just that they also no longer have any responsiblity for paying the costs of staff, newsprint or anything else that goes into making a newspaper. They have absolutely no skin in the game and are able to totally externalize the the newspaper’s costs of doing business — isn’t that great for the paper? Everyone’s happy! Except maybe those newspaper staffers who lost their jobs, or the Journal Communications shareholders who have been financially ruined, or newspaper readers who see their favorite daily spiral downward in both quantity and quality.

Wow. It’s a great deal, isn’t it?

It’s odd how folks argue that working stiffs should pay more and more of their health care costs because it gives them some economic interest in keeping their health costs low and so they are more likely to use medical services only when they are really needed. Yet, when it comes the city, there is apparently no need for the folks who earn their living from it to make any sort of investment to keep it healthy.

Go figure.

The Walker budget — Part 2

Here is a presentation on the impacts of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget on Milwaukee Public Schools, as given by the district Finance folks during Thursday night’s Strategic Planning and Budget Committee meeting.

A cut of a cool $74 million.

Ald. Michael Murphy, meanwhile, said that his very rough, very back-of-the-envelope estimate is that the governor’s budget will be a $30 million hit to the city.

What if there IS a strike?

This is part 2 of “Points Well Made” from Monday’s meeting of the Common Council’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee. The committee was discussing Gov. Scott Walker’s brutal proposal to strip collective bargaining rights from public employees.

Ald. Robert Bauman: “What’s the remedy if all our forestry and sanitation workers strike with the next big snowfall?”

City Labor Negotiator Troy Hamblin: “The new law says if they’re gone for three days we have the ability to terminate them.”

Bauman: “Then what’s our remedy?”

(Laughter)

Committee Chairman Ald. Ashanti Hamilton: “Cause the snow is still there.”

Hamblin: “I don’t know. I just — I don’t know.”

City lobbyist Jennifer Gonda: “That is exactly the point I was making. There are some practical implications here that, frankly, weren’t well thought out in the drafting of the bill.”

City strategy on Walker bill revealed ! (?)

Ald. Robert Bauman raised an interesting question duringMonday’s meeting of the Common Council’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee.

“Is that whole arrangement subject to an equal protection challenge?” he asked. He was referring to the way Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting bill treated the police union (which would be able to arbitrate on an issue-by-issue basis under Walker’s bill) is treated better than even the firefighters’ union (still with collective bargaining rights, but no issue-by-issue arbitration under the Walker bill) and every other city union (totally screwed under the Walker bill).

Bauman’s question is met with a momentary silence that said it all.

“Very good,” he said then.

“Closed session,” Committee Chair Ald. Ashanti Hamilton told him.