Wisconsin's parties

I'm kind of kicking myself that I haven't been devoting my sabbatical time to researching partisanship in the Wisconsin statehouse. As it happens, this is on my research agenda, just not for this year. I've been interested in the state for some time since -- like California, Colorado, Nebraska, and others -- Wisconsin is a state where Progressive anti-party traditions run strong yet the parties have developed ways of adapting to rules designed to weaken them. Wisconsin was home to the first open primaries and campaign finance restrictions, yet it has one of the most polarized legislatures in the country.

I don't have a full grasp on the sources of legislative partisanship in Wisconsin yet. I conducted some interviews with legislators and lobbyists there a few years ago, but I really have a lot to follow up on. The stories I was hearing from respondents suggested that the source of partisanship could primarily found within the chamber. There is a great deal of party discipline actually enforced by party leaders within the legislature. Now, that perspective could be an artifact of the location of my interviews -- Madison. But it's being backed up today. Bringing an entire party legislative caucus out of the state and keeping them there away from their families requires party discipline. Voting for a dramatic change in labor policy when public opinion screams not to requires party discipline.

In the next year or so, I hope to investigate this further. If, say, a Democratic Wisconsin senator were having second thoughts about continuing to hide in Illinois, what's keeping him there? Is it the fear of disappointing his colleagues? The fear of a recall by disappointed Democrats in his district? The fear of labor unions who would never back his campaign again? (Similarly, what fate will befall Sen. Dale Schultz, the one Republican who opposed the effort to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights?) I'm sure all of these things play a role, but I'm just kind of curious why party discipline is so much greater there than in almost any other state.

How legislators talk

Here's a lovely letter from Wisconsin's Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald to Democratic Senator Mark Miller, the minority leader, currently hiding somewhere in Illinois. An excerpt:

Your grasp of reality, and control of your caucus as minority leader, continues to amaze me.... Your stubbornness in trying to ignore the last election and protect the broken status quo is truly shameful. While we wait for you and your colleagues to finally show up, Senate Republicans continue to stand ready to do the job we were elected to do, here in Wisconsin. I hope you are enjoying your vacation, and your vacation from reality.

For the record, concerns about incivility among elected officials tend to be way overblown. Even if legislators don't like each other, they have longstanding rules and customs that allow them to address the people's business and make decisions about competing interests. I think it's fair to say that those rules are under considerable strain in Wisconsin right now.

(h/t Barry Burden)

Does shamelessness have a price?

Jonathan Bernstein doubts that movement conservatives are winning just because they're so adept at repeating talking points without shame.

When pundits can pick up and drop arguments at the drop of the hat without worrying about long-term consistency, it may make it easier to appear to be winning at any moment, but at the cost of actually fighting for policies they believe in. I don't know; perhaps most of this stuff is only surface-deep and doesn't really have any effect beyond really efficiently conveying to people disposed to agree with conservatives what it is that they're suppose to agree with right now. But the idea that it's a major net plus for conservatives, I think, is unproven and highly unlikely.

I think there are other prices to these stances, which are partially attributable to what has been termed "epistemic closure." Just a few years ago, Republicans would happily criticize teachers' unions but were always very quick to profess their love for the teachers themselves. No more. Now, conservative pundits are regularly going on Fox to demonize teachers and talking about how lavish a $50,000 salary (plus benefits!) is for someone who doesn't work summers. Yes, many of these same pundits also pointed out quite recently how tragically low a $250,000 salary was for Wall Street CEOs (and they didn't mention the benefits then), but hypocrisy isn't really the point here.

The point is that when conservative pundits go on conservative news outlets and bash teachers, conservative viewers get the impression that it's okay to make these arguments publicly. And politically, that's a really dumb idea. Teachers are incredibly popular. What's more, there are a lot of them, and they don't all live in liberal neighborhoods and they aren't all Democrats. Conservatives are alienating a large and very sympathetic constituency when they make these sorts of arguments, and if all they watch is Fox, they probably don't even know it.

Is uncertainty really the problem?

I found this AP coverage of possible teacher layoffs in Wisconsin rather confusing. Here's how the author, Patrick Condon, opens the story:

Wisconsin school districts are warning teachers that their contracts might not be renewed as Gov. Scott Walker's plan to cut nearly all public employees' collective bargaining rights remains in limbo.

The proposal took a concrete step forward Friday when Republicans in the state Assembly abruptly approved the bill and sent it to the Senate after three straight days of debate and amid confusion among Democrats. But with all 14 Democratic state senators still out of state, another stalemate awaits the measure that Walker insists will help solve budget deficits and avoid mass layoffs.

Condon makes it sound like the reason for the layoff warnings is uncertainty, which has been created by Democratic senators leaving the state. Gov. Walker's proposal to strip the unions of collective bargaining rights, conversely, is portrayed in this story as the way to avoid the layoffs. Condon then continues,

The legislative gridlock prompted the Wisconsin Association of Schools Boards to warn districts that they have until Monday to warn teachers of possible nonrenewal of contracts. That's because if Walker's bill becomes law, it would void current teacher collective bargaining agreements that lay out protocol and deadlines for conducting layoffs. [Emphasis added].

Okay, now it sounds like the layoff warnings went out not because of uncertainty, but because if the governor's proposal becomes law, teachers will lose their job protections and school districts will lose funds to keep them employed. That's how one teacher interviewed for the story sees it:

Despite the uncertainty created by the absence of the Senate Democrats, who fled more than a week ago to block a vote on Walker's bill, Marshfield kindergarten teacher Jane Cooper said she blames Republicans.

"They are trying to bust our union," Cooper said. "That is huge."

Negotiations are difficult to cover, since different sides will interpret events differently and try to spin reporters. But this article doesn't seem to know what it's saying.

Public unions and performance

To follow up on my previous post on public sector unions (also see John Sides' summary of recent posts on the topic), I stumbled across this recent survey by 24/7 Wall Street of the best- and worst-run states. According to the report,

Our writers looked at hundreds of data sets ranging from debt rating agency reports to violent crime rates, unemployment trends and median income. Of those, we chose what we considered to be the 10 most important ranking of financial and overall government management.

Below is a scatterplot showing the relationship between public sector unionization and the state rankings by 24/7 Wall Street. I have plotted the latter variable in reverse order so that better-run states (those with lower rankings) appear toward the top of the graph.

The chart suggests a modest but positive relationship between the two: greater public unionization is associated with better governance. Now, this doesn't mean the relationship is causal, and the correlation is low and falls short of statistical significance. Plus, there are plenty of other surveys of state governance out there. But I just wanted to throw this out there as possible evidence of the sort of benefits that public unions can provide, even if they cost the public more. At the very least, there's no evidence here that public unions are hurting the states.

Public unions and debt

John Sides has but together some graphs examining the relationship between the extent of unionization in the public sector and a state's debt load. I find the one reproduced below the most telling:

John is wise to point out that there are probably other important variables to consider here, and also that the relationship described in these plots is descriptive, not necessarily causal. The point is well taken, but let's just suppose for a moment that this relationship is causal, and that greater unionization leads to greater public debt load. Just how shocking should this revelation be?

Not very. The main benefits that union membership conveys are higher pay and improved working conditions, both of which cost the employer (in this case, the public) more. So if a greater percentage of your state's work force is unionized, you're probably going to be paying more for the labor. And since labor costs are usually contractual and not easily cut in the short run, states with greater labor costs will go into debt more quickly when revenues take a dive. This shouldn't be particularly controversial or surprising. 

What the evidence above doesn't show is what citizens get by paying more for public labor. With higher pay, you can usually attract better trained workers, turnover will be lower, services will be of higher quality, etc. (By the way, the two states with the lowest public sector unionization rates -- Louisiana and Mississippi -- have the highest corruption rates.) 

Sometimes good things -- even when they come from the government -- cost more. A country that devotes 1% of its budget to defense will probably have a lower debt load than one that devotes 20%, and a country that slashes education spending will no doubt see less red on its balance sheets than one that doesn't. But where would you rather raise your kids?

Unions

I've never figured labor unions for angels, but it is a sacred principle in our family that one does not cross a picket line.  Picketers are risking their own livelihoods for a chance at a better work environment using the one advantage they have over corporations -- collectivity.  Whether we agree with the union's goals or not, I teach my children, we must respect the risks they are taking and honor their struggle.

Or so I thought.  I have to say that this Daily Show segment, in which we learn that a UFCW local is hiring temporary picketers at non-union wages, was an eye-opener for me.  Kudos to Comedy Central for providing actual investigative journalism.

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