Tag Archives: wisconsin

All About the Water

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The governors of the Great Lakes states recently approved a request by a Wisconsin city to draw water from Lake Michigan after its existing water supply dried up. But because the city isn’t in the watershed of the Great Lakes, the two Canadian provinces that share Great Lakes water rights say the request should be denied.

Waukesha, Wisconsin will be allowed to tap Lake Michigan for up to 8.2 million gallons per day once it completes a $207 million pipeline project that would draw in lake water and return fully-treated wastewater.

Delegates for the governors of Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York gave their unanimous consent to the first formal request to divert water outside the Great Lakes basin during a meeting of the compact council.

The 2008 compact prohibits water from being sent outside the basin watershed. Communities like Waukesha, located over the line but within a straddling county, can apply under a limited exception.

The eight governors approved the request over the objection of widespread opposition. Mayors, legislators, policy-makers and citizens around the Great Lakes have worried about the precedent Waukesha’s application represented.

Waukesha is under a court-ordered deadline to provide safe drinking water by mid-2018. The city draws most of its water from a deep aquifer that is contaminated with unsafe levels of radium, a naturally occurring carcinogen. The city has a population of about 70,000 people.

Kiplinger warns that more water conflicts will flare up, citing California, India, South Africa and the Middle East among the likely areas of dispute.

Making the Most of the Middle

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Business direction background with two people

The Indiana Chamber Foundation conducted research on Indiana middle-market firms nearly a decade ago and initiated programming efforts (that continue today) to help grow those companies.

Now, American Express and Dun & Bradstreet offer the Middle Market Power Index.

The latest report rates Indiana fourth for growth in the number of middle market firms – defined as between $10 million and $1 billion in annual revenues) from 2011 to 2016. The current 3,916 firms in this category constitute an increase of more than 101% from five years earlier.

While small businesses (less than $10 million in revenues in this case) comprise more than 98% of all businesses, Indiana is one of 10 states – in a somewhat Midwest-dominated category – in which middle market firms comprise a greater than average share of companies. The numbers: Illinois and Wisconsin, 1.5% share; Michigan and New Jersey, 1.3%; Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Dakota, New York and Ohio, 1.2% each.

Maybe part of the explanation for the above is that middle market firms are much more likely to be found in manufacturing (18%) and wholesale trade (17%).

Just as the Chamber found previously, these firms makes an outstanding economic contribution. While comprising just less than 1% of all businesses, they employ more than one in four workers (27%) in the private sector and contribute 26% of revenues.

It Was Big (Ten); It Can Be Bigger

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In the college football world, a lot has happened since last Saturday’s Big Ten Championship game unfolded in Indianapolis for the second consecutive year. (More on that in a minute). Northern Illinois crashed the Bowl Championship Series party, creating a venom that is usually reserved for teams that are on the outside looking in when it comes to the NCAA basketball tournament.

The coach who won that Big Ten title game has bolted Wisconsin for Arkansas in an unexpected move. Notre Dame, Ball State and Purdue learned their bowl destinations, with the Boilermakers hiring a new coach — from that same no-respect Mid-American Conference as Northern Illinois and Ball State. (In case, you didn ‘t know I’m a Ball State grad and proud to be making the trip to Florida for the always popular Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl).

But my focus is back to Indiana and the business of sports. Yes, the 41,000-plus in attendance at Lucas Oil Saturday night was a dramatic drop from more than 62,000 a year earlier. Yes, TV ratings were down (falling almost as fast as the Nebraska defenders as Wisconsin running backs piled up more than 500 yards in a 70-31 victory). Yes, there is concern despite Indy being in the middle of a five-year contract to serve as host. Many say the attendance problem would have been solved if undefeated Ohio State had not been on probation, but that falls into the category of things we can’t control.

I volunteered both Friday and Saturday at the Big Ten Fanfest at the Indiana Convention Center and attended the game. A few observations.

  • Wisconsin and Nebraska fans showed up and they liked what they saw. I talked with numerous parents and family members who, like so many before them, truly appreciated downtown Indianapolis and all its amenities. They enjoyed Georgia Street before the game and they, at least on the Wisconsin side, enjoyed a winning effort in Lucas Oil for the second straight year.
  • Yes, this is only anecdotal, but I witnessed far fewer fans from the Hoosier state taking part in either the Fanfest or the game. On a smaller scale, the Fanfest was similar to the NFL Experience that took place in conjunction with Super Bowl XLVI earlier this year. An opportunity seemed to be missed in not generating more interest and participation on a local or regional level.
  • These events, and many others, bring a true excitement and economic impact to downtown. The benefits both in the short term and in further establishing the Circle City as a destination spot are numerous.

Let’s allow the creative people who do such a good job bringing these sports championships here to work on ways to bring more fans into the fold. And if you’re looking for something else to do in late November/early December on a post-Thanksgiving weekend, give the Big Ten and its championship a good hard look in coming years.

Governors Faced with Difficult Medicaid Decision

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The Medicaid expansion decision for each state is one of several critical aspects of the Affordable Care Act, which was recently deemed Constitutional by the Supreme Court. Although federal dollars are at stake, it’s not a given that states (including Indiana) will agree to the changes to the program for low-income residents. Stateline offers a strong summary.

Although the lineup is shifting, more than a dozen Republican governors have suggested they might decline to participate in the Medicaid expansion. Governors in Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Texas, South Carolina and Wisconsin have said they will not participate. GOP governors in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Virginia indicate they are leaning in that direction.

Meanwhile, about a dozen Democratic governors have said their states will opt in. The rest have not declared their intentions.

According to data from the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government would spend $923 billion on a full Medicaid expansion between 2014 and 2022, and states would spend about $73 billion. But nobody is sure how many people will enroll in the Medicaid expansion. According to a 2010 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, states’ share of the Medicaid expansion could range anywhere from $20 billion to $43 billion in the first five years.

According to Kaiser, most states opting into the expansion likely would have to ramp up their Medicaid spending between 2014 and 2019, but four would spend less (Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont) and several others would have to boost state spending only slightly.

Mississippi’s Medicaid program, for example, cost a total of $4 billion in 2011—the federal government paid $3 billion, and the state paid $1 billion. Expanding that program to everybody at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line would cost the state as much as $581 million between 2014 and 2019, according to Kaiser’s 2010 study.  That’s a 6.4 percent increase in state spending compared to what Mississippi would spend without an expansion

The day after the Supreme Court ruled the Medicaid expansion was optional, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, a Republican, said: “Although I am continuing to review the ruling by the Supreme Court, I would resist any expansion of Medicaid that could result in significant tax increases or dramatic cuts to education, public safety and job creation.”

Does Wisconsin Illustrate Fading Role of Unions?

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Wisconsin public sector unions don’t like the rules that emerged from a legislative battle earlier this year. As a result, many failed to file for recertification. A professor and former legislator terms it: "Welcome to the future Wisconsin." Stateline reports:

Major unions in Wisconsin have opted to allow their official collective bargaining status to lapse rather than file for “recertification” under controversial new rules enacted earlier this year.

The decision raises serious questions about the relevance of state workers’ unions in Wisconsin politics and governance. Wisconsin has long been a union stronghold — and was in fact the first state to require collective bargaining for state workers. That changed when Republican Governor Scott Walker and the state legislature re-wrote bargaining rules, triggering protests that captured national attention for weeks.

The new law allows unions to retain official collective bargaining status if they undergo an annual vote of represented workers to determine that they still want the union to represent them in formal talks with the state. That’s a high hurdle. For one thing, holding an annual election is an expensive proposition for a union. And in order to prevail, unions must receive votes from a majority of represented workers, not just a majority of the votes cast.

The deadline to recertify passed last week. While some small unions filed paperwork, unions representing the majority of state workers allowed the deadline to pass without filing with the state as required by the new law.

“I think the passing of the deadline was a major moment and now we can say, ‘Welcome to the future Wisconsin,’” Mordecai Lee, a professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and former state legislator, told Reuters.

The decision not to subject themselves to the recertification process indicates that unions are betting that, under the new rules of the game, the costs of collective bargaining may outweigh the benefits. Those unions that do successfully pass the recertification test will only be able to negotiate over salary increases to keep pace with inflation — they can’t negotiate over not workplace conditions, benefits or more significant salary bumps, as they could before. At the same time, the resources available to state unions have diminished because unions are no longer allowed to take automatic deductions from represented workers’ paychecks. All contributions are voluntary.

The Associated Press reports that while union leaders have refused to say how many members are voluntarily continuing to pay dues, layoffs of union staff have already begun. The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the statewide teachers union, has laid off 42 people — 40 percent of its staff.

Indy News Anchor Files Complaint Against Union

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WRTV-6 news anchor Trisha Shepherd is one of many American workers who believe she should actually receive the money she earns rather than a union she would prefer not to belong to. Most telling is her quote that she’s not trying to make a political statement, just trying to protect herself. While unions have every right to exist, how can forced membership be justified? The Indy Star reports:

A news program anchor for WRTV (Channel 6) has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the union representing workers at the Indianapolis television station.

Trisha Shepherd, who anchors the evening newscasts, claims in a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board that the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is illegally trying to collect dues or fees from her.

Shepherd’s two-page complaint, filed this week with the NLRB office in Indianapolis, has echoes of the controversy over right-to-work legislation that failed to pass the Indiana General Assembly.

Unions consider such laws to be politically motivated attempts to weaken the labor movement by cutting their ability to charge fees even to nonmembers who receive the benefits of collective bargaining.

Shepherd said Thursday that her complaint to the NLRB isn’t intended as a test case on right-to-work issues.

She said the controversy in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states did not motivate her complaint against AFTRA.

"This is not intended as a political statement," she said.

"I’m just like any other citizen trying to protect myself," Shepherd said.

The union has been trying to collect $1,032 as of April 18. It hired a Pennsylvania collection company to try to get her to pay, according to NLRB filings.

Is the U.S. a Nation of Takers?

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Some chilling statistics from a Wall Street Journal article illustrating an alarming paradigm shift in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The conclusion seems to be: As long as the manufacturing sector is dwarfed by the current size and continued growth of the public sector, American states are in for a bevy of financial problems. So anyway, this doesn’t seem too encouraging. If you have a take on this that’s borderline positive, please share in the comments section as we could all use some good news after last night’s game.

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida’s ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York’s.

Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker.

Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world—at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That’s less than half of the state’s 1.48 million government employees.

Hat tip to Chamber staffer Glenn Harkness for the article link.

And the Top Manufacturing City is …

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No matter the math, Indiana still generally ranks as the most manufacturing intensive state in the nation. That means we have more manufacturing jobs based on our population/workforce. Wisconsin and North Carolina are typically in the same neighborhood.

Manufacturers News Inc. changed the scope recently and put out a top 50 list of most manufacturing jobs by city. Certainly population is a bigger factor here, but there are still some interesting numbers.

The top 10 (list below), lost more than 95,000 jobs between August 2008 and the end of 2010. Big movers included Detroit (falling from 29th to 45th) and Seattle (moving up to 34th from 46th). Five from California (L.A., San Diego, San Jose, Irvine and Santa Clara) made the top 50.

Top 10 Manufacturing Cities

  1. Houston: 228,226
  2. New York: 139,127
  3. Chicago: 108,692
  4. Los Angeles: 83,719
  5. St. Louis: 83,123
  6. Dallas: 81,626
  7. Cincinnati: 81,364
  8. Indianapolis: 79,566
  9. Phoenix: 77,322
  10. San Diego: 70,709

Others Start Paying Attention to Right-to-Work

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The Indiana Chamber’s right-to-work study has gained attention in neighboring states, including Ohio.

The Columbus Dispatch repeats key findings and says that some Ohio lawmakers would prefer their state, not Indiana, become the 23rd to join the RTW fold. Sure, the article (as it should) presents both sides. Only the arguments against, as usual, are more rhetoric than facts.

There have also been rumors of RTW talk in Kentucky, Wisconsin and Minnesota, among others. As one Ohio legislator reaffirmed, the first Midwestern state to pass RTW will become a "jobs oasis."

We would prefer that oasis be a Hoosier one.

More States Challenge Legality of Health Care Law

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It seems the controversial federal health care law is not going through without serious rebuttal from what is now over 50% of America’s states. A state press release has more on the ongoing lawsuit and Indiana’s role:

Today six additional states sought to join the group of 20 plaintiff states — including Indiana – that have brought a legal challenge to the new federal health care law. Attorney General Greg Zoeller, who joined the lawsuit on behalf of Indiana in May, issued this statement:

“Now that the number of plaintiff states has expanded from 20 to 26, it underscores that this lawsuit is widely understood to have merit. After the health care law was ruled unconstitutional in a separate lawsuit in Virginia that raised many of the same arguments, no one now can claim that this legal challenge is a frivolous lawsuit,” Zoeller said.

“Regardless of the eventual ruling by the federal court in our case, it is important that the states have an opportunity as sovereign entities to challenge the constitutionality of the federal government’s claims of authority. Under our federalist system, this respectful legal challenge is a proper check on the role of the federal government,” Zoeller added.

“We and the other plaintiff states contend the federal mandate that individuals purchase a private health insurance product or face a penalty is unconstitutional, and that ultimately this question should be decided by the United States Supreme Court. Having met with Hoosiers across our state, I agree that some type of health insurance reform is needed in this country, but implementing it ought to be done in a constitutional manner,” Zoeller said.

In addition to Indiana, the group of 20 plaintiff states bringing the legal challenge included Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington, Idaho, South Dakota, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Alaska and North Dakota. Also joining as plaintiffs were two private individuals and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

Today, the plaintiffs filed a motion with the court to amend the complaint so that six more states can join the case: Ohio, Kansas, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Maine and Iowa, bringing the total plaintiff states to 26. The U.S. Department of Justice represents the federal government defendants.