Blame the Board, Not the Executive

Scott Walker is polishing his axe. In response to the county board's lousy budget and the employee union's stall tactics, Walker has proposed laying off 120 workers.

Walker moved, as promised, to terminate workers in parks, courthouse security and maintenance after the County Board-approved 2007 budget rejected his privatization plans and provided only partial funding for the jobs.

Good. I was hoping he'd give the union (and the board) about a week to explain how they were going to make the budget work. After that, pink slips until the county is in the black.

It's unclear exactly how Walker's departments plan to provide perimeter security screening at the courthouse complex, clean the facility and keep parks in shape without the workers or the funding.

By moving some of the dead weight from other parts of the building and forcing them to actually lift a finger or two?

His top managers will meet with him Wednesday to propose short-term privatization plans or shifting other workers into those jobs, but legal and budgetary hurdles exist, Walker said.

Yup.

AFSCME leader Richard Abelson cried foul over the layoff notice, saying the County Board clearly intended to keep the workers on the job for several months to give the union and county more time to work out a labor deal. Walker and county supervisors say the county's largest union can still save the jobs if workers agree now to pay more of their health insurance costs - the same deal that smaller county unions accepted last year.

"We are not going to be blackmailed into a contract," Abelson said.

Oh, yes you are. Scott Walker is not about to let the county be held hostage by an irresponsible county board and a out of control labor union.

Also on the table again is the idea of selling or leasing Mitchell Field. If it has to be done, I say sell it. There's no point in going half way with a lease. If the county tries to retain some kind of ownership they'll put it out for low bid operations contracts or they'll try to arrange some kind of sweetheart lease. In either case the people operating the facility won't have any stake in maintaining it. That's not good for anyone.