By: Paul Thurman
School districts cited by the Wisconsin State Journal as evidence of alleged fiscal devastation caused by Governor Scott Walker’s first budget and early policy reforms did in fact use Act 10 to achieve taxpayer savings and manage their finances, Media Trackers has discovered. Schools in Verona and Portage have, according to research compiled by the MacIver Institute, saved millions of dollars thanks to Act 10.
On Sunday, Matthew Defour of the State Journal went after Governor Walker’s upcoming budget address by misleading the public into citing a few local school districts’ budget woes without mentioning how implementing Act 10 and Walker’s 2011 budget reforms have helped those schools and taxpayers save millions. The article leads readers to believe that the reforms of the last year aren’t working by citing only a few districts’ budget shortfalls and suggesting the reforms caused the shortfalls.
The majority of Dane County school districts were able to balance their 2012-13 budgets without teacher layoffs because of Act 10. Teacher layoffs have taken place almost exclusively in districts where union contracts did not expire until later in the year or the districts refused to use the tools given to them in the collective bargaining reform.
Districts that successfully navigated the restructuring of state aid in the last budget did so primarily by increasing employee pension contributions and negotiating healthcare premium costs.
The State Journal piece declares, “Educators across Wisconsin blame 20 years of state-imposed limits on how much revenue they can generate from state aid and property taxes for perennial program cuts and increasing class sizes.” What is not mentioned is that these so-called “educators” are really union organizers, part of WEAC, the state’s infamous teachers union, who are pushing for hire taxes in their legislative agenda for this session.
Wisconsin was facing one of the largest deficits in state history under Doyle but Governor Walker’s reforms have resulted in a budget surplus of $484 million. Despite the success of Governor Walker’s budget reform’s and Act 10, The Wisconsin State Journal choose to focus primarily on a few School district’s budget problems instead of the majority of district’s in Wisconsin that has seen their budgets balanced with very few teacher layoffs.