Ohio Set to Vote on Ending Public Union Rights - Bill would End collective bargaining for Public-Sector Workers

From [HERE] COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Senate is expected this week to consider a revised version of a bill to end collective bargaining for public-sector workers, and thousands of union members who gathered outside the Statehouse here Tuesday said they were bracing for the worst.

“This is going to get passed and people will sit back and say, ‘What happened?’ ” said Mark Horton, a retired firefighter who is treasurer of the Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters. “Once it’s done, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.”

Unlike similar legislation in Wisconsin, which exempts police officers and firefighters, the Ohio bill includes them, making the measure particularly contentious. The bill is expected to be taken up by the Ohio Senate as soon as Thursday. But Republicans say legislation that seeks to eliminate long-held union prerogatives are part of broader austerity measures intended to reduce crippling budget deficits, of which public employee pensions have played a growing role.

Mr. Horton said rhetoric suggesting that union members were overpaid and pampered was unfair.

“The upper class has done a great job of pitting the middle class against itself,” he said. “I get a pension of $3,700 a month. If someone thinks I’m riding high on the hog, that’s just not the case.”

Last week the president of the Senate, Tom Niehaus, said the changes would include the right to bargain over wages, but would also prohibit strikes for all public workers. Union leaders have said they oppose the bill in any form, as it is political strike against public workers, whose unions have traditionally supported Democrats.

In Wisconsin, the political divide was expected to only widen on Tuesday as Gov. Scott Walker prepared to announce his budget proposal, which is expected to cut $1 billion in aid to local government over two years.

By early Tuesday, critics of Mr. Walker were already gathering, as they have for two weeks, outside the Capitol. Security was tight, and only some people were allowed to enter. Mr. Walker, a Republican whose proposal to cut collective bargaining rights for public workers and increase their pension and health care contributions has set off a firestorm here, will present his budget in the state Assembly chambers. Some Democrats were already predicting that the cuts in his new budget might lead to still more protests, more disagreement, more of a split in this state’s Republican-dominated Capitol.

In his two-week-long standoff with Democrats and state employee unions, Mr. Walker has pressured 14 Democratic state senators, who have fled the state, to return to deal with what he says are important fiscal deadlines that would otherwise pass this week and harm the state.

But the Democrats are staying put, in Illinois, to avoid a quorum and thus stall a proposal by Mr. Walker that would strip public employee unions of nearly all their collective bargaining powers, allow publicly owned power plants to be sold with what critics say is little guarantee of fair value, and give the governor’s appointees what public health advocates describe as expansive new powers to limit health care coverage for lower-income residents.

“One day left to save the state $165 million,” said the governor’s office on Monday, announcing the latest deadline.

If Democrats do not return by Tuesday, taxpayers would lose an option to save that money through a “refinancing,” the governor’s office said, citing the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that conducts budget analysis.

The bureau’s director, Bob Lang, did not return a call Monday. Nor did the governor’s office.

But the assertion that taxpayers are on the verge of losing $165 million appeared nowhere in the analysis of the bill.

According to that analysis, which the bureau completed two weeks ago, the bill calls for restructuring $165 million in debt. Instead of paying the debt off in May, it would mean new debt would be issued, deferring the repayments. The restructuring would increase debt payments over the next two years by almost $30 million in principal and interest.

The Tuesday deadline appeared to be based on another analysis by the bureau that suggested that for the restructuring to happen, the state would have to order it done at least two weeks before March 16.

But nowhere in either analysis does it suggest that taxpayers would otherwise lose $165 million — just that the state would not be able to push back the repayment of that amount to a later date. The debt would still be owed, and taxpayers would still be on the hook.

As the dispute continued, about 60 protesters remained in the Capitol around the clock. Although the authorities had said over the weekend that they would remove all protesters by Sunday night, they decided to let those inside remain. But on Monday they blocked additional demonstrators from entering, prompting Democrats to accuse Mr. Walker’s administration of trying to silence opponents of his bill.

The governor also says the state will have to begin the process of laying off 1,500 employees later this week. This is also the Democrats’ fault, Mr. Walker says.

Their “failure to return to work and cast their votes will lead to more painful and aggressive spending cuts in the very near future,” the governor’s office said in the statement.

But to the Democrats leading the opposition in the Senate, the deadlines — and the premise for the governor’s bill — are largely phony.

Instead, the Democrats say, the governor is trying to inflate a crisis to make fundamental changes in the way the state works. Most of his bill has little to do with current budget issues.

“These are the first steps he needs to take to privatize the state,” said State Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the 14 Democrats.

Mr. Erpenbach expressed frustration that the governor had not done more to acknowledge that the state’s major public employee unions had agreed to sizable cuts in workers’ take-home pay — 6 percent to 8 percent on average — by diverting more of their paychecks to pay for health care and pension plans.

“He’s not being honest,” Mr. Erpenbach said. “Piece by piece, public employees will be shown the door and then replaced by private contractors with no accountability.”

Another Democratic senator, Chris Larson, called the governor’s bill a “Trojan horse” whose “sleeper provisions” would allow the power plants theoretically to be sold “for a buck.” He said the governor had a history of using scare tactics during political disputes.

Other critics of the governor’s proposal say the fiscal problems could be eased by increasing taxes on the state’s highest earners and corporations.

But the governor has not backed down, and the Democrats in the Senate are still in Illinois.