Budget meltdown

Months after the regular legislative session, ten days into a "special" session and a little over a month away from a state government shutdown, things are still a mess at the capitol. That was the topic of the latest Front Porch podcast.

Not another no-brainer!

It's no secret that WV's budget is a hot mess. The majority-Republican legislature didn't pass one at the end of the session and there's still no deal.

Hardliners oppose any new taxes, even extremely reasonable ones like a $1.00 increase in the cigarette tax, which would both raise needed revenue and have a positive public health impact. Instead, they are talking about slashing budgets, laying off public employees, and even privatizing public colleges and universities and the Public Employees Insurance Agency.

There are some voices of reason, including this Gazette editorial, this op-ed, and  this bit of myth busting about the budget. A number of groups came together Thursday at a press conference calling for higher tobacco taxes.

It's not clear if the ideologues in the legislative majority are listening. One of the speakers at the press conference said that raising this kind of revenue was a "no-brainer." I'm not sure what this says about WV, but in my experience the no-brainers are the toughest fights of all.

Good times...not

The WV legislative session is more than half over...which is good...but the Republican leadership has spent most of its time cutting workers' wages, bashing poor people and gays, and pandering to pistol packers...which is not.

Meanwhile, their answer to the state's budget and revenue problems is draconian budget cuts to everything from public safety to K-12 to higher ed. So far, they've shown little interest in common sense solutions that would raise revenues.

Other bad ideas involve spending millions of dollars to tighten benefits and rules for programs that effect low income families and test them for drugs, an expensive policy that has basically turned up next to nothing in other states.

The fun never ends. Once again I say hitting bottom would be nice.

Get ready

Working families in West Virginia had better get ready to take some major hits--or, better, to get back to basics and stand up for themselves and each other. One hit coming is the likely push of the Republican led legislature to pass RTW (right to work for less). Another union busting move is a likely attempt to repeal prevailing wage for construction on public projects.

Next in line are teachers, police and other public employees, who are about to get hammered with "draconian" cuts to benefits. Republican leaders want to resist adding money to help with the program's deficit and are blaming the administrators of the program, charges which are refuted here.

In a word, or maybe two or three, depending on whether you count contractions, it's on.

Really worth a look

There was a great op-ed in the Gazette today about the danger of drinking Arthur Laffer's tax-cuts-for-the-rich-Kool-Aid. After all, it worked so well in Kansas, right?

A vision of the future...not mine

It looks like WV Republicans really want to permanently kill WV's prevailing wage laws. Talk about a sea change; once upon a time, state politicians at least pretended to believe it was a good thing for West Virginians to earn living wages and have a shot at being in the middle class. That's all gone. It's all about doing whatever they can do to cheapen the price of human labor.With any luck, maybe they'll bring back the plantation system.

They seem to be dedicated to the dark vision of George Orwell's 1984: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

The whole widow/orphan thing

While WV's deeply religious Republican legislature contemplates legislation that would make it harder for workers maimed on the job or their widows and orphans to have access to legal remedies, I decided to let my fingers go walking through the Bible. Here's what I found...and it's very incomplete.

* Exodus 22:22: “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan.”

*Deuteronomy 10: 18 “For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing.”

* Deuteronomy  24:17 ”Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.”

*Deuteronomy 27:19 "’Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow’." Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’"

* Isaiah 1:17 “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

* Isaiah 1:23 “Your rulers are rebels, partners with thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them.”

* Jeremiah 5:27-29: “Like a cage full of birds, so their houses are full of deceit; therefore they have become great and rich. They are fat, they are sleek, they also excel in deeds of wickedness; they do not plead the cause, the cause of the orphan, that they may prosper; and they do not defend the rights of the poor. Shall I not punish these people?' declares the LORD, 'On a nation such as this shall I not avenge Myself?”

* Malachi 3:5: "’So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,’ says the LORD Almighty.”

* James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”


Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a pattern here, although some elected officials don’t seem to have gotten the memo.

In any case, the final vote on this bill will be one to watch. And to remember.

Preserving WV's prevailing wage law

This op-ed on mine appeared in yesterday's Sunday Gazette Mail:

The new leaders of West Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature have made jobs and economic prosperity a top priority. That being the case, I hope that some will reconsider support for a bill that would take money out of the pockets of the state’s working families and local businesses.

The issue in question is West Virginia’s prevailing wage law, which sets pay standards for workers on public construction projects. The idea is to prevent these projects from turning into a race to the bottom, with out-of-state contractors profiting at the public expense by underbidding local businesses and importing low-wage, low-skill workers laboring under unsafe conditions.

Maybe a little history might help. Many state prevailing wage laws were modeled on or influenced by the 1931 federal Davis-Bacon Act, which bears the name of two Republican senators, James J. Davis of Pennsylvania and Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York.

Neither was anything remotely resembling a labor radical. Bacon was a banker and decorated military officer who served in World War I, while Davis served in the cabinets of Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.

Bacon got on the case in 1927, when an Alabama contractor got a bid to build a veteran’s hospital in Long Island and imported poorly treated workers from that state. According to Bacon, these workers were “herded onto this job, they were housed in shacks, they were paid a very low wage, and . . . it seems to me that the federal government should not engage in construction work in any state and undermine the labor conditions and the labor wages paid in that state.”

He believed that a prevailing wage policy leveled the playing field:

“If the local contractor is successful in obtaining the bid, it means that local labor will be employed because that local contractor is going to continue in business in that community after the work is done. If an outside contractor gets the contract, and there is no discrimination against the honest contractor, it means that he will have to pay the prevailing wages, just like the local contractor.”

According to Davis, the least the government could do in such cases “is comply with the local standards of wages and labor prevailing in the locality where the building construction is to take place.”

Davis and Bacon believed their bill would help local workers and communities because wages on public projects wouldn’t be slashed by contractors who had to compete against those using cheap labor.

West Virginia’s prevailing wage law has been in place for decades and has promoted generally harmonious relations between contractors, construction workers, and building trades organizations. It has also encouraged the development of apprenticeship programs that help young people build skills for lifelong careers in a state where workforce participation is a critical issue. It has promoted high quality work, boosted productivity, reduced turnover, and promoted safety on the job.

Some of the most eloquent voices in favor of keeping the law in place are owners of construction firms. One CEO was recently quoted in the media as saying that “Loss of wage to our own people, and that wage going out of state, I just can’t understand how any legislator can explain that to his constituents.”

Opponents of the prevailing wage system basically want to reduce the wages of working people in a state where incomes are already among the lowest in the nation.

The Koch-brother supported Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia issued a report in 2009 that argued that prevailing wage laws artificially inflate wages for some workers. The study’s methodology has been characterized as flawed by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and others because it conflates data with construction wages in the home construction sector with those in the nonresidential sector.

Meanwhile, other studies, such as those by Michael Kelsey of the University of Missouri and the Keystone Research Center, compared states with and without prevailing wage laws. They concluded that West Virginia’s public construction costs are not out of line with other states and are under some without prevailing wage laws. They have also found numerous public benefits, such as those mentioned above.

I think it’s pretty simple. West Virginians win when our friends and neighbors earn a living wage with decent benefits and can provide for their children and families while building up our public infrastructure, paying taxes and contributing to our communities.

It’s great that legislative leaders want to put West Virginia back to work. I just hope we can find a way to build the state up without pulling our people down.