Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. March 2, 2021.
Editorial: Time for a raise
There can be few good faith arguments against raising the minimum wage. The federal wage is at $7.25 per hour, a figure that hasn’t changed since 2009. Inflation has eroded the wage’s buying power over those years, bringing it very close to the effective level it was in 2007, the last time Congress acted on the issue. Wisconsin’s minimum wage is identical to the federal wage.
Few employees would be happy at a job in which they saw their wages stagnate for more than a decade. Americans shouldn’t be happy about their governments allowing this to happen.
A report released last April by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 1.6 million workers in the United States earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage. That was about 1.9% of the nation’s wage earners.
There is an argument, though, that the federal minimum wage boosts other wages by setting a floor for employee pay. So the ripple effect of a minimum wage increase could well be felt more broadly than what it may appear.
It seems likely the current Congress will act to raise the minimum wage. How much remains a question, and the push for a wage of $15 per hour causes us some concern.
The shock of an immediate adjustment to $15 per hour would be tremendous for many businesses, particularly those that are unable to swiftly adjust what they charge customers to compensate for the increased payroll burden. Not every business is in a position to simply raise rates, and it is probable a sudden introduction of a wage more than double the current level would force tough decisions on who those businesses could afford to retain.
A multi-year process of phasing in increases isn’t unprecedented. The 2007 legislation envisioned multiple steps for minimum wage before reaching the current level in 2009. Something along those lines will most likely be needed in any future raises as well, even if the target wage is less than $15 per hour.
The argument most loudly advanced in favor of a $15 per hour minimum wage is that no one who works a job for 40 hours per week should be in poverty. People using that argument often say that the minimum wage was designed to ensure a livable income. That doesn’t seem to be accurate.
The first attempt at a federal minimum wage was in 1933. That initial attempt was found to be unconstitutional. The question came before the U.S. Supreme Court again in 1937, and that case upheld establishment of a state minimum wage. One year later the Fair Labor Standards Act established a federal minimum wage of 25 cents per hour.
If, as proponents claim, the minimum wage was aimed at providing a livable income rather than preventing companies from grossly abusing employees, then one would think the original wage would have been something more than the equivalent of $4.64 per hour in today’s dollars.
A 1938 wage equal to $15 today would have been more along the lines of 81 cents per hour, more than three times what the federal government actually established. In fact, at no point has the federal minimum wage ever been equivalent to $15 per hour in 2021 dollars. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968, when the wage was equal to slightly more than $12 per hour today.
If people want to say minimum wage should provide a livable wage, that’s a different question. But the claim that the minimum wage was established to give people something approximating the income $15 per hour would today appears to be badly flawed.
What should today’s minimum wage be? That’s a tougher question and, frankly, we’re not prepared to stake out a specific figure. Using historical levels as a guide, such as the $12 equivalent in 1968, doesn’t strike us as the worst place to start.
The basic goal of preventing companies from being so rapacious that they abuse their workers financially remains defensible. The fact neither the federal nor the Wisconsin legislatures have increased the wage in more than a decade is not.
It’s time for action.
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Kenosha News. March 2, 2021.
Editorial: Grants for team name changes a good idea
At this time of racial reckoning in this country, the issue of team mascots and monikers remains front and center in attention and discussion - especially in regard to how those team names and mascots portray Native Americans.
The debate stretches from professional sports, where the Washington football team of the NFL and the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball have decided to abandon their Indian-rooted names, to the college level to high schools. In Wisconsin, 28 schools have a name that references Native American culture.
In a state where Native American culture is deep rooted (count how many communities have Indian names) and 11 federally recognized tribes call Wisconsin home, there has been a push for several years by state officials to get schools to abandon the Indian team names and mascots. In 2010, then-Gov. Jim Doyle signed Act 250, a bill that allowed the state Department of Public Instruction to begin a review process if a complaint was received from a district resident (even if only a single resident) that a school’s nickname, mascot or logo is offensive.
According to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, under that law, a hearing (conducted by the DPI) had to be scheduled within 45 days. Unless the state superintendent found the use of the nickname or team name, alone or in conjunction with a logo or mascot, was ambiguous as to whether it was race-based, the district had the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that its mascot or nickname did not promote discrimination, pupil harassment or stereotyping.
Doyle’s successor, Republican Scott Walker, overturned the law in 2013, saying it went too far - a viewpoint we share.
“If the state bans speech that is offensive to some, where does it stop?” Walker said in 2013, according to a report in the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.
Now Gov. Tony Evers is resurrecting the issue. Like his Democrat predecessor Doyle, Democrat Evers wants teams to abandon the names some, including the Tribes, find offensive. But he has come up with a carrot approach rather than one that uses a stick, like Doyle’s.
As part of his biennial state budget proposal, Evers wants to use $400,000 of tribal casino revenue to create a grant program to help school district officials pay to adopt a new nickname or logo for school merchandise, team uniforms and scoreboards, among other costs, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
That’s a tiny portion of the $91 billion budget plan. It also takes the funds from money generated by gambling rather than directly from taxpayers.
This is a reasonable approach to the issue. But we still contend it is local school districts that have to make the decision, based on the feedback of their constituents.
La Crosse Central High School in February changed its mascot to the RiverHawks, choosing to drop its long-held moniker the “Red Raiders,” the Leader-Telegram reported. But the Cornell School District in Chippewa County and Mukwonago High School in Waukesha County are sticking with their respective names, Chiefs and Indians.
The discussion of team names needs to continue. The governor’s proposal could help those wanting to transition.
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La Crosse Tribune. February 28, 2021.
Editorial: Draw new legislative maps ‘in the light of day’
If you want the Wisconsin Legislature to operate in an open and transparent manner, there’s a provision tucked in Gov. Tony Evers’ budget that deserves support.
Consider it an early gift for Sunshine Week March 14-20 – the week that journalists have set aside to promote open government.
Every 10 years, after results of the U.S. Census are completed, Wisconsin legislators who are in the majority party draw the boundaries for congressional and legislative districts to keep up with population shifts.
Every 10 years, whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans, the party in charge draws those lines to their party’s benefit.
The gerrymandering that followed the 2010 redistricting was especially partisan.
On Page 125 of his budget, the governor suggests the process be conducted “in the light of day.”
We have long advocated that Wisconsin switch to a redistricting model similar to the nonpartisan process used in Iowa.
For his part, the governor has created a People’s Maps Commission that has been working for several months seeking input from people statewide.
Under his proposal, the new legislative maps “will be drawn not by any political party or high-paid consultants, but by the people of our state. If the Legislature chooses to draw their own maps, they will be required to do so in the light of day, in the public eye, and with public input by requiring public meetings for the map-drawing process.”
As we’ve written so many times, the people should be choosing their elected officials – not the other way around.
Worse, the Legislature has exempted itself from key provisions in the state’s open-records and open-meetings laws.
Your city and village officials are required to be open with citizens. If you write a complaint to a local elected official, law requires that official to keep it on file - and produce it upon request - for seven years.
But when it comes to redistricting, legislators have given themselves a pass when it comes to transparency. They have exempted themselves from the laws that they require others to follow.
That means legislators can and do destroy what should be public records that would show the public the process they use to develop the new maps - and the people pushing the levers - when when it comes to deciding key elements of our democracy.
As Evers writes in his budget: “It is not appropriate that because the Legislature wrote themselves out of Wisconsin’s public records law, they were able to destroy many of the public records from the last redistricting process. The goal for any strong democracy should be that the people get to choose their elected officials, not the other way around. Wisconsinites do not want maps that favor any political candidate or party-we just want maps where either candidate can win. It is time we look to the people, not politicians, to draw maps that are fair and impartial.”
When it comes to how our government operates in a democracy, demanding openness is not asking too much.
In a 2017 Your Right to Know column, Bill Lueders, who is president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, wrote: “Wisconsin lawmakers should not be destroying records they create and receive in their official, taxpayer-funded capacity. Every legislator and all candidates for this office should be asked, by citizens and the media, whether they will work to end this exemption.
“Otherwise, the public should be looking for other representation.”
In the spirit of Sunshine Week, those words hold true today.
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