David D. Haynes
"Is the JS editorial staff ready to issue a BIG apology to the working people of Wisconsin for its endorsement of Scott Walker for governor? Front page would be good."
This reader, and many others like her in recent days, is asking a very good question.
When we recommended the then-Milwaukee County executive to be governor, we had no reason to think that he would try to bust public-employee unions. Since his inauguration, Walker has displayed a strong ideological bent at times that distracts him from the work at hand: creating an efficient state government and formulating government policy to promote job growth.
He has, in short order, become the most polarizing governor in the country.
So isn't this a classic bait-and-switch? If so, why not "recall" him for his transgressions?
I think it's too soon to make such a sweeping judgment. And there are many of Walker's initiatives that we agree with. One example: His decision to try to close the state's chronic budget gap.
We've quarreled with Walker frequently over the years, and that hasn't changed. We've taken issue with him over a number of provisions in his proposed two-year budget, including a decision to cut family planning services for low-income families. We've disagreed with his effort to change siting requirements for wind farms. We think efforts to curtail collective bargaining for public-employee unions went too far - and we think that Walker played politics by exempting police and fire unions from the new collective bargaining rules, which will be a severe handicap as Milwaukee tries to balance its budget.
With big majorities in both houses of the Legislature, Walker rolled the dice and made a bet that he could push through a transformative agenda, albeit one with political overtones that resonate nationally.
Yes, Walker has been too ideological and too inflexible. A conservative I know recently observed that Walker may have made the same miscalculation as President Barack Obama - mistaking an election victory for a mandate for major change. The weak economy helped elect both men. Yet, instead of jobs, Obama spent a year on health care reform, and Walker seems to have made elimination of collective bargaining his mission.
That said, Walker's economic plan is solid. His creation of the new Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a public-private agency focused exclusively on economic development, is sound. His effort to reform an out-of-control tort system was sensible (for the most part). And we think his cuts to shared revenue, while deep, may have the silver lining of forcing local governments to try harder to find efficiencies through shared services and consolidation. That's long overdue.
"If there is one thing Walker has shown in his tenure as county executive, it is an abiding intolerance for the failures of business as usual," we wrote in October. "The persisting dysfunction in Milwaukee County is not of Walker's making and arguably - with tight-fisted stewardship - is better than it was before he took office."
We still believe that. And we believe that it's far too early to predict the ramifications of Walker's agenda. Recall efforts now under way seem to be built more on emotion than on sober judgment. Walker's opponents argue that the loss of collective bargaining for public employees trumps everything.
We disagree. One issue - even a policy disagreement as large as this one - shouldn't lead to recall.
Our recommendation - like any piece of commentary - was based on what we knew at the time we published it. We know more now, but not enough to invalidate our judgment of last October. It's better to wait and evaluate Walker and legislators at the appointed time - the next election - when we'll have more information and more time to digest it.
We don't plan to "recall" our recommendation. But if there is a recall election next year, we, just like voters, will have a decision to make.
Special Section: Ongoing coverage of Gov. Scott Walker's controversial budget-repair bill and the battle over the 2011-'13 state budget
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