Ohio Set to Vote on Union Rights

Published: March 1, 2011 - New York Times

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican State Senators on Tuesday unveiled a new version of a bill governing public employee unions, saying the legislation would preserve the right of workers to bargain collectively, but Democratic lawmakers said it did not appear to include enough modifications to win their support.

One proposal that Republicans appear to have left in the legislation, and which is hotly contested by Democrats and union members, would bar public unions from striking.

“If you take away the right to strike, you are taking the biggest bargaining chip off the table,” said Senator Joe Schiavoni, a Democrat.

Shortly after the bill was introduced Tuesday afternoon, Democratic lawyers and lawmakers began poring over its contents. The legislation could come to a vote in the State Senate as early as Wednesday.

While the restoration of bargaining rights in the 99-page bill represented a concession by Republicans, it was not immediately clear to what extent unions would be able to exercise those rights.

“The biggest difference is we’re allowing state employees to collectively bargain,” said Senator Kevin Bacon, a Republican. “It’s going to be fairly limited from where it is now, but they are still going to be able to collectively bargain.”

A similar measure is pending in Indiana. Democratic lawmakers there and in Wisconsin have temporarily left their states to avoid having to vote on the legislation.

Republicans in all three states say the legislation, which seeks to eliminate long-held union prerogatives, is part of broader austerity measures intended to reduce crippling budget deficits and rein in runaway public employee pensions.

Mark Horton, a retired firefighter who is treasurer of the Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters, 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 prohibit strikes by all public workers. Union leaders have said they oppose the bill in any form, calling it a political blow directed at public employees, whose unions have traditionally supported Democrats.

In Wisconsin, the political divide was expected to only widen 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 had already assembled outside the Capitol in Madison, as they have for two weeks. Security was tight, and only some people were allowed to enter as part of an effort by the Walker administration to allow only small numbers of protesters inside the building during the governor’s budget address, scheduled for 4 p.m.

But Tuesday afternoon, a state judge in Madison issued a temporary restraining order requiring the building to be kept open during business hours and when other official business was being conducted.

The restraining order appeared to give hundreds of people the right to go back inside the Capitol, where crowds had been denied entry by the police based on an order issued Tuesday morning by a state agency overseen by one of Mr. Walker’s appointees.

Even as protesters held up copies of that order to police officers stationed at the building’s entrances Tuesday afternoon, the officers said they knew nothing about the order and refused to allow demonstrators inside.

The area around the building has been the scene of massive protests against efforts by Mr. Walker, a Republican elected in November, to strip state employee unions of power; facilitate the sale of state-owned power plants to investors; cut the take-home pay of state workers; and give what public health advocates say are expansive new powers to Mr. Walker’s appointees to revoke some health benefits from low-income residents.

In recent days Mr. Walker’s administration has sought to clamp down on protesters inside the Capitol itself. While the administration backed down over the weekend from a plan to kick out demonstrators who had been spending the night, the administration issued a statement Tuesday morning saying that for every protester that left the building, only one would be allowed to enter.

In his two-week-long standoff with Democrats and state employee unions, Mr. Walker has pressured the 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.

“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.

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.

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.

“He’s not being honest,” said State Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the 14 Democrats.

“Piece by piece, public employees will be shown the door and then replaced by private contractors with no accountability.”

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Columbus, Ohio, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Madison, Wis. Monica Davey contributed from Madison.