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Sunday, February 25, 2018

Local Governments, Not The State, Are At War With Local Control



Yeah, I know the title sounds contrary to the convention, but here's why I believe it's truth.

Have you ever asked yourself, "where is all of the anti-local-control legislation coming from?" It seems never ending in Wisconsin. Do you ever find yourself on the winning side of local wage, LGBT, working conditions and civil rights battles in your city only to find later that the state has just nullified everything you fought for and won?

So, here we go again with news about the Wisconsin state assembly passing new laws that will prohibit municipalities from creating their own local labor laws.

Wispolitics Excerpt:
The Assembly early this morning voted 58-32 along party lines on bill that would prohibit municipalities from creating their own local labor laws with a new amendment that would make it clear the bill wouldn’t apply to Foxconn.

You read that right. They granted a giant foreign corporation total immunity from laws they believe are necessary to help give Wisconsin employers across the state certainty when conducting business. Go figure.

If you read between the lines however, you should also pick up the notion that Wisconsin's municipalities supported the original restrictive blanket law with only one "local" jurisdiction, Racine, asking for an exemption. Not for themselves ...but for Foxconn. It's true.

In Janesville for instance, recent city councils have passed local resolutions to reaffirm collective bargaining and strengthen language within ordinances to protect workers rights, wages and the LGBT community from discrimination.

However, the hired-hand city administration opposed those new laws. They said existing laws cover everything and that changes were unnecessary. As the council membership changed, the next council president, Doug Marklein, immediately laid out a regressive agenda intended to overturn those "unnecessary" city resolutions. He received enough push back from the seven member council that he later suggested changing the city charter to expand the council to nine members or more, assuming he could gain the majority to force his will. Are you still with me?

That's how much seething hatred these folks have for workers and civil rights. This is not your Koch brothers at work here. This is local. These are the men behind the curtain, and not just in Janesville.

So these folks, with the help of your local chamber, lobby under the table to get state legislators pass laws that are designed to put the state boot on the neck of those local decisions.

Sure, the knee-jerk response is to blame the majority party in Madison for passing those restrictions. I blame them too, but only in part.

And, as much as I would like to blame ALEC, the Koch brothers, the WMC or the Bradley Foundation simply because it's the politically correct thing to do OR because everyone on my side is doing it, I strongly believe the real enemy of local control is your city administrator, county executive, city administration personnel, municipal organizations AND your local chamber of commerce. THEY are calling the shots on all of those ANTI-local control laws. THEIR SILENCE IS SUPPORT. They don't get everything they want, and sometimes they oppose some overreaching, but they're getting anything that fits the majority party's red state agenda.

They realized only the state has the power to do what they desperately want but can't or couldn't do because the local citizenry would rebel. So they're going to the state, at night, through the back door, when everyone else is sleeping.

Plus, local town and city officials in the executive capacity, many running under the guise of progressivism and "local" defenders, know they would be criticized and possibly fired for their discriminatory policies.

They're playing us over and over again.

And then there is this.

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