"The Socialists Will Never Get It" Ping.
Madison has been the leftwing's Midwestern Mecca since I was old enough to know it existed. Why shouldn't it wind up looking like a forgotten Russian waystation?
Don't worry Diana, us folks "up nort" wont let Madisonitis infect us.
Wow... They just really do not get it!
When a corporate chain like Duncan Donuts gets dicked around for three years trying to get some stores opened that are going to provide a good chunk o' tax revenue and walks away in disgust after being treated like Pol Pot by the Madison city council...
I won't go downtown anymore to shop because of the pan handlers and begging winos. I won't drink in Madison bars because of the smoking ban. I try real hard not to spend a CENT of money in the city proper to avoid giving Moscow on Menona ANY of my money.
They can go eff themselves. The 'Burbs around crazytown are building businesses right and leftto suck up what is fleeing. In ten years it's going to be a ghost town supporting the university and an overinflated housing market occupied by idiot liberals. Oh wait... isn't that the situation now? lol.
PART TWO OF FOUR:
Private jobs soar, state jobs sputter
JASON STEIN - July 17, 2006
http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/top/index.php?ntid=91299&ntpid=1
In 1967, Judy Haag took an entry-level state job and started living the Dane County dream of government service. Decades later, she helped the state automate and eliminate the very clerk's job she was first hired to fill - and some 80 more just like it.
Haag's nearly 40-year career shows both the opportunity that government jobs can offer and the way that those jobs - the core of this region's economy - are no longer the force they once were.
High-paying state jobs have sustained tens of thousands of educated workers here, giving Madison its reputation as enlightened and prosperous. But a deep shift is taking place: The state workforce is growing more slowly than the private sector, leaving it with a still important but ever smaller place in the local market.
"I was very fortunate in that I took exams and I advanced through the state service," said Haag, 59, who retired in April. "I don't think that same opportunity is available for younger people these days."
Economists and other experts agree that on balance the change has been good so far, as the region has diversified with good jobs in fields like technology, insurance and law.
But they also see potential downsides, such as the rise of lower-paying service and retail jobs. A bigger private sector could also mean more sprawl and an economy more prone to ups and downs.
Between 1969 and 2004, the government workforce in Dane County grew much more slowly than the private sector. The disparity was more pronounced here than in the rest of the nation. The trend was largely due to slower growth in state employees, a group that includes staff at UW-Madison and UW Hospital and accounts for the bulk of public workers here.
Government workers' share of the overall county workforce fell from 34 percent to 21 percent, federal statistics show. By 2004, there were 76,800 government workers, and 291,600 in the private sector.
While private sector jobs are 79 percent of the workforce, they generate only 75 percent of the wages. The biggest private sector growth in Dane County jobs came in service and retail industries, where jobs pay much less than government.
The trends look set to continue and could accelerate. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle isn't half done with a 2002 promise to cut 10,000 state jobs by the end of this decade. Both Doyle and his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Green Bay, have vowed to hold the line on taxes, which could also hamper hiring.
State government can't keep up with greater Madison, where the population and economy are growing faster than the rest of the state, said economist Terry Ludeman.
"I would be frightened if the government were keeping up with the market sector in Madison," said Ludeman, who recently retired as the state's chief labor economist. "There's no question the government growth will not be anywhere near the market growth (here)."
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz agreed, adding that the trend has given a new edge to the debate over whether the city is friendly to business. He said the debate "does seem to be more intense the last few years, and I think this is part of the explanation."
The boom years
When Haag started four decades ago at the state's unemployment claims office on Broom Street, government was still a growth industry. Fueled by the rise of the baby boomer generation and an expanding role for government, state workforces around the country were adding jobs at rates of up to 9 percent a year.
Long-serving state Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, said when he was first elected 50 years ago, the state had two off-campus office buildings, the Capitol and the 1 W. Wilson St. Now there are 14 state-owned office buildings in the area plus rented space.
"There was a tremendous boom right after the Second World War," said Risser, remembering how UW-Madison swelled with students on the G.I. bill.
Not that all of the jobs created were cushy - much less glamorous. Haag, who never completed a college degree, started out at $1.21 an hour as an unemployment claims clerk and worked a second job for years.
In the office where Haag last worked, the sections of plain cubicles have numbers marked above them, as if in a parking garage.
Family-supporting jobs
But the cheerful, ambitious Haag - the oldest of 11 children - took night classes and civil service tests, and rose through 17 pay grades at the state's unemployment insurance division. When she retired in April, she was making $32.72 an hour.
With a stable state job, Haag never used the unemployment benefits she worked to provide to others. She and her husband, a parts manager for a car dealership, put their two daughters through college and now live in a handsome Verona house that was once in the Parade of Homes.
"I have worked hard many times - many more hours than the standard 40, but I've also had some very nice opportunities," she said. "I had a sense that I was making a contribution and that I was helping the unemployed."
In 2004, state workers in Dane County made an average of $46,391, nearly 28 percent more than the $36,333 made by the average private sector worker, state figures show.
That's because the private sector includes jobs like cashiers and fry cooks, usually for workers with little education. State and other government jobs are mostly for career workers like professors and bureaucrats whose pay matches their degrees.
"People who work for government are the most educated population there is," Ludeman said. "That keeps Madison on the cutting edge."
Government slows
Haag played a role in keeping the state on the forefront. She helped lead a team that in 1995 set up a computerized telephone service for taking unemployment claims.
As a result, the Broom Street office where she started was closed, along with 25 others statewide. Some 140 affected clerks and managers found work in new state call centers, but about 80 workers did not, she said.
"That was difficult. It was hard for me," Haag said of the human impact, but she also points to the benefits - an accurate system that handles claims in days instead of weeks.
In recent years, pressures to cut state jobs have mounted. For Mark Bugher, the wakeup call came four years ago when Doyle made his campaign pledge to cut state jobs.
"If a traditional private sector employer announced they were going to (cut 10,000 jobs), it would be cataclysmic," said Bugher, a former head of the state Department of Administration. "The private sector better get busy and recognize this and take up the slack for those employees and the economy."
By the end of this two-year budget, the Doyle administration will have cut some 3,800 jobs, not counting limited term employees and workers at UW Hospital and state universities whose positions aren't funded by tax or tuition dollars, said state budget director David Schmiedicke.
Only about 260 employees have actually been put out of work. For the next budget, Doyle asked agencies for plans to slice 10 percent of administrative costs, suggesting more job losses to come.
Shift to lower pay
Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union said, "As (government) shrinks, it shrinks from family-supporting jobs to minimum-wage jobs, and that becomes a real economic issue."
But overall, economists see a positive picture in Madison, including growth in high-paying service jobs like the law and in the high-tech companies in University Research Park. Bugher, now the park's director, said the park has relied on UW-Madison research to grow from nothing in 1984 to more than 4,100 private workers today who make an average of $60,000 a year.
But there are still tradeoffs, they said. Economist Michael Brandl has seen the phenomenon in Austin, Texas, a state capital that has had even bigger growth in tech companies than Madison.
For one, the community's economy might become a little less stable, since a big share of government jobs helps insulate a city from cyclical market downturns, said Brandl, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and former UW-Madison student. But the bigger problem, he said, is that businesses can grow more explosively than government, creating a sudden need for roads, schools and sewers.
"Are you ready, if you want to encourage a lot of (business growth), for bumper-to-bumper traffic every day?" said Brandl, whose 19-mile commute to work takes an hour.
Looking ahead
In April, Haag retired. Thousands more baby boomers in state government are set to follow. By the fiscal year ending in summer 2010, some 16,400 classified state workers, or nearly 41 percent, will be eligible for retirement.
Observers agree that many of these retirees won't be replaced. That's the case with Haag, whose duties were split up among six other workers in her financially tight division.
Besides the aging baby boomers' need for more services, like health care, Ludeman saw few factors that would lead to great growth in government jobs. Government will continue to boost the local economy, but through indirect means such as UW-Madison discoveries that spawn high-tech firms, he said.
"Madison's going to be a great place for people to live and work for the next century or so," Ludeman said.
How great depends on finding the balance between boosting and channeling this rise of the private sector, Cieslewicz said. "No question it will be difficult. But that doesn't mean we can't do it."