Dr. Robin Vos has diagnosed a sickness plaguing Wisconsin’s body politic. “I just think recall elections are like a cancer,” the Republican Assembly member from Rochester told his local newspaper, the Racine Journal Times. Vos wants to “apply chemotherapy immediately to try to stop the cancer from spreading.” Here’s a man of mighty metaphors.

Like chemo, this proposal is rather drastic medicine. Vos and his Republican co-sponsors would strictly limit recalls, so they could only be used against lawmakers charged with a felony, convicted of a misdemeanor or found guilty of an ethical violation by the state Government Accountability Board. 

Vos is obviously responding to last summer’s unprecedented explosion of recalls, with attempts made against six Republicans and three Democrats. The entire discussion about the proposal, whether by Democratic critics or Republican supporters, has focused on the summer recall elections and the fact that the proposed law would have eliminated them. Even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an editorial supporting Vos’ proposal references only the recent recalls in deciding we must have change.

That’s remarkably short-sighted. The recall law has been on the books since 1926. Taking the long view of history, just how well has it worked? To begin with, it has rarely been used, just four times from 1926 to 2010, and only two of the four attempts were successful, making the recent recall attempt against nine lawmakers (with two actually recalled) a complete anomaly. What’s to say we’ll ever face something like this again?

Vos and the JS essentially argue that the electorate shouldn’t be able to recall an official over a disagreement over a policy decision, simply for “doing their job.” But what about the case of George Petak, the Republican state senator who was recalled in 1996 because voters disagreed with his vote in favor of public financing of Miller Park?

There had been a state referendum on this bailout of the Brewers, and Wisconsin voters resoundingly rejected the idea. So the legislature created a special, five-county stadium authority that would be able to tax residents of the five counties in metro Milwaukee to pay for Miller Park. The local officials and voters in these five counties were never consulted (and undoubtedly would have voted against the proposal). What the legislature cooked up was a way to evade the will of voters being taxed. You might call this taxation without representation. That was more or less how the voters of Petak’s district viewed it, and they rose up and threw him out of office.

Or consider the case of the Milwaukee County pension scandal. County Executive F. Thomas Ament and a large majority of county supervisors passed an ordinance with one of the sweetest pension deals in American history. It has allowed average county workers to collect lump sum pension payouts of as much as a million dollars and has cost taxpayers several hundred million dollars. Recall attempts ended up forcing Ament to resign and threw out seven supervisors.

Interestingly, it was conservative and Republican activists and talk radio’s Charlie Sykes who led the way in pushing for as many county recalls as possible. But Vos’ proposal would prevent a recall of any lawmaker who passed an equally egregious state law. (Sykes did not respond to my email asking whether he supports the Vos proposal.)

The idea that a legislator should not be recalled from office over a policy disagreement sounds reasonable, until you get down to specifics. For many Republicans, the policy behind Ament’s pension plan was outrageous; ditto for Democrats on Gov. Scott Walker’s law eliminating collective bargaining rights. 

Both liberals and conservatives, in short, would someday confront a legislative policy so egregious it cries out to them for a recall of the offending lawmaker, but that would be impossible under the proposed law. To judge by the last 85 years of history, such outrage doesn’t crop up very often: the voters have still recalled only four legislators in that time. Maybe we can continue to trust the wisdom of the state’s voters on such issues rather than that of Robin Vos. 

Battering the Middle Class
The Journal Sentinel barely covered a new report released last week by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau on the impact of the Budget Repair Bill that required greater contributions by state and local employees to their pension plan and health insurance. You will recall that Democrats called this an attack on middle class workers, teachers and the like, while Republicans said they were standing up for middle class taxpayers.

The report shows the impact of Walker’s plan is disproportionately greater on middle class and lower middle class employees and easier on the top-paid people in government. The monthly deduction of $208 for health insurance and pension contribution of 5.8 percent has a combined impact that is very regressive: Those earning $25,000 a year are paying $3,946 annually – nearly 16 percent of their earnings. Those earning $50,000 are paying $5,396 or almost 11 percent of their earnings. Those making $125,000 are contributing $9,746 or less than 8 percent of their earnings.

The reality is there are many state and local employees earning less than $50,000. In fact, the average state worker in Wisconsin without a college degree earns $37,000, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures by The New York Times. Some of these are single parents who were already having trouble making ends meet.

On the other end of the spectrum are top government officials. The legislature has given Gov. Walker more freedom to evade civil service rules and make political appointments, often with higher salaries, as a Journal Sentinel story has documented. These employees were already the least affected by the employee givebacks, and their higher salaries just add to that inequality.

Walker and the Republicans, of course, could have altered the formula for givebacks to lessen the impact on those government employees who earn less. Perhaps this simply didn’t occur to them. But if they truly want to stand up for the middle class, they ought to address the inequity they have created.

The Buzz
-Ald. Bob Donovan may face a formidable opponent in 2012: Jennifer Morales. As a former school board member, she has name recognition, and she is a Hispanic in a district that will become 62 percent Latino as a result of the city’s redistricting plan.

-Word has it that Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) is not popular with Republicans in that house, and they may move to replace him after the 2012 elections.  A likely replacement would be Robin Vos, I’m told. That may help explain why Fitzgerald has talked about running for the seat of retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl in 2012. Fitzgerald isn’t seen as a strong candidate in a primary that’s likely to include popular former Gov. Tommy Thompson and former U.S. Congressman Mark Neumann. The speculation is that Fitzgerald would be looking to improve his name recognition before getting into the lobbying business, always a popular career option for ex-lawmakers.

-Pressroom Buzz reports on a shoestring campaign to battle conservative talk radio.

-And the Sports Nut was hanging out with Prince Fielder as the Brewers celebrated winning the division title. Here’s his man-on-the-field report.