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Organizations representing school district administrators and school boards in Wisconsin have released a new analysis that estimates school districts in the state would face a budget gap greater than $300 million in the 2011-12 school year under the state budget proposed by Gov. Scott Walker, even after districts impose some of the employee concessions he has proposed.

The study, released by the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance and the state Association of School Boards, is based on a survey of about 250 if the state’s 424 school districts. Administrators were asked what savings they would realize in the upcoming school year by requiring employees to pay more toward their retirement plans and health insurance premiums. Savings from wage limits included in Walker’s Budget Repair Bill were also included.

The governor’s budget lowers the revenue caps for school districts statewide by 5.5 percent; the caps limit the total amount of local property tax and state funding a district can receive in a year. In the survey, districts reported what gap they thought would remain after taking the savings into account.

In total, the roughly 250 districts said they would save about $120 million from higher retirement contributions, $44 million from higher health plan contributions and $82 million from wage limits. The Budget Repair Bill, currently barred by court order from taking effect until a legal challenge is resolved, would limit wage increases to inflation.

The remaining shortfall for the districts that responded to the survey would be about $150 million. Many of the state’s largest districts, including Milwaukee Public Schools, either didn’t respond to the survey or weren’t included in the results released. The associations estimate that statewide, the shortfall would be about $300 million.

In March, Walker released figures showing almost 80 percent of districts in the state could offset projected reductions in school funding under his budget by diverting about 10 percent of employee salaries to help the districts pay for their health insurance and pension plans. Some districts contested the figures, saying the figures overstated their savings.

scott walker

Dan Rossmiller, director of government relations for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, says the options available to districts to cover the projected $300 million shortfall include laying off teachers or support staff, delaying maintenance or the purchase of new textbooks, increasing students fees, increasing class sizes and cutting elective or extracurricular programs.

Long-time teachers are retiring, and the cuts will likely deter some people from entering the profession, he says. “We’re seeing a brain drain.”

Walker’s Budget Repair Bill would allow districts to increase their employees’ health plan and retirement contributions by removing the benefits from collective bargaining. Districts would be unable to make any changes until current contracts with unions expire.

But not all districts are going to be able to extract all the concessions needed to offset the reductions in state funding, Rossmiller says. “Not everyone is going to have the political will to extract all the concessions you theoretically could.”

Some already require their employees to make higher contributions to their health plans, he says. “All are starting from a little different point.”

Because the bill is being challenged in court, according to Rossmiller, districts are still under an obligation to continue negotiating with unions. But if the bill is allowed to take effect – retroactively back to March when it was passed – new contracts signed since then could be invalidated.

“It’s a really awkward situation,” he says.

Adding to the uncertainty, school districts are already working on their budgets for the 2011-2012 school year. Districts operate on fiscal years ending, like the state, in June and not in December like county and municipal governments in Wisconsin.

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A bill introduced by Southeastern Wisconsin lawmakers State Sen. Rich Zipperer (R-Pewaukee) and State Rep. Robin Vos (R-Racine) would prevent the state’s federally required health insurance exchange from offering coverage for abortion – except in limited circumstances, such as when ending the pregnancy is needed to save the mother’s life.

The federal law requires states to establish exchanges by 2014 to sell health plans to individuals and small employers. Plans offered on the exchange will be eligible for federal subsidies, but no federal subsidies can be used for abortion coverage.

robin vos

But some states are not satisfied with that restriction and want to prevent any private insurers in a health exchange from offering abortion coverage. Wisconsin would devote some resources to designing and administering the health exchange.

The legislation would “prevent private citizens from using dollars to buy private insurance coverage that includes abortion services,” complained Nicole Safar, a legal and policy advisor for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, at a public hearing on the bill on Wednesday before the Senate Public Health, Human Services and Revenue Committee.

State law in Wisconsin prohibits spending public dollars on abortions unless the procedure is “medically necessary to save the life of the woman,” the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest or continuing it would result in “grave, long-lasting physical health damage to the woman.”

The bill would extend the same exceptions to the private health insurance plans offered on the exchange, meaning insurers could only sell plans covering abortions in those circumstances.

According to Planned Parenthood, at least nine other states have already passed bills similar to the one just introduced in Wisconsin. The federal law allows states to block abortion coverage within plans sold through their exchanges by passing such legislation.

In states where plans offer abortion coverage, that coverage is exempted from federal subsidy and purchasers of it are required to pay for it separately from the rest of their coverage.

Currently, most private health insurance plans offer abortion coverage.

“It’s wrong for the government to take away insurance coverage for a legal medical procedure,” testified Stacey Harbaugh from the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin. “This will not do anything to reduce the demand for abortion services in our state.”

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The state Department of Natural Resources announced in April it would be awarding $19 million in grants to municipalities’ recycling programs instead of the $31 million city leaders were expecting. The $13 million was lapsed to the state’s general fund to help balance it by the end of the state’s fiscal year.

tom barrett

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and City Attorney Grant Langley contend the lapse was illegal because the grants are paid from a state trust fund, the Recycling and Renewable Energy Fund, which is replenished, in part, by tipping fees municipalities pay to landfills when they dump trash.

The resolution passed on Tuesday authorizes Langley “to proceed with a lawsuit as soon as is reasonably possible” if one is determined to be “justifiable and viable.”

The resolution says the city “has already budgeted this money for its 2011 recycling program and the loss of these funds will cause the city substantial budgetary hardship.” Milwaukee officials have said the cut could require a reduction in the frequency of recycling pickups.

According to Barrett, increased taxes, fees or new employee concessions are not possible mid-year to replace the funding.

In 2010, the State Supreme Court ruled that a $200 million transfer from a state medical malpractice fund done under Gov. Jim Doyle in 2007 was illegal. The court ordered the state to repay the money; the payment is included in Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed 2011-13 budget.

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In the first accident, which occurred in February 2010, Jacqueline Hawkins was crossing North 35th Street when a county pickup truck turned in front of her. A snow plow attached to the truck struck the woman’s knee, bruising it. She underwent several weeks of physical therapy.

Police cited the driver, a county employee, for failing to yield to a pedestrian.

County attorneys and the county’s insurer are recommending settling with Hawkins for $9,000.

In the second accident, which happened in September 2010, a car driven by Glenn Kirby was hit by a county pickup that ran a red light at the intersection of North 26th Street and West Wisconsin Avenue. Kirby said he suffered neck and lower back pain and also underwent physical therapy.

The county is recommending paying $7,500 to settle his claims.

The board is expected to vote on both claims during its monthly meeting today. Both were approved by the board’s Judiciary Committee.

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Since January when Scott Walker became governor and on through April, the state Department of My way or the highwayTransportation has spent an extra $13.9 million outsourcing state road work to private consultants, even though the state acknowledges the work could have been done cheaper by state employees — if it wasn’t already badgering many of them into early retirement.

Some of those busy private DOT consultants belong to a state roadbuilders association that funneled noticeable amounts of campaign cash to Walker. However, the outsourcing problem also existed under Gov. Jim Doyle. A state audit in 2009 confirmed expensive DOT consulting costs, but the report was not acted upon by the governor or Legislature. Neither has anything yet been done under Walker’s tenure, and it doesn’t look like anything will be done in his first two-year budget — except to accelerate outsourcing and hike costs to taxpayers yet some more.

The spending on expensive consultants was highlighted in a news story on Madison’s WISC-TV last night (URL to a transcript and streaming videocast, below).

Making this situation even worse is that a record number of state engineers are taking early retirement in light of the Walker administration’s moves to cut wages and benefits and strip away collective bargaining rights, creating more vacancies. DOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb says he’s working to fill in some of those positions but makes no promises.

It may not be easy to convince civil engineers to join up, when the state already offers less in total compensation to engineers than their private-sector counterparts make, and that doesn’t take into account Walker’s plan to reduce compensation even more.

“Right now, what’s happening is we’re paying someone else to do it for more money,” Mark Klipstein, president of the State Engineering Association, told WISC-TV News. The association is the collective bargaining unit for 1,100 engineers and technical professionals in the DOT and other state agencies.

According to Klipstein, when there isn’t enough state DOT staff to handle a growing workload of highway projects, the state hires out engineering work to private contractors. The DOT completes cost-benefit analysis reports for contracts with outside consultants and most show that consultants cost more money. From the broadcast: “In some 300 projects, WISC-TV found that 80 percent of the reports said just that — there was no DOT staff available to do the work.”

Walker’s budget would hold transportation funding steady while advancing major new road projects. He would not add DOT positions while getting rid of some long-vacant ones.  The State Engineering Association put out a news release on April 5 noting that early retirements at DOT had zoomed since the start of 2011, resulting in the loss of a collective 2,100 years of state engineering staff experience. [See link below] Other reports from the Wisconsin Retirement System have said early retirement inquiries from state employees have quadrupled since Walker revealed his state employee compensation givebacks.

Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington), co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, told WISC that no one has brought forth any ideas on how to deal with the problem, adding: “In general, I never want to waste taxpayer dollars.” Gee, Assemblyman, just in general and not always?

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Wisconsin’s nuclear power plants – the Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant and the Kewaunee Power Station – are changing their procedures in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The accident, the worst since Chernobyl, has prompted waves of inspections led by both by federal regulators and the nuclear industry itself.

Both Point Beach and the Kewaunee plant are located on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Manitowoc. Together, they produce about a fifth of the state’s electricity, according to the state Public Service Commission.

At Fukushima, the combined havoc wrought by a massive offshore earthquake and the resulting tsunami knocked out power at a large nuclear power plant containing six reactors. (The Kewaunee plant has one, and Point Beach has two.)

kewaunee power station

A variety of backup cooling and power systems failed. Fuel rods were exposed, causing, over time, explosions of hydrogen gas that damaged the reactors. The damaged plant leaked dangerous radiation into surrounding towns and countryside. All was caused, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted, by “events outside of the design basis for the facilities.”

In the U.S., operators of nuclear power plants began reviewing their ability to withstand disasters, including floods, power outages or earthquakes. The NRC, which regulates nuclear plants, followed up with inspections of each of country’s 65 nuclear power plants, including Point Beach and the Kewaunee plant.

The inspections tested whether plants were equipped to deal with extreme disasters. Since Sept. 11, the NRC has required all licensed nuclear plants to have plans in place to deal with “the loss of large areas of the (facilities) due to large fires and explosions from any cause,” including aircraft collisions.

In a summary of its post-Fukushima findings, the NRC noted some reason to worry: “While, individually, none of these observations posed a significant safety issue, they indicate a potential industry trend of failure to maintain equipment and strategies.”

At Point Beach, federal inspectors noted that a water pump intended for putting out fires during emergencies was stored in a building not specially designed to withstand an earthquake. They also noted the facility had no procedure in place requiring staff to regularly test the pump’s batteries to ensure they’re in working order.

The inspection report also noted the plant, which has two reactors, was considering buying a second such pump. The plant is also considering increasing staffing levels so more employees would be on hand during emergencies.

Following the Fukushima disaster, the plant reduced water levels in certain storage tanks, according to the NRC. This was done as a precaution: At previous levels, the tanks, if broken open by a disaster, could have flooded (and possibly disabled) pumps used to cool the reactors.

Sara Cassidy, a communications manager for Florida-based NextEra Energy, owner of the Point Beach plant, says the plant has assessed its ability to respond to “extreme external events,” reviewed its ability to respond to “total power loss,” evaluated its “flooding readiness” and conducted “detailed assessments to verify equipment readiness for any possible seismic events.”

The NRC requires nuclear plants to be prepared for the “most severe of the natural phenomena that have been historically reported for the site and surrounding area.” NextEra says the Point Beach plant is “designed to withstand earthquakes and other natural events stronger than ever recorded in the region.”

At the smaller Kewaunee plant, owned by Virginia-based Dominion Resources, federal inspectors said that over half of the station’s “severe accident management guidelines” hadn’t been updated since 2000. They also reported that some mechanical and electrical maintenance personnel had not received some of the disaster training required at the plant after Sept. 11.

The inspectors found that the station’s emergency diesel generator was located on the station’s roof, where it was exposed to the weather. “The inspectors will continue to inspect this issue” during the second quarter of 2011, the report says.

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Although Wisconsin hasn’t suffered through the tragedy wrought by tornadoes in Alabama or Missouri, this state has had its share of twisters. Like 2010, this could be another record-breaking year. The National Weather Service has already documented 18 tornadoes in 2011, more than Wisconsin had in all of 2009.

But since that year, the state has been a regular tornado alley. A total of 46 twisters hit in the state in 2010, the second-most of any year after 2005, when the NWS documented 62.

Last year, 22 people were injured and none were killed. The most devastating storm hit the town of Eagle in Southeastern Wisconsin, injuring 15, including one woman who was badly cut by flying glass, destroying 25 homes and damaging hundreds more.

Since 1970, Wisconsin has averaged 21 tornadoes per year, a number the state is already approaching. June and July are typically the most twister-prone months with about half of the state’s tornadoes forming in those months.

Meteorologists say the young-but-hellish tornado season is largely due to powerful jet stream “troughs” that are creating high-speed collisions of cold northern air and warm, moist air from the South and the Gulf of Mexico.

Tornadoes raked La Crosse on Monday, inflicting no major injuries and damaging about 200 homes and businesses on the city’s south side, according to the La Crosse Tribune.

It was the first twister to hit the city since 1966.

An editorial in the newspaper said the storm was “a good reminder that we should always be prepared.”

Some residents thought the city was invincible, the editorial huffed: “Any La Crosse resident who foolishly believed the folklore about the city being safe from tornadoes because it’s where three rivers meet or because of the bluffs should now realize tornadoes can strike anywhere — at any time.”

Tornadoes also damaged the towns of Sparta and Tomah, which lie east of La Crosse along Interstate 90.

Nationally, the NWS has already documented more than 1,000 tornadoes – putting the national record, 1,189 set in 2004, within range.

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