History > 2011 > USA > States (I)

Adam Zyglis

Buffalo, NY, The Buffalo News

Cagle

13 January 2011

L: Jared Lee Loughner

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http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/jared_lee_loughner/index.html

New York Allows Same-Sex Marriage,

Becoming Largest State to Pass Law

June 24, 2011
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL BARBARO

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes.

With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

Senate approval was the final hurdle for the same-sex marriage legislation, which was approved last week by the Assembly. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the measure at 11:55 p.m., and the law will go into effect in 30 days, meaning that same-sex couples could begin marrying in New York by late July.

Passage of same-sex marriage here followed a daunting run of defeats in other states where voters barred same-sex marriage by legislative action, constitutional amendment or referendum. Just five states currently permit same-sex marriage: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.

At around 10:30 p.m., moments after the vote was announced, Mr. Cuomo strode onto the Senate floor to wave at cheering supporters who had crowded into the galleries to watch. Trailed by two of his daughters, the governor greeted lawmakers, and paused to single out those Republicans who had defied the majority of their party to support the marriage bill.

“How do you feel?” he asked Senator James S. Alesi, a suburban Rochester Republican who voted against the measure in 2009 and was the first to break party ranks this year. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

The approval of same-sex marriage represented a reversal of fortune for gay-rights advocates, who just two years ago suffered a humiliating defeat when a same-sex marriage bill was easily rejected by the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. This year, with the Senate controlled by Republicans, the odds against passage of same-sex marriage appeared long.

But the unexpected victory had a clear champion: Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged last year to support same-sex marriage but whose early months in office were dominated by intense battles with lawmakers and some labor unions over spending cuts.

Mr. Cuomo made same-sex marriage one of his top priorities for the year and deployed his top aide to coordinate the efforts of a half-dozen local gay-rights organizations whose feuding and disorganization had in part been blamed for the defeat two years ago.

The new coalition of same-sex marriage supporters brought in one of Mr. Cuomo’s trusted campaign operatives to supervise a $3 million television and radio campaign aimed at persuading several Republican and Democratic senators to drop their opposition.

For Senate Republicans, even bringing the measure to the floor was a freighted decision. Most of the Republicans firmly oppose same-sex marriage on moral grounds, and many of them also had political concerns, fearing that allowing same-sex marriage to pass on their watch would embitter conservative voters and cost the Republicans their one-seat majority in the Senate.

Leaders of the state’s Conservative Party, whose support many Republican lawmakers depend on to win election, warned that they would oppose in legislative elections next year any Republican senator who voted for same-sex marriage.

But after days of contentious discussion capped by a marathon nine-hour closed-door debate on Friday, Republicans came to a fateful decision: The full Senate would be allowed to vote on the bill, the majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, said Friday afternoon, and each member would be left to vote according to his or her conscience.

“The days of just bottling up things, and using these as excuses not to have votes — as far as I’m concerned as leader, it’s over with,” said Mr. Skelos, a Long Island Republican who voted against the bill.

Just before the marriage vote, lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly approved a broad package of major legislation that constituted the remainder of their agenda for the year. The bills included a cap on local property tax increases and a strengthening of New York’s rent regulation laws, as well as a five-year tuition increase at the State University of New York and the City University of New York.

But Republican lawmakers spent much of the week negotiating changes to the marriage bill to protect religious institutions, especially those that oppose same-sex weddings. On Friday, the Assembly and the Senate approved those changes. But they were not enough to satisfy the measure’s staunchest opponents. In a joint statement, New York’s Catholic bishops assailed the vote.

“The passage by the Legislature of a bill to alter radically and forever humanity’s historic understanding of marriage leaves us deeply disappointed and troubled,” the bishops said.

Besides Mr. Alesi and Mr. Grisanti, the four Republicans who voted for the measure included Senators Stephen M. Saland from the Hudson Valley area and Roy J. McDonald of the capital region.

Just one lawmaker rose to speak against the bill: Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, the only Democratic senator to cast a no vote. Mr. Díaz, saying he was offended by the two-minute restrictions set on speeches, repeatedly interrupted the presiding officer who tried to limit the senator’s remarks, shouting, “You don’t want to hear me.”

“God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago,” Mr. Díaz said.

The legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States is a relatively recent goal of the gay-rights movement, but over the last few years, gay-rights organizers have placed it at the center of their agenda, steering money and muscle into dozens of state capitals in an often uphill effort to persuade lawmakers.

In New York, passage of the bill reflects rapidly evolving sentiment about same-sex unions. In 2004, according to a Quinnipiac poll, 37 percent of the state’s residents supported allowing same-sex couples to wed. This year, 58 percent of them did. Advocates moved aggressively this year to capitalize on that shift, flooding the district offices of wavering lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and signed postcards from constituents who favored same-sex marriage, sometimes in bundles that numbered in the thousands.

Dozens more states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. Many of them were approved in the past few years, as same-sex marriage moved to the front line of the culture war and politicians deployed the issue as a tool for energizing their base.

But New York could be a shift: It is now by far the largest state to grant legal recognition to same-sex weddings, and one that is home to a large, visible and politically influential gay community. Supporters of the measure described the victory in New York as especially symbolic — and poignant — because of its rich place in the history of gay rights: the movement’s foundational moment, in June 1969, was a riot against police inside the Stonewall Inn, a bar in the West Village.

In Albany, there was elation after the vote. But leading up to it, there were moments of tension and frustration. At one point, Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, erupted when he and other supporters learned they would not be allowed to make a floor speech.

“This is not right,” he yelled, before storming from the chamber.

During a brief recess during the voting, Senator Shirley L. Huntley, a Queens Democrat who had only recently come out in support of same sex marriage, strode from her seat to the back of the Senate chamber to congratulate Daniel J. O’Donnell, an openly gay Manhattan lawmaker who sponsored the legislation in the Assembly.

They hugged, and Assemblyman O’Donnell, standing with his longtime partner, began to tear up.

“We’re going to invite you to our wedding,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Now we have to figure out how to pay for one.”

 

Danny Hakim and Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting from Albany,
and Adriane Quinlan from New York.

    New York Allows Same-Sex Marriage, Becoming Largest State to Pass Law, NYT, 24.6.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/gay-marriage-approved-by-new-york-senate.html

After Years of Cost Cuts, Texas Tries to Find More

April 8, 2011
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

AUSTIN, Tex. — It is hard to overstate the budget-cutting furor that has gripped lawmakers in this capital, where the Republicans who control the Legislature and all statewide offices believe voters sent them an ironclad mandate last year to shrink the size of government.

But the Texas government was already a relatively lean operation after years of conservative fiscal policies. So when the Texas House passed its budget bill last weekend, the depth of the cutbacks necessary for the Republican majority to stick to its promise of no new taxes became clearer. It was not a pretty picture.

The bill would slash $23 billion from the current level of state and federal spending over the next two-year budget cycle — a 12.3 percent reduction that does not take into account rising costs to meet the needs of Texas’s growing population.

In a party-line vote, the House slaughtered dozens of sacred cows. The budget bill makes huge cuts to public education, nursing homes and health care for the poor. It slashes financing for highways, prisons and state parks. It eliminates full-day preschool, cuts teacher incentive pay and reduces scholarships for college students by two-thirds.

“You are cutting to the bone in the state of Texas,” said State Representative Sylvester Turner, a Houston Democrat. “The Republican game is: ‘We want smaller government, and we will do whatever it takes by whatever means necessary, regardless of the cost.’ ”

On Wednesday, conservatives and Tea Party supporters held a rally on the steps of the Capitol calling on the Legislature to cut even deeper into some programs, while thousands of state workers marched to protest the House spending plan.

What galls state employees and many liberals in the state is the refusal by Gov. Rick Perry and his House allies to buffer some of the pain by tapping into the more than $6 billion left in an emergency fund fed by taxes on oil production. (Last month, the House approved using $3 billion from the fund to close a deficit in the current two-year budget.)

But Republican leaders in the House say that the state has to live with its reduced revenues. Raising taxes would hurt the economy, they say, and dipping into the Rainy Day Fund is unwise, given the prospect of cutbacks in federal aid.

“This is the hand we were dealt,” said State Representative Larry Taylor of the Houston area, the chairman of the Republican Caucus. “That’s how much money we have. We don’t have a choice in Texas. We can’t print money. We can’t go into debt.”

The depth of the cuts, however, has caused divisions in the party. Some Republicans in the Senate are balking at the large reductions in money for public education and health care for the poor, calling them shortsighted. “The kids aren’t going away,” said State Senator Robert F. Deuell, a Republican from Greenville and a physician. “So you can build a school, or you can build a prison.”

The Senate is currently laying out its own budget bill, and Republican leaders say it will contain about $10 billion more than the House version, most of it for public schools and Medicaid. Senate Republicans are looking at various ways to raise revenue without calling them tax increases, like speeding up tax collections and eliminating some exemptions.

In a normal year, the Senate and House in Texas enter into negotiations and split the difference between proposals. The speaker of the House, Joe Straus, said in an interview that he saw the House bill as the beginning of a long negotiation. “We are not blind to the issues that are unaddressed,” he said.

But this year the two chambers are so far apart, and the public mood here is so hostile toward anything resembling a tax increase, that it is unclear how the two houses will bridge their differences. The House is not likely to accept any increases in revenue; the Senate is not likely to go along with the deep cuts in education and health care.

Veteran lawmakers on both sides said they were suffering from the public reaction against federal spending and the deficit in Washington, even though the state has little debt. In the Texas House, 31 freshman Republicans were swept in on the Tea Party tide on a small-government platform, and they are in no mood to compromise on raising taxes.

“You can’t exaggerate the anger and frustration in Texas with the behavior of the federal government,” said the State Senate finance chairman, Steve Ogden, a Republican from Bryan. “And to a certain extent we are thrown into the same boat.”

The public pressure to reduce taxes makes it difficult to do something about what many budget experts say is a chronic shortage of revenue in Texas. The experts said the economic downturn caused only a third of the revenue shortfall here, as sales tax receipts fell off. Most of it, they said, stemmed from the state’s decision to overhaul its business tax structure and to reduce local property taxes in 2006. Various tax exemptions have also weakened revenues over the years.

“The tax system is out of whack,” Senator Ogden said. “There are more and more exemptions, and the taxes we do have are not performing as expected.” At the same time, Texas continues to grow by about 1,500 people a day, and costs are rising inexorably. “It’s unstable,” he said. “The curves will not cross.”

Given the political climate, however, few in the Capitol expect the Legislature to perform major surgery on the tax code. The Democrats were sidelined in the Republican landslide last fall, and moderate Republicans are worried about their re-election prospects after seeing so many incumbents fall to Tea Party challengers in the last election. If the final budget resembles the House version, however, some politicians fear that there could be a price to pay at the polls next year — a backlash to the backlash.

The House plan would give schools almost $8 billion less than current state law requires over the next two years. Medicaid would be about $4 billion short of what officials say is needed to meet the growth in caseloads. One group of budget analysts predicted that 97,000 teachers and school employees would be laid off. Other analysts said that the cuts to Medicaid would force hundreds of nursing homes out of business and would have a devastating effect on rural hospitals and doctors.

Those sorts of austere budget cuts have not been seen in Texas since Truman was president, not even during the oil bust in the late 1980s and the recession in 2003, several lawmakers said.

“There is nothing comparable to this since World War II,” said State Senator John Whitmire, a veteran Houston Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Finance Committee. “I think we are in a hell of a mess, and I am not sure of the path out of it.”

    After Years of Cost Cuts, Texas Tries to Find More, NYT, 8.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/09texas.html

Missouri Halts Extension of Pay for Unemployed

March 31, 2011
The New York Times
By A. G. SULZBERGER

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Citing concerns about the national debt, a handful of conservative state legislators have blocked a vote to accept federal money to extend unemployment benefits, effectively cutting financial assistance for more than 10,000 out-of-work residents next week.

The move, which came despite widespread bipartisan support for extending the benefits, puts Missouri at the center of a growing national discussion about reining in unemployment benefits at a time when both the job market and government coffers remain weakened.

In recent weeks, Republican leaders in Michigan, Arkansas and Florida have taken steps to limit their states’ contributions by cutting the duration of unemployment benefits.

But for now Missouri, with an unemployment rate above 9 percent, is the only state that has stopped accepting dedicated federal money to extend payments to 99 weeks from 79. (A number of states never joined when the program was initially offered.)

“This is about sending a message to the federal government from the state of Missouri that enough is enough,” said Jim Lembke, the state senator who, with three other Republicans, is filibustering the legislation. “The federal government is sending us money they don’t have.”

Mr. Lembke said he also plans to block a vote needed to accept nearly $190 million in federal education money.

The reauthorization legislation, which was supported by the leadership of both parties, passed by a wide majority in the House and had been expected to pass easily in the Senate, where a similar extension passed unanimously last year. Both chambers are controlled by Republicans. The legislation is supported by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat.

But senators so far have decided against using a rarely invoked procedure to end debate. The chamber adjourned Thursday without voting on the matter, missing a deadline required for the payments to continue uninterrupted.

“This is the angriest I’ve ever been,” said Jolie Justus, a Democratic senator who gave an emotional speech in favor of extending benefits. “To tell these thousands of people that they have to get off their backsides and get a job is so out of touch with what’s going on in Missouri right now.”

In addition to those whose payments will stop immediately, the Missouri Department of Labor estimated that another 24,000 people would be affected by the end of the year — totaling $105 million in lost payments.

Senators were still discussing the possibility that a deal could be worked out, either through compromise or by forcing a vote.

    Missouri Halts Extension of Pay for Unemployed, NYT, 31.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/us/01missouri.html

Michigan Cuts Jobless Benefit by Six Weeks

March 28, 2011
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER

Michigan, whose unemployment rate has topped 10 percent longer than that of any other state, is about to set another record: its new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, signed a law Monday that will lead the state to pay fewer weeks of unemployment benefits next year than any other state.

Democrats and advocates for the unemployed expressed outrage that a such a hard-hit state will become the most miserly when it comes to how long it pays benefits to those who have lost their jobs. All states currently pay 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, before extended benefits paid by the federal government kick in. Michigan’s new law means that starting next year, when the federal benefits are now set to end, the state will stop paying benefits to the jobless after just 20 weeks. The shape of future extensions is unclear.

The measure, passed by a Republican-led Legislature, took advocates for the unemployed by surprise: the language cutting benefits next year was slipped quietly into a bill that was originally sold as way to preserve unemployment benefits this year.

The original bill was aimed at reducing unemployment fraud and making a technical change so the state’s current long-term unemployed could continue receiving extended unemployment benefits from the federal government for up to 99 weeks — benefits that would have been phased out next week without a change in the state law to make the unemployed in the state eligible to continue receiving benefits. Republican lawmakers amended it to cut the length of benefits starting in January.

“It turns the clock back 50 years at a time when unemployment is at historic highs since the Depression,” Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said in an interview, adding that he worried that the state would set a precedent that would be followed by other states, including Florida, that are thinking of curtailing their unemployment programs. “I think that Michigan should not be to unemployment insurance what Wisconsin has become to collective bargaining.”

But Republicans and business groups said that cutting benefits was necessary, because the unemployment trust fund, which was ill-prepared to cope with the recession, is insolvent. The state owes the federal government $4 billion that it borrowed to keep its program afloat, and unemployment taxes on businesses have already been raised, and will need to be raised more, to repay the money. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce called the new law “a huge win for job providers,” and said it could save up to $300 million a year.

Mr. Snyder issued a statement after signing the bill trumpeting the fact that it would preserve the extended benefits this year — and making no mention of the fact that it would cut state benefits beginning next year. “Snyder Signs Bill to Protect Unemployed,” was the headline of the news release that his office sent out. “Now that we have continued this safety net, we must renew our focus on improving Michigan’s economic climate,” he said in the statement.

Sara Wurfel, a spokeswoman for Mr. Snyder, said in an e-mail that he signed the bill because 35,000 Michiganders would have lost their extended benefits this week, and an additional 150,000 would have lost them by year’s end, if the state’s law had not been altered. She said that about 250,000 people collected more than 20 weeks of benefits in 2010.

Advocates for the unemployed called it a bad trade. “We have a temporary change to help some jobless workers that is imposing an indefinite or permanent cost on future jobless workers,” said Rick McHugh, a staff lawyer for the National Employment Law Project, which opposed the law. “And that does seem doubly unfair when the temporary help for current jobless workers is almost totally paid for by the federal government.”

But business groups saw the state’s need to change its unemployment law as an opportunity to make the cuts to benefits that they have long sought.

“The business community, the chamber included, were opposed to a one-sided benefits increase,” said Wendy Block, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce’s lobbyist responsible for health policy and human resources initiatives, and unemployment insurance. She said that while the extended benefits were currently paid for by the federal government, the money comes from a fund that is financed by federal unemployment taxes on employers. “Employers will ultimately see higher federal unemployment taxes to pay for this,” Ms. Block said.

More than half the states together owe the federal government more than $46 billion that they borrowed to pay for their unemployment programs during the downturn. Many states had salted away too little money in their unemployment trust funds during good times — often because they cut taxes on employers — and saw their funds depleted by the length and depth of the recession, and the slow pace at which businesses have begun hiring again. Now some other states are thinking about reducing unemployment benefits.

In Florida, where the unemployment rate hovers at 11.5 percent, even higher than Michigan’s current rate of 10.4 percent, lawmakers are zeroing in on a similar bill. The Florida House also approved a bill this month to reduce the number of weeks unemployed workers could receive benefits to 20 weeks, from 26, and make it easier for businesses to deny benefits to applicants. A Senate bill takes a less stringent approach and does not cut the number of weeks workers can receive benefits. (It is unclear how the differences will be resolved.) Doing so would undo a consensus that emerged in the years after World War II that states should pay up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. And it would come as the average length of unemployment has risen.

Richard A. Hobbie, the executive director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, said “at a time when long-term unemployment is worse than ever, it doesn’t match up well with the trends in the labor market.”

One of the unemployed Michiganders who was warned that her extended benefits could run out next week without action was Melissa Barone, 42, who lost her job with a software company in August 2009, and has been collecting unemployment since then. She has gone back to school to train to be a nurse.

“Maybe what they need to do is look at giving businesses more incentives,” Ms. Barone said, “rather than taking from the guy that is unemployed and needs those funds.”


Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting from Miami.

    Michigan Cuts Jobless Benefit by Six Weeks, NYT, 28.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/politics/29michigan.html

The Burden of Pensions on States

March 10, 2011
The New York Times
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

For public workers in Wisconsin, there’s more bad news.

Having lost the battle on collective bargaining, they may soon be asked to make more financial sacrifices.

The state’s workers offered to start picking up part of the cost of their pensions and health insurance early in their showdown this year with Gov. Scott Walker. That change will provide immediate relief for struggling towns, school districts and state agencies, and help them balance their budgets.

But new pension cost estimates, ordered before Governor Walker was elected, are coming as soon as next week. They are expected to show that the current contribution levels to the state pension system are too meager. More money, from employers and employees in some combination, will be needed, and perhaps much more in coming years.

Other states will also probably find that Wisconsin’s idea of simply dividing pension contributions between labor and management is an illusory solution to their long-term financial woes. That’s because several studies have shown that promises to workers are far more costly than routinely calculated by Wisconsin and most states.

And the problem seems unlikely to be solved by putting curbs on the collective bargaining power of state workers. Despite the arguments of some Republican governors and popular perception, the places with the most unionized work forces are not necessarily the ones with the most generous pensions, according to a new study.

Coming up with bigger contributions to pension funds will require states to make difficult choices about the size of their work forces, their commitment to public services and the viability of their employee benefits, which are often said to be irreversible and protected by state constitutions.

“The amount they have to be contributing could potentially be two to three times as much as they’re contributing now,” said Joshua Rauh, an associate professor of finance at Northwestern University, who has been challenging the way most cities and states measure their pension promises. “If you don’t want to count on the stock market to pay for all this, this is what you’re going to have to contribute.”

Mr. Rauh and a number of other analysts say the states’ biggest problem has been a failure to understand how much benefits will really cost. Instead of the states’ models, these analysts have come up with alternatives that more closely approximate those used by insurance companies.

Unlike recalcitrant states like New Jersey and Illinois, Wisconsin has been setting aside money every year for its fund. It has also been thinking of lowering its reliance on stocks, to reduce its exposure to bear markets.

The issue is whether it has been setting aside anywhere near enough, given the magnitude of its promises to workers.

The idea that public pensions may cost more than expected angers many union officials. They say economists like Mr. Rauh are trying to frighten workers, or build resentment among taxpayers so that public pension funds will be scrapped and replaced with something less generous.

“We think there’s an agenda,” said Steve Kreisberg, research director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “These numbers have become intensely politicized, and they’re being distorted in a way that does real harm to real people.”

A spokesman for Wisconsin’s governor said Mr. Walker had not factored any possible increase in pension contributions into his budget proposal or talks with the unions. “That was never discussed,” said the spokesman, Cullen Werwie.

An analysis being prepared for the state agency that operates Wisconsin’s pension system — and which is to be presented to the agency’s board on Wednesday — is expected to show that it has been relying on too high a figure for investment gains. If the system’s trustees accept those findings, overall cash contributions will have to rise.

The actuary preparing the analysis is not tipping his hand, but any increase at this point is likely to be small. The state estimates that 12 percent of all public workers’ pay will need to be set aside annually for the pension fund. Lowering investment expectations sharply, to 7 percent a year from the current 7.8 percent, could push the contribution rate up to perhaps 16 percent, meaning an additional $2,000 to $3,000 a year apiece for workers nearing retirement.

Based on the 12 percent figure, workers agreed earlier this year to contribute 5.8 percent of their pay to the pension fund, leaving their employers to pay the remaining 6.2 percent. Workers also agreed to cover a portion of their health costs. How to pay for health benefits for retirees is still being discussed.

Workers in Wisconsin point out that their payments in retirement are hardly a king’s ransom. Their average annual benefit is about $26,500, and they believe they have been wrongly portrayed as greedy chiselers who game the system and walk away with six-figure pensions.

But it can be a huge burden for states and municipalities to provide even a modest, $26,000-a-year pension to hundreds of thousands of people, at least in today’s economic environment, and especially if those people are able to retire well before 65 and collect that money for many years.

“When interest rates are low, these plans are really expensive to run,” said Gordon Latter, an actuary at Voyageur Asset Management whose clients include both corporate and public pension funds.

Despite the furor in Wisconsin, collective bargaining does not appear to be the main factor driving pension costs higher.

Sylvester J. Schieber, an economist and independent consultant, recently compared public pensions in each of the 50 states, ranking them from richest to poorest. Instead of looking at dollar values, like Wisconsin’s $26,500 a year, Mr. Schieber looked at what part of the average worker’s paycheck his pension was designed to replace in retirement. The method eliminates regional disparities and certain other problems with benefit-cost data.

Mr. Kreisberg of the public workers union said he considered the approach fair.

Mr. Schieber said he expected to find that the most generous states were the ones with collective bargaining for public workers, but he found no correlation whatsoever. “I was surprised at the result,” he said. “I had expected that the unions would be a significant force.”

Wisconsin turned out to have the eighth-richest pensions of any state, replacing on average 57 percent of a worker’s pay in retirement. But the most generous state by far is Colorado — even though it has granted collective bargaining to only a fourth of its public work force. In Wisconsin, roughly half are covered, according to Unionstats.com, a database that uses Census data to track union membership.

Colorado offers pensions that replace 90 percent of salary, with generous annual compounding that more than keeps up with the current rate of inflation. (The state has tried to reduce this compounding; retirees have sued.) Colorado’s pensions are unusually rich because its public workers are not permitted to participate in Social Security — the state pension is the only one they get.

The second-richest state is New York, which replaces 77 percent of a worker’s income, even though New York’s public work force earns Social Security benefits as well. A New Yorker’s public pension benefit, combined with Social Security, replaces more than 100 percent of his pay, Mr. Schieber found.

That might appear to be the fruits of collective bargaining, since New York State grants that right to more of its public work force than any other state. But the third most generous state is Georgia, replacing 68 percent of a retiree’s former paycheck on average. And Georgia is a right-to-work state with one of the lowest rates of collective bargaining in America, just 14 percent of its public work force.

Nonunion Georgia’s public pensions are, in fact, three times as generous as those of labor-friendly Vermont, where more than half the public work force has collective bargaining. Vermont replaces just 20 percent of a retiree’s previous pay, the lowest of any state.

Mr. Schieber said he was at a loss to explain these findings. He had expected rich pensions would go hand in hand with collective bargaining.

But his research, to be published in the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, does shed light on how a seemingly modest $26,000-a-year pension can be considered unaffordably rich. One reason is low interest rates; another is that public employees can often start claiming their pensions in their 50s. Wisconsin’s pension plan allows people to retire at 57 with a full pension, as long as they have 30 years of service. Police officers and firefighters can retire at 53, with 25 years of service.

In the private sector, pensions like that “have just kind of dropped off the radar screen,” Mr. Schieber said. At the dwindling number of companies that still grant full pensions below age 65, people seldom take them, for fear of giving up their health insurance before they qualify for Medicare. Labor statistics show a marked increase in the number of 60- to 65-year-olds still working.

Public employees have so far dodged that bullet. They can still generally retire several years younger, which means their states or municipalities must pay their benefits over a longer period. That adds up. It also means the money for their benefits has fewer years to compound, so more must be set aside years in advance.

“By the time the typical private-sector worker has retired, the teachers, the highway patrolmen and these folks have already gotten $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 in pensions,” Mr. Schieber said. “Plus, they’re getting a pretty rich retiree health benefit. That’s why these benefits are so expensive. ”

    The Burden of Pensions on States, NYT, 10.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/business/11pension.html

Largest crowds since Vietnam War march in Wisconsin

MADISON, Wisconsin | Sun Feb 27, 2011
12:03am EST
Reuters
By James Kelleher and David Bailey

MADISON, Wisconsin (Reuters) - A crowd estimated at more than 70,000 people on Saturday waved American flags, sang the national anthem and called for the defeat of a Wisconsin plan to curb public sector unions that has galvanized opposition from the American labor movement.

In one of the biggest rallies at the state Capitol since the Vietnam War, union members and their supporters braved frigid temperatures and a light snowfall to show their displeasure.

The mood was upbeat despite the setback their cause suffered earlier this week when the state Assembly approved the Republican-backed restrictions on union collective bargaining rights over fierce Democratic objections.

"I'm deeply honored to be here with you," said Peter Yarrow, a veteran of many social protests during his 50-year folk music career and a founding member of the group Peter, Paul and Mary. "If you persist, you will prevail."

What began two weeks ago as a Republican effort in one small U.S. state to balance the budget has turned into a confrontation with unions that could be the biggest since then President Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers nearly 30 years ago.

Republicans still must push the measure through the state Senate, which has been unable to muster a quorum for a vote because of a Democratic boycott.

If the plan is approved in Wisconsin, a number of other states where Republicans swept to victory in the 2010 elections could follow. Already, other legislatures including Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Idaho, Tennessee, and Kansas are working on union curbs.

Unlike previous protests, the rally on Saturday brought out thousands of union workers not directly affected by the bill, including the state's firefighters, exempted along with police from the Republican proposal. Dozens of private sector unions were represented as well at the event.

No "Tea Party" supporters of the proposal championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker were spotted on Saturday. They staged a smaller rally of their own in Madison a week ago.

PARTY ATMOSPHERE

The rally felt more like a party than a protest.

"This is one of the largest sustained protests we have seen in Madison since the Vietnam War. And to my knowledge there were absolutely no problems," Madison Police spokesman Joel DeSpain said.

Scott Sumer, a teacher from Rockford, Illinois, just south of the Wisconsin state line, said he hoped the sustained and broad-based opposition to the Wisconsin bill would discourage lawmakers in other states from considering similar measures.

"Other governors are going to see this and think, 'I don't want to go there.'" Sumer said. "The tenacity of this movement and civility here are impressive."

Demonstrators chanted "Hey hey, ho ho, Scott Walker has got to go," as they stood directly under the office window of the state's new governor, who introduced the controversial measure as part of a budget deficit cutting bill that is moving in the Wisconsin legislature.

The stakes are high for labor because more than a third of U.S. public employees such as teachers, police and civil service workers belong to unions while only 6.9 percent of private sector workers are unionized. Unions are the biggest single source of funding for the Democratic party.

Some of the demonstrators carried signs, others pushed baby carriages, and others walked with their dogs by their sides.

The overwhelming anti-Walker sentiment of the demonstration was telegraphed in many ways, including a sign that read: "Scott Walker for President ... of Libya."

U.S. labor groups also staged rallies across the country to show solidarity with Wisconsin in fighting the proposal they see as trying to break the union movement.

BETTER WEATHER

Wearing thick outerwear and her 10-month-old son strapped to her belly, Tamarine Cornelius, 36, carried a sign that read "If Wisconsin is gonna become Mississippi than I am gonna want better weather."

"I understand that there are tough times ahead, things are going to be difficult no matter what. I think most people understand that," said Cornelius, who works for the non-profit Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.

People in the state capital of Madison, which is home to unionized state government agencies and the University of Wisconsin, are overwhelmingly opposed to the governor's plan. But Republicans said they believe there is a silent majority who voted Walker into office, and support the efforts.

Republicans appeared defiant in the face of the union protests. In Phoenix, potential Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota, a neighbor of Wisconsin, drew applause from "Tea Party" activists when he blasted President Barack Obama for supporting the Wisconsin unions.

"It says in the Constitution: 'In order to form a more perfect Union.' ... Mr. President, that does not mean coddling out of control public employee unions," he told some 2,000 partisans gathered for a conference.

The Wisconsin changes sought by Walker would make state workers contribute more to health insurance and pensions, end government collection of union dues, let workers opt out of unions and require unions to hold recertification votes every year. Collective bargaining would be allowed only on wage increases up to the rate of inflation.

(Reporting by James Kelleher, David Bailey and Stefanie Carano in Madison; Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix; Editing by Greg McCune)

    Largest crowds since Vietnam War march in Wisconsin, R, 27.2.2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/27/us-wisconsin-protests-idUSTRE71O4F420110227

Thousands March on Capitols as Union Turmoil Spreads

Published: February 22, 2011
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and A. G. SULZBERGER

COLUMBUS, Ohio — First Wisconsin. Now Ohio and Indiana.

Battles with public employees’ unions spread on Tuesday, with Republican-dominated Legislatures pressing bills that would weaken collective bargaining and thousands of pro-union protesters marching on Capitol buildings in Columbus and Indianapolis.

After a week of upheaval in Madison, Wis., where the thumping din of protesters has turned almost celebratory, the battle moved to Ohio, where the Legislature held hearings on a bill that would effectively end collective bargaining for state workers and drastically reduce it for local government employees like police officers and firefighters.

Several thousand pro-union protesters filled a main hall of the state courthouse in Columbus and gathered in a large crowd outside, chanting “Kill the bill,” waving signs and playing drums and bagpipes. There were no official estimates, but the numbers appeared to be smaller than those in Madison last week. One Democratic state legislator put the figure at 15,000.

In Indiana, nearly all of the Democratic members of the state’s House of Representatives stayed away from a legislative session on Tuesday in an effort to stymie a bill that they say would weaken collective bargaining. By late Tuesday, they seemed to have succeeded in running down a clock on the bill, which was to expire at midnight. Representative Brian Bosma, the speaker of the Indiana House, said the bill would die when the deadline passed.

Fleeing was not an option for Ohio Democrats because the Republicans had enough members on their side for a quorum. Republicans have a 23-to-10 majority in the Ohio Senate, and the bill needs 17 votes to pass. It was not clear when it would be voted on.

The bills have amounted to the largest assault on collective bargaining in recent memory, labor experts said, striking at the heart of an American labor movement that is already atrophied.

“I think we are looking at the future of the labor movement being defined in rotundas in several states,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, specializing in labor issues. “This is a structural change with profound repercussions.”

The Ohio bill was introduced this month by a Republican senator, Shannon Jones, who said it was intended to give state and local governments more control over their finances in hard economic times. But opponents say the bill is about politics, calling it a direct attack on the unions, which have long been reliable Democratic supporters.

“They’re using a fiscal challenge as an excuse to consolidate political power,” said former Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, who was in the crowd of protesters in Columbus.

Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, strongly denied that characterization.

“This is nothing more than an effort to reduce the cost of governance so we can start to create jobs,” he said by telephone. “This is an effort to save the state, no agendas.”

Ohio is facing an $8 billion budget deficit, about 15 percent of its two-year budget, far less than states like California, Illinois and New Jersey, but still significant, and Mr. Kasich says drastic steps are required to plug the gap.

“The state is at a point of no return,” said Chris Kershner, a Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce vice president, who testified last week before the Senate committee overseeing the bill. “Change must happen now if Ohio emerges solvent from the current fiscal situation.”

Some in the Columbus crowd compared themselves to protesters in Egypt: a growing movement of people who will not take it anymore. But labor experts and political analysts were skeptical.

Unionized workers represented just 6.9 percent of all workers in the private sector in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics down from about 36 percent in 1955. The number of unionized workers in the public sector has held steady at about 35 percent since the late ’70s.

“Seven percent in the United States makes them a very rare breed,” said Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard. “I don’t think there’s a high probability that this will be an explosive event where the average American says, ‘Wait, this is what’s left of the middle class — what are you doing?’ ”

In Wisconsin, Senate Democrats remained in hiding across the state line, depriving the chamber the quorum needed to take up the budget repair bill, which includes provisions they view as an attack on public sector unions.

Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker, who introduced the legislation, warned that if the bill was not passed, layoff notices could be sent to state workers as early as next week.

Seeking to increase pressure on Mr. Walker to compromise, the South Central Wisconsin Federation of Labor announced on Tuesday that it had endorsed a rare labor action — a general strike that would begin if he signed the bill that would curb collective bargaining rights.

The federation, which represents 45,000 unionized workers in the Madison area, said it was not a formal call for a general strike, but the first step toward preparing for an eventual strike. .

The Ohio bill, if passed, would do away with the legal protections passed in 1983 governing collective bargaining for state workers, including prohibitions on hiring alternate workers during a strike. Bargaining power would be weakened for local workers, doing away with binding arbitration, an option favored by police officers and firefighters, who are not allowed to strike.

It would also slice into public-worker benefits by taking health insurance off the bargaining table and requiring government workers to pay at least 20 percent of the cost. It would strip automatic pay increases and mandatory sick days for teachers.

The bill could have political repercussions for Ohio Republicans, who draw some of their votes from union members. Jeremy Mendenhall, president of the Ohio Troopers Association, who is an active duty sergeant and a registered Republican, said he was angry with his party for pushing it.

“People won’t forget this in 2012,” he said.

But Republicans could also gain, said Gene Beaupre, a political science professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Taking a cost-cutting position against unions is part of the mantra for far-right groups like the Tea Party, and not necessarily unpopular.

“There is a strong sentiment against pension benefits and all that has accrued over the years as a result of organized public labor,” Mr. Beaupre said.

For the working class in Ohio, government jobs are highly desirable, with the median salary about 20 percent more than in the private sector, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau. This is partly because employees tend to be more skilled: more than half of state and local workers have college degrees, far more than in the private sector. But among college graduates, public workers make less than those in the private sector.

Public employees say they have sacrificed. The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association said they had taken five pay cuts in nine years with a savings to the most recent budget of about $250 million.

Monty Blanton, 50, who worked for 31 years as a food service worker and an electrician in a state facility for mentally retarded people, made a gross salary of $44,000 before retirement. His pension, he said, stands at $19,500, barely enough to live on.

“We’re barely making a living wage,” he said. “I don’t think they understand how hard it is in southeastern Ohio.”


Sabrina Tavernise reported from Columbus, and A. G. Sulzberger from Madison, Wis. Reporting was contributed by Bob Driehaus from Cincinnati, Steven Greenhouse from Madison and Robert Gebeloff, Sarah Wheaton and Timothy Williams from New York.

    Thousands March on Capitols as Union Turmoil Spreads, NYT, 22.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/us/23ohio.html

Court Weighs the Power of Congress

February 22, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday in a case that touched on the most pressing constitutional question of the day: just how much power does Congress have to regulate matters ordinarily left up to the states? The fate of President Obama’s health care law will turn on how that question is answered.

But based on the justices’ comments, the lurid facts of the case and the odd posture in which it reached the court, the eventual decision will probably offer only limited guidance on the health care law’s prospects.

The case heard Tuesday, Bond v. United States, No. 09-1227, arose from a domestic dispute. Carol A. Bond, a Pennsylvania woman, did not take it well when she learned that her husband was the father of her best friend’s child. She promised to make her former friend’s life “a living hell,” and she drew on her skills as a microbiologist to do so.

Ms. Bond spread harmful chemicals on her friend’s car, mailbox and doorknob. The friend suffered only a minor injury.

Such matters are usually handled by the local police and prosecutors. In Ms. Bond’s case, though, federal prosecutors charged her with using unconventional weapons in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, a treaty concerned with terrorists and rogue states.

At the argument, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggested that Congress had gone too far. Suppose, he said, that Ms. Bond had “decided to retaliate against her former friend by pouring a bottle of vinegar in the friend’s goldfish bowl.”

“As I read this statute, Justice Alito said, “that would be a violation of this statute, potentially punishable by life imprisonment.”

Ms. Bond’s lawyer, Paul D. Clement, said that a chemical used by his client was not much more exotic than vinegar. “There is something sort of odd about the government’s theory that says that I can buy a chemical weapon at Amazon.com,” he said.

In her appeal to the federal appeals court in Philadelphia, Ms. Bond argued that Congress did not have the constitutional power to use a chemical weapons treaty to address a matter of a sort routinely handled by state authorities. She cited the 10th Amendment, which says that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The appeals court ruled that Ms. Bond did not have standing to raise a 10th Amendment defense. Only states, it said, can invoke the amendment.

Federal prosecutors initially embraced that line of argument, but the Justice Department abandoned it in the Supreme Court, now saying that Ms. Bond was free to try to mount a defense based on the amendment.

Since Ms. Bond and her nominal adversary agreed on the central issue in the case, the court appointed a lawyer, Stephen R. McAllister, to argue for the position the government had disowned.

The outcome of the case on the standing point did not seem in much doubt on Tuesday.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for instance, said it would be “pretty harsh” to forbid Ms. Bond from challenging her conviction on the ground that the law under which she was convicted exceeded Congressional authority.

But the justices struggled with two other distinctions. One was how to disentangle claims that Congress had exceeded its enumerated powers in Article I of the Constitution from ones based on the 10th Amendment. The other was whether there were at least some 10th Amendment claims that could be pressed only by states.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested that the case could be decided simply on the ground that Congress had exceeded the powers listed in Article I of the Constitution.

“Are there any peculiarly 10th Amendment claims that you’re making?” she asked Mr. Clement. He replied that Ms. Bond relied “principally” on the argument that Congress had exceeded its powers but that it was possible the 10th Amendment played a role as well.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy added that individuals had a role to play in cases that at first blush seem to implicate only a clash between federal and state sovereignty.

“Your underlying premise,” Justice Kennedy told Mr. McAllister, “is that the individual has no interest in whether or not the state has surrendered its powers to the federal government, and I just don’t think the Constitution was framed on that theory.”

    Court Weighs the Power of Congress, NYT, 22.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/us/politics/23scotus.html

Wisconsin Leads Way as Workers Fight State Cuts

February 18, 2011
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER and KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

The unrest in Wisconsin this week over Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers is spreading to other states.

Already, protests erupted in Ohio this week, where another newly elected Republican governor, John Kasich, has been seeking to take away collective bargaining rights from unions.

In Tennessee, a law that would abolish collective bargaining rights for teachers passed a State Senate committee this week despite teachers’ objections. Indiana is weighing proposals to weaken unions. Union members in Pennsylvania, who are not necessarily facing an attack on their bargaining rights, said Friday that they planned to wear red next week to show solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin.

In many states, Republicans who came to power in the November elections, often by defeating union-backed Democrats, are taking aim not only at union wages, but at union power as they face budget gaps in the years ahead.

The images from Wisconsin — with its protests, shutdown of some public services and missing Democratic senators, who fled the state to block a vote — evoked the Middle East more than the Midwest.

The parallels raise the inevitable question: Is Wisconsin the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights?

Governor Walker, in an interview, said he hoped that by “pushing the envelope” and setting an aggressive example, Wisconsin might inspire more states to curb the power of unions. “In that regard, I hope I’m inspiration just as much as others are an inspiration to me,” he said.

FreedomWorks, a Washington group that helped cultivate the Tea Party movement, said it was trying to use its lists of activists to turn out supporters for a variety of bills aimed at cutting the power of unions — not just in Wisconsin, but in Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio as well.

And officials seeking to curtail labor’s power in other states said that by focusing attention on public-sector unions, the tense standoff in Wisconsin could give them momentum.

“We think that what’s going on in Wisconsin actually helps us here in Ohio,” said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Governor Kasich, who is supporting a bill that would limit collective bargaining rights.

But Wisconsin is also proving to be a catalyst for Democrats and labor leaders, as they take heart from the way thousands of workers have rallied to the cause.

With the falling popularity of unions in recent years, some union leaders see the attempt to take away bargaining powers as an effort that could shift the question from whether public-sector workers are overpaid to whether they should have the right to negotiate contracts at all.

To that end, unions and Democrats are preparing their own post-Wisconsin campaigns in a number of states against what President Obama called “an assault on unions” in a television interview this week.

As Gerald W. McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the main union of state employees, put it: “Workers’ rights — including the fundamental right to organize and bargain for better pay, benefits and working conditions — are under attack in states from Maine to Ohio, from Wisconsin to Florida.”

Governor Walker’s plan would limit collective bargaining for most state and local government employees to wages, barring them from negotiating on issues like benefits and work conditions. It would also require workers to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, cap wage increases based on the Consumer Price Index and limit contracts to one year. And it would take on the power of unions by requiring them to take annual votes to maintain certification, and by permitting workers to stop paying union dues. Police and fire unions, which have some of the most expensive benefits but who supported Mr. Walker’s campaign for governor, are exempted.

“If they succeed in Wisconsin, the birthplace of A.F.S.C.M.E., they will be emboldened to attack workers’ rights in every state,” Mr. McEntee said. “Instead of trying to work with public employees at the bargaining table, they’ve decided to throw away the table.”

On paper, Wisconsin might seem an unlikely candidate for an assault on unions. Like many other states, it has grappled with large spending gaps during the economic downturn, but its projected deficits for the next two years are nowhere near the worst in the country — more like in the middle of the pack.

Its 7.5 percent unemployment rate is below the national average. Its pension fund is considered one of the healthiest in the nation, and it is not suffering from the huge shortfalls that other states are facing.

Those facts have groups on both sides thinking if it can happen there, it can anywhere.

In Columbus, Ohio, Tea Party organizers said they had 300 to 500 people turn out on Thursday for a counterdemonstration against several thousand union members.

“We weren’t well-versed in everything about the bill and why they’re doing what they’re doing except that we’re broke as a state,” said Adriana Inman, an organizer with the Fairfield Tea Party in Southwest Ohio, who attended the rally. She said that her group had many union members.

Some union members who are trying to preserve their rights have been cheered by what they have seen in Wisconsin.

Joe Rugola, executive director of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees and an international vice president of A.F.S.C.M.E., said that 4,000 protesters gathered at the Columbus Statehouse on Thursday to preserve union rights. “Yesterday at the Statehouse, everyone was talking about the images they had seen in Wisconsin, and it gave them great heart and made folks determined to equal that effort.”

Tennessee, a right-to-work state, where workers cannot be required to join a union, is likely to become a staging ground for a collective bargaining battle.

State Senator Jack Johnson, a Republican who sponsored a measure to curtail collective bargaining rights for teachers, said he expected the bill to become law. “Collective bargaining between teachers and the school boards has been an absolute dismal failure,” he said.

In Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican who is considered a possible presidential candidate in 2012, issued an executive order on his first day as governor in 2005 that ended collective bargaining for state employees. Now he is supporting a measure to limit negotiations by teachers to wages and benefits. Some state lawmakers have called for steps that would go further, but Mr. Daniels has said that he does not think their legislation should be passed this year because it has not been publicly vetted.

Not all new Republican governors plan to take aim at collective bargaining rights.

In Pennsylvania, which faces a $4 billion deficit, a spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett, the state’s new Republican governor, said the governor wanted to shrink the government while being mindful of a 40-year-old law giving state employees the right to organize.

“We’ll begin negotiations with the public-sector unions and anticipate we’ll conduct those in good faith,” said Kevin Harley, a spokesman for Governor Corbett.

Michael Luo and Kate Zernike contributed reporting from New York, and Monica Davey from Wisconsin.

    Wisconsin Leads Way as Workers Fight State Cuts, NYT, 18.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/us/politics/19states.html

A Watershed Moment for Public-Sector Unions

February 18, 2011
The New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

In the half century since Wisconsin became the first state to give its public workers the right to bargain collectively, government employee unions have mushroomed in size and power — so much so that they now account for more than half of the nation’s union members.

But the legislative push by Wisconsin’s new governor, Scott Walker, a Republican, to slash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees could prove a watershed for public-sector unions, perhaps signaling the beginning of a decline in their power — both at the bargaining table and in politics.

Three-fourths of the states allow collective bargaining by some or all of state or local government employees. And labor’s friends and foes alike agree that if the Wisconsin legislation passes, it will create momentum for similar bills in Ohio, Indiana and other states.

“These kinds of high-profile public-employee battles have enormous stakes,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor law at Harvard. “We’re still feeling the consequences of President Reagan confronting the union in the air controllers’ strike. For anyone interested in union rights, the fight in Wisconsin couldn’t be more important.”

From Florida to California, many political leaders are seeking to cut the wages and benefits of public-sector workers to help balance strained budgets.

But Mr. Walker is going far beyond that, seeking to definitively curb the power of government unions in his state. He sees public-employee unions as a bane to the taxpayer because they demand — and often win — generous health and pension plans that help push up taxes and drive budget deficits higher.

To end that cycle, he wants to restrict the unions to bargaining over just one topic, base wages, while eliminating their ability to deal over health care, working hours and vacations. Moreover, he wants to require unions to win an employee election every year to continue representing workers.

By flooding the State Capitol in Madison with more than 10,000 protesters, labor unions are doing their utmost to block Mr. Walker’s plans. They helped persuade Democratic state senators to slip out of the building this week to deny Republicans the quorum they needed to pass the legislation.

Democrats say the governor’s “budget repair bill” — strongly supported by the Republicans who control both legislative houses — is political payback, intended to cripple public-sector unions, which spent more than $200 million to back Democrats across the country in November’s elections.

Mr. Walker denies any such notion, saying he simply wants to curb union bargaining rights and bring public workers’ wages and benefits in line with the private sector. “It’s not about the unions,” he said this week. “It’s about balancing the budget.”

Christopher Policano, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said his union was willing to negotiate concessions with Mr. Walker, “but he wants to throw out the bargaining table.”

Mr. Walker has repeatedly argued that most Wisconsin residents back his legislation. After visiting a factory this week, he said that private-sector workers often complain that public employees receive more generous health and pension benefits than they do.

There is no question that public-sector unions and the thousands of contracts they have negotiated over the years have improved wages and pensions of government workers and made government service more attractive. But union leaders are quick to point to studies showing that overall compensation for government employees is slightly lower than for private-sector employees of comparable age and education.

Also embedded in the Wisconsin debate — and reaching well beyond that state — is a more fundamental dispute over the role, even the legitimacy, of public-sector unions. Like Mr. Walker, Ohio’s new governor, John Kasich, and Indiana’s second-term governor, Mitch Daniels, both Republicans, see public-sector bargaining as something to be banned or severely restricted because of its effect on taxpayers and government budgets.

Some Republicans quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, who bridled at public-sector unionism and once said, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted in the public service.”

Republicans say the Democrats have embraced the government employees’ cause because weaker unions would reduce crucial political support for Democratic candidates. Republicans have often denounced what they say is a squalid deal in which public-sector unions spend generously to elect allies to office and then those allies lavish generous wages and benefits on union members.

Ever since Wisconsin gave its government employees the right to bargain in 1959, it has generally been Democrats who have extended that right in other states. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave most federal employees the right to unionize and bargain collectively.

The national importance of the Wisconsin fight is clear. President Obama weighed in on labor’s behalf on Wednesday, calling Mr. Walker’s proposals “an assault on unions.” And the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, praised Mr. Walker for “confronting problems that have been neglected for years at the expense of jobs and economic growth.”

Citing an anticipated budget deficit of $137 million this year and a $3.6 billion shortfall over the next two years, Mr. Walker argues that his measures to curb union power and bargaining are essential to help balance the budget. Union leaders say that several of Mr. Walker’s proposals — including the one that would require elections each year to determine whether a majority of public employees want to keep their union — are really intended to cripple unions, not balance the budget.

Other governors, Democrat and Republican, are also grappling with budget deficits. But many of those governors, like Jerry Brown of California and Andrew M. Cuomo in New York, both Democrats, and Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, are not trying to strip bargaining rights. They are instead using public pressure and the threat of layoffs to persuade public-sector unions to make far-reaching concessions.

“Wisconsin has become ground zero for the process of pushing back against unions,” said Steve Meyer, a professor of labor history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “People are waiting to see what happens here. That’s why the labor movement has become so deeply involved trying to stop this process.”

As happens so often in today’s increasingly partisan politics, the battle reflects how differently Republicans and Democrats view a particular subject — in this case, unions and their power. Many Republicans see public-sector unions as greedy, powerful special interests that are taking too many taxpayer dollars. Many Democrats see them as natural allies and a vital part of a labor movement that has helped build the nation’s middle class.

The furious demonstrators in Madison have shown that public-sector unions still wield real power. But if the Legislature enacts Mr. Walker’s bill, a tipping point might well be reached, with the power of public-sector unions tilting into decline.

    A Watershed Moment for Public-Sector Unions, NYT, 18.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/us/19union.html

Angry Demonstrations in Wisconsin as Cuts Loom

February 16, 2011
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY and STEVEN GREENHOUSE

MADISON, Wis. — As four game wardens awkwardly stood guard, protesters, scores deep, crushed into a corridor leading to the governor’s office here on Wednesday, their screams echoing through the Capitol: “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Behind closed doors, Scott Walker, the Republican who has been governor for about six weeks, calmly described his intent to forge ahead with the plans that had set off the uprising: He wants to require public workers to pay more for their health insurance and pensions, effectively cutting the take-home pay of many by around 7 percent.

He also wants to weaken most public-sector unions by sharply curtailing their collective bargaining rights, limiting talks to the subject of basic wages.

Mr. Walker said he had no other options, since he is facing a deficit of $137 million in the current state budget and the prospect of a $3.6 billion hole in the coming two-year budget.

“For us, it’s simple,” said Mr. Walker, whose family home was surrounded by angry workers this week, prompting the police to close the street. “We’re broke.”

For months, state and local officials around the country have tackled their budget problems by finding trims here and there, apologetically resorting to layoffs, and searching for accounting moves to limp through one more year.

Events in Wisconsin this week, though, are a sign of something new: No more apologies, no half-measures. Given the dire straits of budgets around the country, other state leaders may take similarly drastic steps with state workers, pensions and unions.

“I’m sure we’re going to hear more from other states where Republican governors are trying to heap the entire burden of the financial crisis on public employees and public employees’ unions,” said William B. Gould IV, a labor law professor at Stanford University and a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

“I think it’s quite possible that if they’re successful in doing this, a lot of other Republican governors will emulate this,” Mr. Gould added.

Here, in a state with a long history of powerful unions, Mr. Walker’s plan was upending life in the capital city.

Madison schools were closed on Wednesday after many employees called in sick to help lobby. Thousands of teachers, state workers and students filled a square around the Capitol, chanting “kill the bill” and waving signs (some likening Mr. Walker to a dictator and demanding his recall).

And a hearing on the issue that had started at 10 a.m. Tuesday ran through the night and into Wednesday afternoon, as protesters with sleeping bags camped out near the Capitol’s rotunda and bleary-eyed lawmakers gulped coffee from paper cups.

Protesters shared stories of their families’ deep history in unions, people struggling to pay their mortgages, workers considering moving away, switching careers, retiring.

Kim Hoffman, a middle school music teacher, said she and her husband, also a teacher, would lose $1,200 a month under the plan — too deep a cut to manage.

“I love teaching, but I’d have to start looking for another job, period,” she said.

While union leaders here set up makeshift offices in the Capitol, distributing fliers and planning vigils and “teach-outs,” national officials from more than a dozen unions pledged millions of dollars, as well as phone banks and volunteers, to block such efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

“We view the events in Wisconsin as one of the worst attacks on workers’ rights and their voices in the workplace that we’ve ever seen,” said Kim Anderson, director of government relations for the National Education Association in Washington, where 150 people were calling teachers and union supporters in Wisconsin, urging them to demonstrate or call lawmakers.

Kevin Gibbons, a leader of a union here representing teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin, said, “I think Governor Walker is using this financial crisis as an excuse to attack unions, and if Wisconsin goes, what will be next?”

Already, tensions were rising in other states, particularly in places where Republican victories in November have altered the political landscape.

Earlier this week, in Ohio, workers protested outside the Statehouse in Columbus to protest a bill that would limit collective bargaining for state employees there. In Indianapolis, teachers rallied against a bill that would limit contract bargaining for teachers’ unions. In Tennessee, a legislative committee was considering a similar bill.

For his part, Mr. Walker said he did not believe that most Wisconsin residents had a problem with his proposals. In a tour on Tuesday around the state — to private companies — Mr. Walker said he spoke with plenty of private employees who told of paying far more for their retirement plans and health care than state workers.

Mr. Walker would require state employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their pay to their pensions, where most now pay far less, and require state employees to pay at least 12.6 percent of health care premiums (most pay about 6 percent now). The average salary for a Wisconsin state worker is $48,348, according to a recent report by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

Some national polls, too, have suggested that many people would back cuts to pensions and benefits of government workers.

“To the average citizen — to middle class, working class families — they’re paying a whole lot more right now,” Mr. Walker said. As recently as Wednesday morning, Mr. Walker spoke with Gov. John Kasich of Ohio — to “commiserate” a bit, he said.

“Obviously there is a lot of protest out there, but in the end, it’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Walker said, adding, “We didn’t get elected to worry about the politics.”

Lawmakers here were expected to vote on the issue by week’s end. Into the evening on Wednesday, there was talk that lawmakers might amend the plan, perhaps to restore some union bargaining rights.

But many predicted that the outlines of Mr. Walker’s proposal might survive votes in the Assembly and Senate, both of which are controlled by Republicans.

Still, some lawmakers here appeared rattled by the crowds cramming the building.

Scott Fitzgerald, the Republican leader in the State Senate, slipped out of the Capitol Wednesday morning with his sunglasses on, head down. Protesters had gone to his home earlier in the week, forcing his family (including his wife, a school guidance counselor) to go elsewhere for a bit.

Monica Davey reported from Madison, and Steven Greenhouse from New York.

    Angry Demonstrations in Wisconsin as Cuts Loom, NYT, 16.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/17wisconsin.html

Florida’s Scott Rejects Tampa-Orlando High-Speed Rail Line

February 16, 2011
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida on Wednesday rejected plans for a high speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando, in the process turning down $2 billion in federal funds and a key piece of President Obama’s goal of building a national high-speed rail network.

Florida is the third state with a newly elected Republican governor to turn down a portion of the administration’s high-speed rail project, joining John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has also questioned the White House’s rail strategy.

The Obama administration has called for spending $53 billion on passenger trains and high-speed rail projects over the next six years as part of the president’s goal of making high-speed rail accessible to 80 percent of Americans within 25 years.

But critics said the need to link Tampa and Orlando — separated by 84 miles — paled in comparison with the necessity of high-speed rail along the busy Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston.

In a statement Wednesday, Mr. Scott said cost overruns related to the project could leave Florida taxpayers with an additional $3 billion tab. He also said he believed the federal government’s ridership and revenue estimates were too optimistic, and state taxpayers would be left to pay for ongoing subsidies.

Mr. Scott also said that if Florida started to build the project and then determined it was too costly to continue, the state would have to return $2.4 billion to the federal government.

“The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers, and I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits,” he said.

    Florida’s Scott Rejects Tampa-Orlando High-Speed Rail Line, NYT, 16.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/17rail.html

Relief for States and Businesses

February 9, 2011
The New York Times

So many people now receive jobless benefits that 30 states have run out of their unemployment trust funds and are borrowing $42 billion from the federal government. Three of the hardest-hit states — Michigan, Indiana and South Carolina — have borrowed so much that they triggered automatic unemployment tax increases on employers, and the same thing is likely to happen to 20 more states this year.

The crisis could prove to be a point of friction between Republican governors and members of Congress. On Tuesday, the Obama administration unveiled a smart proposal to delay those tax increases and provide some relief to both employers and state governments. Congressional Republicans reflexively objected to the idea, which could produce higher taxes in three years, but this plan provides relief that might stimulate hiring now when it is most needed. Republican governors in desperate states like Michigan and Indiana are likely to find that more attractive than party members in Washington do.

Under the plan, which is subject to Congressional approval, there would be a two-year moratorium on the increased taxes that employers would otherwise have to pay to support the unemployment insurance system, which could save businesses as much as $7 billion. During those same two years, states would be forgiven from paying the $1.3 billion in interest they owe Washington on the money they have borrowed. The stimulus bill provided a grace period, but it expired last year.

In 2014, when the economy will presumably have recovered somewhat, employers will have to make up for the moratorium by paying higher unemployment taxes to the states. Specifically, they will have to pay taxes on the first $15,000 of an employee’s income, instead of the current $7,000. But, even then, unemployment taxes will be at the same level, adjusted for inflation, as they were in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan raised them.

The administration is proposing to cut the federal unemployment tax rate in 2014 so that employers would pay the same amount to Washington as they do now. States, if they choose to do so, could collect more from each employer to repay the federal government and restock their own unemployment trust funds.

Republicans immediately derided the proposal as an irresponsible tax increase. On his blog, Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, criticized the higher taxes in 2014, but he did not mention the two-year moratorium on the automatic tax increases in 20 vulnerable states.

The proposal is not a bailout for the states or employers but rather a recognition that the automatic tax increases built into the benefits system could put a brake on hiring — and in precisely the states where employers need the most incentive to bring people back to work.

Over the next decade, as more people return to work and the states repay their debt more quickly, the proposal is expected to bring more dollars back to the federal government than the temporary moratorium will cost, so the long-term effect on the deficit should be positive. The full details of the plan’s costs and benefits will be available when President Obama submits his 2012 budget to Congress next week. When he does, both parties should take a close look at the numbers and seize the opportunity to keep this fundamental safety net solvent.

    Relief for States and Businesses, NYT, 9.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/opinion/10thu1.html

Texas Governor Offers Optimism on Budget Shortfall

February 8, 2011
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

AUSTIN, Tex. — Gov. Rick Perry of Texas cannot be faulted for lack of optimism. Facing a two-year budget gap of at least $15 billion, Mr. Perry struck a defiant stance in his annual address to the Legislature, calling the state economy “the envy of the nation” and promising the budget would be balanced through spending cuts alone.

“Now the mainstream media and big-government interest groups are doing their best to convince us that we’re facing a budget Armageddon,” he said. “Texans don’t believe it, and they shouldn’t, because it’s not true. Are we facing tough choices? Of course, but we can overcome them by setting priorities.”

To be sure, Texas fared better than many other states during the recent recession, but sales tax revenues were badly hurt as people curbed spending. The depth of the state’s revenue shortfall was also hidden because it employs a two-year budget cycle and had used billions in federal stimulus money to avoid cutbacks in 2010. Now the state finds itself in a budget crunch not unlike those in New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois.

Even if one does not account for the natural growth in school enrollment and Medicaid rolls, the state would need at least $15 billion of new revenues over the next two years just to keep spending flat.

To continue services at current levels and accommodate growth in the population, however, lawmakers in Austin would have to come up with $27 billion in new revenues.

Republicans, who control every statewide office as well as both houses of the Legislature, are beginning to confront what it means to close the budget gap solely with cutbacks. About 10,000 state employees are in danger of getting pink slips. House and Senate leaders have said they plan to cut aid to schools by $10 billion, a move that would force the layoffs of thousands of teachers and increase class sizes. Lawmakers are also contemplating slicing Medicaid payments to doctors and other providers by 10 percent.

At Statehouse hearings in recent days, advocates for schools, the poor, the disabled and the elderly laid out in detail how Texans would be hurt by cutbacks. They forecast a near future in which nursing homes and rural health clinics would have to close, schools would be consolidated and nursery schools shuttered.

But Mr. Perry, who has worked to raise his national profile as a fiscal conservative, vowed again in his speech not to raise taxes. He also said he would not tap into the state’s reserve fund of about $9.4 billion, fed with oil excise taxes, saying it would be irresponsible to use emergency funds on salaries and other recurring expenses.

Instead, the governor proposed consolidating several state agencies, like the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Rural Affairs. He also proposed temporarily doing away with others, among them the Historical Commission and the Commission on the Arts. It was time, he said, to reinvent the government.

“If ever there was a time to truly reform our approach to governance and streamline our organization, it is now,” he said.

Democrats said Mr. Perry and Republican legislative leaders, who have big majorities in both houses, are ignoring reality to curry favor with Tea Party conservatives. They point out that the governor regularly boasts about people moving to Texas but has not budgeted for the costs of rising school enrollment.

“It’s totally unrealistic,” said Representative Garnet F. Coleman, Democrat of Houston. “He runs around during the election saying we don’t have any problems, and he’s still saying we have no problems here. It’s clear he can’t add or subtract.”

Even members of the governor’s own party are saying privately that they would support dipping into the rainy-day funds to cushion the blow to schools and nursing homes.

Many lawmakers think Mr. Perry is more concerned about laying the groundwork for a run for national office than averting painful budget cuts. Though Mr. Perry has said repeatedly he is not interested in running for president, others see his themes of low taxes, limited services and tight regulation as a platform for a possible run in Republican primaries.

    Texas Governor Offers Optimism on Budget Shortfall, NYT, 8.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/us/09texas.html

Obama Wants Jobless Aid Help for States

February 7, 2011
Filed at 8:56 p.m. EST
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is proposing short-term relief to states saddled with unemployment insurance debt, coupled with a delayed increase in the income level used to tax employers for the aid to the jobless.

The administration plans to include the proposal in its budget plan next week. The plan was described late Monday by a person familiar with the discussions on the condition of anonymity because the budget plan is still being completed.

Rising unemployment has placed such a burden on states that 30 of them owe the federal government $42 billion in money borrowed to meet their unemployment insurance obligations. Three states already have had to raise taxes to begin paying back the money they owe. More than 20 other states likely would have to raise taxes to cover their unemployment insurance debts. Under federal law, such tax increases are automatic once the money owed reaches a certain level.

Under the proposal, the administration would impose a moratorium in 2011 and 2012 on state tax increases and on state interest payments on the debt.

In 2014, however, the administration proposes to increase the taxable income level for unemployment insurance from $7,000 to $15,000. Under the proposal, the federal unemployment insurance rate would be adjusted so that the new higher income level would not result in a federal tax increase, the person familiar with the plan said.

States, however, could retain their current rates, meaning employers could face higher unemployment insurance taxes beginning in 2014.

Though the administration could face criticism for enabling states to increase taxes, the thrust of the administration's argument is that federal taxes would not increase and that the move is fiscally prudent because the federal government ultimately would be repaid at a faster rate than if it did nothing.

The person who described the plan said only 13 of the 30 states that owe the $42 billion would be expected to repay their share of the money in the next nine years under current conditions. The administration's proposal would allow 15 more states to repay the money, this person said.

    Obama Wants Jobless Aid Help for States, NYT, 7.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/02/07/business/AP-US-Obama-Unemployment-Insurance.html

Their Real Agenda

February 6, 2011
The New York Times

As states groan and stumble through the recession, some politicians are trying to exploit their financial crises for ideological purposes. Many Republicans want to use hard times to fundamentally reduce the role of states and public employee unions, in the same way federal tax cuts forced a debate on how to cut the deficit.

Some want to cut back severely on federal aid to the states, no matter how much new joblessness that may cause, while others want to ensure that Washington will never bail out a state close to defaulting on its bonds.

The latest pernicious idea, pushed by Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush and several members of Congress, would allow the states to declare bankruptcy, for the principal purpose of tearing up union contracts and negating pension obligations.

It is true that many public employee unions have done well during a time of hardship for most Americans. The problem, though, isn’t the existence of those unions; it is the generous contracts willingly given to them by lawmakers because of their lobbying power and bloc-voting ability. In New York, unionized state employees have had a 14 percent raise over four years, and now make an average of nearly $67,000. Iowa’s state workers last year won a 6 percent raise over two years.

Dozens of states give pension and health benefits far more generous than in the private sector. Their costs have resulted in significant cutbacks to basic state services for the poor and middle class.

But bankruptcy would fight fire with gasoline, spreading instability to the bond markets, scaring off investors who might think they would never get repaid, and making it much harder and more expensive for states to raise desperately needed capital. Some bond experts say even talk of allowing states to declare bankruptcy has rattled markets.

Magic-bullet ideas like this one are no substitute for the hard work of governing responsibly. Union contracts and benefits need to be changed at the bargaining table, and budget-cutting governors have all kinds of leverage. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York got the attention of state unions last week by threatening to lay off 9,800 workers if the unions don’t give up at least $450 million in payroll cuts and other givebacks. Other governors are talking about changing collective bargaining laws.

Governors also have a huge megaphone at their disposal, and should not hesitate to remind both the public and union members that financial emergencies require sacrifice. Government employees accept a special civic responsibility when they go to work for the taxpayers that is not always shared by their private counterparts — they are working to serve their state’s needs, not just themselves. (That point would be easier to sell if the sacrifice were universal. Giving tax cuts to billionaires and asking middle-class employees for givebacks makes little financial or moral sense.)

Though the bankruptcy proposal has not caught fire in Washington, it demonstrates that some conservatives are serious about experimenting with volatile new ideas. To contain the damage, lawmakers and unions need to get equally serious about dealing with costs that are beginning to infuriate the people who pay the bills.

    Their Real Agenda, NYT, 6.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opinion/07mon1.html

Va. to Ask Supreme Court to Rule on Health Law

February 3, 2011
The New York Times
By KEVIN SACK

Virginia’s attorney general announced on Thursday that he hoped to bypass an initial appellate review by asking the United States Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the Obama health care law on an expedited basis.

Only rarely does the Supreme Court grant such hearings, and it has already rejected a similar request in another legal challenge to the health care act. But the commonwealth’s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, said the legal and governmental confusion sown by conflicting lower-court opinions demanded a rapid resolution.

“Currently, state governments and private businesses are being forced to expend enormous amounts of resources to prepare to implement a law that, in the end, may be declared unconstitutional,” Mr. Cuccinelli said in a statement.

In December, Mr. Cuccinelli became the first plaintiff to win a challenge to the health care act, when Judge Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., struck down a provision that requires most Americans to obtain insurance. The judge ruled that the insurance requirement exceeded Congress’s authority under the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce.

Two other federal judges, including another in Virginia, had previously upheld the law. Then on Monday, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., joined Judge Hudson in striking down the insurance mandate. But unlike Judge Hudson, Judge Vinson invalidated the entire law.

The law, enacted last year by a Democratic Congress and signed in March by President Obama, aims to cover 32 million uninsured Americans by ending insurer discrimination against those with pre-existing health conditions and by providing government subsidies to make coverage affordable.

The Justice Department, which is defending the Obama administration in the health litigation, has already filed a notice of appeal of Judge Hudson’s ruling in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond. Because of the geographic distribution of the four lower court rulings, three different courts of appeal are likely to hear the cases on their way to the Supreme Court.

Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the agency continued “to believe this case should follow the ordinary course” so that legal arguments could be fully developed before being presented to the Supreme Court. She pointed out that the insurance mandate does not take effect until 2014 and that the Fourth Circuit has already expedited its schedule by setting oral arguments for May.

The Justice Department also is considering whether to seek a stay of the Florida decision in order to clarify confusion about whether the health care act remains in effect in the 26 states that are plaintiffs in the case.

Mr. Cuccinelli said he recognized that an expedited Supreme Court review would be exceptional. But he said that this case and the others challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as the law is known, were “truly exceptional in their own right.”

In November, the Supreme Curt refused to review another challenge to the health care act that had been dismissed by a California judge on grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue.

    Va. to Ask Supreme Court to Rule on Health Law, NYT, 3.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/health/policy/04virginia.html

Court Allows Emanuel on Ballot for Chicago Mayor

January 27, 2011
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO — Rahm Emanuel’s bid to become mayor of this city may proceed, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, ending a week that had turned this city’s politics upside down, then back again.

The unanimous decision brought a close to months of legal debate over whether Mr. Emanuel qualified for the ballot, specifically whether his time in Washington as President Obama’s chief of staff meant that he had given up his residency status in Chicago, where he was born.

By Illinois state code, candidates for mayor are required to have resided in Chicago for at least one year before Election Day. Mr. Emanuel left the White House in October, and the election is Feb. 22, but Mr. Emanuel argued that he was still a Chicago resident because he owned a house here, paid taxes here, voted here, and left his most cherished possessions in the basement of his house here.

Moments after the ruling was issued late Thursday, Mr. Emanuel was shaking hands with voters at a downtown “L” train stop,, where many had yet to hear the outcome, and asked what had happened.

Mr. Emanuel, who appeared cheery as a mob of cameras rolled, said that he had no control over what had occurred but was pleased that the voters now had some sense of certainty for the election ahead.

“We stayed focused on the concerns of the voters,” Mr. Emanuel said of a week that had, however briefly, sent voters, election workers and other candidates into a tangle of confusion. The word “resident,” Mr. Emanuel advised, would no longer be permitted in his family’s regular Scrabble games. Then he was off to a televised debate of the candidates.

Legal experts said the State Supreme Court’s decision was probably a final answer to Mr. Emanuel’s situation, which has left this city puzzled and reeling, even as early voting is to start on Monday.

“This is the end of the road,” said Burt Odelson, a lawyer who represented two Chicago residents who had challenged Mr. Emanuel’s status, driven, in part, by a notion, that if city workers are required to live within city limits, a candidate for mayor should, too.

Throughout the challenges to Mr. Emanuel’s candidacy, he had confidently asserted that he would be allowed to run, and had proceeded with routine campaign events as if there was no crisis.

The decision is certain to come as a disappointment to the campaigns of other candidates — especially Gery Chico, a former mayoral chief of staff, and Carol Moseley Braun, a former United States senator — who would have benefited enormously from Mr. Emanuel’s removal from the ballot, and had seemed to have entirely new prospects of becoming mayor.

Not surprisingly, though, the other candidates were quick to play down the significance of the entire episode, insisting that they were pleased to at last move on with a real debate over Chicago’s crucial issues.

“Emanuel’s residency drama has made this election into a circus instead of a serious debate about the future of Chicago,” Mr. Chico said in a statement issued within moments of the decision. “With less than 30 days to go until Election Day, there is no time to waste. Game on.”

Miguel del Valle, the city clerk and another candidate, sounded a similar note: “As I have said throughout my campaign, this has served as a real distraction that has kept people from focusing on the issues that are of concern to the neighborhoods of the city of Chicago — our neighborhood schools, public safety, and fixing our budget deficit.”

Ever since Mayor Richard M. Daley, this city’s longest-serving mayor, announced in September that he would retire, Mr. Emanuel has been viewed as something of a front-runner. A wide array of would-be candidates has shrunk to six, and Mr. Emanuel has held significant leads in polling and fund-raising.

The election is nonpartisan, but all the major candidates are Democrats.

Before this past week of fast-shifting announcements — that he was off, then back on the ballot — some voters had begun to wonder not if Mr. Emanuel would win, but when. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote on Feb. 22, the top two vote-getters will move on to a runoff election on April 5.

In recent months, challenges to Mr. Emanuel’s candidacy were dismissed by a local election board, then by a trial judge. But on Monday, a panel of the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that Mr. Emanuel did not qualify to run, saying he had to physically live in the city — not just own property and pay taxes here — to run.

Mr. Emanuel’s lawyers balked at the interpretation, and appealed their case to the State Supreme Court, even as elections officials struggled with which ballot to print.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s seven justices overturned the ruling of the appeals panel, though two of the justices issued their own reasoning for allowing Mr. Emanuel to run. In the majority’s opinion, which was written by Justice Robert R. Thomas, a Republican, the justices raised sharp questions about what the appellate court had concluded, suggesting that such issues of residency had essentially been settled in this state for 150 years — until this week.

“Things changed, however, when the appellate court below issued its decision and announced that it was no longer bound by any of the law cited above,” Justice Thomas wrote, continuing later, “but was instead free to craft its own original standard for determining a candidate’s residency.”

The opinion repeatedly cited a case from 1867, in which an Illinois resident had been appointed as a judge, but had been challenged for not meeting a five-year residency requirement because his family had lived in Tennessee for eight months. That long-ago ruling — in the judge’s favor — focused on his intent (he refused to sell his Illinois law books, for instance), not on his physical location, the justices found. The same principles, the justice wrote, control Mr. Emanuel’s case, “plain and simple.”

Under the appellate court’s decision, the justices said, all sorts of circumstances would now come into question: Where does a member of Congress who spends several days a week in Washington reside legally? What about a state legislator?

“Under the appellate court’s test, considerable doubt would arise as to whether any of these people could meet a residency test that requires one year of ‘actually living’ or “actually residing’ in the municipality,” the majority wrote.

Two of the justices, Anne M. Burke and Charles E. Freeman, concurred with the overall outcome, but wrote that they did not consider the case “as clear-cut as the majority makes it out” to be. “Suffice it to say, therefore, that this court has not always spoken clearly on what is meant by residency, and the majority should acknowledge this fact,” the two wrote. They construed the case more narrowly, finding that the fact that Mr. Emanuel had rented out his Chicago home (still occupied by renters) did not mean he had given up his “permanent abode.”

Richard L. Hasen, an expert on election law who is a visiting professor at the University of California, Irvine, law school, said, “The decision puts the matter back where it belongs — in the hands of the voters.”

For election officials the ruling was a relief — not particularly for its content but for its finality. They started the week printing hundreds of thousands of ballots without Mr. Emanuel’s name (as the appellate court had ordered), but by Thursday night were about halfway through printing two million more, this time with his name (as the Supreme Court ordered when it agreed to consider the case).

Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting from Chicago, and John Schwartz from New York.

    Court Allows Emanuel on Ballot for Chicago Mayor, NYT, 27.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/us/politics/28chicago.html

Utah’s Gun Appreciation Day

January 26, 2011
The New York Times
By GAIL COLLINS

This week in Washington, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced three very modest gun regulation bills, including one making it more difficult to sell guns to people on the terror watch list.

Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, the State Legislature is considering a bill to honor the Browning M1911 pistol by making it the official state firearm.

Guess which idea has the better chance of passage? Can I see a show of hands? Oh, you cynics, you!

Yes, a committee in the Utah House of Representatives voted 9 to 2 this week to approve a bill that would add the Browning pistol to the pantheon of official state things, along with the bird (seagull), rock (coal) and dance (square). Also, although it really has nothing to do with this discussion, I have to mention that the Utah Legislature has provided its citizens with an official state cooking pot, and it is the Dutch oven.

“This firearm is Utah,” Representative Carl Wimmer, the Browning bill’s sponsor, told The Salt Lake Tribune. He is an energetic-looking guy with a huge forehead who has only been in office four years yet has, according to one of his videos, “sponsored and passed some of the most significant pieces of legislation in Utah history.”

Capitol observers say the Browning bill has an excellent chance of becoming law. Meanwhile, Lautenberg will be lucky to get a hearing. The terror of the National Rifle Association is so pervasive that President Obama did not want to poison the mood of his State of the Union address by suggesting that when somebody on the terror watch list tries to buy a gun, maybe we should do an extra check.

“But people are now commenting on the fact that the president didn’t talk about it in his speech. That hasn’t happened for years,” said Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, whose job really does require an inordinate amount of optimism.

Lautenberg’s bills are extremely mild, and no one seems eager to argue in public against the one that would end easy access to 30-bullet magazines that allow someone with a semiautomatic pistol to mow down a parking lot full of people in a matter of seconds. Instead, they just refuse to come to the phone or toss out platitudes.

“The people that are going to commit a crime or are going to do something crazy aren’t going to pay attention to the laws in the first place. Let’s fix the real problem. Here’s a mentally deranged person who had access to a gun that should not have had access to a gun,” said Senator Tom Coburn on “Meet the Press.”

Another of Lautenberg’s bills would tighten a loophole in current law so a mentally deranged person who should not have access to guns could not go to a gun show and buy one without the regular security check. But never mind.

On Monday, the Utah State Capitol celebrated Browning Day, honoring John Moses Browning, native son and maker of the nominee for Official State Firearm. There were speeches, a proclamation, a flyover by a National Guard helicopter, and, of course, a rotunda full of guns. “We recognize his efforts to preserve the Constitution,” Gov. Gary Herbert said, in keeping with what appears to be a new Republican regulation requiring all party members to mention the Constitution at least once in every three sentences.

It is generally not a good policy to dwell on the strange behavior of state legislators since it leads to bottomless despair. If I wanted to go down that road, I’d give you Mark Madsen, a Utah state senator who tried to improve upon the Browning Day celebrations by suggesting they be scheduled to coincide with Martin Luther King Day since “both made tremendous contributions to individual freedom and individual liberty.”

But it’s a symptom of a new streak of craziness abroad in the land, which has politicians scrambling to prove not just that they are against gun regulation, but also that they are proactively in favor of introducing guns into every conceivable part of American life. National parks. Schools. Bars. Airports.

“There is abundant research suggesting in cities where more people own guns, the crime rate, especially the murder rate, goes down,” Utah’s new United States senator, Mike Lee, told CNN.

Actually, there’s a ton of debate about this, which is hard to resolve given the fact that, as Michael Luo reported in The Times, the N.R.A.’s crack lobbyists have managed to stop almost all federal financing for scientific research on gun-related questions. But Lee has definitely made the list of most creative commentators on these matters, ever since he dismissed calls for a calmer political rhetoric after the Tucson massacre by arguing that “the shooter wins if we, who’ve been elected, change what we do just because of what he did.”

Feel free to say whatever you like about the senator’s thinking. Be frank. Otherwise, the shooter wins.

    Utah’s Gun Appreciation Day, NYT, 26.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/opinion/27collins.html

Lawmakers in Many States Pushing for Abortion Curbs

January 21, 2011
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

Newly energized by their success in November’s midterm elections, conservative legislators in dozens of states are mounting aggressive campaigns to limit abortions.

The lawmakers are drafting, and some have already introduced, bills that would ban most abortions at 20 weeks after conception, push women considering abortions to view a live ultrasound of the fetus, or curb insurance coverage, among other proposals.

In Florida and Kansas, legislators plan to reintroduce measures that were vetoed by previous governors but have the support of the new chief executives, like ultrasound requirements and more stringent regulation of late-term abortions.

“I call on the Legislature to bring to my desk legislation that protects the unborn, establishing a culture of life in Kansas,” Gov. Sam Brownback said last week in his first State of the State message.

“This is the best climate for passing pro-life laws in years,” said Michael Gonidakis, executive director of Ohio Right to Life, expressing the mood in many states. “We’ve got a pro-life governor and a brand new pro-life speaker. Our government now is pro-life from top to bottom.”

Abortion opponents plan marches in Washington and elsewhere this weekend and on Monday to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

Republicans in Congress hope to strengthen measures to prevent even indirect public financing of abortions, but laws in the states have the greatest impact on access to them. Abortion opponents have been emboldened by major changes in the political landscape, with conservative Republicans making large gains.

Although social issues were often played down in the campaigns, many of the newly elected governors and legislators are also solidly anti-abortion, causing advocates of abortion rights to brace for a year of even tougher battles than usual.

The biggest shift is in the state capitols, with 29 governors now considered to be solidly anti-abortion, compared with 21 last year. “This is worrisome because the governors have been the firewall, they’ve vetoed a lot of bad anti-choice legislation,” said Ted Miller, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America.

In 15 states, compared with 10 last year, both the legislature and the governor are anti-abortion, according to a new report by Naral, and those joining this category include larger states like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, as well as Georgia and Oklahoma. Maine and Pennsylvania are now strongly anti-abortion as well, if not quite as solidly.

Just which measures will pass is impossible to predict, particularly because many states are bogged down by budget crises.

Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state policies on abortion for the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization, said that while states would be preoccupied with budget issues, it appeared rather likely that more measures would pass this year than in 2010, which anti-abortion advocates considered a banner year, with more than 30 restrictive laws adopted in at least nine states.

The elections brought even more gains for their side than expected, said Mary Spaulding Balch, state policy director of the National Right to Life Committee, leading her group to call in its affiliates for a special strategy session on Dec. 7.

While many anti-abortion measures have been adopted or debated over the years, including requiring parental consent for minors and waiting periods, advocates have set a few top priorities for the months ahead:

¶Banning abortions earlier in pregnancy. Most states place restrictions on later abortions, often defined as after fetal viability, or around 22 to 26 weeks after conception. But last year, Nebraska set what many advocates consider a new gold standard, banning abortions, unless there is imminent danger to the woman’s life or physical health, at 20 weeks after conception, on a disputed theory that the fetus can feel pain at that point. The measure has not been tested in court, but similar measures pushing back the permissible timing are being developed in Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and other states.

The 20-week law in Nebraska, which took effect in October, forced a prominent doctor who performed late-term abortions to leave the state. Jill June, president of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said women suffering from complicated pregnancies but are not yet sick enough to qualify for an emergency abortion would be forced to travel to other states. Or, she said, doctors fearing prosecution will wait until such women become dangerously ill before considering an abortion.

¶Pressing women to view ultrasounds. While several states encourage women seeking abortions to view an ultrasound, Oklahoma last year adopted a requirement that doctors or technicians perform the procedure with the screen visible to the woman, and explain in detail what she is seeing. The measure is under court challenge, but the Kentucky Senate has passed a similar bill, and variants are expected to come up in states including Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming.

In Florida, former Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed an ultrasound bill. The new governor, Rick Scott, attacked him for that veto and is expected to support a new proposal.

¶Banning any abortion coverage by insurance companies in the new health insurance exchanges. Numerous states are poised to impose the ban on plans that will be offered to small businesses and individual insurance buyers under the Obama administration health plan.

The shifts to conservative governors, in particular, have opened new opportunities for abortion opponents. In Kansas, legislators said they would act quickly to adopt measures that were previously vetoed, including regulations that will make it harder to open abortion clinics or to perform abortions in the second trimester.

“There’s pent-up demand in the Legislature for these changes,” said State Representative Lance Kinzer, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Kansas House. Once these long-debated steps are taken, he said, the Legislature will consider more sweeping restrictions, including banning most abortions after the 20th week.

The politics of abortion have changed profoundly in some larger states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“We’re facing the biggest threat to reproductive rights we’ve ever faced in this state,” said Lisa Subeck, executive director for Naral Pro-Choice Wisconsin.

In Michigan, because of the switch to an anti-abortion governor, “the dominos are lined up well for us this time,” said Ed Rivet, legislative director for Right to Life of Michigan. For starters, advocates hope to pass a state ban on the procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion that had been vetoed twice. After that, he said, “We have quite a list.”

Many defenders of abortion rights argue that because the election hinged largely on the economy and the role of government, officials did not receive a mandate for sweeping new social measures. “This last election was not about these issues at all,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “We now are concerned about a real overreaching by some state legislators and governors that will make it very difficult for women to access reproductive health care.”

Daniel S. McConchie, vice president for government affairs with Americans United for Life, responded that laws restricting abortion have been adopted right along by the states and that while he expected large gains in the year ahead, they will be part of steady trend.

The abortion rate in the United States, which had declined steadily since a 1981 peak of more than 29 abortions per 1,000 women, stalled between 2005 and 2008, at slightly under 20 abortions per 1,000 women, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute.


Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta, Dan Frosch from Denver and Emma Graves Fitzsimmons from Chicago.

    Lawmakers in Many States Pushing for Abortion Curbs, NYT, 21.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/us/politics/22abortion.html

Path Is Sought for States to Escape Debt Burdens

January 20, 2011
The New York Times
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.

Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign.

But proponents say some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal government’s aid.

Beyond their short-term budget gaps, some states have deep structural problems, like insolvent pension funds, that are diverting money from essential public services like education and health care. Some members of Congress fear that it is just a matter of time before a state seeks a bailout, say bankruptcy lawyers who have been consulted by Congressional aides.

Bankruptcy could permit a state to alter its contractual promises to retirees, which are often protected by state constitutions, and it could provide an alternative to a no-strings bailout. Along with retirees, however, investors in a state’s bonds could suffer, possibly ending up at the back of the line as unsecured creditors.

“All of a sudden, there’s a whole new risk factor,” said Paul S. Maco, a partner at the firm Vinson & Elkins who was head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Municipal Securities during the Clinton administration.

For now, the fear of destabilizing the municipal bond market with the words “state bankruptcy” has proponents in Congress going about their work on tiptoe. No draft bill is in circulation yet, and no member of Congress has come forward as a sponsor, although Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, asked the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, about the possiblity in a hearing this month.

House Republicans, and Senators from both parties, have taken an interest in the issue, with nudging from bankruptcy lawyers and a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, who could be a Republican presidential candidate. It would be difficult to get a bill through Congress, not only because of the constitutional questions and the complexities of bankruptcy law, but also because of fears that even talk of such a law could make the states’ problems worse.

Lawmakers might decide to stop short of a full-blown bankruptcy proposal and establish instead some sort of oversight panel for distressed states, akin to the Municipal Assistance Corporation, which helped New York City during its fiscal crisis of 1975.

Still, discussions about something as far-reaching as bankruptcy could give governors and others more leverage in bargaining with unionized public workers.

“They are readying a massive assault on us,” said Charles M. Loveless, legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “We’re taking this very seriously.”

Mr. Loveless said he was meeting with potential allies on Capitol Hill, making the point that certain states might indeed have financial problems, but public employees and their benefits were not the cause. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report on Thursday warning against a tendency to confuse the states’ immediate budget gaps with their long-term structural deficits.

“States have adequate tools and means to meet their obligations,” the report stated.

No state is known to want to declare bankruptcy, and some question the wisdom of offering them the ability to do so now, given the jitters in the normally staid municipal bond market.

Slightly more than $25 billion has flowed out of mutual funds that invest in muni bonds in the last two months, according to the Investment Company Institute. Many analysts say they consider a bond default by any state extremely unlikely, but they also say that when politicians take an interest in the bond market, surprises are apt to follow.

Mr. Maco said the mere introduction of a state bankruptcy bill could lead to “some kind of market penalty,” even if it never passed. That “penalty” might be higher borrowing costs for a state and downward pressure on the value of its bonds. Individual bondholders would not realize any losses unless they sold.

But institutional investors in municipal bonds, like insurance companies, are required to keep certain levels of capital. And they might retreat from additional investments. A deeply troubled state could eventually be priced out of the capital markets.

“The precipitating event at G.M. was they were out of cash and had no ability to raise the capital they needed,” said Harry J. Wilson, the lone Republican on President Obama’s special auto task force, which led G.M. and Chrysler through an unusual restructuring in bankruptcy, financed by the federal government.

Mr. Wilson, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for New York State comptroller last year, has said he believes that New York and some other states need some type of a financial restructuring.

He noted that G.M. was salvaged only through an administration-led effort that Congress initially resisted, with legislators voting against financial assistance to G.M. in late 2008.

“Now Congress is much more conservative,” he said. “A state shows up and wants cash, Congress says no, and it will probably be at the last minute and it’s a real problem. That’s what I’m concerned about.”

Discussion of a new bankruptcy option for the states appears to have taken off in November, after Mr. Gingrich gave a speech about the country’s big challenges, including government debt and an uncompetitive labor market.

“We just have to be honest and clear about this, and I also hope the House Republicans are going to move a bill in the first month or so of their tenure to create a venue for state bankruptcy,” he said.

A few weeks later, David A. Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, published an article, “Give States a Way to Go Bankrupt,” in The Weekly Standard. It said thorny constitutional questions were “easily addressed” by making sure states could not be forced into bankruptcy or that federal judges could usurp states’ lawmaking powers.

“I have never had anything I’ve written get as much attention as that piece,” said Mr. Skeel, who said he had since been contacted by Republicans and Democrats whom he declined to name.

Mr. Skeel said it was possible to envision how bankruptcy for states might work by looking at the existing law for local governments. Called Chapter 9, it gives distressed municipalities a period of debt-collection relief, which they can use to restructure their obligations with the help of a bankruptcy judge.

Unfunded pensions become unsecured debts in municipal bankruptcy and may be reduced. And the law makes it easier for a bankrupt city to tear up its labor contracts than for a bankrupt company, said James E. Spiotto, head of the bankruptcy practice at Chapman & Cutler in Chicago.

The biggest surprise may await the holders of a state’s general obligation bonds. Though widely considered the strongest credit of any government, they can be treated as unsecured credits, subject to reduction, under Chapter 9.

Mr. Spiotto said he thought bankruptcy court was not a good avenue for troubled states, and he has designed an alternative called the Public Pension Funding Authority. It would have mandatory jurisdiction over states that failed to provide sufficient funding to their workers’ pensions or that were diverting money from essential public services.

“I’ve talked to some people from Congress, and I’m going to talk to some more,” he said. “This effort to talk about Chapter 9, I’m worried about it. I don’t want the states to have to pay higher borrowing costs because of a panic that they might go bankrupt. I don’t think it’s the right thing at all. But it’s the beginning of a dialog.”

    Path Is Sought for States to Escape Debt Burdens, NYT, 20.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/business/economy/21bankruptcy.html

Budget Worries Push Governors to Same Mind-Set

January 17, 2011
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO — The dismal fiscal situation in many states is forcing governors, despite their party affiliation, toward a consensus on what medicine is needed going forward.

The prescription? Slash spending. Avoid tax increases. Tear up regulations that might drive away business and jobs. Shrink government, even if that means tackling the thorny issues of public employees and their pensions.

In years past, new governors have introduced themselves in inaugural remarks filled with cheery, soaring hopes; plans for expansions to education, health care and social services; and the outlines of new, ambitious local projects.

But an examination of more than two dozen opening addresses of incoming governors in recent days shows that such upbeat visions were often eclipsed by worries about jobs, money and budget gaps. Those speeches are the best indication thus far of the intentions of this class of 37 governors — 26 new and the others re-elected.

“The rhetoric has grown very similar,” said Scott D. Pattison, executive director of the nonpartisan National Association of State Budget Officers. “A lot of times, you can’t tell if it’s a Republican or Democrat, a conservative or a liberal.”

In Wisconsin, the new Republican governor, Scott Walker, says that any prospect of a tax increase is off the table, and that he wants to “right-size” state government, meaning, he says, that it would provide “only the essential services our citizens need and taxpayers can afford.”

In California, the new Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, lists as one of his guiding principles (second only to his tenet to “speak the truth”) support for new taxes only if voters want them. And he says it is time to examine the state’s system of public pensions — an increasingly vitriolic political issue in states around the country — to ensure that they are “fair to the workers and fair to the taxpayers.”

Without question, this emerging consensus comes in a wide range of degrees. Exceptions have also emerged.

Here in Illinois, a state that has wrestled with some of the most dire financial circumstances in the country, including some $8 billion in unpaid bills to social services agencies and others and a desperately underfinanced pension system, Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, a Democrat, pledged after renewing his oath of office simply to “stabilize our budget.” Three days later, on Thursday, he did the reverse of what so many governors are urging, and signed a 66 percent increase in the state’s income tax rate.

And in Minnesota, where Gov. Mark Dayton, another Democrat, faces a $6.2 billion deficit and a Legislature controlled by Republicans, he has advocated for a tax increase on the wealthy.

After being sworn in this month, Mr. Dayton told the crowd, “To those who sincerely believe the state budget can be balanced with no tax increase — including no forced property tax increase — I say, if you can do so without destroying our schools, hospitals and public safety, please send me your bill, so I can sign it immediately.” Otherwise, Mr. Dayton said, he hoped his colleagues would work with him on “this challenging, complicated and essential” budget process.

Though public remarks in the moments after being sworn into office may be the first signal of a governor’s true intentions, actual policies can be another matter entirely. Those can depend, not least of all, on the decisions of legislatures. And governors of all political stripes have a tendency to talk tough in their early days.

The difference now, experts say, is that the financial circumstances leave little room to do nothing, and governors will soon be tested on their words — as early as in the next few weeks, when many of them must propose budgets for next year.

Some states seem better off (North Dakota) and others worse (California), but the shared, essential problem in many states is simple: not enough money coming in to pay for all that is going out.

While state revenues — shrunken as a result of the recession — are finally starting to improve somewhat, federal stimulus money that had propped up state budgets is vanishing and costs are rising, all of which has left state leaders bracing for what is next. For now, states have budget gaps of $26 billion, by some estimates, and foresee shortfalls of at least $82 billion as they look to next year’s budgets.

This class of governors arrives in a wave of Republican victories in the 2010 elections for state legislatures and governorships, a trend that may be affecting everyone’s approach. Even in states where the fiscal struggles have been less pronounced, new governors are sounding warnings and talking, again and again, of waste, frugality, simplicity, shared sacrifice and painful choices.

“Some of our sister states and some cities within them face the very real possibility of bankruptcy because of their mountains of deficits and debt,” said Dennis Daugaard, the newly inaugurated Republican governor of South Dakota, who has asked departments in his state to cut spending by 10 percent and has announced that he would cut his own annual salary to $98,000 from the $115,331 his predecessor collected.

“They have promised their citizens something for nothing,” Mr. Daugaard said of other states during his inauguration in Pierre this month, “and created a society where everyone wants to be carried and no one wants to pull their own weight.”

Governors appeared to be girding residents for a rocky road ahead — a path they seemed to sense residents may not yet grasp, given headlines of improvements in other parts of the economy.

Many called for bipartisanship in their efforts (the words “Republican” and “Democrat” are not mentioned in the Maine Constitution, reported Gov. Paul R. LePage, a Republican), and alluded to past moments of crisis (hurricanes, yellow fever outbreaks, even a “dark day” in 1780 when daytime skies were said to mysteriously appear nightlike in New England) as rallying points for the current gloom.

In his speech, Rick Scott, the new Republican governor of Florida, called for eliminating a business tax and reducing property taxes. He dubbed taxation, regulation and litigation “the axis of unemployment.” And he issued a warning: “No job — public or private — should be immune from accountability.”

On the other side of the country, and in the other major political party, John Kitzhaber, the new governor of Oregon, elaborately described the state, which needs to bridge a projected budget deficit of $3.5 billion, as an old house in need of an overhaul.

“There are too many rooms, and they aren’t the right size,” Mr. Kitzhaber said. “There’s no insulation, and the windows are drafty. And the cost of keeping this house is more than the family can afford. The roof needs to be replaced, and the siding is falling off.”

In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, another Democrat, sounded a similar call. “We must right-size the state government for today,” said Mr. Cuomo, who added that New York had no future if it intended to be “the tax capital of the nation.”

Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed research.

    Budget Worries Push Governors to Same Mind-Set, NYT, 17.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17governors.html

For California’s Budget Examiner, an Ease With Diplomacy and Dollar Signs

January 16, 2011
The New York Times
By JESSE McKINLEY

SACRAMENTO — If the California budget process sometimes resembles an extremely expensive food fight, with the name-calling, hair-pulling and that $25 billion deficit, Mac Taylor is the adult in the room.

Mr. Taylor — a tall, gray-haired fellow with an amiable smile — is California’s legislative analyst, head of an independent, nonpartisan office that is charged with taking a hard look at what are often soft numbers in the state’s chronically troubled budget.

Every January, armed with a staff of number crunchers, policy wonks and other arithmetic-minded assistants, Mr. Taylor studies the spending plans offered up by the governor and gives a steely assessment of what is realistic, and what is less so.

As such, Mr. Taylor, who has spent more than three decades examining California’s books, is considered one of the more reliable, least political voices in a state in which budgetary gimmickry is a time-honored tradition.

Not, of course, that he would say that.

“The term ‘smoke and mirrors,’ people will put different things in that category,” he said during a recent interview in his office, which looks out on the California Capitol. “For example, is a one-time sale of an asset smoke and mirrors? Well, no, it’s not, if you can get the money you estimated.”

Mr. Taylor’s job is one that involves equal parts diplomacy and dollar signs. Last Wednesday, for example, he presented his overview of the $85 billion general fund proposal made two days earlier by Gov. Jerry Brown, who has promised to give Californians the unvarnished truth about the state’s financial mess.

Mr. Taylor, 57, who joined the legislative analyst’s office during Mr. Brown’s first go-round as governor in the late 1970s, mixed in a few compliments — the budget seemed “reasonable” and a “good starting point” — with more skeptical statements.

“There is,” Mr. Taylor wrote, “significant work ahead.”

All of which can earn either praise or scorn, or both, depending on how the state’s politicians decide to spin it. Despite some of Mr. Taylor’s supportive words for Mr. Brown, Republicans were generally happy that he had raised questions about the Democratic governor’s plan to ask for five years of tax extensions.

“Assembly Republicans share the legislative analyst’s concerns about ‘significant risks’ within the governor’s budget plan,” the Assembly’s Republican leader, Connie Conway, said shortly after Mr. Taylor released his review. That sentiment was echoed a day later by another Republican leader, Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, who cited Mr. Taylor’s support for proposed spending cuts.

The depth of California’s financial dysfunction is well-documented. The state, which faces a $25.4 billion deficit over the next 18 months, has been late on passing a budget, due July 1, for several years, and suffered a record 100-day delay in 2010. The budget problems have damaged the state’s reputation with investors and creditors alike.

Unlike the federal Congressional Budget Office, which does not offer its opinions on matters of policy, California’s legislative analyst is required to make recommendations, something that sometimes puts the office at the heart of the debate. In 2007, the office’s dour budget analysis was considered a major factor in killing a proposal, backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to provide universal health coverage for all Californians.

For all that, Mr. Taylor — who is technically part of the legislative staff — plays down the influence of his office.

“Clearly either side can disagree with what you do, and that’s fine,” he said. “They’re not there to take our advice. We’re here to provide them with good information and thoughtful recommendations, and they can do with it what they want.”

But California’s continuing budget crisis — the state has faced multibillion-dollar deficits for the last several years — has certainly enhanced the profile of the legislative analyst’s office. And the recession, which laid low the state’s housing industry and drove unemployment over 12 percent, has led to what Mr. Taylor called “constant budget mode for the last 2 ½ years.”

Still, Mr. Taylor, who is married with three politics-averse children in their 20s — “I can’t get any of them to take an economics course” — says he holds out hope that the Legislature will somehow find its way to passing a budget on time this year.

“And then,” Mr. Taylor said, “I can take off on July 1.”

    For California’s Budget Examiner, an Ease With Diplomacy and Dollar Signs, NYT, 16.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17taylor.html

Arizona, in the Classroom

January 16, 2011
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Last week’s memorial service in Tucson, which began with a blessing by a professor of Yaqui Indian and Mexican heritage, showcased Arizona’s rich diversity as well as the love and tolerance of many of its citizens.

Unfortunately there is another Arizona, one where its state government all too often promotes discord and intolerance. This was painfully clear in the state’s immigration law, which empowers the police to demand the papers of suspected illegal immigrants. And it is painfully clear in a new education law that injects nativist fears directly into the public school classroom.

The law, which took effect Dec. 31, bans any courses or classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” Arizona’s new attorney general, Tom Horne, immediately used it to declare illegal a Mexican-American ethnic-studies program in the Tucson Unified School District.

Mr. Horne, who wrote the law when he was superintendent of public instruction, accused the program of “brainwashing” Latino students, of teaching “ethnic chauvinism” because it uses works by authors critical of the United States’ historical relationship with Latin America and its past treatment of Latinos. He has not gone after similar programs for black, Asian or American Indian students.

It’s hard to object to the portions of the law that discourage the overthrow of the government. But Mr. Horne goes way overboard in trying keep high school students from studying works like Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” a classic educational text, or any effort to deepen students’ understanding of history, and their place in the world. Tucson school officials say that far from stoking teenage resentment, the program has helped students keep their grades up and stay in school.

The school district has been put in a bind: shut the program down or lose state financing. Eleven teachers have sued to block the law. The school board, regrettably, did not join the lawsuit.

Educators and parents across the state should resist this effort to clamp down on education. Justice demands it. And even this ill-considered law suggests that Mr. Horne has badly overreached. One passage reads: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to restrict or prohibit the instruction of the Holocaust, any other instance of genocide, or the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race or class.”

Arizona was rightly criticized in the 1980s and early 90’s when it refused to join the nation in declaring Martin Luther King’s Birthday a holiday. It finally agreed in 1992, and the whole country has since traveled closer toward racial harmony. Arizona’s political leaders shame themselves and their citizens when they preach and promote the opposite.

    Arizona, in the Classroom, NYT, 16.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17mon2.html

Illinois Wakes Up

January 16, 2011
The New York Times

For years, Illinois, like so many states, pretended that it had not fallen off a budgetary cliff. It was spending too much and taking in too little revenue, but every year it would kick its problems into the next. Unable to pay its bills, it finally accepted reality last week and raised taxes on incomes and businesses — a first step toward getting its house in order.

The action was immediately ridiculed by several governors around the nation who are still pretending that they can cut their way out of the enormous shortfalls they face, without raising taxes. Wisconsin and Indiana predicted a windfall of angry corporations and residents would head their way from Illinois. Even Gov. Chris Christie, the New Jersey Republican, vowed to fly to Illinois to invite businesses there to defect to his state.

That makes great political theater. But businesses and voters in Illinois, and around the country, should take a closer look at the facts and figures, including their own.

After 22 years of not raising income taxes, Illinois saw its budget shortfall grow to $15 billion. It had the lowest state credit rating in the nation, and it wasn’t paying its bills to hospitals and schools.

The Illinois tax rate was low before and remains low for big states. The income tax will rise from a flat 3 percent to a flat 5 percent. That will cause pain at the lower and middle levels of the economic scale, but the state’s millionaires will probably stay put. (The top rate is 10.55 percent in California, 8.97 percent in New Jersey and New York, and 7.75 percent in Wisconsin.)

Illinois’s corporate tax is going up to 9.5 percent from 7.3 percent, but that by itself is unlikely to send businesses packing. What businesses crave most is a stable environment in which to make profits, and Illinois was anything but stable. Businesses tend not to like it when health and education systems break down.

By taking this step, which will raise about $6.5 billion, the Illinois Legislature has begun to show residents and corporate leaders that it is serious about fixing the budget. It still has a lot more to do. It must brave union opposition and bring down the cost of excessive health and retirement benefits for state employees, and examine all state salaries to make sure they are in line with the private sector. It must adhere to a new system to rebuild the budget each year, based on available revenues.

Almost every state is in deep fiscal trouble this year, but only a few others have admitted that cutting spending will not be enough.

Gov. Jerry Brown of California has proposed $12.5 billion in painful cuts that will hit the poor and higher education particularly hard. He is also rightly warning voters that the pain will be much worse if they do not extend sales and income tax increases for five more years. Oregon raised income taxes at the high end last year, and Kansas and Arizona raised sales taxes.

In too many states, though — including New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington — voters or governors have rejected higher taxes on high incomes, even though those at the top have experienced a windfall at the federal level.

Governor Christie, who calls his state “broke” and faces an upcoming deficit that may be more than $10 billion, has even rejected raising New Jersey’s gasoline tax, one of the lowest in the nation.

With federal stimulus aid ending, states are in for their worst year in generations, and they cannot get out of it by either cutting or taxing alone. Illinois is figuring that out, finally. Too many other states are still in denial.

    Illinois Wakes Up, NYT, 16.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17mon1.html

Illinois Legislators Approve 66% Tax Increase

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO — With only hours left before new state lawmakers were to take over, Illinois’s State Legislature narrowly approved early on Wednesday an increase of about 66 percent in the state’s income tax rate.

The vast size of the increase, the rarity of such increases here — the last one came two decades ago — and the hour of the vote (in the wee hours of Wednesday) all reflected the urgency and depth of this state’s fiscal crisis.

Even grudging supporters of the tax increase, which won no Republican support in a state capital controlled by Democrats, voiced a desperate sense of regret over the circumstances in which Illinois finds itself. State Representative Elaine Nekritz, a Democrat who voted for the increase, described her decision as an alternative “between bad and worse.” Another Democrat cautioned his colleagues: “We don’t have a better choice today.”

Many states are struggling with anemic revenues and the prospect of an end to additional federal funds, but Illinois faces a budget deficit of as much as $15 billion, owes some $8 billion in unpaid bills to social service agencies, doctors, dentists and others, and is receiving mounting signs of worry from bond investors.

Under the legislation, the income tax rate would, at least temporarily, rise to 5 percent from its current rate of 3 percent. Lawmakers had talked about an even steeper increase, but set that aside as the hours went by and the debate grew increasingly emotional. The rate for corporate taxes would rise to 7 percent from its current rate of 4.8 percent. As part of the deal, the state’s spending growth would be limited from one year to the next over the next four years.

Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, a Democrat whose signature would be needed to make any rate increase final, has indicated in the past he believes a tax increase is necessary.

The tax hike irked Republicans in Springfield, the state capital, and business owners around the state. Again and again, Republicans argued that the state needed to make significant spending cuts to solve its deficit before it even began considering a tax increase.

On the Statehouse floor on Tuesday night, Roger L. Eddy, a Republican representative, said that lawmakers were essentially “making up for our mistakes” on the backs of taxpayers, while one state senator called it a “train wreck.” Representative David Reis, another Republican, warned of the “sucking sound” he imagined would now be heard of businesses leaving the Illinois.

The fallout of the vote remains to be seen: Will Illinois businesses really now flock to neighbors Wisconsin and Indiana as opponents have suggested? Will the increase impress investors and quickly improve the state’s sunken bond rating? And, perhaps most of all, will the change be enough to turn around the financial woes of a state where the deficit has grown to the size of half of the annual general fund?

Democrats, who control the state’s House of Representatives and Senate, had been racing to push through the tax increase before noon on Wednesday, when legislators elected in November arrive in Springfield and a new legislative session begins.

In the new session, Democrats will continue to control both chambers, but their margins will shrink. Some leading Democrats viewed this as the only time when such a politically difficult vote might be possible: a moment when departing legislators need not fret over how voters might react.

In the House, where until noon on Wednesday Democrats hold 70 seats, the bill passed 60 to 57. In the Senate, which had shown earlier willingness to raise taxes, the measure passed 30 to 29 in a vote that was tallied after 1 a.m. Central time.

    Illinois Legislators Approve 66% Tax Increase, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13illinois.html

Sweet Home Arizona

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By AURELIE SHEEHAN

Tucson

I SPENT early Saturday morning writing a short story set in Tucson. I’ve lived here for a decade, but it’s only recently that I’ve felt I can claim the place as a subject. The impetus for writing about it hasn’t been love so much as anxiety, a sense that it’s in danger somehow — on many fronts.

That feeling of danger hit hard when I slouched out of my office to get another cup of coffee and my husband, mid-chat, looked up from his computer to tell me Representative Gabrielle Giffords had been shot, as had several other people. At a Safeway, of all places.

We stared at the local news Web site, trying to understand this new reality. A headline for an earlier article describing a lesser calamity still dominated the page: “BB Gun Killed 80 Bats Found Under East-Side Bridge, G & F Concludes,” with a picture of a frail bat clinging to an embankment. To the right of this, the stark words of a breaking news bulletin: Gabrielle Giffords, 40, shot point-blank in the head.

Our 11-year-old daughter came out of her bedroom. She was wrapped in her fuzzy blanket, ready to listen to Taylor Swift or play Fruit Ninja on her iPod. Instead she listened to her mother tell of the shooting of our congresswoman and, as the news came in, the killing of her aide, a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl (who, like our daughter, had served on her student council) and three elderly citizens. She watched her mother cry.

My daughter knew Gabby Giffords as a politician, as someone we’d supported in the last election. We talk a lot about politics at our house, and she’s an attentive listener, fierce about what she thinks is wrong and right. But her response that morning wasn’t politically motivated, nor was ours. It was the shock of violence, the fear and anger and sorrow that comes from hearing about deaths close to home.

We know that Safeway; we know the bakery where people ran to safety. The shopping center is both pleasant and mundane: an adobe and brick building with the Santa Catalina Mountains rising up behind it, a sleepy, easy place to get groceries or a muffin on a weekend morning. Given a modest shift in circumstance, we might have been there.

Earlier, over breakfast, my husband and I had shaken our heads to see our adopted city as the dateline of an article on the front page of The Times under the headline “Citing Brainwashing, Arizona Declares a Latino Class Illegal.” Arizona has been in the national news a lot lately, and never for the right reasons. Now, as we senselessly hit refresh on our computers, we felt more than ever caught in a place where the tenor of America’s political discourse was spinning out of control. The state felt as if it was closing in on us.

Over the weekend, that slowly changed.

Saturday night we had signed on to go to a benefit concert for a small organization that develops music programs for at-risk children in the Southwest. It was organized by a talented 12-year-old boy who took guitar lessons alongside our daughter, and we had been looking forward to it. Now no one really wanted to go — we were all too beaten down by the day. But we went anyway, to support the young guitarist and the nonprofit group.

We sat down in the school auditorium, restless, a little ill at ease, scattered in our thoughts. About 200 people were there. The lights went down and, after a weirdly protracted pause, Brad Richter, the nonprofit’s co-founder, took the stage.

He talked quietly about what had happened that morning. He had played guitar at Gabrielle Giffords’s wedding, in 2007. And that evening he played an original composition for us, something she had requested he play then: “Elation,” the song was called. The feeling of community in the room was palpable, and if elation was beyond our reach, we were at least consoled.

The next night, my daughter and I stopped in front of Ms. Giffords’s office on the corner of Pima and Swan. Hundreds of candles and flowers, many teddy bears, peace signs, handwritten notes and a dreamcatcher — vast, radiant displays of support and hope — were arrayed at our feet. A TV newscaster was putting on lip balm, readying for another round of pronouncements. A group of college students huddled in their hoodies, awkward and silent and sad, and a lone young woman sat by the edge, in prayer.

It’s been a tough couple of years here since the presidential election, and our friendships with some Republicans have grown strained. In the wake of this attack, I don’t know if we will be able to talk to each other more now, if we will reach out across the political divide, or if the sides will become further entrenched, if this is the harbinger of more divisiveness.

But experiencing the steadfast and determined ways so many people of this city are trying to keep it together, trying to reach out and make this a better place — Gabrielle Giffords being one of them — has made me understand how much this flawed, complex desert town means to me, how much it feels like home.

Aurelie Sheehan is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Arizona and the author of “History Lesson for Girls,” a novel.

    Sweet Home Arizona, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11sheehan.html

In Tucson, Guns Have a Broad Constituency

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By JO BECKER and MICHAEL LUO

TUCSON — “I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I’m a pretty good shot.”

The quip, by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was made in an interview last year with The New York Times, when tensions were running high in her district. It speaks not only to her ability to defend herself but also to the passionate gun culture in Arizona, which crosses political lines and is notable for its fierceness, even in the West.

Indeed, the federal judge who was killed on Saturday in the shootings here, John M. Roll, had his wife and many people who worked with him take lessons at the Marksman Pistol Institute, an indoor range downtown. One of the doctors who operated on Ms. Giffords after the shooting rampage was a member of the Pima Pistol Club, an outdoor range where federal and local law enforcement personnel were practicing on Monday.

Arizona’s gun laws stand out as among the most permissive in the country. Last year, Arizona became only the third state that does not require a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The state also enacted another measure that allowed workers to take their guns to work, even if their workplaces banned firearms, as long as they kept them in their locked vehicles.

In 2009, a law went into effect allowing people with concealed-weapons permits to take their guns into restaurants and bars.

It is unclear whether the attack on Saturday will do anything to shift attitudes about guns in this state. But at the federal level, gun control advocates have quickly zeroed in on the “high-capacity” ammunition magazine used by the suspect, Jared L. Loughner.

Gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds were banned under the federal assault weapons ban until the statute expired at the end of 2004. Today, just six states and the District of Columbia limit the sale of such magazines.

The magazine of Mr. Loughner’s semiautomatic pistol held more than 30 rounds when, law enforcement officials say, he opened fire on a crowd outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday.

It was only when he stopped to reload that bystanders were able to tackle him.

“The reason he was able to be tackled was he had to pause to reload,” said Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group that works to change gun laws and the gun industry. “The problem is, he didn’t have to pause to reload until he’d already expended 30 rounds.”

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, is preparing legislation to prohibit high-capacity magazines and could introduce a measure as early as this week, said Shams Tarek, a spokesman.

Mr. Tarek said Ms. McCarthy’s office had been in talks with the staff of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, about working together on the issue. “We’re trying to come up with something that’s reasonable, that has a chance to go somewhere,” Mr. Tarek said.

Public support for stricter gun control, however, has dropped significantly over the last couple of decades, and there is little evidence to suggest that mass shootings change opinions.

In a Gallup poll conducted in October, just 44 percent of Americans said the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made stricter, matching Gallup’s record low on the question set in 2009. The 1999 Columbine and 2007 Virginia Tech shootings appear to have had little, if any, effect on these views.

In Arizona, the liberalization of gun laws has accelerated over the last two years, after Jan Brewer, a Republican, succeeded Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, as governor in 2009, putting Republicans in control of both the Legislature and the governor’s office.

In the last two weeks, two bills were introduced relating to the right to carry guns on college campuses, one allowing professors to carry concealed weapons and one allowing anybody who can legally carry a gun to do so.

“Here in Arizona, it’s very difficult to change the culture,” said Hildy Saizow, president of Arizonans for Gun Safety. “But we’re going to try.”

Federal laws bar anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun. Administrators at Pima Community College banned Mr. Loughner from the school last year because they had concerns about his mental well-being, but the episode would not have risen to the level in which it would have shown up on a computerized background check, or legally barred him from buying a gun, legal experts said.

Similarly, federal law prohibits “unlawful” drug users and “addicts” from buying guns, based on recent convictions, or multiple arrests over the past five years. Mr. Loughner was arrested in 2007 for possession of drug paraphernalia; he successfully competed a court diversion program, which resulted in the charge’s being dropped from his record. He failed a drug test when trying to enlist in the Army in 2008, Pentagon officials said. But, it does not appear that any of this would have been enough to bar him from buying a gun, at least in Arizona.

A handful of other states, like New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts, where more extensive investigations of individuals seeking gun licenses are conducted, might have picked up some of these issues, said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

Mr. Loughner legally bought his Glock 19, the same type of 9 millimeter pistol that Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman used, on Nov. 30 at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson, according to law enforcement officials. Not long before the shooting on Saturday, Mr. Loughner went to a Wal-Mart in the city to buy gun ammunition, but left the store before the sales person came back with the bullets, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the criminal investigation.

The individual said that Mr. Loughner then bought the ammunition he had sought at another Wal-Mart in Tucson.

F.B.I. agents visited local gun ranges here on Monday, trying to reconstruct his movements after he bought his gun. At the Marksman Pistol Institute, an agent entered shortly before noon, questioning the owner over the dulled popping sounds of gunfire.

The owner, Barbara O’Connell, had already checked the logs. Mr. Loughner had not been there, according to her paperwork, and no one recalled seeing him. The story was the same at another outdoor range.

Most people at the ranges said that, if anything, the shooting would cause more people to carry guns as a means of self-defense, rather than cause a retrenchment in the form of stricter laws.

“The criminals are going to have guns, so why should we as law-abiding citizens be punished for what a criminal does?” said Ms. O’Connell.

Ms. O’Connell lamented the death of Judge Roll, who was well known at the range: “He knew how to shoot, but he’d just been to church, and he probably didn’t have his gun.”

Serge Kovaleski and Dalia Sussman contributed reporting from New York.

    In Tucson, Guns Have a Broad Constituency, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11guns.html

Talk Radio Hosts in Arizona Reject Blame in Shooting

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DOLNICK and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

TUCSON — During Tucson’s first rush hour since a weekend shooting left six people dead and 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, talk radio hosts pushed back against arguments that their heated political rhetoric had played a role in the tragedy.

Phone calls poured in to stations across the AM dial to denounce Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, who said at a news conference over the weekend that Arizona had become “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry” and that local TV and radio hosts should do some “soul-searching.” “I would say that his comments have incited stupidity around the world,” said Garret Lewis, host of The Morning Ritual on 790 AM. “People have the image now that we’re a bunch of racist bigots and there are shootouts in the streets. Again he has absolutely no proof that any of this is true.”

Steve, a caller on the Jon Justice Show on 104.1 FM, said Mr. Dupnik’s statements “showed him for the buffoon he is.” Later, a called named Lee called the sheriff “a blithering idiot.” Caller after caller came up with their own colorful descriptions.

In the incredulous language of the AM dial, Mr. Justice defended his show, and dismissed the notion that Arizona’s heated political culture served as the backdrop to the shooting or an inspiration for the suspect, Jared L. Loughner.

“This is a crazy person!” he said. “Politics is out the window — you’re a nutbag! No amount of controlling talk radio is going to change that!”

“People need to go and point fingers,” he said. “It’s unfortunate but some people do. They have to find somebody to demonize.”

Some callers however made it clear that they believed the state’s conservative-leaning radio hosts bore responsibility.

“You ought to be ashamed,” said a caller named Dale to Mr. Justice’s program. “You are part of the problem.”

Mr. Justice, his voice cracking, responded: “There’s nothing I have said on this radio station that could have inspired” this guy.

A caller who identified himself as Rick told the host Mike Gallagher of KKNT, 960 AM, in Phoenix that “individuals like yourself instill fear” in people.

“Was Jared Loughner a Mike Gallagher listener?” the host asked. “You’re dishonest, Rick.”

On Wake Up Tucson on 1030 AM, the hosts said their political conversations were more reasoned than inflammatory.

“When we take an issue on, we really, really understand where we’re going,” said Joe Higgins.

“Ninety-nine percent of the stuff that we’ve ever talked about, we’re dead on,” said his partner, Chris DeSimone. “We’re constantly doing our homework.”

On the Morning Ritual, it was barely light outside when Mr. Lewis began knocking down arguments that after the shooting, gun control laws should be tightened. “We can’t always depend on the police, the sheriff’s department or anyone else to protect us,” he said. “At some point, we have to do it ourselves.”

Most callers to the shows agreed with the hosts and defended their right to speak.

“I don’t know what you did wrong,” said a caller to Mr. Justice’s show named John. “Keep the freedom of speech going.”

Sam Dolnick reported from Tucson, and Timothy Williams from New York.

    Talk Radio Hosts in Arizona Reject Blame in Shooting, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11radio.html

Shooting Casts a Harsh Spotlight on Arizona’s Unique Politics

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Arizona is not a world apart, but its political culture has often resided at a distance from much of the nation.

But after the fatal shooting of six that left Representative Gabrielle Giffords critically injured, Arizona has shifted from a place on the political fringe to symbol of a nation whose political discourse has lost its way.

The moment was crystallized by Clarence W. Dupnik, the Pima County sheriff, who, in a remarkable news conference on Saturday after the shooting, called his state “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

On Sunday, the state found itself increasingly on the defensive against notions that it is a hothouse of hateful language and violent proclivities. It was as if Arizona somehow created the setting for the shocking episode, even though there was no evidence to support the claim.

Arizona’s United States senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, moved quickly to defend their home state, denouncing before national audiences the man accused in the shooting, and, in Mr. Kyl’s case, suggesting that Sheriff Dupnik, a Democrat who was elected to office, had overreached. “I didn’t really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing last night,” Mr. Kyl said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

Other elected officials were pressed to explain why the assault might have taken place in their state. “Arizona’s the epicenter of a lot of division and a lot of hard politics,” Representative Raul M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “From the top to the bottom of not only our elected leadership, but community.”

In recent years, where much of the nation has seen intolerance, Arizona has cited security. What other Americans have viewed as outlandish, Arizona has interpreted as independence. It is one of the few states in America that would produce a politician like Ms. Giffords: a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, tough on border issues, and a Democrat passionate about the health care overhaul.

Its unusual mix of residents largely born and raised outside of the state, its three-way political divide — independents are as numerous as Republicans and Democrats — bifurcated urban and rural culture and strong pro-gun laws give the state an independent, and at times almost isolated, streak.

While the individual components of Arizona are shared by other states, the mix of the state’s border proximity, rapid growth and dire fiscal circumstances have combined in the last few years into a riveting and sometimes chilling theater of fiscal, political and cultural tensions.

The shooting comes soon after the passage of a strict anti-immigration measure that is being challenged by the federal government, the killing of a rancher that led to the law and the revelation that the state has stopped paying for some transplants for critically ill patients. There is also the state’s role as an early promoter of the effort during the 2010 Senate campaign to write the children of illegal immigrants out of the 14th Amendment provision that grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

“Just when we were starting to emerge from the P.R. trauma of the immigration law, and with the eyes of the nation upon us for the college football national championship all week for Monday night’s game, we offer up our state as the land of Oswalds,” said Jason Rose, a native Arizonan and a well-known political adviser in Phoenix. “This tragedy can’t help but curtail, at least for some time, Arizona’s role as a Wild West incubator.”

Talk radio, which has a long tradition in Arizona, has been particularly heated as the state has struggled with immigration. “You’ve got a lot going on in Arizona that feeds into the kind of discourse that some people think is creating a contentious climate in this country,” said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers magazine, which covers the industry. “I wouldn’t say that talk radio is more contentious or extreme or radical in Arizona, but they are just closer to the issues at hand. It’s a national story elsewhere; there, it’s a local story.”

Arizona has found itself in the position of self-defense against a critical nation before. Shortly after taking office in 1987, Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded the state holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a move that enraged state workers and caused a boycott of the state, which was the last to finally embrace the holiday.

“Arizona’s at the tip of the spear,” said Kelly Townsend, a co-founder of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party. “I think people are getting to the pressure point where they can’t restrain themselves anymore in expressing their feelings.

“I don’t mean restrain themselves in terms of violence, but calling names. It’s a reaction to all the pressures we’re facing. It’s not that anyone is trying to hurt anyone. It’s just that our budget is so incredibly stressed right now that we can’t afford to be paying for so many people coming into our state. There’s a lot of pressure on the backs of everyone, and so the anger and these kinds of statements are made underneath that pressure.”

While many states have nonrestrictive gun laws, Arizona’s zeal for weapons has often made headlines. It recently became one of just a few states with a law that allows people to carry concealed guns without a permit. Last summer, Ms. Giffords’s Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, had a campaign event in which voters were invited to “shoot a fully automatic M-16” with him to symbolize his assault on her campaign.

The state also allows for weapons in bars, which is unusual. Last year, an unsuccessful candidate for Congress, Pamela Gorman, ran on a pro-gun platform; a campaign video depicted her firing off rounds several times.

Arizona may now stand at a crossroad, in which the state’s more moderate, independent political factions begin to seize the state’s political discourse, in the spirit of Barry Goldwater and the pre-2008 Mr. McCain, or becomes all the more polarized. But, said Mr. Rose, who at one point was a spokesman for J. D. Hayworth, the former radio host who challenged Mr. McCain in the primary last year, “Either way, a giant collision is about to occur.”

Reporting was contributed by Sharon Otterman, Sarah Wheaton and Kate Zernike.

    Shooting Casts a Harsh Spotlight on Arizona’s Unique Politics, NYT, 9.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10arizona.html

Bloodshed and Invective in Arizona

January 9, 2011
The New York Times


She read the First Amendment on the House floor — including the guarantee of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” — and then flew home to Arizona to put those words into practice. But when Gabrielle Giffords tried to meet with her constituents in a Tucson parking lot on Saturday, she came face to face with an environment wholly at odds with that constitutional ideal, and she nearly paid for it with her life.

Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting Ms. Giffords, killing a federal judge and five other people, and wounding 13 others, appears to be mentally ill. His paranoid Internet ravings about government mind control place him well beyond usual ideological categories.

But he is very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery. With easy and legal access to semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the parking lot, those already teetering on the edge of sanity can turn a threat into a nightmare.

Last spring, Capitol security officials said threats against members of Congress had tripled over the previous year, almost all from opponents of health care reform. An effigy of Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Maryland Democrat, was hung from a gallows outside his district office. Ms. Giffords’s district office door was smashed after the health vote, possibly by a bullet.

The federal judge who was killed, John Roll, had received hundreds of menacing phone calls and death threats, especially after he allowed a case to proceed against a rancher accused of assaulting 16 Mexicans as they tried to cross his land. This rage, stirred by talk-radio hosts, required marshals to give the judge and his family 24-hour protection for a month. Around the nation, threats to federal judges have soared for a decade.

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.

That whirlwind has touched down most forcefully in Arizona, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described after the shooting as the capital of “the anger, the hatred and the bigotry that goes on in this country.” Anti-immigrant sentiment in the state, firmly opposed by Ms. Giffords, has reached the point where Latino studies programs that advocate ethnic solidarity have actually been made illegal.

Its gun laws are among the most lenient, allowing even a disturbed man like Mr. Loughner to buy a pistol and carry it concealed without a special permit. That was before the Tucson rampage. Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments.

    Bloodshed and Invective in Arizona, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10mon1.html

Rift in Arizona as Latino Class Is Found Illegal

January 7, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY

TUCSON — The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American.

For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched.

“It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1.

Although Shakespeare’s “Tempest” was supposed to be the topic at hand, Mr. Acosta spent most of a recent class discussing the political storm in which he, his students and the entire district have become enmeshed. Mr. Horne’s name came up more than once, and not in a flattering light.

It was Mr. Horne, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who wrote a law aimed at challenging Tucson’s ethnic-studies program. The Legislature passed the measure last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May amid the fierce protests raging over the state’s immigration crackdown.

For the state, the issue is not so much “The Tempest” as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Occupied America,” which Mr. Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated.

Teaching methods in the classes are sometimes unconventional, with instructors scrutinizing hip-hop lyrics and sprinkling their lessons with Spanish words.

The state, which includes some Mexican-American studies in its official curriculum, sees the classes as less about educating students than creating future activists.

In Mr. Acosta’s literature class, students were clearly concerned. They asked if their graduation was at risk. They asked if they were considered terrorists because Mr. Horne described them as wanting to topple the government. They asked how they could protest the decision.

Then, one young woman asked Mr. Acosta how he was holding up.

“They wrote a state law to snuff this program out, just us little Chicanitos,” he said, wiping away tears. “The idea of losing this is emotional.”

At a recent news conference, Mr. Horne took pains to describe his attack on Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program as one rooted in good faith. He said he had been studying Spanish for several years and had learned enough to read Mexican history books in Spanish and to give interviews on Univision and Telemundo, two Spanish-language broadcasters.

Asked whether he felt he was being likened to Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner who became a symbol of bigotry in the 1960s, Mr. Horne described how he had participated in the March on Washington in 1963 as a young high school graduate. He said of his critics: “They are the ‘Bull Connors.’ They are the ones resegregating.”

Mr. Horne’s battle with Tucson over ethnic studies dates to 2007, when Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, told high school students there in a speech that Republicans hated Latinos. Mr. Horne, a Republican, sent a top aide, Margaret Garcia Dugan, to the school to present a different perspective. He was infuriated when some students turned their backs and raised their fists in the air.

The Arizona law warns school districts that they stand to lose 10 percent of their state education funds if their ethnic-studies programs are found not to comply with new state standards. Programs that promote the overthrow of the United States government are explicitly banned, and that includes the suggestion that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country.

Also prohibited is any promotion of resentment toward a race. Programs that are primarily for one race or that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed.

On Monday, his final day as the state’s top education official, Mr. Horne declared that Tucson’s Mexican-American program violated all four provisions. The law gives the district 60 days to comply, although Mr. Horne offered only one remedy: the dissolution of the program.

He said the district’s other ethnic-studies programs, unlike the Mexican-American program, had not received complaints and could continue.

John Huppenthal, a former state senator who took over as Arizona’s schools chief, said he supported Mr. Horne’s 11th-hour ruling. Mr. Huppenthal sat in on one of the Tucson classes taught by Mr. Acosta, and said that Benjamin Franklin was vilified as a racist and a photo of Che Guevara was hanging on the wall. Besides that, he said, Tucson’s test scores are among the lowest in the state, indicating that the district needs to focus on the fundamentals.

Officials here say those enrolled in the program do better on state tests than those of the same ethnicity who are not enrolled.

The battle means that Tucson, a struggling urban district, stands to lose nearly $15 million in an already difficult budget environment. So far, the school board has stood by the program, declaring that it considers it to be in compliance with the law.

If financing were pulled, the district would have an opportunity to appeal, and school officials were already talking about the possibility of the matter ending up in court. Meanwhile, 11 teachers, including Mr. Acosta, have filed suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the state restrictions.

A discrimination suit against Tucson’s schools in the 1970s prompted a settlement in which an African-American studies program was created. Later, other ethnic-studies programs were added.

To buttress his critique of the Tucson program, Mr. Horne read from texts used in various classes, which in one instance referred to white people as “gringos” and described privilege as being related to the color of a person’s skin, hair and eyes. He also cited the testimony of five teachers who described the program as giving a skewed view of history and promoting racial discord.

“On the first day of school, they are no different than students in any other classes,” said John Ward, who briefly taught a Latino history class in Tucson. “But once they get told day after day that they are being victimized, they become angry and resentful.”

Augustine F. Romero, director of student equity in the Tucson schools, said the program was intended to make students proud of who they are and not hostile toward others. “All of our forefathers have contributed to this country, not just one set of forefathers,” he said. “We respect and admire and appreciate the traditional forefathers, but there are others.”

The debate over the program’s future, Mr. Romero said, proves more than ever the need for the program. “There’s a fierce anti-Latino sentiment in this state,” he said. “These courses are about justice and equity, and what is happening is that the Legislature is trying to narrow the reality of those things.

“Who are the true Americans here — those embracing our inalienable rights or those trying to diminish them?”

    Rift in Arizona as Latino Class Is Found Illegal, NYT, 8.1.20111, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/us/08ethnic.html

Georgia Facing a Hard Choice on Free Tuition

January 6, 2011
The New York Times
By KIM SEVERSON

ATHENS, Ga. — Students here at the University of Georgia have a name for some of the fancy cars parked in the lots around campus. They call them Hopemobiles. But there may soon be fewer of them.

The cars are gifts from parents who find themselves with extra cash because their children decided to take advantage of a cherished state perk — the Hope scholarship. The largest merit-based college scholarship program in the United States it offers any Georgia high school student with a B-average four years of free college tuition.

But the Hope scholarship program is about to be cut by a new governor and Legislature facing staggering financial troubles.

The lingering effects of the recession and the end of federal stimulus funds have sunk many states into a fiscal quagmire. The seriousness of the problem, and a growing concern over how much worse it might become, have many states struggling to find ways to trim services or raise revenues.

In Georgia, that means taking a slice out of the Hope scholarship.

When it was begun in 1993, the program was covered easily by Georgia’s state lottery. Politicians enjoyed how happy it made middle-class constituents. Educators praised the way it improved SAT scores and lifted Georgia from the backwaters of higher education.

It was considered so innovative that 15 states copied it. And while the lottery-based scholarship programs in states like Tennessee are dipping into reserves to cover the costs, none have fiscal woes as big as Georgia’s.

Part of it is the program’s popularity. A majority of freshmen in Georgia have grades good enough to qualify for Hope, which covers tuition, some books and fees — but not housing costs — at any Georgia university or technical school.

And even though as many as two-thirds of Hope students let their college grades slip so much that they no longer qualify — “I’ve lost Hope,” they joke when it happens — Georgia still gives away more financial aid per student than any other state. Since the program started, 1.3 million Georgia students have received a total of $5.6 billion in educational support. The program offers as much as $6,000 a year for some students.

But the program has become so popular it cannot sustain itself. Lottery sales, which by law can pay for only the Hope scholarship and a free prekindergarten program, will be short $243 million this fiscal year and as much as $317 million the next, according to state budget estimates.

Last year, lawmakers had to pull millions of dollars from the state’s reserve fund just to cover the cost. But this year, there is nowhere to turn.

Like the other states that are facing the worst fiscal crisis in recent memory, Georgia heads into its legislative session next week staring at a budget deficit of as much as $2 billion. And that is after billions of dollars in cuts over the past two years that have reduced the state’s spending power to $17.9 billion for fiscal year 2011.

But trim the program that for years has paid to educate the children of the most reliable voters in the state?

“Undoubtedly, this is, in every sense of the word, a very strongly ingrained entitlement for a certain segment of voters, and politicians are indeed reluctant to touch it,” said Christopher Cornwell, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia, who has studied the effect of the Hope scholarship on the state, including an analysis of the positive impact the scholarship has had on car sales.

Politicians are hoping for mercy as they begin this month to make decisions that will surely have the parents of college-bound students scrambling to find new ways to pay for tuition.

“We trust and we hope the people in the state of Georgia understand the position we’re in,” said State Representative Len Walker, a Republican who leads the House Higher Education Committee.

They do and they don’t.

Cathy Ottley, a part-time office manager, and her husband, a management consultant, are raising three children in Marietta, north of Atlanta. One is a sophomore at the University of Georgia, courtesy of the Hope scholarship. A daughter who is a high school senior had her heart set on the University of North Carolina but has come to see an in-state college as the practical way to go. And then there is the youngest, a high school freshman with a promising future in athletics. Without the scholarship, Ms. Ottley said, college for her children would be a stretch at best.

“This just gives you options,” she said. “I don’t have peace about kids just starting out at 22 with $200,000 in debt for their education.”

Mr. Walker said no one was talking about cutting the program completely.

“It appears at this point that it will not be a 100 percent scholarship. It might be 90 percent. It might 80 percent,” he said. But the cost of books and fees will most certainly be eliminated.

Other options include raising the required grade-point average, which would cut the number of students who qualify, or giving more to exceptional students and less to merely above-average performers.

“That would make it so much harder,” said Myisha Price, a junior at Clayton State University in Atlanta, who relies on the scholarship and also works. “I don’t go to clubs. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke and I don’t party and it’s already hard.”

Another idea is to work economic need into the equation, though that idea does not have much support, both lawmakers and educators said.

The most likely plan, and one that Governor-elect Nathan Deal, a Republican, has indicated he supports, would be to create a flat rate for each student, regardless of the tuition bill.

At a cafeteria table here this week, a group of Hope recipients defended the program and debated a range of ideas to keep Hope alive, including raising taxes.

Allie McCullen, who is majoring in English and women’s studies, is in her fourth year at Georgia. She is the only child of a single mother who in 2006 lost her job in the mortgage industry. Ms. McCullen pieces together her living expenses and extra book costs through a small grant and two jobs.

“If I didn’t have it, I might not be able to attend at all,” she said. “Or I would just be in such severe debt that I might not ever be able to get out of it.”

If the scholarship ends or gets cut drastically, it could send the most promising students out of state and even end the era of new cars for incoming freshman.

Lauren Rice drives a Hopemobile (though, she concedes, it is only a Honda Civic). Her parents told her she could go to college anywhere. She was considering Auburn in Alabama. But her parents offered her what she called “the car incentive.” That, plus the daunting out-of-state tuition helped her select the University of Georgia.

But without Hope, Ms. Rice’s decision might have been different.

“If you’re going to have a bill in-state anyway,” she said, “then what does it matter?”

    Georgia Facing a Hard Choice on Free Tuition, NYT, 6.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07hope.html

Son of Former Speaker Has His Prison Term Cut

January 3, 2011
The New York Times
By IAN LOVETT

LOS ANGELES — With just hours left in his term, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commuted the sentence of a former State Assembly speaker’s son who is in prison for his role in a 2008 killing.

Esteban Nuñez, the son of the former speaker, Fabian Nuñez, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter after a drunken fight near San Diego State University led to the stabbing death of Luis Santos. Mr. Nuñez, now 21, was sentenced to 16 years in state prison, but Mr. Schwarzenegger reduced the sentence to seven years.

In a statement released Sunday — his last night in office — Mr. Schwarzenegger noted that although Mr. Nuñez had no prior criminal record and was not the one to deliver the fatal blow, he had received the same sentence as Ryan Jett, a fellow defendant who already had two convictions and killed Mr. Santos with a stab to the chest.

“I believe Nuñez’s sentence is excessive,” the statement said. “He was not the actual killer.”

As speaker until 2008, Mr. Nuñez had been one of the most powerful politicians in California. High-profile politicians were involved in the case from early on, with former Gov. Pete Wilson among those who sent letters in support of the younger Mr. Nuñez.

Brad Patton, Esteban Nuñez’s lawyer, said he thought the judge had delivered a harsh sentence to avoid the appearance of buckling to political pressure.

“The outcome that the governor created is how the case should have resolved in the first place,” Mr. Patton said. “There was no reason that Esteban Nuñez should have gotten the same sentence as Ryan Jett.”

But the San Diego district attorney and Mr. Santos’s parents said they were shocked at the commutation. His parents said they learned of it when they began getting calls from reporters on Sunday night.

“This has everything to do with politics, nothing else,” said Mr. Santos’s father, Fred Santos. “He waited until the last minute and tried to sneak it in and commute the sentence during the holidays.”

The Nuñez commutation was part of a flurry of activity on Mr. Schwarzenegger’s final night as governor.

In addition to issuing several other commutations and pardons, Mr. Schwarzenegger also announced dozens of political appointments, including one for the spouse of his chief of staff.

    Son of Former Speaker Has His Prison Term Cut, NYT, 3.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/us/04pardon.html

Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions

January 3, 2011
The New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Faced with growing budget deficits and restive taxpayers, elected officials from Maine to Alabama, Ohio to Arizona, are pushing new legislation to limit the power of labor unions, particularly those representing government workers, in collective bargaining and politics.

State officials from both parties are wrestling with ways to curb the salaries and pensions of government employees, which typically make up a significant percentage of state budgets. On Wednesday, for example, New York’s new Democratic governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, is expected to call for a one-year salary freeze for state workers, a move that would save $200 million to $400 million and challenge labor’s traditional clout in Albany.

But in some cases — mostly in states with Republican governors and Republican statehouse majorities — officials are seeking more far-reaching, structural changes that would weaken the bargaining power and political influence of unions, including private sector ones.

For example, Republican lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and seven other states plan to introduce legislation that would bar private sector unions from forcing workers they represent to pay dues or fees, reducing the flow of funds into union treasuries. In Ohio, the new Republican governor, following the precedent of many other states, wants to ban strikes by public school teachers.

Some new governors, most notably Scott Walker of Wisconsin, are even threatening to take away government workers’ right to form unions and bargain contracts.

“We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. “The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers.”

Many of the proposals may never become law. But those that do are likely to reduce union influence in election campaigns, with reverberations for both parties.

In the 2010 elections, Republicans emerged with seven more governor’s mansions and won control of the legislature in 26 states, up from 14. That swing has put unions more on the defensive than they have been in decades.

But it is not only Republicans who are seeking to rein in unions. In addition to Mr. Cuomo, California’s new Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, is promising to review the benefits received by government workers in his state, which faces a more than $20 billion budget shortfall over the next 18 months.

“We will also have to look at our system of pensions and how to ensure that they are transparent and actuarially sound and fair — fair to the workers and fair to the taxpayers,” Mr. Brown said in his inaugural speech on Monday.

Many of the state officials pushing for union-related changes say they want to restore some balance, arguing that unions have become too powerful, skewing political campaigns with their large war chests and throwing state budgets off kilter with their expensive pension plans.

But labor leaders view these efforts as political retaliation by Republicans upset that unions recently spent more than $200 million to defeat Republican candidates.

“I see this as payback for the role we played in the 2010 elections,” said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the main union of state employees. Mr. McEntee said in October that his union was spending more than $90 million on the campaign, largely to help Democrats.

“Now there’s a bull’s-eye on our back, and they’re out to inflict pain,” he said.

In an internal memorandum, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. warned that in 16 states, Republican lawmakers would seek to starve public sector unions of money by requiring each government worker to “opt in” before that person’s dues money could be used for political activities.

“In the long run, if these measures deprive unions of resources, it will cut them off at their knees. They’ll melt away,” said Charles E. Wilson, a law professor at Ohio State University.

Of all the new governors, John Kasich, Republican of Ohio, appears to be planning the most comprehensive assault against unions. He is proposing to take away the right of 14,000 state-financed child care and home care workers to unionize. He also wants to ban strikes by teachers, much the way some states bar strikes by the police and firefighters.

“If they want to strike, they should be fired,” Mr. Kasich said in a speech. “They’ve got good jobs, they’ve got high pay, they get good benefits, a great retirement. What are they striking for?”

Mr. Kasich also wants to eliminate a requirement that the state pay union-scale wages to construction workers on public contracts, even if the contractors are nonunion. In addition, he would like to ban the use of binding arbitration to settle disputes between the state and unions representing government employees.

Labor leaders, who argue that government employees are not overpaid, worry that many of these measures have a much better chance of enactment than in previous years because of Republican electoral gains and recession-ravaged taxpayers’ reduced sympathy toward government workers.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s internal memo warned labor leaders, “With the enormous losses in state legislatures around the country, we will face not only more attacks on working families and their unions — we will face more serious attacks, particularly in the formerly blue or purple states that are now controlled by a Republican trifecta.”

It pointed in particular to six states, including several former union strongholds, where Republicans control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature: Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Naomi Walker, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s director of state government relations, said many voters would oppose the antiunion efforts. “I think folks in these states are going to ask whether this is the right time to weaken unions when corporations are amassing more power than ever,” she said. “We’ve been fighting against privatizing Social Security and sending jobs offshore and to get the best deal for the unemployed. It would be a lot easier for Republicans if unions weren’t there to throw up these roadblocks.”

Union leaders particularly dread the spread of right-to-work laws, which prevail in 22 states, almost all in the South or West. Under such laws, unions and employers cannot require workers to join a union or pay any dues or fees to unions to represent them.

Unions complain that such laws allow workers in unionized workplaces to reap the benefits of collective bargaining without paying for it. Pointing to lower wages in right-to-work states, unions say the laws lead to worse wages and benefits by weakening unions.

But lawmakers who are pushing right-to-work laws argue that they help attract investment. “The folks who work day-to-day in economic development tell us that the No. 1 thing we can do to make Indiana more attractive to business is to make Indiana a right-to-work state,” said Jerry Torr, an Indiana state representative who backs such legislation.

Some union leaders say that proposals like right-to-work laws, which have little effect on state budgets, show that Republicans are using budget woes as a pretext to undercut unions.

“They’re throwing the kitchen sink at us,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “We’re seeing people use the budget crisis to make every attempt to roll back workers’ voices and any ability of workers to join collectively in any way whatsoever.”

A group composed of Republican state lawmakers and corporate executives, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is quietly spreading these proposals from state to state, sending e-mails about the latest efforts as well as suggested legislative language.

Michael Hough, director of the council’s commerce task force, said the aim of these measures was not political, but to reduce labor’s swollen power. “Government budgets have grown and grown because of the cost of employees’ pensions and salaries,” he said. “Now we have to deal with that.”

Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions, NYT, 3.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/business/04labor.html