More On Darling, Vos' 11th-Hour Friday Hit To Milwaukee Taxpayers

Over the weekend, I posted an item about the decision at the close of business Friday by Joint Fiance Committee Co-Chairs Alberta Darling and Robin Vos to force Milwaukee-only taxpayers to continue to pay salaries and benefits to law-breaking police officers while their appeals wend their way through the system.

No other community's taxpayers have to do this by legislative fiat, but these Republicans awarded this favor to the Milwaukee Police Association, a well-connected union.

Why did the GOP put back into state law what the legislature removed in 2008, rectifying years of fiscal unfairness and obeisance to one powerful union?

Turns out these so-called pro-taxpayer legislators threw the Milwaukee cops a bone because Joint Finance voted to add into Walker-s union-busting approach a bit of equity when it came to state-mandated changes to police and firefighter health care and pension payments.

Walker had exempted police and firefighters from the mandated contribution changes, thus giving them special consideration and higher take-home pay, too.

So Joint Finance in its budget-writing capacity partially corrected the imbalance by making new police and fire fighter hires pay the larger health and pension amounts other public employees would pay under Walker's plan (blocked for now by a Madison court, and under appeal today at the State Supreme Court by the Walker administration).

And to mollify the MPA, rewrote state law to force Milwaukee to retain on paid status officers convicted of crimes but who are still appealing their cases. Which can take years.

Irony of ironies: Republicans have been blasting "union bosses" and "big labor" for months, years...but is there a more powerful union around the Capitol than the MPA?

The state budget-writing committee has answered that question for you.