 |
 |
 |
||
 |
|
|
||
|
||||
 |
|||||
|
1/13/2005 Disenchanted with Doyle Insiders see him as all politics, no policy By Marc Eisen These are sour times for many veteran state employees. The graying baby boomers -- who were inspired by JFK, fought for civil rights and opposed the war in Vietnam -- never saw public service as just a paycheck. They saw it as a calling. Now they're disgusted with one of their own: Gov. Jim Doyle, a former Peace Corps volunteer who seems downright Republican in his intent to roll back state services. Doyle's pledge to cut more than 10,000 state jobs over eight years while simultaneously holding the line on taxes is the defining characteristic of his two-year-old administration. I've spoken to a handful of these mid-level state workers -- all loyal Democrats -- in different departments. They're dumbfounded, dismayed and demoralized over how clueless the Doyle administration is in running their shops. No vision, no plan, just cuts and more cuts that compromise services, and improvised fixes that make for headlines and PR talking points. "Doyle is trying to cut 10,000 jobs to save one job, his own," says one the disaffected. “You get the sense he doesn’t really care what happens in our department,” says another. “People are bailing out as soon as they can,” says a third. “They’re taking early retirement and walking away.” Suffice it to say, nobody was willing to talk on the record. Even before the sudden demotion of James Thiel as Transportation's chief legal counsel (his punishment for releasing a review on consultant costs that embarrassed the Doyle administration), the word was out: Cross the boss, and your ass is grass. Of course, the Doyle administration sees things differently. The budget crisis, it argues, requires the cuts. Most will come from retirements and unfilled openings, not actual layoffs. The governor remains committed to stoking the economy and taking care of kids. Raising the minimum wage. Protecting reproductive choice. Preserving open government. Enacting campaign finance reform. Bolstering education. No doubt many of these themes were cited in Wednesday night's State of the State address. Not to mention finding new defensive backs for the Packers and an heir apparent for Brett Favre. What’s not to like about the guy? Doyle’s political smarts aren’t in question, that's for sure. Like no other Wisconsin Democrat in recent years, he’s knocked heads with Tommy Thompson, Scott Jensen and John Gard, and walked away if not the winner at least unbowed. "Doyle has political skills that [Govs.] Tony Earl and Scott McCallum never had," says Brian Christianson, a Republican consultant. "The job-cuts promise was a very savvy political calculation. Nobody ever lost an election by beating up public employees. Yet the traditional Democratic base will not abandon him." But two years into his first term, Doyle is all politics and no policy, say his critics inside government. He’s surrounded himself not with bold thinkers but with party apparatchiks and well-connected lawyers. His nominal policy director is a political pollster. To be sure, the job-cut pledge was inspired politics. Made before the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board in June 2002, Doyle's pledge strategically positioned him to the right of his Democratic primary opponents, Tom Barrett and Kathleen Falk. Going two steps further, Doyle also rejected any new tax increases and told the paper’s editors he supported "single factor" taxation for corporations. That piece of tax arcana meant zilch to 99% of voters but signaled to the powerful Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce lobby group that Doyle was on board for a key plank of its pro-business agenda. Not just another woozy Dane County Democrat, Doyle was the tough-talking fiscal conservative who the WMC mandarins could live with once he upended the terminally inept Scott McCallum. And Doyle’s center-right economic stance has served him well as governor. It's given him the armor to fend off the various tax-freeze schemes that the hard-charging Republicans have thrown at him in the Legislature, while allowing him to support so-called regulatory reforms that the business community hungered for. But is that it for Jim Doyle? Is he at best a weak-tea Democrat embracing mainstream Republican policies to repel radical Republican policies? "The Doyle people have no real agenda, as far as I can tell," says one veteran administrator, who contrasts this with Thompson’s tenure as governor. “Tommy's people knew how to use governmental power. They did things you might not agree with, but they were purposeful." Doyle's people, in contrast, didn't come into office with any idea of what they wanted to do. "They saw government as the evil, as the source of the budget problems. They didn't have the faintest idea of what to do, so they brought in all these consultants." Did you catch that? Yes, there's palpable nostalgia for Tommy Thompson among these graying Democrats. "Tommy was terrible in his first term," says one. "He made terrible appointments. But when he finally settled into office he had people managing things really well. They weren't obsessed with his re-election, and there were things they wanted to get done. I was never a fan of W-2, but they worked hard at it." Tommy, of course, was a big-government Republican. He liked new programs; he liked new buildings. That he considered himself a fiscal conservative is one of the paradoxes of his four terms. Thompson was every inch an activist. "Everything was blue sky, everything was looking forward," Christianson recalls. "The Legislature was constantly playing catch-up." Doyle, in contrast, is locked in a bloody ground war with Republican legislative leaders over a tax freeze and the budget deficit. Gard, the Assembly speaker, will try to box him in on spending, first forcing him to veto a tax freeze, then mobilizing to pass a veto-proof constitutional amendment -- the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights -- at the end of the session. “The freeze is a hugely popular issue, a slam-dunk in the polls,” says Gard aide Steve Baas. How does Doyle avoid this looming juggernaut without conceding even more ground to the Republicans? That’s the key question. My two cents is that the governor needs some Thompson-style “blue sky.” He needs to think big. The solution doesn’t lie in political bank shots, but in big policy proposals. Most everyone at the Capitol understands that Wisconsin’s fiscal woes are rooted in the outmoded and self-defeating ways the state helps finance schools and local government. Change it! Doyle has the power to set the terms of that debate. But will he? That’s the signal those demoralized baby boomers in state service are looking for. And unless they get it, at least some of them are prepared to abandon Doyle. “I’d vote for Thompson if he returns in 2006,” one state worker, a lifelong Democrat, told me. “If Gard runs against Doyle, I still wouldn't vote for Doyle. I'd vote Green [Party]." -- EISEN, EISEN@ISTHMUS.COM, IS ISTHMUS’ EDITOR. |
|