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A Milwaukee-only anti-poverty plan crafted by Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and state Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) may be short on details, but it could make sweeping changes to the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), zoning regulations and labor rights if it’s implemented by the Republican-dominated Legislature.
Whether Darling and Kooyenga’s “New Opportunities for Milwaukee” proposal would reduce poverty, as intended, is another matter.
Darling and Kooyenga propose to get tough on neighborhoods with more than 10% unemployment. That encompasses 14 ZIP codes that fall within Milwaukee city limits, about two-thirds of the city’s footprint, or 414,851 city residents.
In these areas, the suburban Republicans seek to implement 14 reforms, including:
■ Appoint a board that would shutter “failing” schools and turn them into charter schools and allow high-performing charter schools to replicate without getting approval from any public entity.
■ Allow schools to obtain waivers from the state Department of Public Instruction to be free of any state mandate.
■ Create “free market zones” in which the corporate income tax would be eliminated from new businesses that don’t compete with existing businesses, “right to work” would be implemented to weaken unions, and the minimum mark-up law, which was intended to protect small businesses from big box stores, would be repealed.
■ Override city zoning ordinances to permit small businesses with fewer than five employees and 15 customers a day to operate from a home in a residential neighborhood.
■ Do away with occupational licensing for floor sanders, interior designers, African hair-braiding specialists and photographers. The legislators wrote that the high number of foreclosures in the city provide interior designers with new opportunities and they shouldn’t be hampered by the need to obtain a license.
■ Permit social impact bonds to be offered to private entities targeted to helping challenged individuals, such as recently released offenders.
Darling and Kooyenga state that their plan is based on the “hundreds of hours” they spent in Milwaukee’s central city in 2014.
But the members of the Common Council’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee wondered who, exactly, met with the legislators.
The committee’s chair, Alderman Ashanti Hamilton, had invited Darling and Kooyenga to the Feb. 2 meeting, but they didn’t appear. Jennifer Gonda, the city’s lobbyist, said meetings are scheduled with the legislators this week.
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The legislators didn’t respond to the Shepherd’s requests to comment for this article, nor have they responded to open records requests seeking documentation of the “hundreds of hours” they spent in the central city last year.
But according to the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, some of the plan—primarily the free-market zones—came straight out of the ultra-right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) playbook.
No Mention of Minimum Wage or Jobs Programs
Although Kooyenga and Darling didn’t appear before the committee, the members debated whether it would reduce poverty in the city.
Hamilton noted that the plan didn’t mention city initiatives such as the Compete Milwaukee transitional jobs program and the Milwaukee Promise plan in four “promise zones” struggling with unemployment, or even expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or raising the minimum wage to boost the paychecks of low-wage workers.
“That will probably have a greater impact than all of the things [in the plan] combined,” Hamilton said of the city’s transitional jobs program.
The council members were highly concerned with the Republicans’ plan to override city zoning, saying that small businesses such as car repair shops could pop up on a residential street and increase traffic.
Commissioner Art Dahlberg of the Department of Neighborhood Services testified that the legislators’ zoning changes wouldn’t comply with state building codes, which would have to be changed to include Darling and Kooyenga’s vision of home-based businesses.
Alderman Robert Bauman scoffed at the Republicans’ attempt to increase employment by, for example, allowing interior designers to capitalize on the foreclosure crisis.
But he argued that Darling and Kooyenga’s plan was really a smokescreen to attack and break up MPS and set up more taxpayer-funded charter schools with little oversight.
“I’m wondering how much of this is a joke,” Bauman said.
Alderwoman Milele Coggs wondered about how the multiple changes to schools, labor rights and zoning would impact city residents.
“Are they thinking about that at all?,” Coggs wondered.
