Wisconsin Republicans seem to be intent on turning the state into one that’s completely corrupt. As we detailed our Aug. 20 cover story, Wisconsin always had a national reputation for having a clean, efficient and very competent government that functioned for the benefit of the common good, not political cronies. That has changed over the past several years and now the latest proposal to gut the state’s civil service system seems to open the door to more corruption, even if it doesn’t explicitly allow for employees to be hired based on political affiliation or personal connections.
Republicans say that the current civil service system, which was created to take political cronyism out of hiring, is outdated and too slow for today’s competitive market for good employees. But that’s not the problem, and any sophisticated person understands that the private sector also does extensive screening for important positions. The problem is that Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP constantly attack and demean public employees, lowering their wages and providing little job security in a political environment in which Republicans slash the workforce but funnel taxpayer money to unaccountable private corporations. It’s no wonder why Wisconsin employees are retiring in droves and some of the best and the brightest won’t consider working for government at any level. The civil service proposal will make Wisconsin’s brain drain even worse and make Wisconsin government more corrupt.
But that’s not all. On Tuesday, state Sen. Stephen Nass (R-Whitewater), who chairs the committee that’s hearing the proposal, had the committee go into a two-hour recess over the lunch hour, possibly to prevent many public employees from testifying during their lunch hour. In the past when Wisconsin was an honest state, legislators would order out for their lunches so they could run the hearing through the lunch hour to ensure maximum participation from the Wisconsin taxpayers. One Wisconsin Now’s Scot Ross blasted the plan, saying, “Sen. Nass’ stunt to try to keep the very people most impacted by he and his fellow Republicans’ scheme to pack government with more partisan hacks is cheap and cowardly.”
Wisconsin voters need to wake up and take back their government from those who seek to completely corrupt our public institutions. Although the majority of Wisconsinites do not work in the public sector, this new proposal affects all of us by opening the door to even more corruption and the hiring of incompetent political hacks.
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