We’re back with the latest installment of You Be the Judge, where our team of independent fact-checkers looks at a claim, puts it in context, goes beyond the carefully worded claim to break down the issues, presents all the facts and then lets you be the judge on whether it holds water.
PolitiFact Wisconsin evaluated two important claims this week that we thought deserved further examination, so since this is the last You Be the Judge feature before next Tuesday’s election, we decided to make it a two-for-one.
Walker’s Revenue Cuts and Rising Crime
The first claim we’ll look at comes from Democratic candidate for governor, Mary Burke, who said at the second and final gubernatorial debate on Oct. 17 that Wisconsin has seen the second worst increase in violent crimes in recent years, and Gov. Scott Walker’s drastic cuts to shared revenue were a contributing factor.
This one comes in two parts, so let’s first figure out whether or not the startling violent crimes increase statistic holds up. Burke cites the latest available FBI data on violent crimes, and it in fact shows that Wisconsin had a 13% increase in violent crimes between 2010 and 2012 and an 18% increase between 2011 and 2012, trailing just South Dakota in the Midwest when it comes to change in the violent crime rate. PolitiFact correctly acknowledges that Burke’s claim on the numbers is spot-on, but things unravel a bit in the second part of the claim.
Were Gov. Walker’s cuts to shared revenue a contributing factor in the violent crime rate increase? PolitiFact seems to think that’s debatable, and that’s why they rate Burke’s claim just a “Half True.”
PolitiFact confirmed that Walker did cut shared revenue to municipalities by 9% in his first budget, $76 million to be precise, the largest such funding cut in at least a decade. And then Walker’s second budget kept strict levy limits in place and held shared revenue flat, so local governments’ hands are tied. That’s a problem for local governments; shared revenue, their share of state aid, is used to fund essential public services, such as police and fire. So a reduction in shared revenue means cuts at the local level and less money to spend across the board, including public safety.
While it’s true that many factors contribute to an increase or decrease in the occurrence of violent crimes, law enforcement officials and crime prevention scholars agree that an increased community-based police presence helps to prevent crimes and keep our communities safer.
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So taking a step back to look at both pieces of the claim, it appears to be a no-brainer; the governor’s budget definitely cut funding to local governments and those entities had less to spend on public safety services, even though data indicate that an increased police presence can help to prevent crime. And Burke didn’t say the funding cuts were the only cause, an important distinction. She merely said those cuts contributed and it’s hard to argue she’s wrong—but you’ll have to be the judge.
Do CEOs Truly Represent Wisconsin?
Now for the bonus round.
The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), in a radio ad promoting Walker’s running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, trotted out a favorite statistic of the Walker faithful: that “95% of job creators say Wisconsin is headed in the right direction.”
Considering the Walker administration’s documented problem creating jobs (Wisconsin ranks dead last in the Midwest in private sector job growth), this bold claim should give pause to anyone paying attention.
Turns out, the 95% the RSLC cites is based on a survey from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) of its members, 341 chief executive officers. WMC is the state’s largest business lobbying group and it makes no secret of its support for Scott Walker—the group has spent millions of dollars on ad campaigns promoting his agenda. And prosecutors say that WMC was part of what they call a “criminal scheme” to aid Walker and his fellow Republicans in the 2011 and 2012 recall elections.
But aside from WMC’s clear political leanings, PolitiFact finds another deficiency with the reliability of this focus group, noting that “a majority of the survey respondents were manufacturing executives, but manufacturing establishments are just 6% of Wisconsin’s businesses.”
But despite those clear red flags, PolitiFact ends up rating this claim “Half True” even as they say the sample “is not reflective of the overall makeup of state businesses.”
That just doesn’t make sense. If we were to survey a different group, we would surely get different results. Say, for example, we took a survey of every business owner in the state that signed a recall petition against Scott Walker and asked if the state was heading in the right direction under Scott Walker. We’d be willing to bet those results would look a lot different. But from a statistical standpoint, they’d be no more or less reliable than the survey RSLC cites.
So we’ll ask you—do 95% of all businesses really say Wisconsin is headed in the right direction? Or did a group of Walker’s political and financial supporters who have a vested interest in his administration just publicly support their guy? You be the judge.
