When conservative Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill earlier this year to restrict the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin state employees and require them to pay more of the costs of their own pensions and health care, thousands of angry union protesters descended on the state capital in Madison in what became a major national media story for several weeks. However, the reaction was much more subdued when County Executive Ike Leggett did the same thing in Montgomery County. With a state deficit projected to hit $3.6 billion over the next two years, Walker said he had no choice. But labor leaders vowed to launch a major national counterattack against the Wisconsin Republican, who used the $30 million in savings from his plan to avert 1,500 layoffs and service cuts. After a decade of unsustainable growth in Montgomery County government, Leggett was also grappling with a budget shortfall, this one of $300 million. And with 80 percent of the county’s $4.35 billion budget going to employee and retiree compensation, unaffordable benefits clearly had to be trimmed. The County Council agreed, unanimously approving $33 million in Walkerlike cuts to government employee pensions and benefits. County workers now have to pay 5 percent more than before for health insurance and 2 percent more for retirement. As a sweetener, the council reinstated $400,000 in taxpayer funding for Viagra, thus suggesting that Leggett’s cuts were not nearly deep enough.
Union pushback was muted. The head of Montgomery’s largest government employees union, 250 of his members and two goats demonstrated at county offices in Rockville, accusing Leggett of using 8,000 union members as “scapegoats.” And a mere handful of disgruntled firefighters protested in front of Leggett’s home in April, when a union lawsuit claiming Leggett’s budget plan violated the collective bargaining agreement was dismissed.
Recommended Stories
Alarmed by the awkward comparisons, GaithersburgPatch blogger Richard Parsons insisted that Leggett was no cheesehead like Walker — even though both the conservative Republican and the liberal Democrat cut employee benefits and refused to honor collective bargaining agreements their respective jurisdictions could no longer afford. The biggest difference: the level of vitriol directed at these two chief executives.
When Walker testified on Capitol Hill last month, House Oversight Committee member Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., accused him of trashing collective bargaining rights in order to undermine the Democratic Party. We’re still waiting for Connolly — the second-highest recipient of public sector union campaign contributions in Congress — to say the same about Leggett.
