Capitol View: February 22, 2011 Archive

Border War: The Wage Factor

Posted at 8:25 PM on February 22, 2011 by Tim Nelson
Filed under: MN Legislature, Mark Dayton

We had a story last week comparing the retirement and health benefits of public sector workers in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Those are the highest-profile points of the economic battle being waged between Wis. Gov. Scott Walker and the public employee unions in the Badger State.

But many contended the picture wasn't complete without a look at wages, since bargaining units often trade one for the other -- typically retirement benefits or health premiums in lieu of up-front pay. It was hard to run all that down in time for Friday morning's story.

The reason: It's very, very difficult to compare. No one in either state tracks health benefits for teachers overall. And while state-by-state wage data is available, it's typically for individual occupations, without distinguishing between private and public sector workers.

That said, there are some jobs that are largely public. School teachers. Fire fighters. Cops and judges. Information on those is available from a single source, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Below you'll find a table drawn from that data, for a series of jobs.

The bottom line? Mixed. For some jobs, like teachers, the USBLS said median wages in Wisconsin actually led Minnesota in 2009, despite Wisconsin's comparatively generous pension benefits. For others, like court, municipal and licensing clerks (also likely public employees), Minnesotans get a pretty noticable 24 percent premium.

A few caveats here: the teacher numbers do not distinguish between public and private schools, although the biggest proportion are presumably public school teachers. The clerk numbers also do not distinguish between the differences in the judicial systems in the two states: Wisconsin has 252 municipal courts, as well as a state 10-district Circuit Court system. Minnesota has had an exclusively state court system since 1986. That may as well explain the wide disparity in the judge salaries.

At any rate, here are the numbers, ranked by USBLS median salary data in 2009.

Select Employee Wages in the Upper Midwest

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Data dowloaded 2/22/2011, dated May, 2009. Annual wages calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by 2080 hours; where an hourly mean wage is not published the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. Data can be accessed at http://www.bls.gov/bls/blswage.htm

Senate GOP backs off efforts to repeal MA expansion

Posted at 2:29 PM on February 22, 2011 by Tom Scheck
Filed under: MN Legislature, Mark Dayton

A Republican state senator is backing off an effort to repeal early expansion of Medicaid in Minnesota. Governor Dayton ordered the expansion to cover 95,000 people who are currently either on state health care programs or who have no health insurance.

Republican Senator David Hann of Eden Prairie joined other Republicans in objecting to expansion. But Hann said today that he will no longer push to repeal the expansion because it would make the state's budget deficit worse.

"After some consideration we felt that it might be an easier approach just to not deal with that issue," Hann said. "Especially given the likelihood that the governor is not likely to sign a bill that repeals an action that he's taken already."

Hann and other Republicans criticized the Medicaid expansion because it's part of the new federal health overhaul. They said there's too much uncertainty about what it will cost the state in the future. Dayton said the expansion will ensure greater health coverage to more Minnesotans. The expansion is supposed to start next month.

Dayton speaks at labor rally

Posted at 8:32 PM on February 22, 2011 by Tim Nelson
Filed under: MN Legislature, Mark Dayton

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton this afternoon had some of his strongest language yet regarding public employees and their labor unions.

He spoke for about 8 minutes at the AFL-CIO rally in the Capitol rotunda, called in support of embattled public employee unions in Wisconsin. Referring to anti-union measures afoot in Minnesota's legislature, Dayton said "drastic, extreme measures won't become law here, because I'm here."

You can hear his entire speech below. He opens with a birthday greeting for Eliot Seide, director of AFSCME Council 5.