So, does anyone really believe that the City of Madison is going to lose
- 37 – 185 businesses
- 6,000 jobs
- $4 – $21 million in property taxes
and that businesses will lose $75 million
- in wages ($60M)
- and compliance costs ($15M)
because the City of Madison is looking at requiring that businesses allow their 39,000 City of Madison employees who currently don’t have paid sick leave to get this benefit when they and their family members are sick?
(Note: $60M in wages is $1,538 per employee, which means that would be a payroll cost of $21.36 per hour per person and all 39,000 employees would have to be full time and take all 9 days of sick leave. How many people making that kind of money do you think don’t already have paid sick leave?)
Those are just some of the claims made in the Chamber of Commerce’s Paid Sick Leave Report they recently bought from NorthStar Economics, Inc. (It was on their website earlier today, but disappeared.) Part of a study and its conclusions are based on a survey of 96 Chamber of Commerce members. Do you think those survey answers were unbiased? As we have seen, this is hardly an apolitical group of people and one might suspect that their members have political motivations to answer the questions in a particular way. Alder Austin King made this analogy earlier today:
Asking Chamber of Commerce members if they are going to leave Madison if we pass a paid sick leave policy is like if he had polled Democrats right before the last election and asked them if they were moving to Canada if George Bush won the election. Both are likely to yield a high number of people who say yes, and a very small number of people who would actually follow through.
More disturbing in the report is the claim that the City of Madison would lose $4M to $21M. First of all, as Alder Austin King points out, that is 15.5% of our total annual projected tax revenue of $135,680,761. (see page 10) [Yes, I checked the math $21M/$135,680,761 = 15.477% and the source] And given that commercial property is only 31% of the land value that is taxed in the City (see page 2) that means we would have to lose half our commercial real estate as a result of this ordinance. [Yes, I checked the math $5,648,462,400/$18,283,569,200 = 30.89% and the source.] This is so absurd on its face it is hard to know how to respond.
Interestingly enough, they seem to have no problem making authoritative statements in their report but offer no data, to make statements such as the following:
The minimum wage increase has caused businesses to hire fewer workers, delayed, decreased or eliminated pay increases; decreased benefits such as health care and retirement contributions; increased prices and cut service levels.
Additionally, they obviously hadn’t read the ordinance, or had no problem grossly mischaracterizing the ordinance when they said that the ordinance “will require a business with more than five employees to provide 70 hours of paid sick leave per year if the employee works more than 12 hours per week.” Actually, what the ordinance says is that you have to offer 1 hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked if a person works more than 12 hours a week. So if someone works 12 hours a week, they would only be offered 20.8 hours of sick leave, not 70.
There is so much about the Chamber of Commerce and friends’ (Tavern League, Realtors, Common Sense Coalition) latest attempts to be politically active that is just so . . . comical.
Finally, I have a few rather random thoughts about all of this, and although I’m going to name names here, these are not meant to be personal attacks. I just have to point out some interesting inconsistencies and absurdities. I think these folks have to start taking responsibility for their actions.
First up, for no particular reason – Daniel Guerra, small business owner and Executive Director of Building Wisconsin, Inc.
I recently attended a Communities United meeting where they reaffirmed their support of inclusionary zoning and opposed repeal of the ordinance. Daniel is the current chair of that group. When they discussed someone speaking at the council meeting regarding their position, Daniel claimed that he couldn’t do it because his position at Building Wisconsin prohibited him from taking public positions on political matters. However, he had no problem being quoted in the Chamber of Commerce press release as follows:
“Taking care of our employees is just good business,” said Dan Guerra, a Madison small business owner. “But, mandating economic policies on small business is killing us. The city has to consider the cumulative effect of all the mandates they have showered on us in the past 18 months. It’s time to stop the mandates and save the jobs.”
Interesting when he can make political statements and when he can’t.
Next, Ald. Zach Brandon
Ald. Brandon’s comments in the Wisconsin State Journal article on the report are as predictable as it gets. First, the scare tactics.
The study, obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal on Wednesday, found that even under more modest projections, the law would blow a $4.2 million hole in the city’s operating budget.
The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce commissioned the report as part of its continued fight against the proposal, and has planned a morning news conference to discuss the findings today.
Ald. Zach Brandon said such a big hit to the city’s tax base could spell disaster.
“That would mean the elimination of some very important services, or a shift in the property tax burden,” said Brandon, who opposes paid sick leave. “Because there wouldn’t be businesses paying it, the average homeowner’s taxes would go up.”
The alder is definitely skilled in using republican fear tactics in his political rhetoric. And of course, just like the republicans, its all about the taxes. But I’m amazed he really believes these numbers? Doesn’t he realize something doesn’t make sense?
Surprisingly, he then makes a rather astonishing comment.
But Brandon said he welcomed the study, echoing Alexander’s past complaints that local empirical data was not available to guide debate.
“For the first time we’re dealing with real numbers,” he said.
Interesting . . .
This brings me to my third name to drop – Chairman Mark Bugher & the Economic Development Commission
If the the Economic Development commission and Alder Brandon and the Chamber of Commerce/Common Sense Coalition/Tavern League don’t have local empirical data, how do they know the city is losing jobs? And why is this the first time they’re dealing with real numbers? How do they make decisions about economic development without data? What is the Economic Development Commission doing if they don’t have real numbers? What are they doing to get them? And why don’t they want to have an economic development plan for the City?
Sigh . . . how long before we can look at some data that is real and determine if this anti-business rhetoric has any basis? And when will the City have an economic development plan?
