Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Clark and Orton in the Wisconsin State Journal: Cable Bill Proponents Fudge Facts

Today's Wisconsin State Journal published an opinion column by Brad Clark, Madison's Cable Officer, and myself.  It was a response to last week's WSJ editorial pushing the "video competition" bill.

Your claim that the bill would allow competing providers to "negotiate a single contract with the state" shows a misunderstanding of the bill. The state could not negotiate anything: State franchises would be empty boilerplate, held in perpetuity, and freely transferable without state oversight.

No wonder both the cable companies and AT&T find the bill's relief from "the tedious task of negotiating cable television deals with hundreds of individual communities across Wisconsin" worth the fortune they have spent on lobbyists.

...Competition is a good thing and we're in favor of it, but don't pass along the false claims made by industry-sponsored groups, which have little credibility in this debate. By echoing their arguments, you diminish your credibility as well.

- Barry Orton

Republican Cable Bill Will Raise Property Taxes

Lost in the cable television discussion is the hidden property tax hike found in AB 207, the bill already passed by the Republican-dominated Wisconsin Assembly.  It contains a tax hike that is estimated to be as much as $2 million state- wide.

That is $2 million in property tax increases at the local level and/or a corresponding reduction in services.

Most municipalities in Wisconsin fund about 40 to 60% of their operations from the property tax. The additional revenues needed to operate the local budget comes from fees, fines and forfeitures, some shared revenue from the state, and a few other limited sources.

One of those sources is the franchise fee paid to cities by cable operators to use the public right of way.  Most cities that issue franchise permits to Charter or Time-Warner use part of that money to fund local cable TV programming and the remainder to run the city, town, or village.

The public right of way belongs to the people and it is not unreasonable for the public to be compensated.  After all, if Ralph wanted to operate his car dealership in the public right of way, we would expect him to pay some kind of rent. Or if Regina wanted to set up her real estate office in the right of way, it is reasonable to charge her, and to periodically review the terms and conditions of the lease as conditions change over time.

The sponsors of AB 207 want to change this system, which has been in place in Wisconsin since the 1950s, and give cable companies and AT&T franchise rights in perpetuity.  The bill also reduces in several significant ways (eliminating PEG fees and construction permit fees, for example) the rent to use the public right of way; thus the hidden property tax hike.

Foul.

Budget Cuts, Spending Increases, and other Legislative Mumbo Jumbo

As the Wisconsin legislature continues to pound sand in the finals days or weeks before we get a budget, a side show takes place as the opposing sides try to win a battle over the affection of the public, a public that does not have much use for this banter by either political party.

If a program cost $1,000,000 last year and it is funded at the same level this year, Republicans say there is no budget cut.  Democrats would call that a budget cut since it does not keep up with inflation.

If inflation runs at 3% and the program is given another 3% Democrats say the funding is at last year's level and Republicans call it a spending increase.

If Republicans cut $1,000,000 of revenues from a program, they say, "We cut taxes." When Democrats find a new source of revenues for the program, Republicans say, "The Democrats raised your taxes." Having reduced the expenditure by that $1,000,000, the Republicans refer to what the Democrats call a "restoration of Republican cuts," as "New spending."

Wisconsin taxpayers do not care about this shadow boxing. As they always have, Wisconsin taxpayers are willing to pay a little more in taxes if they believe that the services are of a higher quality.  Even if those services are for other people.

Wisconsin's Baseball Fans Familiar With Futility

The Milwaukee Brewers lost significant ground to the Chicago Cubs over the weekend, and are now clinging
to a mere one-half game lead in the Comedy Central Division.  It wasn't so much losing to the struggling Cardinals, it was the way the Brewers lost: blowing 5+ run leads two days in succession. Meanwhile, since before the All-Star break the Cubs have been winning at an amazing clip.

Southern Wisconsin's baseball nuts are mostly either Brewers or Cubs fans: people who are used to some fleeting success foreshadowing inevitable failure and defeat. (Paul's White Sox followers are a decidedly smaller group of diehards who, having tasted recent ultimate success, are currently mired 13 games behind Detroit.)

The Cardinals looked pretty good as they made the Brewers' inexperience  show.  As much as Cub fans enjoyed watching the Cardinals' Albert Pujols and David Eckstein demolish Brewer pitching, it sent a shiver down our collective backs.  The Cards are only 5.5 games behind the Cubs, and it's still July.

At least how both the Brewers and Cubs do still matters.  We can only hope the same can be said in September.

- Barry Orton

Weekend bicycling report: Changes in Farmer's Market, Square for August 4

Today's ride through the Arboretum, around Monona and back to the Capitol Square reminded me that next week there will be some significant changes at the Farmer's Market.

On Saturday August 4, the pedestrian flow will be reversed and the procession will be clockwise. In an effort to reduce greenhouse gases, organizers of the Farmer's Market (FM) want everyone to try this new routing to test the theories of University of Wisconsin scientists from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS).

AOS researchers believe that mammals consume fewer calories and emit fewer gases if they move in a clockwise rather than a counterclockwise direction when in the Northern Hemisphere.

FM organizers are making two other requests of patrons. First that no children under the age of six be on the grounds unless they walk; the consumption of cheeses and uncooked vegetables by children contributes significantly to hydrocarbons if the children are in strollers and carriages according to researchers from the UW Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics.

Finally, anyone who drives to the market is asked to hang their car keys around their necks so that observers can get an accurate count of those who did not walk, ride a bicycle or take the bus or trolley.

 

Dueling Editorials on Wisconsin "Video Competition" Bill

Monday the Wisconsin State Journal got it wrong in its editorial pushing AT&T's "video competition" bill:

...No longer would video providers have to go through the tedious task of negotiating cable television deals with hundreds of individual communities across Wisconsin. Instead, they could negotiate a single contract with the state.

This is an alarming misunderstanding of the bill's specifics. The state could not negotiate anything: all state franchises would be empty Department of Financial Institutions boilerplate, held in perpetuity, and freely transferable without state oversight.  No wonder both the cable companies and AT&T find the bill’s relief from “the tedious task of negotiating cable television deals with hundreds of individual communities across Wisconsin” worth the fortune they have spent on lobbyists.

Today's Capital Times editorial sees the connection between the lobbying and the real purpose of the bill:

The State Journal says, "The Legislature should send the video competition bill to the governor's desk soon after the state budget is finished. The bipartisan bill would encourage telephone company AT&T and others to enter the cable TV picture and hustle for customers against traditional providers such as Charter Communications."

Hustle? AT&T crafted the legislation in collaboration with its allied legislators. The corporation won't be hustling. It will be playing by rules it put in place in order to make the most money from the most people with the least hassle.

That's not hustling. That's profiteering.

And the only explanation for why the editors of the State Journal, whom we respect for their integrity if not their research skills, could reach the conclusion they have is if they got hustled.

...Legislators should reject the advice of those who are lobbying for the bill and move quickly to reject this corrupt and corrupting proposal.

- Barry Orton

 

Steve Nass: An Embarrassment To Wisconsin

Steve Nass, the outlaw chairman of an Assembly committee that is designed to destroy the University of Wisconsin System, needs to go back to school. The Whitewater Republican, not content to embarrass his party, continues to shame his district and the state.

Nass' premise is simple. He considers certain programs "too far to the left," or he disagrees with them philosophically.

Wisconsin has benefited mightily and the University of Wisconsin has contributed to its economy by the exploits of its faculty. We need go no further than the work of Professor Karl Paul Link or these activities which personify the Wisconsin Idea:

As you look at this list, recall two things:

• While at some later date, the private sector may have solved these problems, it was a public institution that relishes academic freedom that did the work with a combination of private and pubic money through the dedication of a free and independent faculty that entertained the most unpopular ideas.
• While not all of us would have supported each and every program, that as a whole, this body of work has been of great benefit to our state and society.

1. 1886 Professor Richard Ely publishes the nation’s first book on labor relations, presaging a period of dramatic reform in government’s role in the workplace.

2. 1888 The state Legislature provides funding for the university to begin offering summer institutes for schoolteachers.
3. 1889 Civil engineering professor C.D. Marx travels to Racine to offer mechanics training to factory workers, the first of a series of mechanics institutes where faculty brought their expertise directly to state workplaces.
4. 1890 Professor Stephen Babcock devises a method to test the butterfat content of milk, allowing merchants to pay farmers based on butterfat rather than weight and effectively ending the days of watered-down milk.

5. 1895 UW bacteriologists discover new techniques for canning vegetables that solve a persistent problem for the state’s canning industry — exploding cans.

6. 1899  Building on the success of summer institutes for farmers and teachers, the university establishes its first official summer session, making courses available to practicing professionals and non-traditional students.

7. 1901 Robert M. La Follette becomes the first UW alumnus to be elected governor of Wisconsin. A former roommate of Charles Van Hise, he articulates a progressive view of politics that sweeps Wisconsin and the nation, leading to legislative reforms in labor laws, social security and education. In his first address to the Legislature, La Follette says: “The State will not have fulfilled its duty to the University nor the University fulfilled its mission to the people until adequate means have been furnished to every young man and woman to acquire an education at home in every department of learning.”
8. 1907 The university creates an extension division to carry the university’s educational resources to citizens around the state.

9. 1908 Extension programs in public health are conducted for school children and adults throughout the state, focusing on nutrition, sanitation, safety, prenatal health, and the prevention and control of communicable diseases.

10. 1911 The state Legislature authorizes the hiring of county agricultural agents, who are employed jointly by the UW and local governments to help advance local agriculture, preceding agencies funded by the federal Smith-Lever Act by three years.
11. 1917 University faculty members begin making regular radio broadcasts from a campus transmitter, operating under the call sign 9XM. Their efforts become the foundation for WHA, the oldest educational radio station in the country.
12. 1921 The university begins offering tests for bovine tuberculosis, helping control the spread of the disease among state dairy herds.

13. 1925 Biochemist Harry Steenbock forms the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to commercialize his techniques for enriching food with vitamin D. The nation’s oldest university-based intellectual property agency, UW helps move scholarly inventions into the public domain and supports further research by routing licensing fees back to the lab.

14. 1930s  University research yields new hybrids of sweet corn that adapt well to Wisconsin’s low temperatures and shorter growing season, leading the state’s sweet corn crop to quintuple from 1930 to 1950.
15. 1931 WHA Radio’s “School of the Air” broadcasts lessons in civics, music, art, nature and health, and within a decade, nearly 300,000 elementary and high school students are tuned in as regular listeners.
16. 1933  Seeking to explain why cows were dying after eating spoiled sweet clover, biochemist Karl Paul Link discovered a chemical in the plant that he synthesized as the blood thinner dicumarol, which would become an essential anticoagulant for treating blood clots. Link made more than 100 variants of dicumarol, the most potent of which is the basis for Warfarin, a deadly poison used to control rats.
17. 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, a law that was significantly drafted by UW economist Edwin Witte and drew on the ideas of UW economists John Commons, Arthur Altmeyer and others.
18. '1940  UW horticulturists create North America’s first potato-seed farm to supply farmers with high-quality, disease-free seed potatoes. Some of the nation’s hardiest potato varieties, such as Superior and Snowden, were developed there.
19. 1949 Professor Aldo Leopold publishes A Sand County Almanac, a timeless bestseller that has become the wellspring for modern efforts to preserve the environment.
20. 1963 Engineering professor John Bollinger designs a robotic welding device that could control motion in five directions, helping Milwaukee’s A.O. Smith Company automate its welding process and revolutionize the manufacturing of automobile frames.
21. 1963 The UW schools of Education and Library and Information Studies create the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which houses and analyzes contemporary and historical children’s literature and helps state libraries identify the best books for young minds.
22. 1968 The world’s first successful sibling-to-sibling bone-marrow transplants are performed simultaneously at the UW and the University of Minnesota. Based on a compatibility test devised by Fritz Bach, a UW professor of medical genetics and medicine, bone-marrow transplants have since become a mainstay in the treatment of diseases and disorders such as leukemia.
23. 1974 The UW Law School establishes the Center for Public Representation, which provides free legal assistance to health-care consumers and elderly, disabled and low-income people.
24. 1985 Warzyn Engineering becomes the first company housed at the University Research Park, created to help businesses take university research advances into the marketplace.
25. 1987 UW surgeon Folkert Belzer and biochemist James Southard create the Wisconsin solution, a fluid for preserving organs for transplant surgery that dramatically increases the time an organ can survive outside the body. Used by hospitals throughout the world, the solution saves lives by providing time to make better matches between a donated organ and a patient, and to transport organs over greater distances.
26. 1989  The Wisconsin Center for Education Research aids in the development of new national standards for teaching math, which replace problems like runaway trains hurtling toward each other at different speeds with everyday situations, to be solved by student teams.

Wisconsin Water: Midwest Environmental Advocates

No discussion of water is complete without the participation of Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA). An excellent place to start is their report, Realizing the Promise of the Great Lakes Compact: A Policy Guide for State Implementation.

Also important is Protecting Wisconsin's Water: A conservation Report and Toolkit.

A review of MEA's work provides a keen reminder that water is essential not only to health but a vibrant economy. My conclusions are that any reasonable long term solution is going to require:

• Sacrifice: by both rural and urban water users.
• Discipline: careless, wasteful habits must come to an end.
• Higher Cost: for both infrastructure and to protect existing resources. This will undoubtedly be reflected in greater cost for growing, preparing, and distributing food.

In additon, agriculture costs will rise and bottled water will become a thing of the past.

Madison and Waukesha Water

When government regulates it should be thoughtful and reasonable. When it provides a service it should charge fairly.

Last Friday The Capital Times reported that Madison Alder Satya Rhodes-Conway met with fifty citizens to discuss ways of reducing water consumption. Two ideas considered were incentive based rates that charge more per gallon over the first 160,000 gallons used annually and changes in billing cycles.

The Madison Water Utility bills twice yearly. It was suggested that monthly billing would remind people of the cost of water and encourage conservation.

The left and the right both love to regulate to control behavior when it comes to their high priority issues. The problem is that sometime the regulations in place may be better than the proposed new ones, or education may work between than regulation.

Take the billing. It cost the city of Madison $2.04 to send out each water bill. There are 72,095 bills so the cost to send them out twice a year is $294,148. Send those bills out monthly and the cost jumps to $1,764,886.

I don't know if it matters much but in repeated polls over the years, water utility customers made it clear they want biannual billing. I hope what the customer wants counts for something.

Now for the pricing systems. First, the Waukesha pricing system does not kick in until the consumer uses 160,000 gallons annually.  Since the average Madison residential household uses well under 60,000 gallons annually it will not impact a lot of homes unless the threshold is significantly lowered.  Clearly the Waukesha concept may look good in theory but it does not impact but a tiny one or two percent of the users.

When we compare the water bills of the two communities we begin to see some significant differences. Both have demand charges for the 5/8' or 3/4" pipe that feeds water into the home, a fire protection charge to cover the cost of hydrants, and a sewer demand charge for the handling of waste water. But progressive Madison also has a fee based on the pervious and impervious surfaces of the property. And Madison also has a land fill fee.

In terms of cost, for a home that uses 75,000 gallons a year, the bill in Madison is $426.62 and the bill in Waukesha is $556.40. In Madison the actual charge for the water including the demand charge is $146, in Waukesha it is $224.24

Some might now say water is too cheap in Madison. Certainly Nestle and Bechtel would.

Madison is a community where forty percent of our children live in homes below the poverty line. Despite recent quality issues, Madison is able to provide water cheaper and more efficiently than Waukesha.

The Waukesha pricing system is not significant in terms of impacting 99% of water customers. To be really effective, the volume level that triggers the price increase must be significantly lowered. If our goal is to conserve water, perhaps education might be a more effective tool than raising costs that will have a disparate impact on low income families.

Water conservation tips from Madison and Waukesha

To understand what is going on in Waukesha I suggest the Political  Environment where Jim Rowen writes extensively about Waukesha and Lake Michigan water. and the Great Lakes Water Compact.

Madison's Kite Aerial Photographer

Craig M. Wilson is Madison's photo-documentarian from above, but not from a helicopter or airplane.  Craig's is more a bird's-eye view: a few hundred feet up and very dependent on the winds.  Craig, in his day job a behind-the-scenes bureaucrat in the City of Madison's Department of Planning and Development, has a hobby/business/artistic calling as an internationally recognized kite-assisted aerial photographer.

Browse his website, "FromaKite," and check out his photos of Madison places and events from above.  Shots of the Terrace, Camp Randall during football games, and the Capitol are spectacular.  He's got a great book, too, "Hanging by a Thread."

- Barry Orton