First they came for the teachers and though I am not a teacher, I did speak out. Now, they come for the fire fighters and ...
According to a local Facebook posting ...
Janesville Fire Fighters Local 580 Excerpt:
Last March, city officials announced that fire fighters would no longer use the fire station garage for private vehicle use, claiming that no other city employee was afforded that same ability. When the JFFA rightly pointed out that several city employees including the City Manager and deputy city manager continued to park at city facilities, the city retaliated with the unprecedented move of proposing to increase only fire fighters health care costs.
There it is. Outside of the offensive retaliatory strike orchestrated by the city manager on the fire fighters for daring to question him, it should be noted that prior to Act 10, Local 580 agreed to make changes to their insurance including their rates to create parity among all city employees. After Act 10, that decision has kept all employees on par with the same offerings. But much like what happened to Wisconsin school teachers, Janesville fire fighters within the union are the only ones being targeted now with higher insurance costs.
Once beyond those arguments, it should also be noted that when the city was facing a projected $850K budget deficit for 2017, City Manager Freitag was quick to point blame at unions for the city's budget shortfall.
In an unrelated incident with an elected city council member, Freitag ordered staffers to ignore the council member's request for information because he didn't believe the council member was being cooperative. So there is a pattern of emotionally leveraged decision making. The city council as a whole however isn't exactly innocent as they continued to prop up the administration with rave reviews and raises. No surprise there.
Fire fighters shouldn't expect much help on this from the Janesville Gazette either. The newspaper will help them spread the message for readership, afterall, it is news. But you might recall the Gazette is on record saying Scott Walker didn't do enough in his first term and that he should finish the job by extending Act 10 to fire fighters and local police departments as well. And, if the city's heavy-handed actions appear divisive to the average observer, the Gazette thought Walker's scorched earth approach on teachers was just about the right touch needed to make them buckle. So we can eventually expect a whitewash from the Gazette on this as well.
Unfortunately, as history tells me where political loyalties are in the city's scandals over the last ten years, history also tells me this entire episode will be washed away.
Because, instead of Janesville becoming the epicenter of a reconstituted progressivism fighting for good government, fairness and equality in Wisconsin during the Scott Walker error, the city willingly raced to devolve into a resentment-driven laboratory for right-wing engineered trickle-down economics.
In my view, the aggressive response to the fire fighters is a deep problem in leadership that must not be allowed to go away with a statement from the city that someone misspoke or a new council rule that all employees including the city manager can no longer use city facilities for private use.
Those willing to abuse power by retaliating with an iron fist against their peers over elementary equality and fairness issues don't suddenly self-medicate into Gandhi when verbally corrected. If city staffers are so easily triggered against their peers over petty squabbles, just think what they have planned for the irate taxpayer or opinionated speaker they see as their adversary.
The city's emotionally charged authoritarian offensive against the fire fighters flows out from a toxic mindset and demoralizing culture that should have no refuge in our local government.
Janesville residents must not let the two parties negotiate an internal "settlement" on this matter leaving bad apples on the top to continue rotting the rest of the crate and ...don't let them pretend like this never happened. Like we have repeatedly done in the past.
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