MATC Latest Target of Misguided Anti-Tax Vigilantes
But the area lacks enough skilled workers

By Bill Christofferson
6/8/06
This article is from the Shepherd Express

A shortage of skilled workers continues to plague the Milwaukee metro area, employers regularly complain. As baby boomers approach retirement age, the problem is guaranteed to get worse.

There’s an obvious solution: policymakers should invest in the state’s technical college system.

But that costs money, and the money comes from taxpayers.
If recent screaming newspaper headlines about a proposed 5% tax levy increase at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) are any indicator, the anti-tax crusaders have poisoned the atmosphere so that even modest increases are unacceptable.

The Journal Sentinel made MATC’s proposed budget its top story and followed with a second story and headline about “Lessons in Tax and Spend.” It noted that MATC has raised its levy 35.7% since 2001, more than Milwaukee’s city, county and public school budgets have increased.

The paper chose to ignore the fact that general state aid to technical schools has been frozen for six years, and that the state, which in 1980 paid 35% of the cost of tech schools, now pays half that, or 17.5%. That forces local boards to rely on the property tax.

The proposed levy increase would cost the owner of a median-priced home $14 a year. Call it a cup of coffee a month. If you prefer, call it three lattes a year—four if you don’t tip.

A reader of my blog, “The Xoff Files,” asked: “Is this too much to ask the citizens of this community to support their technical college and its 58,000 students? Is this too much to ask to ensure that this community has an adequate supply of nurses, dental technicians, police and firefighters, IT network specialists, Web page designers, welders, auto and heating and air-conditioning technicians and skilled trades people?”

Beating Up on MATC
Conservatives who want to beat up on MATC, and education spending in general, have used the inflated hype about MATC’s budget to call for an elected board. If board members, who are now appointed, had to run for office they would be more responsive to taxpayers and hold down spending, the theory goes.

But the same suburban legislators who berate the MATC board for its spending and want an elected board—state Sens. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) and Alberta Darling (R-River Hills)—have also voted to freeze state aid.

When you freeze aid for six years—not tied to inflation or the cost of living, but a real, solid, absolute freeze—you are forcing property taxes to go up. To then complain that property taxes are going up takes more than a little chutzpah.

You don’t need to be a financial wizard to know what has happened to the price of energy and health care in the last five years, just to cite two examples of rising costs that drive the school’s budget.

The right wing would rather blame the faculty and staff, saying they are overpaid, and the newspaper helps that impression by reporting: “The average pay for a full-time teacher at MATC is $90,845. Some full-time faculty earn more than $140,425 by taking on additional teaching duties.”

The facts: The salary range for full-time faculty with a master’s degree is $50,500 to $80,824; it goes to $85,156 with additional schooling. The only way a faculty member can earn more is by teaching extra classes or doing administrative work, for which they are paid at 60% of the regular rate, actually saving taxpayer money. The nine highest paid MATC faculty members are performing year-round administrative functions in addition to their teaching loads. The only instructor who earned $140,000 not only taught extra classes and did administrative work, but wrote and coordinated grants generating more than half a million dollars for MATC.

Got a Better Solution?
What makes Darling and Lazich think that elected board members would rein in spending and taxes?

Darling herself was a member of Joint Finance, the Legislature’s budget committee, when Republicans were turning the state budget into the nation’s laughingstock with a $3.2 billion deficit. The deficit was so bad the state’s bond rating was reduced—even as MATC continued to receive the highest bond rating possible.

In Washington, our elected officials, including “fiscal conservative” Rep. Mark Green (R-Green Bay) and his leader, George W. Bush, have run up deficits in the trillions of dollars.
There is simply no evidence that changing to an elective body would really change anything.

What are the alternatives to investing in our technical colleges?
One upbeat Business Journal article recently suggested that some planned area factory closings might help, since some badly needed skilled workers would be added to the labor pool.

That is hardly a strategy.

Phyllis Eisen, vice president of the Manufacturing Institute, the research and education arm of the National Association of Manufacturers, says that the skilled labor shortage can, in part, be attributed to parents’ and teachers’ emphasis on four-year college degrees as the key to success.

The association is launching programs in Houston, Kansas City, Mo., and Omaha, Neb., to promote technical job training. Milwaukee could organize a similar effort, Eisen told the Journal Sentinel. “But it needs to be promoted as economic development rather than education,” she said. “Otherwise, no one will pay attention to it.”

And no one will want to pay for it.

Clearly, what MATC does is all about economic development. The single largest obstacle to job creation is the state’s labor shortage.

MATC and the state’s other technical colleges are the key to solving the problem.

But it will cost money. Who will ante up?

Bill Christofferson is a consultant to the Greater Wisconsin Committee.