Police pick pension or insurance

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Local governments across Wisconsin are threatening to greatly increase public safety workers' health insurance costs if they don't start contributing to their pensions, according to the state's largest police union.

The Wisconsin Professional Police Association contends local governments are taking advantage of a state budget clause that allows municipalities to dictate the form of public safety workers' health insurance plans. The WPPA told The Associated Press local leaders are using their new power to set up exorbitant deductibles for police and firefighters if they don't agree to contribute to their retirements.

Municipal leaders say they're simply using a tool the Legislature provided them to manage deep cuts in state aid and defuse tensions between police and firefighters and other public employees stemming from Gov. Scott Walker's contentious collective bargaining law. The measure forced most public sector employees to pay more into their pensions and insurance but exempted public safety workers from the requirements.

WPPA Executive Director Jim Palmer likened the tactics to blackmail.

"These employers tell their officers that unless you agree to pay this, we will make health insurance nearly unaffordable for you and your families," Palmer said

Walker, a Republican, shepherded a measure through the GOP-controlled Legislature last year that stripped almost all public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights and required them to contribute about 6 percent of their earnings to their pensions and pay at least 12 percent of their health insurance costs, including premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

Before Walker introduced the law, state and local governments generally covered most, if not all, of employees' retirement contributions and their health insurance costs. The governor said he had to make the changes so local governments would have the flexibility they needed to absorb deep cuts in state aid needed to help balance a $3.6 billion budget shortfall.

Labor leaders and many Democrats saw the changes as a blatant attack on unions, one of Democrats' key constituencies. Thousands of demonstrators converged on the state Capitol in February for weeks, leading to demonstrations as large as 100,000 people. All 14 state Senate Democrats fled to Illinois in a futile attempt to stop passage of the bill, which cleared the Republican-controlled Legislature and was signed into law by Walker in March.

Walker said at the time that he exempted public safety workers from the changes in part because the state couldn't afford for them to walk off their jobs in anger.

Municipal leaders immediately began to fear tensions would rise between police and firefighters and other public employees. They also feared they would be forced to create two separate health insurance plans, which would cost more.

In response, Republican legislators added language in the state budget that prohibited police and firefighter unions from having any say in the design of their health insurance. Local government leaders across the state believe the clause grants them unilateral authority to establish the plans' details.

"We wanted all municipal employees to be treated alike," said Dan Thompson, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, which lobbied for the clause. "Legislators simply understood the argument that having two separate health care plans isn't the right way to run city hall."