Editor and Publisher Magazine reports that the Ohio News Organization, a consortium of widely-read Ohio newspapers, will run an investigative report focused on public employee pensions next Sunday, Nov. 29th.
Editor and Publisher Magazine Link
Given the fact that the investigation is unpublished - and won't be published for another week - I really can't comment on the specifics of the investigation. However, the E&P coverage does not seem to suggest any malfeasance.
Apparently, the story will simply focus on the long-term sustainability of pensions for teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees. And, given the pressures on existing pensions and health care plans, I wanted to give the heads-up to Ohio public employees.
For many years, manufacturing industries set standards for pay and benefits across the Midwest. Half of those jobs are gone. And the workers who remain have had to endure round after round of pay and benefit cuts.
This has made public employees a target.
Police officers, teachers, firefighters and other public employees in most cases still make reasonable wages. And in our age of 401k plans and health savings accounts, public employees seem almost anachronistic with traditional pensions and largely solid health care plans.
And these public employees are easy targets. For the most part, the wage and benefit details for public employees are a matter of public record. This makes it easy for, say a newspaper consortium, to dig into some easy data.
And as unemployment escalates across the Midwest, public employees become easy targets for Republican attacks. Rather than taking responsibility for the conservative policies that have caused the economy to tank, Republicans seem more than willing to point at the last remaining middle class residents of many Midwestern towns and say, "Look what they've got. Let's take that, too."
Of course, that is a race to the bottom. In the southern Michigan town in which I teach, the local school district is, by far, the largest employer. When wages and benefits decrease for teachers, local businesses do suffer. And I believe that it is important that those who perform the basic functions of society - public safety, fire suppression, education and other duties - earn a decent living.
So, I can pretty much guarantee that this newspaper investigation will become talking points for the Ohio Republican Party by Monday of next week.
Of course, the report itself is a piece of news. It is the first actual piece of reporting released by the Ohio News Organization. The ONO includes the Toledo Blade, the Columbus Dispatch, the Dayton Daily News, the Akron Beacon Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The ONO is an attempt to pool resources. An alternative view, of course, is that it is a way for newspaper executives to make due with fewer reporters. And it probably made sense in those corporate offices to focus the first report on teachers, firefighters and police officers.
Of course, when the Blade, Dispatch, Beacon Journal and Plain Dealer are all reporting the same news, it doesn't leave much space for an alternative view.
The danger is that this report becomes THE prevailing view in Ohio. And thousands of public employees will not be the only losers in that race to cripple the last remaining vestiges of the Midwestern middle class.