Per the Green Bay Press-Gazette today:

The City of Green Bay is now looking to hire a private security firm to provide school crossing guards; currently, crossing guards are employed by the city, represented by the Teamsters Union, and are paid around $12 per hour.  The guards fear that privatizing the service would drop their pay and benefits, although there's no evidence cited in the story that would back up their claim.

Remember Wimpy? His famous line was: "I'll pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today." That is, in effect, the practice of states and local governments who have been offering citizens more public services (schools, roads, police protection, etc.) today and promising to pay for them tomorrow. What happens when the bill comes due is a huge political problem...

Here in California, it used to be commonplace for disaffected voters to long for a figure like Rudy Giuliani, who could sweep into office and restore the tarnished luster of the Golden State. In fact, that's what many Californians thought they were getting with the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the governorship in 2003. That experiment, however, failed to produce anything like the results of Giuliani's, particularly after the Governator fell captive to faddish third way statism in his later years in office. These days, the unsatisfied Californian is more likely to point to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as an example of the kind of leadership he wishes he had. In today's Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn makes a compelling case as to why that is.

New York will (one presumes) have a new mayor come January 2014. One question for that mayor will be whether he or she chooses the past or the present.

The (future) present: the new mayor likely will face a deficit of $3.7 billion for his or her inaugural budget (fiscal year 2015). That's a good seven percent of city tax revenues.

The past: unless Mayor Bloomberg and municipal unions do some serious negotiating in the next few months, the new mayor will face more than a dozen expired contracts -- and union leaders requesting retroactive settlements.

On Tuesday night, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett won a landslide victory against his union-backed opponent, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, for the right to face Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election.  But while the night was supposed to be Barrett's alone, Walker became a primary storyline.  Walker actually received more votes than Barrett and Falk combined, despite running virtually unopposed.