Marketplace of Ideas Blog

I am speaking on KFIZ (1450 AM) this morning as a followup to the Mercury Marine story that dominated 2009’s headlines.

As a Fond du Lac County resident, I can’t say I’m thrilled about getting to pay ½ percent more for most things I buy thanks to the county sales tax that is funding the county’s portion of the incentive package to keep Mercury in Fond du Lac.

It is similar to the ½-percent sales tax Brown County residents are paying for the Lambeau Field renovations, in that no one should want to envision Fond du Lac without Mercury and its 11,000 direct and indirect jobs. It is also similar to the Lambeau Field sales tax in that the Fond du Lac County board wisely voted to sunset the sales tax once the incentive package is paid off instead of keep the sales tax for other county funding, as was proposed, but defeated, by Brown County voters in 2000.

Another facet of the Mercury story comes to mind this week, which is the American Society of News Editors’ Sunshine Week, “a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.” Readers may recall not just the topsy-turvy sequence of events that ultimately led to the incentive package, but public comment during the sequence of events. Commentary has gotten to the point for some time where, rather than just offering a counterargument, those with opposing views get demonized — to use this example, Mercury union members were greedy, those who thought the union should give contract concessions didn’t support workers, etc.

The first time Mercury’s potential move from Fond du Lac to Stillwater, Okla., was reported was in late June, three months after Mercury officials told the state they needed to consolidate their facilities. Less than two months later came the first union vote, the interrupted second union vote, and the third vote that superseded the first two.

If you read the series of stories about all this, the sequence of events makes sense. It did not at the time the events were actually happening. What particularly didn’t make sense at the time was that there appeared to be no involvement by anyone other than Mercury and its union until late August, when the Fond du Lac County Board met in closed session to consider “negotiating strategies and funding alternatives related to Mercury Marine.” Then, in early September — nearly six months after the state got involved — Gov. James Doyle hinted that a “significant expansion” might happen at Mercury if the contract concessions were approved. That, of course, turned out to be Mercury’s moving its stern drive operations from Stillwater to Fond du Lac.

At Marian University’s Business & Industry Awards two weeks ago, Doyle said, “I was really the one who put them back at the table after that midnight vote and everybody thought it was over. People had to be grownups, and they had to realize things were different.”

That is interesting news nearly seven months after the fact. For that matter, it could be said to have been a political PR blunder for that information to not have reached the public before now, even though Doyle announced during the behind-the-scenes negotiations that he wasn’t running for reelection. Political capital is not something a politician should waste at any stage of his or her career.

I don’t point this out because certain commentators had to sort of eat their words following the final union vote. But the tenor of the public back-and-forth over what was going on between Mercury and its union would have been different had the public known that efforts were being made with their tax dollars to keep Mercury in Fond du Lac.

And the public has a right to know at least that. The state’s Open Meetings and Open Records laws say generally that government activity — meetings and records — is to be conducted in the open. State law does provide exceptions under which the Mercury negotiations were conducted.

Those exceptions exist for a similar reason to the fact that, for instance, one business doesn’t negotiate the purchase of another business in the public square. In the case of Mercury, state officials were concerned that the State of Oklahoma, which had already offered an incentive package to get Mercury to move to Stillwater, would find out what Wisconsin was offering and try to up the ante. (Which could be considered information the public has a right to know as well.) Negotiations for, for instance, the sale of lots in a municipal-owned business park fall under Open Meetings Law exceptions.

The fact that negotiations included organizations whose operations are funded by tax dollars, however, does not seem to me to fall into one of those exceptions. And independent of that assertion, certainly the public anxiety over the possibility of Mercury’s leaving would have been at least lessened by the knowledge that governmental efforts were being made to keep Mercury in Fond du Lac. That wasn’t generally known.

I mean to neither criticize or make accusations about nefarious conduct or motives, and I don’t believe the result would have been different. (And as it is, the result, even with the sales tax, is preferable to losing 11,000 jobs in Wisconsin.) But the presumption in this state is that government activity is conducted in the open. The public deserves to know that government is trying to work out an arrangement palatable to both sides in a situation like Mercury’s, even if the public can’t know every last detail about the negotiation process.