State and municipal employers will be losing a large number of experienced staff in one fell swoop. Certainly they will still have employees in the workforce who are not eligible for retirement, but imagine losing a third of your staff that is the most experienced and knowledgable and losing them at the same time.

Couple that with the quality of "new hires". As a former employee of Milwaukee County, I saw with my own eyes what happens when contract after contract, giveback after giveback, concession after concession diminishes the quality of new applicants.

When I first started working for Milwaukee County in 1976, my salary as a Registered Nurse was slightly more than I made in several years of work in the private sector. The benefits, including pension, were better. As a result, Milwaukee County attracted high quality personnel. They maintained that quality despite a series of contracts containing concessions (mostly to retain benefits and pensions) since the closure of the main hospital contracted their workforce numbers. Most of their employees were of long tenure and high experience which shielded them from the implications of their noncompetative wage and benefit package.

However, when those workers began to retire, the lower salaries and diminished benefits revealed themselves in both the number and quality of people applying for positions. Recruitment of staff, particularly professional and technical staff, is expensive, as is the accompanying training of new staff. When recruitment needs to be done continuously when there are few qualified applicants, expenses mount. Milwaukee County began to lower their standards just to fill positions. Then they lowered them more. Instead of getting the best, brightest, and most qualified personnel, they were hiring people who, frankly, could barely perform at the minimal level. Their work load (and errors) began to fall on everyone else. It's one of the reasons I decided to retire early. I was tired of the hiring of "warm bodies with a pulse" and my growing responsibilities for them and their practice.

This is about to affect every city, town, county, and state agency as their eligible employees head out the door in retirement. For many years public employees have been giving back, asking for less, and just trying to hang on to what they can with ever tightening budgets. The expense of recruitment, coupled with the expense of training new employees will add to already strained budgets. Add to that the never ending demonization of public employees and governments will discover that qualified personnel might be hard to find.

No doubt, this time of high unemployment will cushion the effect, but how long will those new employees stay when good jobs become readily available? Will there be another mass exodus of personnel leaving for more lucrative private employment taking with them the additional skills and knowledge they gained while working in the public sector? And what of the added expenses of more recruitment and training with noncompetative wage/benefit packages in an improved private sector employment environment?

Scott Walker hasn't realized that this blowback is coming. He clearly hasn't thought through the implications of his Republican dream of killing unions. Within the next few months, his eyes will be opened to the reality of what he and his Republican cronies have done and it will be too late.

As an aside to those public employees who are retiring in Wisconsin, I want to let you know that while you are locking in your retirement benefits before they become unilaterally changed, you are not completely safe from future changes. Municipalities have tried to change benefits for retirees in the past, but have been prevented from doing so by a Wisconsin State Supreme Court decision that no changes can be made for those already retired. You may have noticed the major effort to pack right wing judges onto the Wisconsin State Supreme Court over the past several years. Should there be success in tilting the court, I wouldn't put it past Scott Walker or others to try to get that decision reversed.

It is important, therefore, to make sure you vote on April 5 for Joanne Kloppenburg for Wisconsin State Supreme Court to replace RW Justice David Prosser.

If you are in Milwaukee County, please also vote for Chris Abele for Milwaukee County Executive (Scott Walkers old job) and defeat Walker ally and current Republican State Assemblyman Jeff Stone.

Update: Off to the Debates Edition: I need to go for a few hours to attend a debate between (union endorsed) Chris Abele and (evil Republican State Legislator) Jeff Stone for Scott Walkers previous job of Milwaukee County Executive. I expect Stone to get a question on his participation in the illegal, unannounced, 3 second vote on Walkers union stripping bill. Stone is a buddy of Walker. I'm working to get Abele elected. It would be a great show of public rejection of Walker.

Update: Back from the Debates Edition: Wow. Chris Abele came early to greet people before the debate (actually more like a candidate forum) and stayed late after to shake peoples hands. Jeff Stone zoomed in a couple of minutes before and bolted out right after it was done (I'm sure he only likes Tea Bagger Crowds). Early on, Stone had an "oops" moment when he certainly forgot he was in a mixed audience of mostly independents and was verbally fawning over Walkers reign as County Executive and the important steps he took in "reforming" the county. Yeah, Walker left us in a pile of debt. He spewed Walkers old line about making the county more welcoming to business and creating jobs. He downplayed his support for Walker and the Budget Repair Bill - only saying that it was important to control costs. Abele was articulate and spoke to the importance of sitting down and talking to all parties about the best ways to improve efficiency and trim waste and that everyone needed a seat at the table.

Update: Thank You for Not Feeding the Trolls Edition: It looks like we've had a little troll action here (hope you guys are enjoying your per post chump change). Thanks for not tipping or engaging them in useless dialogue to add to their payday. I even had a new guy (zero posts, zero diaries, joined 3/11) send me a DK Troll Message - my first ever - complete with RW talking points, accusations of lying, and a few blasts at Michael Moore. Unfortunately, he didn't use the one about how all of us "libruls" were on the payroll of George Soros or my day would have been complete.

Update: Walker Really will get Blowback Edition: There was a lot of discussion about the RW plan to make public service jobs really terrible so all they get are unqualified employees which will lead to public support of their desire to privatize. That's pretty much the same old story for Republicans that's been going on for decades.

That's not what I meant about blowback. The blowback Walker will get will be pretty immediate. With a such a massive loss of so many public employees, services will abruptly become awful. And people will know exactly who to blame. Now that will be blowback.