It would be easier to stop Wal-sconsin from happening if we had a Public Intervenor.
A case for intervention
By
Ed Garvey
A year before high school graduation, I asked my father if he wanted me to study pharmacy so I could take over the family drugstore. Without hesitating, he said, "Absolutely not." I worried that he thought I could not pass chemistry, but, he explained, "By the time you are my age the big boys will control the pharmacy business." He knew what he was talking about in the mid-1950s, but not even he could have imagined the impact of Wal-Mart on towns the size of Burlington or Viroqua.
You should know up front that I represent a number of citizen groups who are engaged in legal battles with Wal-Mart over proposed supercenters in Waupaca and Minocqua and a distribution center in Beaver Dam. But my concern goes well beyond the legalities of zoning, annexation and city council procedures. The issue is whether citizens of Wisconsin will determine what our state will look and feel like in 20 or 50 years, or if we would prefer to let huge corporations make the decisions for us under the rubric of "growth."
Citizen groups have been engaged in tough fights to stop factory farms in the town of Porter and in Menomonie; a slaughterhouse in Adams; ethanol plants in Cambria, Elba and Augusta; and, of course, Perrier in the town of Newport. For the most part those were one-time battles. With Wal-Mart, you know the company is marching into Wisconsin in full battle gear as an occupying army. It does not want a mere presence; it wants domination of our state's retail sales and damn the consequences.
It is no secret that the business centers of small communities are decimated when Wal-Mart arrives. An Iowa State study found that 47 percent of retail trade is lost in small communities 10 years after Wal-Mart arrives. Grocery stores close immediately. Flower shops, bicycle shops, liquor stores are devastated.
Wal-Mart plays hardball with the local politicians. The pattern is to work with the local chamber of commerce, the mayor or the head of the business development entity. Wal-Mart insists that the local officials deal in secrecy despite our open meetings law. It threatens that it will go to the neighboring community and deny the "losers" an increased tax base if its plans become public. For example, when Stoughton took sensible action, Wal-Mart threatened to go to Oregon.
Wal-Mart does not want to give time for citizen opposition to form. These back-room deals keep citizens locked out of decision-making and planning, and undermine democracy.
The Chamber of Commerce in Fort Atkinson complained that citizens opposed to Wal-Mart cost Fort Atkinson $225,000 in lost property taxes. But the spokesman had no idea how much in property taxes would have been lost from small businesses filing for bankruptcy had Wal-Mart built a supercenter there.
So why be concerned? Sure, these big boxes are esthetically disastrous. They are to our communities what strip mining was to West Virginia. Ugly. But ugly is not enough to stand in front of the bulldozer. With Wal-Mart marching methodically through Wisconsin, establishing supercenters in Menomonie, Viroqua and 100 other communities, the question is, how can we defend ourselves and preserve competition? Can employee-owned businesses survive? Can we preserve the character of our communities?
Would it be asking too much to have the Doyle administration become proactive by hosting a summit of small business, environmentalists, community groups, planners and Department of Transportation experts to shed light on the real cost to the taxpayers of new highway construction aimed at pleasing the Wal-Mart masters? Can we discuss the awful downward impact of Wal-Mart on wages in communities where the big stores exist?
A Viroqua Chamber of Commerce representative says, "Those who have been with Wal-Mart for three years or more earn about $6.80 per hour with few benefits." And she was on Wal-Mart's team at the meeting in Waupaca!
That would be $14,144 per year if the employee worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks per year. Ah, but most do not. They work 30 hours a week at $6.80 and that totals $10,600 per year. Try raising two kids on that salary. Local businesses, concerned about their employees, are driven out of business in part because they pay higher wages and provide health care. Where do low-wage employees go for health care? The emergency room. Who pays? You do.
And what is the impact on suppliers who are told by Wal-Mart: "Cut your prices by 15 percent or you are out." More and more suppliers are forced to go to China. Result? Manufacturing goes down and we follow Wal-Mart's lead to the economic basement.
What about the environmental impact of these big boxes - the traffic, the water use, the lights and the noise?
The Doyle administration has done nothing to help citizens in these battles. If anything, it helps Wal-Mart. One of Doyle's campaign pledges was to bring back the public intervenor. There has been not a peep from him on that issue since January of 2003.
Here is some encouraging news. Instead of waiting for state government to help, the voters in Beaver Dam defeated the longtime incumbent mayor who entered into secretive deals with Wal-Mart; Minocqua and Waupaca are fighting to stop Wal-Mart. Voters in California said no to Wal-Mart in an April 6 referendum. Stoughton is still fighting, as are citizen activists in Beaver Dam, Janesville, Franklin and almost everywhere word of a Wal-Mart supercenter gets to the public.
It is quite possible that Wisconsin will fight back before we become Wal-sconsin. Let's hope so.
(A version of this article originally appeared on the opinion page of the Capital Times.)
April 18, 2004
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Ed Garvey is editor and publisher of FightingBob.com.
