A Tale of Two Labor Laws

Conn Carroll / June 02, 2010

The Washington Post editorialized yesterday:

Montgomery County has just completed a nightmarish budget year. Stressed, squabbling and besieged elected officials savaged services and programs and jacked up taxes to eliminate an eye-popping deficit of almost $1 billion in a $4.3 billion spending plan. Meanwhile, across the Potomac River in Fairfax County, all was sweetness and light by comparison. With a budget roughly equal to Montgomery’s, Fairfax officials erased a deficit a quarter as large with relative ease and far less drama.

The Post even goes on to correctly identify the power of public sector unions as the culprit for Montgomery’s budget woes, but then they write: “The primary culprits here, as this account should make clear, are not the unions, which are supposed to represent their workers energetically, but county leaders.” This is silly. Politicians don’t magically become more fiscally responsible by crossing the Potomac. But what does change at water’s edge is the law. Specifically, Maryland unions operate under a collective bargaining regime while Virginia law allows each public employee to negotiate their own compensation free from union coercion. The results are startling. The Washington Post reports: (more…)