AN UNHEALTHY CHOICE?

Sometimes home rule can be a matter of life or death.

Dozens of lives could have been saved if the Wisconsin Legislature had let Milwaukee’s paid sick leave ordinance take effect, a Syracuse University researcher says.

In 2008, city voters approved the measure by a wide margin. The ordinance would have required all private-sector employers to give workers at least one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked, up to an annual maximum of 72 hours of leave at large businesses and 40 hours at small businesses.

Advocates said it would protect low-wage workers from being fired for taking time off if they or their family members were ill.

But by the time the ordinance survived a legal challenge, Republicans had won control of state government and in 2011 then-Gov. Scott Walker signed legislation outlawing local paid leave ordinances.

Senate President Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), who co-sponsored the override law as an Assembly member, said by email he favors local control unless an issue “has a broader impact to the state” – an apparent reference to business concerns about a patchwork of local regulations.

But increasing paid leave drives down death rates, according to a

2022 study led by Syracuse professor Douglas Wolf. The research links paid sick leave to reduced deaths from homicides among both genders, suicides among men and drug overdose deaths among women, all aged 25 to 64. Then the study looked at how much local ordinances could have cut deaths if states didn’t block them.

Although Milwaukee’s ordinance wasn’t part of that study, Wolf predicted 40 hours of paid leave countywide could have resulted in 18 fewer deaths per year, on average, from 2012 through 2019. The city-only total would be lower, but “it seems safe to conclude that the state’s preemption law is responsible for numerous deaths that might not otherwise have occurred,” Wolf says.