Wisconsin collective bargaining law in suspense
A new Wisconsin law to end collective bargaining rights for most public employees is blocked until the state courts decide several legal questions surrounding passage of the controversial legislation. Also, Wisconsin lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are calling for their opponents to be recalled, and Gov. Scott Walker has passed a separate bill containing financial reforms that had been cut from the original bill to allow the vote without a quorum.
On March 18, Dane County, Wis., Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi placed a temporary restraining order on the new law after hearing arguments by Dane County District Attorney, Ismael Ozanne, that Republican lawmakers violated the state’s Open Meetings Law when they failed to give Democrats 24 hours notice of a conference committee meeting to vote on the budget repair bill. The judge’s ruling was supposed to prevent the law from being published on March 25 and taking effect the next day, according to the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. However, the state’s Legislative Reference Bureau published it anyway, leading Sumi to further clarify her ruling in a two-page revised order prohibiting the Secretary of State from designating a publication date for the law “or any further implementation of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, including but without limitation publishing in the official state newspaper,” until further order of the Court. On April 1, Sumi ruled that the injunction would remain for now while she considers the issues in the case, a court spokesperson said.
In response to Sumi’s first ruling, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican, asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether Sumi had the authority to block the law. But, the Appeals Court opted to send the case on to the state Supreme Court, saying in a statement that the case could raise issues that might ultimately be brought to the Supreme Court for review, anyway.
Meanwhile, state Democrats have launched recall campaigns against as many as eight Republican state senators who supported the bill and Republicans have launched recalls against eight Senate Democrats. Both sides have 60 days to collect enough signatures to hold recall elections. On April 1, the La Crosse Tribune reported that area Democrats had enough signatures – more than 15,500 – to file the first recall, against Republican state Sen. Dan Kapanke.
The recall efforts come following a contentious battle in the legislature over the collective bargaining bill. Democrats had originally refused to show up at the state capital in order to prevent the quorum needed to vote on the original legislation, but Republicans used a procedural method to bypass the need for a quorum. Essentially, they stripped the bill of the financial provisions that made the quorum necessary. On March 30, Walker released a separate bill containing those financial provisions.
The provisions in the new bill include refinancing state debt to save $165 million, providing $22 million to the Department of Corrections to help close the department’s budget deficit, allocating $37 million in excess Temporary Assistance to Needy Families revenues to go toward the Earned Income Tax Credit, and lowering spending cuts that were authorized for 2009-2011 by $79 million, according to the governor’s office. The bill also would increase state Medicaid funding to aid low-income residents. “This legislation will allow the state to finish this year’s budget in the black without raising taxes on the middle class,” Walker said in a statement. “The balanced budget legislation also allows us to put an additional $176.5 million into healthcare for the poor.”