The status of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10

Jolly Bill wrote:

I have to twist my mind around a bit to come to this logic, but this is a possibility:

The only piece of legislation that will void another piece of legislation when they are in conflict is the State Constitution. The ability of the courts to determine if a piece of legislation is void is ONLY in determining whether that conflict with the State Constitution exists. Therefore the Open Meetings law, while valid on it's own, is not capable of voiding another law unless the State Constitution is amended to include it.

From a Roberts Rules of Order perspective it makes a certain amount of sense. But if you use this kind of logic you call into question the basic premise of lawmaking, IMO. I have no documentation backing up whether those individual claims are true or not... I am doubtful about both claims made in that statement.

I'm still in shock (as is some of the WI supreme court minority, apparently) that this argument is what the majority actually used to come to their decision. Quotes from this article.

WI Supreme Court Majority wrote:

The court's task in the action for original jurisdiction that we have granted is limited to determining whether the Legislature employed a constitutionally violative process in the enactment of the act. We conclude that the Legislature did not violate the Wisconsin Constitution by the process it used.

WI legislators now must apparently amend the constitution to make the legislature responsible to the laws passed SPECIFICALLY to govern their own body.

Journal Sentinel wrote:

But Democrats decried the Supreme Court decision for finding lawmakers do not have to follow the open meetings law. They said they would move to amend the state constitution to make them subject to the meetings law, a process that would take years and be difficult to start while they remain in the minority.

So the upshot is that the Legislature doesn't have to follow the law, period.

Conservatives like to complain that liberals are 'destroying the country', but I can't think of any idea on the liberal side of the fence that's as destructive as saying the government doesn't have to follow the law.

Malor wrote:

So the upshot is that the Legislature doesn't have to follow the law, period.

I think what the decision actually determines is that the rules of the Legislature are beyond the purview of judicial oversight.

If that's correct, given the behavior of our state GOP of late, I would not be surprised to see a new rule that not only prevents the public from attending government meetings, but also the media. Heck, why not ban Democrats from attending, while we're at it?

This seems to state that legislation that is done illegally is okay as long as it isn't barred by the constitution. Wisconsin has even more big problems to solve if that's the case.

LouZiffer wrote:

This seems to state that legislation that is done illegally is okay as long as it isn't barred by the constitution. Wisconsin has even more big problems to solve if that's the case.

That's the argument the minority puts forward.

Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson wrote:

The majority justices "make their own findings of fact, mischaracterize the parties' arguments, misinterpret statutes, minimize (if not eliminate) Wisconsin constitutional guarantees, and misstate case law, appearing to silently overrule case law dating back to at least 1891," Abrahamson wrote.

Kraint wrote:

So when does the Republican Party of WI announce that it is suspending elections to preserve order?

Does anyone else have the image of all he republican congressman shouting "I AM the law!"?

Blast from the past - Gov. Walker testifying before congress this past April:

Capital Times[/url]]When Walker failed to address how repealing collective bargaining rights for state workers is related to state debt or how requiring unions to recertify annually saves money -- one of the provisions in Walker's amended budget repair bill -- Kucinich tried one more time.

"How much money does it save Gov. Walker?" Kucinich demanded. "Just answer the question."

"It doesn't save any," Walker said.

Sometimes the purpose of a state's legislature is to serve as a warning to others....

Since Secretary of State LaFollette duly published 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 in the local paper yesterday, it has now gone into effect as law.

I'd heard murmurings earlier of other legal challenges in the works, but given the the state Supreme Court decided to pretend that §19.84 §19.97 (which are clearly worded, and very clearly applicable) didn't exist when overturning Judge Sumi's decision, I'm not sure there's any remaining angle that would be likely to succeed.

Dimmerswitch wrote:
Malor wrote:

So the upshot is that the Legislature doesn't have to follow the law, period.

I think what the decision actually determines is that the rules of the Legislature are beyond the purview of judicial oversight.

If that's correct, given the behavior of our state GOP of late, I would not be surprised to see a new rule that not only prevents the public from attending government meetings, but also the media. Heck, why not ban Democrats from attending, while we're at it?

That's actually fairly sound, though. Rules of legislatures aren't laws, and enforcement needs to be done by that legislature itself. Same thing happens in DC.

Not that I like the result there.

wordsmythe wrote:

That's actually fairly sound, though. Rules of legislatures aren't laws, and enforcement needs to be done by that legislature itself. Same thing happens in DC.

Not that I like the result there.

Actually, they are. (At least in this case). It's not a point of parliamentary procedure, they are laws the state legislature has passed to ensure public access and participation in the legislative process.

These laws explicitly state that any act taken in violation of these clauses is voidable, and state the parties who have legal standing to initiate that process (the Attorney General or the District Attorney of the county where the violation took place).

The case that Judge Sumi ruled on, which was just overturned by the state Supreme Court, was filed by the Dane County District Attorney. Since Dane County is where the state capitol is located, he definitely has standing.

If the state Supreme Court wanted to take the position that the legislature cannot pass parliamentary regulations as law, then §19.84 and §19.97 of the Wisconsin legal code (at a minimum) need to be ruled invalid.

Dimmerswitch wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

That's actually fairly sound, though. Rules of legislatures aren't laws, and enforcement needs to be done by that legislature itself. Same thing happens in DC.

Not that I like the result there.

Actually, they are. (At least in this case).

I think that's where the court disagreed.

Nope.

The majority opinion in State v. Circuit Court for Dane County / Ismael R. Ozanne v. Jeff Fitzgerald vacated Judge Sumi's ruling on two fundamental grounds:

1) The precedent of Goodland v. Zimmerman was improperly ignored. The ruling in this case was that a circuit court could not stop the secretary of state from publishing an act of the legislature. Goodland predates Wisconsin's open meetings law, but I think the legal reasoning here is sound. Judge Sumi should have ruled that the case needed to be filed after 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 went into effect.

Accordingly, because the circuit court did not follow the court’s directive in Goodland, it exceeded its jurisdiction, invaded the legislature’s constitutional powers under Article IV, Section 1 and Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution, and erred in enjoining the publication and further implementation of the Act.

2) The judiciary should have no oversight of how the legislature functions.

It also is argued that the Act is invalid because the legislature did not follow certain notice provisions of the Open Meetings Law for the March 9, 2011 meeting of the joint committee on conference. It is argued that Wis. Stat. § 19.84(3) required 24 hours notice of that meeting and such notice was not given. It is undisputed that the legislature posted notices of the March 9, 2011 meeting of the joint committee on conference on three bulletin boards, approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes before the start of the meeting. In the posting of notice that was done, the legislature relied on its interpretation of its own rules of proceeding.

It's the second part that's problematic. If the state legislature's rules and procedures are not subject to judicial oversight, then they should not be laws. If this is the court's position, then the relevant portions of the Open Meetings law should be stricken from the state's legal code. This leads directly to the possibility of ridiculous rules I raised earlier (like banning Democrats from any legislative proceedings), but is at least consistent.

What they've done instead is create a subset of the legal code (namely, anything that would apply to the legislative process) which is not subject to judicial oversight. That's just insane. The judicial branch is predicated upon having oversight over the law. Not over some of the law. Not over the law, with the following exceptions...

Milwaukee to see net gain from state budget

Despite early criticism from city officials, new figures show Milwaukee will gain more than it will lose next year from the state's controversial budget and budget-repair legislation.

The city projects it will save at least $25 million a year - and potentially as much as $36 million in 2012 - from health care benefit changes it didn't have to negotiate with unions, as a result of provisions in the 2009-'11 budget-repair measure that ended most collective bargaining for most public employees.

That saving would be partly offset by about $14 million in cuts in state aid to the city in the 2011-'13 state budget. The figure is down from earlier estimates of more than $17 million, after the Legislature scaled back Gov. Scott Walker's proposed cuts in aid for local streets and recycling.

As a result, the city would come out with a net gain of at least $11 million for its 2012 budget, slicing into the "structural deficit" created by costs rising faster than revenue and reducing the spending cuts that Mayor Tom Barrett and the Common Council must impose.

That outlook contrasts sharply with Barrett's initial comments in March, after Walker's administration and the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau released figures on the extent of the aid cuts in Walker's budget.

At that time, Barrett had said the combination of aid cuts, rising expenses, a property tax levy freeze and exempting public safety workers from health care and pension benefit changes "just makes our structural deficit explode."

No surprise that paying folks less results in savings.

Worth noting that, if cuts to benefits are the bulk of the savings, that these most likely would have been produced by the concessions offered by unions back in February (unions offered to accept the benefit changes Walker demanded in return for preserving the right to bargain collectively - an offer Governor Walker rejected).

I assume you're referring this this part of the story you linked to:

Mary Bell, the president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union, said her group also would make the financial concessions to keep its bargaining rights.

"This is not about money," Bell said in a phone conference. "We understand the need to sacrifice."

Question: Why did so many districts rush to extend existing contracts prior to the law taking effect? Contracts that did not include the financial concessions in Act 10.

Answer: Because it is about money, and they don't want to sacrifice anything.

Part of collective bargaining included giving WEA Trust (created by the teachers union) a monopoly on providing health care coverage. Now districts are savings millions simply by switching to another provider, without giving up any health care benefits.

Matt's got a really good point there. In Michigan, changes Snyder is making (or has made) will give teachers the ability to switch from MESSA, potentilaly saving TONS of cash.

MattDaddy wrote:

Question: Why did so many districts rush to extend existing contracts prior to the law taking effect? Contracts that did not include the financial concessions in Act 10.

Answer: Because it is about money, and they don't want to sacrifice anything.

This is a mistake which gets repeated a lot by folks who support our current Governor. Here's what I believe is the source for many of those repetitions.

Scott Walker, in February of this year wrote:

We've seen local union after local union rush to their school boards, their city councils, their technical school boards and rush through contracts in the past two weeks that had no contributions to the pension and no contribution to health care.

Mostly false.

I agree that WEA Trust needs to be competitive on pricing. If municipalities can get equivalent coverage from other insurers, that should be allowed. If municipalities sign contracts mandating WEA Trust no matter what, the people responsible for negotiating those contracts should be fired, and the health coverage put out for open bidding at the next opportunity.

It wasn't a mistake, it's a fact. I'm not going scour the internet for all of the examples, but there are more than just the ones mentioned in the Politifact piece that extended and attempted to extend union contracts in order to delay making the concessions in Act 10. I didn't get my statement from anything Walker said. I came up with it on my own based on hearing and reading about these cases over the course of months.

The Politifact article was testing a statement by Walker that included the wording "no contributions". I said they didn't include the measures in Act 10. My statement includes those that extended contracts that included some contributions, but not to the levels in Act 10. They also locked in things like using WEA Trust for insurance.

I'll rate my statement as True.

Here's another reason for ditching collective bargaining:

On a state level, the Department of Corrections allows correctional workers who call in sick to collect overtime if they work a shift on the exact same day. The specific provision that allows this to happen was collectively bargained for in their contract. Cost to taxpayers $4.8 million.
MattDaddy wrote:

It wasn't a mistake, it's a fact. I'm not going scour the internet for all of the examples, but there are more than just the ones mentioned in the Politifact piece that extended and attempted to extend union contracts in order to delay making the concessions in Act 10. I didn't get my statement from anything Walker said. I came up with it on my own based on hearing and reading about these cases over the course of months.

The Politifact article was testing a statement by Walker that included the wording "no contributions". I said they didn't include the measures in Act 10. My statement includes those that extended contracts that included some contributions, but not to the levels in Act 10. They also locked in things like using WEA Trust for insurance.

I'll rate my statement as True.

Governor Walker's office was only able to provide six examples to Politifact. Of these, Politifact found only two (Madison and MATC) where negotiations were speeded up in response to Walker's agenda. In both of those cases, negotiations had been in process since before Walker was elected. Hardly the stampede Walker's quote would lead you to believe.

You don't provide a citation for the Department of Corrections quote, but this appears to be the original source. Although most of the other examples on that list do follow good form and cite sources, that one does not. It's not clear where that number comes from.

I did find that the Legislative Audit Bureau did a study this spring on the subject of overtime. They found that most of the overtime issues in the state of Wisconsin result from the Legislature refusing to approve the staffing increases needed to meet operational commitments. For the Department of Corrections, those commitments include staffing to support the 24-hour secure detention facilities they're tasked with supporting.

I agree that folks who use a sick day should not be eligible for a work shift for a full 24 hours. That's something that the state should press for in the next contract cycle, and whoever signed off on that provision for the state in the existing contracts should be fired unless they got a major concession in return.

You can rate your statements however you'd like, but if you don't provide sources it's hard for others to determine their veracity or the merit of the argument you want to make.

When were the examples provided? Deals were being made right up until the day prior to the law taking effect. I'm not arguing Walker's statement anyways. You just threw that in there. I already explained that I'm not using Walker's statement as my source.

I'm not going to scour the internet for the examples. Like I said, I heard of some on the radio, read about a couple others in the paper, and some others from the internet over the past few months. Even if I found a bunch of links, I know the routine. I provide evidence, followed by the Walker haters proceeding to come up with excuses for why they don't really count.

MattDaddy wrote:

Here's another reason for ditching collective bargaining:

On a state level, the Department of Corrections allows correctional workers who call in sick to collect overtime if they work a shift on the exact same day. The specific provision that allows this to happen was collectively bargained for in their contract. Cost to taxpayers $4.8 million.

This is one of the reasons why I hate bald statements and numbers given with no context. Where you see "those darned unions" getting away with murder, I see compensation for workers who are forced to work when they are sick, because there aren't enough correctional employees to cover the shifts.

One side of the debate complains about lazy union workers, and the other side of the debate complains about worker exploitation, and nobody cares about what's really going on. Then both the workers and the department of corrections get screwed; the workers because their working conditions get worse, and the department because its funding is cut and it can't do what it's supposed to do any more. And then the prisoners get screwed because there's not enough money for basic health care, and the public gets screwed because dangerous felons are released early because there aren't enough corrections officers, and even if there were, there isn't enough money to feed them.

Do you have any evidence that these workers were forced to work when sick? Keep in mind that this was being done with a collective bargaining agreement in place. If they were being forced to work under such bad conditions, then what good was the union anyways?

http://www.wisconsinreporter.com/wisconsin%E2%80%99s-state-employees-continue-to-dip-into-overtime-goody-basket

State prison and health workers in Wisconsin continue to rack up big bucks in overtime, with more than 160 of them getting a salary boost of $25,000 or more in overtime over 2010, according to a Wisconsin Reporter analysis of state payroll data.

Two of those workers earned a whopping six figures in overtime — overtime that alone amounts to about double the median household income in the state.

And one state worker got enough overtime to make the list of the 10 highest paid employees in the state at nearly $365,000 in total pay.

Despite a decrease in overall overtime spending in the taxpayer-funded Wisconsin state work force since the Legislative Audit Bureau reviewed state agencies’ use of overtime in 2008, overtime remains a reliable payday for many state workers. The LAB is scheduled to release a follow-up audit this spring.

The state paid employees almost $52.8 million for overtime in 2010 — the equivalent of 1,200 workers making the average state salary.

To put it another way, Wisconsin’s overtime tab is about the same as the budget as the state’s Environmental Improvement Program, which pays for wastewater facility construction and cleaning up contaminated lands.

Wisconsin paid $66.5 million in overtime in 2008, a goody basket that has decreased about 21 percent when compared to this year, according to the state database.

You can search the salary database of Wisconsin state employees by clicking here or clicking the button below. The links take you to a page where you can download an Excel spreadsheet of state worker salaries. (Story continues below graphic)

This isn't about lazy union workers, it's about abusing the system. I'm not going to lay all the blame on union employees, because someone on the other side of the bargaining table agreed to these messed up rules. My original point (which is apparently being lost) is that these are the types of things that collective bargaining gave us, and are the reasons why it was taken away.

MattDaddy wrote:

Do you have any evidence that these workers were forced to work when sick?

I'm not going to scour the internet for the examples. I heard of some on the radio, read about a couple others in the paper, and some others from the internet over the past few months. Even if I found a bunch of links, I know the routine. I provide evidence, followed by the Walker lovers proceeding to come up with excuses for why they don't really count.

In my experience any time someone looks at over time costs as a metric of how the workers are riding roughshod over their employers/the people they are either ignorant or selling something.

People that work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week should be compensated for it. It's supposed to be expensive for the company, because that is behavior that the company shouldn't be allowed to subject on people willy nilly.

The way that this works is that a company goes together and makes a time card sheet for all of the things that need to be done and hours that need to be worked. They then go in and fill up the sheet with people's usual times and shifts. Alas for some reason there aren't enough people to do all the work, (usually because in a misguided attempt to save money someone has cut the training budget, or attempted to limit headcount or something like that) how the company handles this has varied over history based on the workers contract:

Slaves: More whipping
Before Unions: Work these extra hours or you're fired.
After Unions: Hey, if anyone wants time and a half pay could you please sign up for voluntary work?
Salaried Employees that haven't unionized: Haha, you're paid by the year, overtime has no meaning for you! Dance puppets dance!

If you are paying too many millions of dollars in overtime fees the solution isn't to gouge the worker's contracts in the next year so that it's cheaper to work them 80 hours a week. The solution is to hire more workers so that less overtime hours are necessary, that's how the system is intended to work.

Some guy that has chosen to triple his income by working 80 hours a week so he can retire early isn't "abusing the system". That is the system working as intended, a worker voluntarily putting in the extra hours that his company needs. If it isn't actually in his companies interest to have him working those hours that's their bad, not his, and the solution isn't to go back to having to coerce employees to spend more time at the office.

Stengah wrote:
MattDaddy wrote:

Do you have any evidence that these workers were forced to work when sick?

I'm not going to scour the internet for the examples. I heard of some on the radio, read about a couple others in the paper, and some others from the internet over the past few months. Even if I found a bunch of links, I know the routine. I provide evidence, followed by the Walker lovers proceeding to come up with excuses for why they don't really count.

]

Two Wisconsin threads, 2 snarky answers. You're on a roll today. Care to add anything of substance?

MattDaddy wrote:
Stengah wrote:
MattDaddy wrote:

Do you have any evidence that these workers were forced to work when sick?

I'm not going to scour the internet for the examples. I heard of some on the radio, read about a couple others in the paper, and some others from the internet over the past few months. Even if I found a bunch of links, I know the routine. I provide evidence, followed by the Walker lovers proceeding to come up with excuses for why they don't really count.

]

Two Wisconsin threads, 2 snarky answers. You're on a roll today. Care to add anything of substance?

Other than to praise Dimmerswitch for his saintly patience, not really.

MattDaddy wrote:
Stengah wrote:
MattDaddy wrote:

Do you have any evidence that these workers were forced to work when sick?

I'm not going to scour the internet for the examples. I heard of some on the radio, read about a couple others in the paper, and some others from the internet over the past few months. Even if I found a bunch of links, I know the routine. I provide evidence, followed by the Walker lovers proceeding to come up with excuses for why they don't really count.

Two Wisconsin threads, 2 snarky answers. You're on a roll today. Care to add anything of substance?

I think he had you dead to rights. If you are going to make blanket statements - shouldn't you expect responses in kind? Doesn't seem fair to get so defensive when he is just your using quote.