What's Happening in Wisconsin, now?

The question I'm getting the most these days is some variation on "What's happening in Wisconsin now?"  "Now" of course means now that a modified version of the Budget Repair Bill, which removed the sections involving appropriations while maintaining the sections about collective bargaining and giving DHS and the governor broad powers to change Medicaid without legislative oversight, has been passed and signed.  The law has not yet been published. Secretary of State Doug LaFollette has said he will wait 10 days (the maximum permitted under law) to publish the bill. This means March 25th, to go into effect on March 26th. There are already complicating factors in this, however.

It's important to understand the timeline of this, to the degree possible. That's because the timing of the passage of this bill is not entirely understood, and I think many of us are trying to figure out the logic behind the Republicans moves. 

On Friday, February 11, 2011, Governor Walker introduced his Budget Repair Bill. This bill was intended to address a $137 million dollar deficit in the 2009-2011 Biennium. Certain pieces, such as the collective bargaining and Medicaid pieces, were intended to allow him to propose more drastic measures in his 2011-2013 Biennial Budget proposal.  Small protests were held that weekend, and the first major day of protests (specifically around the university) was on Monday, February 14, 2011. The first day of major union protests was Tuesday, February 15, 2011. 

On that day, the Joint Financial Committee (JFC) held a public hearing on the budget repair bill. It started in the mid-morning, and went until the Republican members of the committee left 17 hours later. The Democrat members continued debating. However, the JFC approved the bill, which meant that it would progress to the Senate.

In Wisconsin, bills involving appropriations require a 2/3 majority of the Senate, or 20 Senators. The Republicans only have 19 seats; the Democrats have 14. In order to pass the bill, at least one Democrat needed to be present. It seemed pretty clear that even with all of the lobbying, phone calls, letters, emails, etc, the Republicans were all going to vote in favor of the bill, and the Democrats couldn't stop them. So, on Thursday February 17, 2011, all 14 Democrat Senators left Madison, and in fact, left Wisconsin and headed to Illinois, where they could not be forcibly compelled to return.

From the beginning, one of the major questions that was asked by the Democrats was "Why is this language about collective bargaining, and the language about Medicaid, in this bill, which is supposed to be about the budget?" and the answer from the Republicans and the Governor was that the section on collective bargaining, and the section on Medicaid, were fiscal in nature, and were not just attempts to pass through legislation eliminating CB for public employees and to give the Governor and DHS broad powers over Medicaid. 

There were two obvious solutions:
1) Remove the collective bargaining and Medicaid language from the bill (basically, remove the non-fiscal parts) and vote only on the fiscal parts. The Democrats seemed willing to do this.
2) Remove the fiscal parts, and vote only on the sections such as collective bargaining and Medicaid (which could be done with a simple majority quorum).  The Republicans said they wouldn't do this. In some ways, that made no sense, since it was clear they wanted this language to pass, and in other ways, it made perfect sense because they wanted to pass this language under the guise of fiscal repair and this gave them the cover they needed.

For almost three weeks, the Democrats stayed away, and the Republicans pushed the bill through the Assembly (calling a vote so quickly that many Representatives didn't actually have time to press their buzzers), and protests, including a take-over of the Capitol, continued.  Then, on Wednesday March 9, 2011, things shifted very quickly.

The Republicans announced the creation of a Conference Committee, which is basically a committee of members of both houses, generally called when the two houses have passed differing legislation that needs to be worked out.  They announced it shortly after 4pm, to meet at 6pm.  6pm is when the Capitol closes, both historically, and in accordance with the decision made by a judge the previous week regarding access to the building. However, the building is supposed to be open to the public when hearings, etc, are taking place. For a few weeks, this was solved by deciding that no hearings would go past 6pm.  But this one was to start at 6pm.

Which presented another problem: It wasn't announced until at least 4pm, just 2 hours in advance. Open Meetings laws in Wisconsin require 24 hours notice unless there is an emergency.  And there were some who felt that this meeting was announced without even the 2 hours required in those circumstances. 

I had arrived at the Capitol just moments before a call went out to all of us who are opposed to this bill to get to the Capitol, as quickly as possible. The Conference Committee voted VERY quickly, and with no discussion, while Representative Peter Barca, the only Democrat on the Committee, tried to address the issue around Open Meetings, and also the issue of what the bill being voted on included. The video of this is at http://wiseye.org/Programming/VideoArchive/EventDetail.aspx?evhdid=3885.  It was clear that this bill would involve the collective bargaining language, but it wasn't clear what else it would include. It turns out to include several things that have financial components, but there's a lack of clarity (at least for me, at this point) about where the line is between "fiscal" and "appropriations". 

After the Conference Committee voted on the bill, it went directly to the Senate, where, because the fiscal parts had been removed, it was promptly voted on by the Republicans.  The vote was 18 for, 1 against. The lone Republican to vote against it was Dale Schultz, who had previously been rumored to come out against it. His statement was very well-done: http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=229612.  He is one of the few Republicans who has been upfront about having spoken to their constituents, listened to their constituents, and let their constituents guide their votes.

On Thursday, March 10, 2011, the Assembly passed the bill, with 4 Republicans voting against it.  We stayed in the streets all day, but with a clear Republican majority (and since the Assembly had previously passed the full version of the bill), I don't think any of us expected it to happen any other way.  On Friday morning, the Governor signed the bill.  The Democrat Senators remained in Illinois until the bill was fully passed, because none of us were sure if this was a ruse of some sort to lure them back, at which point they could be compelled to attend the Senate and bring the quorum necessary for the full bill to pass. 

Which brings me to what's happening now.

There was already a massive protest/rally scheduled for Saturday March 12, including a tractor brigade of farmers protesting the bill. Farmers are frequently a conservative voice, but many of them benefit from Medicaid programs, and many of them understand the importance of labor unions. The tractors paraded in the morning, followed by a rally with speeches by several of the farmers. In the afternoon, a big rally was planned by some of the unions, and ended up being headlined by the 14 Dem Sens, who returned to Wisconsin once the bill had passed.  The estimates vary, but most sources seem sure that there were at least 100,000 people present, possibly up to 150,000. My union, of course, estimates 200,000, but that seems too high to me.

A major theme of the rally was "What happens next?" and the biggest answers were:

1) Vote: On April 5th, Wisconsin holds elections for, among other local offices, a Supreme Court Justice. The incumbent, Justice Prosser, is very conservative. The challenger, Joanne Kloppenburg, is not. Many of the items that are being challenged legally will end up in the state Supreme Court. This includes AFSCME's lawsuit alleging that Walker broke the law by refusing to negotiate in good faith, two suits regarding the Open Meetings law and the process of the budget repair bill passage, and possibly even the issue of access to the Capitol building.  And, of course, there will be many more challenges to both the Budget Repair Bill and the 2011-2013 Biennial Budget.

2) Recall: There are 8 Republican Senators and 8 Democrat Senators eligible for recall this year: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117501513.html.  Campaigns are underway to recall all 16 of them.  Additionally, a campaign is underway to get pledges for people to recall Walker. (Under WI law, an elected official must be in office for a year before they can be recalled, but the signatures can be collected starting about 2 months before that, so right now, we can't even collect signatures for a Walker recall). 

3) General Strike: There are some, mostly those of us who like the IWW, who would like to call for a General Strike. There are two main arguments against this: Strikes tend to turn the public against your cause (wimpy reason), and, Walker wants to privatize things and if he can fire all state employees, that is what he'll do (good reason: it is illegal for state employees to strike, and Walker would love nothing more than to privatize the entire state...and be able to blame it on those pesky unions).

I believe there was another answer, but I can't remember it right now.  I have a lot of thoughts percolating about recalls. I also did not address the (potentially important, potentially distracting) question of "Why Wednesday March 9?". 

I'm tired. It's late. Today is the 8th anniversary of our initial attack on Iraq (of this war, anyway), and in observance, we seem to have gone into military action in Libya. There's a lot happening in the world right now.  Thanks for reading.