Wisconsin Ruling Has a Partisan -- And Possibly Corrupt -- Odor

Something is not right here. Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin threw out a lower court's ruling that, in passing Gov. Walker's union-buster, legislative Republicans had violated the state's open meetings law. In doing so, the court cleared the way for the law to take effect -- mere hours away from Republican's arbitrary and self-imposed deadline for passing it themselves.

The problem for Republicans: they didn't have the votes to pass the thing and everyone knew it. In other words, the conservative majority on the court swept in and saved the bill from dying. Something is not right here.

Let's start at the beginning. In March, Senate Republicans stripped a provision that would remove collective bargaining rights for most state employees from the state budget and passed it as a stand-alone bill. They did this because the state's rules require a quorum for passage of all bills that have a fiscal impact and Democrats had famously denied them that quorum by fleeing the state. In order to do this, they had to skirt open meetings laws. They also had to admit that removing collective bargaining was a policy issue with no fiscal impact. This admission was later confirmed by Gov. Walker himself, while testifying under oath in Washington. File this little tidbit away for later.

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A Setback for the Walker Administration's Union-Busting

When Gov. Walker's union busting bill was passed by the state legislature and signed into law, there was only one thing standing in the way -- Secretary of State Doug La Follette. The law would need to be published by the office of Sec. La Follette and the Secretary decided he'd publish it at the latest date allowable by law, which was ten days after signing.

This was, apparently, nothing new. "I'm doing what I normally do," he explained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which was publish the law at the latest possible date, in order for opponents to have a chance to file legal challenges. La Follette estimated at the time that this was the case with 96% of the bills that come through his office. If it's not an emergency, it cools off for a bit.

It turned out to be a good practice today, as a judge put a halt to implementation of the law:

Wisconsin State Journal:

A Dane County judge Friday issued a temporary order blocking implementation of Gov. Scott Walker's controversial measure limiting collective bargaining rights for public employees, saying a legislative committee likely violated the state Open Meetings Law when it rushed passage of the bill March 9.

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