Yuri Keegstra, Flickr CC
It was extraordinary for all the wrong reasons.
In the middle of the night, during a quickly called extraordinary session of the state Legislature, Republican senators passed sweeping changes to the state’s clean elections laws. When they thought no one would be paying attention, from 7:30 p.m. Friday to 2:30 a.m. on Saturday the Republican majority increased the amount of corporate and anonymous money in the 2016 elections.
Making matters worse, the Republican’s self-serving extraordinary session was called amid stunning mass layoffs around the state, putting Wisconsin at the pace of losing 10,000 jobs this year, almost double last year’s number of laid-off workers.
It was “a bad week for good jobs in Wisconsin,” said Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse) during Friday’s floor debate.
She then listed the week’s headlines of Wisconsin’s job losses—Oscar Mayer’s decision to shutter its Madison headquarters and eliminate more than 1,000 jobs in Madison; S.C. Johnson’s cutting 175 jobs in Racine; Joy Global in Milwaukee eliminating 56 jobs on top of 139 lost earlier; Shopko’s slashing of 247 jobs in De Pere; ConAgra’s announcement it would cut 285 jobs in Ripon; Target’s decision to close stores in Milwaukee and Superior, affecting 176 employees; and Quad Graphic’s announcement it would start to close plants nationally and cut $100 million in costs.
“We should be doing something extraordinary for these families tonight, not something extraordinary for special interests,” Shilling said Friday night.
Yet none of the bills debated Friday night and in the wee hours of Saturday had anything to do with job creation. Rather, they merely hand corrupt candidates and their special interest allies new, legal ways to buy elections and hijack state government for their own purposes.
Legalizing Corruption
State legislators could have been working to pass bills in the final week of the fall floor session, which ended Thursday. But the Senate didn’t meet at all during the week—in fact, it met just once in September and once again for an overnight session in October since passing the biennial budget in July. Instead of making the most of the legislative calendar last week, Republican Senate leaders chose to call an extraordinary session on Friday, apparently to push the debate into the weekend and out of the headlines.
|
|
Two bills were at the heart of the extraordinary session—one bill that would weaken the state’s campaign finance laws and legalize coordination between candidates and outside groups on so-called “issue ads” and another bill that would destroy the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board (GAB), which oversees elections and ethics and was viewed as a national model for clean government by other states. The GAB would be replaced with two commissions filled with partisan appointees—the same model that was in place during the caucus scandal of the early 2000s, which was uncovered by a local reporter, not the partisan watchdogs.
Republican Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) defended the bills, saying that the state’s campaign finance laws were “grossly out of date” and “unenforceable” in the face of recent court victories in cases brought by right-wing special interests who sought less campaign finance disclosure and more freedom to donate and get involved in elections.
“First and foremost, speech is protected,” Fitzgerald said.
Prior to the session it was reported that a handful of moderate Republican senators were holding out for changes to the bills to make them more transparent and less partisan than the versions passed by the state Assembly. But when the Senate bills were finally revealed on Friday, little of their concerns were included. Thus, the campaign finance bill increases contribution limits to candidates; allows corporations and unions to contribute to political entities; removes the requirement that big donors disclose their employers; and makes legal coordination between candidates and special interest groups on so-called “issue ads” that up until now had been illegal and the subject of criminal investigations. Just one Republican—Sen. Robert Cowles of Green Bay—voted with Democrats against the bill. All Democratic amendments to add transparency, disclosure and limits were torpedoed, along with Democratic efforts in the Senate and Assembly to delay the implementation of the new campaign finance regulations until after the 2016 elections.
When the bill goes into effect, candidates will be able to raise even more money for their own campaigns but they will also be able to work with special interest groups that can raise unlimited sums of money from anonymous donors, thereby making the campaign finance limits on the books worthless. The sky’s the limit.
In a sense, Republican legislators made legal the very conduct that Gov. Scott Walker and his right-wing special interest allies engaged in during the 2011 and 2012 recalls. That led to a sweeping John Doe investigation as prosecutors argued that Walker was deliberately circumventing the state’s campaign finance laws by secretly and illegally working with groups that could accept unlimited, corporate and anonymous donations. The state Supreme Court shut down the investigation this summer; four of the justices supporting Walker benefited from $10 million in campaign spending by the groups under investigation but the pro-Walker justices refused to recuse themselves from the case.
After destroying the state’s campaign finance regulations on Friday night, the Senate then took up the bill destroying the nonpartisan watchdog Government Accountability Board. The bill turns the board into two partisan commissions, one to oversee elections and the other to oversee ethics, campaign finance and lobbying laws; in an amendment moderate Republican senators were able to add two retired, nonpartisan judges to the commission on ethics, campaign finance and lobbying laws. Even with the judges, the new commissions will be riddled with partisan gridlock and are set up to fail. Add the new law banning prosecutors from using John Doe investigations to look into crimes committed by elected officials, and you’ve got a campaign system rigged for corruption.
State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) said he felt like he was serving in a state Legislature during in the 1880s or 1890s, when billionaire Robber Barons like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller “chose the presidents of the United States, they chose members of Congress.”
The Assembly is expected to take up the amended bills next Monday, where they’re expected to pass and be signed by Walker.
Kicking the Poor
Although Republicans had no time to devote to improving the state’s job climate during the final days of the fall session, Assembly Republicans did manage to squeeze in votes on bills that would penalize the poor—at great expense to taxpayers.
Last week, Republicans in the state Assembly voted to remove benefits from Food Share accounts that haven’t been accessed in at least six months and allow the recipient to petition to get them back. The bill would also permanently remove year-old benefits from Food Share accounts, even if those accounts are active, a policy change that requires a federal waiver. Implementation costs would be $1.3 million split 50-50 between the feds and the state. The bill passed 66-31 and moves on to the Senate.
In addition, Assembly Republicans voted to require Food Share’s Quest cards to include a photo of the recipient. The state Department of Health Services estimated that the new cards would cost taxpayers $7.4 million to implement, split 50-50 between the state and the federal government, with $2 million in annual ongoing costs. The bill passed 57-40 and moves on to the Senate.
That’s not all. Assembly Republicans approved a two-strikes and you’re out policy for those making mistakes when filing or claiming unemployment insurance benefits. If you make two mistakes, you will be prohibited from getting unemployment benefits for seven years. This too will advance to the Senate.
And just in case you thought Gov. Scott Walker wasn’t doing anything last week, he approved an administrative rule that allows the state to drug test those who want to participate in state-run job-training programs and some Food Share recipients and those who apply for unemployment benefits.
Although the Democrats’ agenda to address job creation was ignored thus far this session, the Republican-controlled Senate did allow a public hearing on the Higher Ed, Lower Debt bill, which would allow those with student loans to refinance them at a lower interest rate—much like homeowners can refinance their mortgages—and also allow borrowers to deduct the interest they pay on their student loan payments on their state income taxes and require those taking out student loans to receive counseling about student debt. Although the years-old bill finally got a hearing, no committee voted on it this session. Last Tuesday, Assembly Democrats tried to use a procedural move to pull it out of committee and force a floor vote, but Assembly Republicans blocked it. An estimated 70% of Wisconsin graduates carry student loan debt and the average amount of debt is a whopping $28,800, according to a new study cited by One Wisconsin Now.
