Saturday, August 20, 2011

Non-Fiscal Bill Gets More Expensive

After Scott Walker dropped his "bomb" of stripping every worker in the State.on the State of Wisconsin, he and his Republican cronies in the state legislature kept insisting that it was a non-fiscal issue, so they could pass it without having a quorum.  At the same time, Walker kept insisting that they must pass the bill because it would supposedly save lots of money for the tax payers.

A couple of months later, Walker was forced, under oath, in front of a Congressional committee, to finally admit  that his union busting bill did nothing to save money.

The news came out Friday that two unions, the Madison Teachers Inc. and AFL-CIO Local 61 (Milwaukee sanitation workers) filed a lawsuit against Walker and the State of Wisconsin regarding the union busting bill:
Unions representing Madison teachers and Milwaukee sanitation workers sued Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday, alleging that the controversial law severely restricting the collective bargaining rights of most public workers in Wisconsin is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, brought by Madison Teachers Inc. and AFL-CIO Local 61 in Milwaukee alleges that the state legislature passed what was originally called the budget repair bill in violation of the state constitution's provision that governs special legislative sessions.
The lawsuit also alleges that the law places severe and unfair restrictions on what unions and their members can discuss with municipalities and school districts, and imposes severe wage increase limits that don't apply to nonunion workers.

"The changes to the collective bargaining laws crushed the ability of municipal employees and teachers to associate with their co-workers and to work together to achieve better wages, hours and working conditions," said Lester Pines, lawyer for MTI.

Pines said in a statement that the legislation punishes union members by restriction wage increases not imposed upon nonunion workers and places onerous burdens on union members who want to keep their unions.
This is the third lawsuit which has been brought against the state for just this one law.

If Walker and his cronies follow their usual pattern, they will be hiring some very expensive private law firm to defend the state in this lawsuit as well. With the fees being charged by these attorneys, defending against three different lawsuits, the bills are going to rack up pretty quickly. And guess you gets to pay for it...

That's right, tax payers like you and me who are barely making ends meet (if we're lucky).

You know, for a non-fiscal bill that doesn't do a thing to save tax payers a dime, this thing is getting pretty damn expensive.   It would have been much less expensive if Walker had just sat down like a true leader would have and negotiated the cuts with the unions.  Any money that he could even imagine of claiming he saved tax payers will be eaten up by the legal fees he's accruing.  

I wonder if this is what they mean by being "fiscally conservative," because only a conservative would think this makes any sense.

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