As a part of their "Thursday night before a holiday weekend" budget-loading Motion 999 ("flip it over--it's 666!"), Republicans voted to eliminate all non-legislator seats on the Joint Survey Committee on Retirement Systems. More about what that means, below the fold.
I first read about this bombshell in this Facebook post by Rep. Katrina Shankland, D-Stevens Point. Current law provides for a 10-member committee that includes senators and representatives from both parties, an Assistant Attorney General, a member of the public who does not participate in the Wisconsin Retirement System, the Commissioner of Insurance, and the Secretary of the Employee Trust Fund or designee. In the future, the entire committee in charge of one of the best public retirement systems in the nation would be selected from the legislature only, by political appointment. As near as I can tell, it also eliminates the language that in the past specified that any of those legislators have to be from the minority party. We could be looking at a full committee of union- and public-employee-hating Republicans who can't wait to take that pension money.
Walker's only claim to fame on the Presidential circuit is his (false) claim that he was "unintimidated" by 100K protestors when he busted our unions. He finds ways to cram that anecdote into anything he's asked. We all knew it was only a matter of time before they came after our pension money, but it's chilling to finally see it in black and white. They may have let the economy tank by design so they'd have an excuse to take it to plug the hole. He's already primed his followers to resent it by painting it as an undeserved taxpayer-given benefit rather than money earned through a lifetime of public service that was entrusted to be set aside for retirement instead of paid out in our paychecks. That's why it's called the Employee TRUST Fund. I only hope that this wasn't also designed to make us react so he could make a show of "quashing" a protest again for cred from the base.
This is my first diary, being typed on my phone no less, so please be gentle. :) I saw this issue mentioned in the comments of Puddytat's excellent diary about Walker's backpedalling on the open records provision last night, but hadn't seen it diaried on its own so I thought I'd throw this together. I'm just a public worker in a two-public-employee household watching our future telescope down to nothing and feeling sort of helpless to stop it--I'm no Puddy or Giles or Jake, or any of our other intrepid Wisconsin citizen journalists on whom we depend for news about our state. But maybe one of them will pick this issue up and expand on it. It needs to be seen. Spread the word. Our activists were able to throw sunlight on the attempt to make legislators exempt from open records law--if we can do something about this too, we should try.
EDITED TO ADD: h/t to Jollie Ollie Orange and StellaRay, who suggested in the comments that I link to Giles Goat Boy's action diary (which played a huge part in getting word around about the proposed open records changes) as it contains a list of contact numbers and email addresses for the state legislature. So, here's the link!
I may not be able to respond to comments for a while because I have to work now, and I've been trying to keep up on my phone, which is about to die, but I wanted to thank you all for putting my first diary on the Rec List and getting more eyes on this issue!
UPDATE: The language is OUT! H/t to Black Brant and all others in comments who stopped in to let us know that once again, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Due to the backlash from the public, the attempt to restructure the JSCRS will be removed from the budget! Links are here and here. AnnieJo also provided this link to the actual amendment. As NWTerriD points out, there are many more things hidden in this budget, so let's not let them get away with a single one. But on this issue, it would appear that for now, we've prevailed.