I have been attending at a fundraising event and just came home to discover that the Republicans on the Wisconsin State Joint Finance Committee are inserting the Collective Bargaining Changes into Budget. This is being discussed right now at 12:31am Central and you can watch it from your computer at www.wisconsineye.org
This is from Peter Barca's Facebook page (Peter Barca is the Minority Leader of WI State Assembly)
If you tune into www.wisconsineye.org you can watch the proceedings of Jt. Finance and see them in what appears to be an attempt to actually make the collective bargaining changes even more restrictive than what the Governor originally proposed. Of course they waited until nearly midnight to take this up!
Go to www.wisconsineye.org and see this live right now. I will add updates after the jump.
Update:
The Motion passed with all of the GOP members voting yes. I can not find the text to this motion online right now. I will add it when it becomes available.
This is from Peter Barca's Facebook page (Peter Barca is the Minority Leader of WI State Assembly)
It is not clear what all is exactly covered in this motion! Perhaps if they would share these motions before midnight the citizens of this state could actually comment and contact their legislators to share their views before it is actually voted on, versus reading about it in the paper in the morning. It does not appear to be putting all of Act 10 back in the budget at this point. Wonder when that will be taken up
It appears that the archived version of this meeting is available now at 06.02.11 |WI Joint Committee on Finance. It is 5hr 55 minutes in duration.
On June 2, 2011 the Joint Committee on Finance held an executive session at the state Capitol on the budgets of the following agencies: Employment Relations Commission, Shared Revenue and Tax Relief -- Direct Aid Payment, Department of Natural Resources -- Air, Waste and Contaminated Land, Department of Commerce, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority, and Department of Public Instruction -- Choice, Charter, and Open Enrollment.
Agenda:
Assembly Bill 40 - State Finance and Appropriations
Senate Bill 27 - Executive Budget Act of the 2011 Legislature
People:
Darling, Alberta
Grigsby, Tamara
Jauch, Robert
Nygren, John
Olsen, Luther
Shilling, Jennifer
Taylor, Lena
Vos, Robin
I can't view this archived video as my satellite internet service has limited data downloads.
Update 2
This is from Peter Barca's Facebook page (Peter Barca is the Minority Leader of WI State Assembly)
We all need to get some rest as tomorrow they will be bringing up various key university and environmental issues and who knows what else! Of course as many of you have commented what makes this so challenging is that so often they bring up these detailed changes with no time to even review the documents. Tonight they only gave the Democratic Members 5 minutes to review these revisions before beginning the debate (my emphasis added)
Update 3:
2 of the recalled GOP State Senators, Luther Olsen and Alberta Darling are on the Joint Finance Committee and both voted yes tonight. Can you send a little $ugar to the Democrats who are running against them in the recall elections? Time and funds are tight so if you can help that would be wonderful. Here are their ActBlue links:
Fred Clark (D) is running against Luther Olsen for WI-SD-14
Sandy Pasch (D) is running against Alberta Darling for WI-SD-08
Update 4:
Good Afternoon:
Here are the items that were added to the budget last night per Superior Telegram: Wisconsin budget panel targets police, fire benefits.
1) Forces newly hired police and firefighters to make the same level of contributions as other public workers as required under a bill pushed by Gov. Scott Walker and passed by the Legislature
2) Also forbids collective bargaining over the design and choice of health insurance coverage plans for police and firefighters, but the cost could still be negotiated.
I have changed the diary title to reflect that only some collecting bargaining rights were affected by the motion that passed early this morning in the Joint Finance Committee.