I have been seeing many people on both sides of the debate argue that people need to 'ready the bill before they form an opinion'. Well, this bill is currently 144 pages long (http://legis.wisconsin.gov/JR1SB-11.pdf), most of it in legal-eze that is difficult to follow and read. I though it would be interesting to take the bill apart bit by bit and look at it in more detail. Although I will copy-paste some sections out of the bill itself to illustrate what I am talking about, I intend for this mostly to be a 'layman's terms' evaluation of the bill itself. If you want to read the entire legal section, you can find the bill itself on the WI Legislature Website. To start out, I figured it made the most sense to start at the beginning, page 8 is where the summary stops and the actual bill language start.
13.172
In this section, “agency” means an office, department, agency, institution of higher education, association, society, or other body in state government created or authorized to be created by the constitution or any law, that is entitled to expend moneys appropriated by law, including the legislature and the courts, and any authority created in subch. II of ch. 114 or subch. III of ch. 149 or in ch. 52, 231, 233, 234, 238, or 279.
The first portion of this section reaffirms that agencies are supposed to allow their employees to serve as election officials without loss of fringe benefits, seniority, pay, etc. However, it does reference that employees who are part of a collective bargaining unit are subject to the requirements of the collective bargaining agreement. Since, later in this bill, there are provisions that would remove collective bargaining rights from everything but pay, it is tricky to predict how this provision would impact these union employees. It could be that, since the collective bargaining agreement should only apply to pay, their employer will be required to allow them to be election officials. However, if the collective bargaining agreements are still allowed to contain provisions that are not actually subject to collective bargaining, it would be possible for employers to put in punishments for being an election official. I assume that federal guidelines preventing this would still need to be followed, but it is something to be aware of.
Page 9 starts the discussion about agency-owned properties and buildings. The sections of note here are provisions that would exclude agency buildings from being subject to local building codes other than zoning. This means that local governments would have limited ability to enforce local codes and guidelines in regards to building materials, construction supervision, permitting fees, etc. It's unclear, but implied, that this could also restrict the ability of local governments to enforce height, facade, and other restrictions that are often put in to avoid buildings being created that detract from local history or neighborhood design. This could make preservation of historic neighborhoods more difficult. However, allowing state agencies more flexibility in their ability to build facilities that better meet their needs could also avoid duplication of services and/or speed up the approval process.
Page 11 starts the description of several Boards, including the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) and Group Insurance Board (GIB). The LFB is descibed basically as a state audit agency that has the ability to access any documents of any agency that related to the agencies "expenditures, revenues, operations, and structure". Structure is not defined, so it could mean either the buildings 'structure' or the management/ staffing 'structure', or both. I was actually surprised that with all the other definitions in this bill, 'structure' was not clearly defined. This agency is 'strictly nonpartisan' according to the description, but certain factors discussed later make it impossible to determine how this nonpartisanship will be achieved or maintained. This section also defines a 'quarom' as a majority of the board, which again if the nonpartisanship charge is carried out should not be a concern. The GIB, however, is stated as being composed of 'the governor, the attorney general, the secretary of administration, the director of the office of state employment relations, and the commissioner of insurance or their designees, and 6 persons appointed for 2-year terms". As these positions are either elected officials or appointees, it is difficult to see how nonpartisainship will be achieved and/or maintained.
Starting on page 12 the bill outlines that the secretary and employees of the Department of the Secretary may enter agency offices and "'examine their books and accounts and any other matter that in the secretary's judgement should be examined and may interrogate the agency's employees publicaly or privately". It also states that employees of the agency being examined are required to cooperate with the investigation. These rules are understandable in the case of an audit-type investigation, and outlining every type of information that may be important for the investigation would be impossible and time-consuming, so giving the secretary the ultimate ability to decide makes sense from a time standpoint. However, there are no details outlining what safeguards are in place to avoid a partisanship issue, so the carte blanche ability to demand access could be a concerning consolidiation of power.
Page 14 contains an interesting provision stating “No change in the number of full−time equivalent positions authorized through the biennial budget process or other legislative act may be made without the approval of the joint committee on finance, except for position changes made by the governor”. Although this could mean that the governor could increase the staffing at an agency, it also could give the governor the ability to essential order an agency to decrease staffing without any legislative oversight or committee review. This could create an intersting dynamic of potential abuse, essentially allowing for the elimination of agencies the governor does not approve of/agree with by allowing him/her to limit their staffing to unsustainable levels. A section that appears to have had to potential to limit the ability to abolish positions appears to have been repealed. This section also contains a provision that limits pay increases to those within a predescribed pay range, which could help to eliminate unsustainable raises for employees, but it's unclear if this limit also applies to appointed positions vs. hired positions.
Section 27 (page 16) appears to be an efficiency issue, as it requires simply that any agency that recieves an improper invoice is required to notify the sender within 10 working days. There are no actually penalties listed for not meeting this 10-day requirement. Since many billing cycles are run on a 30-day timeframe, I'm unclear who is responsible for determining if the invoice is correct. The person responsible for sending payments on an invoice may or may not have first-hand knowledge of the project the invoice relates too so they may not be the best person for determining if the invoice is correct. However, designating a person with first-hand knowledge of each project and routing each invoice to that person for review seems like it would be an additional administrative hoop and might be difficult to complete in 10 days. It may be that agencies already have a requirement that invoices must be reviewed by a designated person and this just changes the required time frame, but I don't know that I've got the time or energy to dig through the statutes to find out. Efficiency can almost never be a bad thing, though, right?
Page 17 starts a rather extensive section dealing with how agencies deal with contractors, mostly relating to issues of discriminatory practices. Mostly this section outlines that contractors must not discriminate in their hiring practices, and that if they are suspected of discrimination an investigation will be conducted. If discrimination is found, the contractor is at risk of being placed on a 'black list' of unapproved contractors for future work. However, the contractor may still be paid the contract rate for the job with little to no financial consequence for the discrinimation. If the contractor works in several states, being 'black listed' in Wisconsin may not actually be a great financial burden and may not discourage discrimination. There is a statute in the bill that would allow for the agency to terminate a contract with a contractor in the case of discrimination, but that appears to be a last resort, probably to avoid the increased overhead and administrative costs in getting a new contractor to finish a job already in the works.
So there's my overview of the first 21 pages of Wisconsin's Budget Repair Bill. I'll post an overview of the next 20 or so pages soon. In the meantime, feel free to put forth any additional/contrasting interpretations you may have. Just be aware, I reserve the right to not approve/remove comments that do not add anything to the discussion itself. Statements just saying "Kill the Bill", "Go Walker", or using derogatory or abusive language will not be approved as they do not increase education or debate.
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