MADISON, Wis. — With their Senate colleagues still in hiding, Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly began introducing a barrage of 100 amendments Tuesday to try to stymie the Republican governor’s plan to strip unionized public employees of most of their bargaining rights.
Both houses of the GOP controlled Legislature convened shortly before noon amid noisy protests outside the state Capitol that began more than a week ago.
The Senate couldn’t take up the union measure because its 14 Democrats skipped town last week, denying the chamber a quorum. But Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald pledged that his chamber would approve the bill this week, despite the blizzard of Democratic amendments.
Turning up the pressure on the Democrats, Gov. Scott Walker warned that state employees could start receiving layoff notices as early as next week if the bill isn’t passed soon. The layoffs couldn’t take effect immediately - existing union contracts could forestall them for weeks or months - and Walker wouldn’t say which jobs he would go after first.
“Hopefully we don’t get to that point,” the governor said in a statement.
Walker took his case straight to the voters Tuesday evening with a speech from his Capitol office that he called a “fireside chat.” With protesters drowning out his message as it was played over monitors in the rotunda, Walker laid out his case for the bill, saying it was needed to balance the state’s budget now and into the future.
“It certainly isn’t a battle with unions,” Walker said. “If it was, we would have eliminated collective bargaining entirely or we would have gone after the private-sector unions.”
Walker warned of “dire consequences” if the Democrats don’t return soon to pass the bill, saying up to 1,500 state workers could be laid off by July with another 6,000 forced out of work over the next two years.
One of the missing Democrats, Minority Leader Mark Miller, delivered his own response from Illinois.
“The only action available to us to slow this down and allow democracy to work was to take us out of the Capitol,” he said.
Similar battles were taking shape in other states. In Indiana, House Democrats walked out of the Statehouse on Tuesday, blocking a GOP backed bill against mandatory union dues. Only three of the 40 Democratic members of the chamber were present, depriving it of a quorum.
A similar debate in Ohio on a bill to limit collective bargaining for public employees drew thousands of union protesters Tuesday, prompting officials there to lock the doors to the Statehouse.
Ohio protesters packed the Statehouse atrium as a crowd gathered on the steps outside because the Ohio Highway Patrol was limiting the number of people inside for safety reasons, said Joe Andrews, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. Former Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, who showed up to support the demonstrators, said more people should be allowed in.
“This house ought to be open to the people of Ohio,” Strickland said, as chants of “Kill the bill” and “This is our house” echoed. Strickland called the measure “union busting, pure and simple.”
Private-sector unions are urging members to join the public employees in fighting the bill, said Tim Burga, president of the 650,000-member Ohio AFL-CIO.
The measure “wrongly punishes teachers, firefighters, nurses, all those in public service, which will ultimately drive down wages and silence the voice of all working families,” Burga said at a Statehouse news conference with the leaders of five private-sector unions.
The state is facing an $8 billion budget shortfall in the next biennium, and governments and school districts need flexibility to manage their costs, said Republican Sen. Shannon Jones, the bill’s sponsor.
“We’re out of money, and no number of protesters are going to change that fact,” Jones said in a telephone interview Monday from her home in Springboro, Ohio.
Not every Republican governor is taking the same path as Walker in Wisconsin. While praising Walker, Florida’s new governor, Rick Scott, said in a radio interview that he believes public-sector workers have a right to collectively bargain. New GOP governors in Michigan and Pennsylvania also have said they would not go after government unions’ ability to negotiate wages and benefits.
In Wisconsin, if lawmakers take no action on the union bill by the end of the week, the state will not be able to refinance debt that Walker had counted on for $165 million worth of savings under the legislation. Republican leaders in the Senate and the Assembly said they have the votes to pass the bill.
Fitzgerald said the bill was a key part of the Republican agenda to cut government spending that won the GOP majorities in the Legislature in November.
“When you talk about a compromise, no. We’re going to make a reform,” Fitzgerald said.
Debate began in the Assembly with the Democrats introducing amendments that would do such things as restore public employees’ right to strike and submit the bill to a referendum before it could take effect. Given the number of amendments Democrats were proposing, an actual vote on the measure may not happen until today or later.
Two Democrats lashed out at Republican lawmakers and aides for laughing at them during the debate.
“This is not a game. We’re dealing with people’s lives. This isn’t funny,” Democratic Rep. Andy Jorgensen shouted in the chamber.
“I haven’t laughed in a long time, especially not on a day like this.”
Democratic Rep. Cory Mason, a former organizer for the American Federation of Teachers, said Wisconsin has enjoyed more than 50 years of labor peace between state and local public employees and their bosses after passing collective-bargaining rights in 1959.
“What the governor is proposing and what the majority is proposing today is to break that labor peace,” he said.
Republican Rep. Steve Kestell jabbed at Democrats for “YouTube auditioning” with their furious speeches.
“Let’s use inside voices,” Kestell said.
The Wisconsin bill would force state and local public workers to contribute more toward their pensions and health care and would strip them of the right to negotiate benefits and working conditions. They would largely be limited to negotiating pay raises no greater than the inflation rate.
Walker exempted police, firefighter and state trooper unions from the cuts and loss of collective bargaining.
The proposal, purportedly designed to help Wisconsin plug a projected $3.6 billion hole in the budget, has led to eight-straight days of protests that grew as large as 68,000 people Saturday.
The Senate was stymied for a second time in its attempts to take up the bill after none of the 14 Democrats who skipped town Thursday showed up. Under Senate rules, 20 lawmakers must be present to take up a budget bill. There are only 19 Republicans.
Walker and Republican leaders have repeatedly called on the Senate Democrats, who fled to Illinois, to return and get back to work. Democrats have said they won’t return until Walker is willing to negotiate.
“We’d love to come back today,” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach. “We could be up there this afternoon and pass this if he would agree to removing the language that has absolutely nothing to do with balancing the budget.”
Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ratcheted up the pressure on state employees by linking relief from property taxes to sharp increases in what government workers pay for health insurance.
Appearing before a joint session of the New Jersey Legislature, Christie used a budget address to cast public employees as a special interest that enjoys pension and health-care benefits, along with job security, that are increasingly rare in the private sector. The governor urged lawmakers to pass legislation that would effectively undercut the collective bargaining leverage of public employees.
Christie’s willingness to confront public employees, in a state where they hold considerable sway, has catapulted him to national prominence, and some Republicans have discussed him as a possible candidate in the 2012 presidential race - something Christie says he has no interest in.
“Let’s pass real reform this spring and use the proceeds to double the property tax relief for middle-class New Jerseyans and seniors,” Christie said. “Please, let’s not pick the special interests over our overburdened taxpayers.” Information for this article was contributed by Scott Bauer and Ryan J. Foley of The Associated Press; by Mark Niquette and Jack Craver of Bloomberg News; by Dan Hinkel of the Chicago Tribune; by Richard Simon and Nicholas Riccardi of the Los Angeles Times and by Michael A. Fletcher, Brady Dennis and Dan Balz of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/23/2011