La Follette delays collective bargaining bill as Democratic senators prepare to return

[highplainsdem]

Source: Wisconsin State Journal

Friday, March 11, 2011 8:29 pm


State senators left the state for three weeks. Assembly members forced a marathon, 61-hour debate in their chamber. Now, Secretary of State Doug La Follette will join the list of Democrats delaying Gov. Scott Walker's controversial bill to limit collective bargaining for public employees.

Walker signed the bill early Friday, but it doesn't take effect until the secretary of state publishes the proposal, and La Follette said he would not publish the law until March 25 to allow time for legal challenges to move through the courts. Laws don't take effect until one day after they are published with the Legislative Reference Bureau.

-snip-

La Follette, a Democrat, said in an interview that it's normal procedure to publish laws 10 business days after the governor signs them, although he said it is sometimes necessary speed up the process.

"The governor wants to publish this on Monday, but that seems a mad rush to conclusion when there are so many questions," La Follette said. "This is one of the biggest changes in Wisconsin I can remember, and I've been around for 30 years."

-snip-

[Critters2]

1. Related to Fighting Bob? nt

[somone]

2. His great-grandfather and Fighting Bob's father were brothers

[Critters2]

5. Cool! nt

[Omaha Steve]

3. Another hero to sing about in the years to come

Good old fashioned labor folk song. For Green Acres fans that is a soap fong. :-)

[Jackpine Radical]

4. A little more about Doug from Wikipedia--

Doug La Follette was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Marietta College, his Master of Science in chemistry from Stanford University, and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University. He began a teaching career as an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin–Parkside in Kenosha.
Known as an environmentalist before running for public office, he was a Wisconsin organizer of the first Earth Day for Gaylord Nelson in 1970 and co-founded Wisconsin's Environmental Decade (now known as Clean Wisconsin) with Peter Anderson.
Political career

La Follette first ran for office in the 1970 U.S. House of Representatives election, losing to Les Aspin in the Democratic primary for the Wisconsin's 1st congressional district. La Follette served in the Wisconsin State Senate for Kenosha for one term.
La Follette was elected Secretary of State of Wisconsin in 1974. He unsuccessfully ran for Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin on a ticket with Governor Martin Schreiber in 1978. In 1982, he was again elected state Secretary of State, defeating incumbent Vel Phillips.
La Follette has been the Secretary of State ever since. He has run unopposed several times and shuns fundraising in the style of former Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire. In 1990, his opponent, Madison attorney and radio personality Stuart Levitan, campaigned on a promise to eliminate the Secretary of State's office, whose duties have been reduced and transferred to other agencies, including the State Board of Elections, under La Follette's tenure.
Since being elected Secretary of State, La Follette has run twice run for federal office. In 1988, he ran for U.S. Senate, losing the primary to Herb Kohl. In 1996, he made another bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district to Lydia Spottswood, who went on to lose the general election to Mark Neumann.
Other roles

La Follette is the author of the 1991 book The Survival Handbook: A Strategy for Saving Planet Earth.
He has also served on the board of directors of Friends of the Earth and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In 2003 he ran for, and was elected to, the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. He did not seek reelection in 2006.
He was a Fulbright Distinguished American Scholar in 2003.

[gratuitous]

6. He's not "delaying" the bill

He's just following standard procedure, absent a compelling reason to speed up the process. What an . . . inaccurate . . . headline to the story. I wonder why the paper would use such a pejorative verb? Well, I'm sure there's a good and logical reason.

[highplainsdem]

7. "Delaying" is not a pejorative word in this context -- we want to delay the bill.

And since Walker wanted it published next week and presumably the SoS could have obliged him, La Follette IS delaying it.

Good for him.

This not only allows more time for the legal challenges, it gives precious time to some unions who can still do some collective bargaining.

For instance, the Madison school board will be meeting tomorrow to approve a deal with its unions before Walker's bill goes into effect.

http://host.madison.com/news/local/education/local_schools/article_70bc0e62-4bfd-11e0-ace2-001cc4c03286.html

They'll now have a bit more time to work that out.

[iwishiwas]

8. Walker was on tv last eveing, and was upset about this. Too bad.

[mascarax]

9. Agree on too bad & I'm surprised he hasn't insisted on a daily prime time show

so he can express the thoughts told to him by his masters. And end every show with "We're broke".

[iwishiwas]

13. He has almost daily pressers to say that.

[gratuitous]

10. My reading

My reading from the story is that the headline was meant to inflame low information nitwits in Wisconsin (if there are any left), by implying that LaFollette was doing something underhanded with his "delay" in publishing the bill. I agree that the lag between governor signature and publishing of the final bill (in Oregon, we call it the "enrolled" bill) allows more time for legal challenges, and that's almost surely what LaFollette is doing. BUT the implication that he's doing something untoward or unusual is simply fatuous, designed to provide demagogues with something to complain about.

I would bet a shiny nickel that if the issue was flipped, and it was a progressive bill being held up by a conservative Secretary of State, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the conservative suddenly vanished from the state on a "long-planned" "vacation" with the promise that when he got back in, oh, April or May, he'd promptly attend to the work piled up on his desk. Republicans would be all over a friendly popular media to claim that the Secretary of State was entitled to his time off, nothing illegal was being done, and compliant reporting would let it go without a peep. Anyone who objected would be painted as some beady-eyed Herbert, a slave to procedure, who hates hard-working public servants for their well-earned and -deserved time off.

[L. Coyote]

11. LAW: Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions

Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x621314

Legal effect ... Declaration was explicitly adopted ... binding on all member states .......

[Vidar]

12. Wonderful to to know there's another La Follette fighting for the people.