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Recall Of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Appears Inevitable

A recall of controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker now appear inevitable. In just 28 days, activists collected 507,533 signatures. Organizers have until January 17 to collect 540,208 signatures, which is equal to 25% of the state’s 2010 general election turnout. To be safe, recall advocates have set a new goal of 720,277 signatures by the deadline.

The recall efforts success has propted the Scott Walker’s campaign to take aggressive action to invalidate signatures. Walker sued his own Government Accountability Board, arguing the proceedures adopted by the board to review signatures aren’t agressive enough. Without citing any concrete evidence, Walker alleged to Fox News that there was massive fraud in the signature gathering effort. The case is still pending.

Nevertheless, Walker has changed his tone in recent days and acknowleged making mistakes in pursuing his an anti-union effort in his first few days in office. Walker told the LaCross Tribune that “that he’s made mistakes in how he’s gone about achieving his agenda” and “he regretted not having done a better job of selling his changes to state government.” Walker also said he regretted his statements on a phone call with a man pretending to be billionaire David Koch. He said his comments on the call, where he referred to his plan to undermine collective bargaining as “dropping a bomb” and admitted he considered planting troublemakers among the protesters, were “stupid.”

Assuming the final signatures are collected and verified, a recall election is expected in the late-Spring or Summer.

 

By: Judd Legum, Think Progress, December 31, 2011

January 2, 2012 Posted by | Collective Bargaining, Democracy, GOP | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Scott Walker’s Next Target: Cancer Screenings For Women

First he gutted worker’s rights, then slashed state education funding and dumbed-down sex ed. Next on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s hit list? Breast and cervical cancer screenings for women. Come January 1, Wisconsinites who rely on Planned Parenthood to access free cancer screenings may be out of luck.

The Wisconsin Well Woman Program is an 17-year-old state service created to ensure that women ages 45 to 64 who lack health insurance can access preventive health screenings. It is administered by the Department of Health Services and provides referrals and screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer, and multiple sclerosis at no cost. The state currently uses a number of contractors to coordinate and provide those services, including Planned Parenthood. But now, in a move that could leave many women in the state without access to the program, the Walker government is ending Planned Parenthood’s contract.

In four Wisconsin counties, Planned Parenthood is the only health care provider currently contracted as a coordinator for the cancer screenings. Coordinators evaluate women for eligibility, enroll them in the program, and then connect them to health care providers that can perform the exams. The coordinators also do community outreach, letting women know that there are options for preventative care even if they don’t have health insurance. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin has been a contractor since the program began—including during the terms of previous GOP governors Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum—but the group recently learned that its contract is being terminated at the end of the month.

Beth Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, told Mother Jones that no decision has been made on the contract and would not comment on why it might not be continued. But Tanya Atkinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, says they were told that the state is cutting them out of the program. “They have very clearly stated that they were ending the contract with us,” she says. [UPDATE: Walker himself has confirmed that the state is ending its contract with Planned Parenthood.]

Atkinson says the DHS cut is politically motivated; as far as she knows, her group was the only service provider whose contract was not renewed. The move puts in question what will happen to the more than 1,000 women that access the Well Woman Program through Planned Parenthood in Winnebago, Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, and Outagamie counties every year. Doctors found 15 cases of cervical and breast cancer in the 1,260 women screened in those counties in 2010—cases that likely would not have been detected if women didn’t have access to the Well Woman Program. The county health officers in two of those counties have already issued statements decrying the state for targeting Planned Parenthood for the cut and for risking the health of their residents.

“If it’s not Planned Parenthood, then who’s going to coordinate? Where do women go?” Atkinson asks. “We don’t have any indication at this point.”

If Walker goes through with the cut, women like Laurie Seim might not get the services they need. Two years ago, the 52-year-old Seim discovered a lump in her breast and started feeling feverish and sick. Even though she had a part-time job as a medical assistant, she didn’t have health insurance and had never had a mammogram. The doctor she worked for sent her to the Well Woman Program coordinator at the Outagamie office of Planned Parenthood. She was able to get a mammogram the next day as well as an ultrasound, and both were covered by the program. Thankfully, she learned she had a cyst, not cancer. But without the program, she says, she probably wouldn’t have gotten that care.

“I didn’t have to worry about anything. It was such a godsend,” Seim says. “If I hadn’t been referred to that program, I don’t know what I would have done.” She worked in the medical field but still didn’t know how to navigate the system. “Well Woman was there for me.”

Planned Parenthood also provides some of the health screenings covered under Well Woman at other clinics around the state, including colposcopy, which is used to evaluate a women’s cervical health if she has an irregular pap smear result. But another bill that has been proposed in the Wisconsin State Senate would bar Planned Parenthood from providing those services, too. Senate Bill 331, sponsored by Republicans Mary Lazich, Glenn Grothman, and Pam Galloway, would block Planned Parenthood and any other health centers that also offer abortion services from being reimbursed for screenings through the Well Woman Program.

This isn’t the first time Walker and his allies in the Legislature have targeted Planned Parenthood. In June, Walker approved a budget that blocked state and federal funds from going to the group and any of its 27 health centers around the state. The clinics provide care to 73,000 women annually. And although there are already rules barring public funding from going to abortion services, Republicans in the state have gone after any and all money that goes to Planned Parenthood—even if it’s for services like cancer screenings.

“They’re willing to put their political ideology before women’s lives,” Atkinson says. “That’s really what’s happening here.”

December 17, 2011 Posted by | Women's Health | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Assembly: Cameras Are Dangerous, Guns Still Allowed

Eighteen people were arrested Tuesday for using cameras in the Wisconsin Assembly gallery, including the editor of The Progressive magazine, Matt Rothschild.

Rothschild and others had gone to the capitol to protest a series of arrests in recent weeks of individuals who carried signs or took photos or video in defiance of an Assembly ban.

“We ought to have a right to take a picture,” Rothschild said.

Guns Yes, Cameras No

The protest was organized through a Facebook event called “Concealed  Camera Day at the Capitol!” The event coincided with the implementation of Wisconsin’s new concealed carry law, which allows residents to carry a concealed firearm — including inside the Assembly gallery.

Stephen Colbert said Governor Walker was bringing “a new freedom to America’s dairyland” with the concealed carry law, but said people would not see “images of gunfire in the statehouse” because of the camera ban. “Thank God. Cameras are dangerous,” he said.

On the agenda in Tuesday’s session was a bill to institute the Castle Doctrine, a “shoot first, ask questions later” bill that gives a person immunity from civil and criminal liability if they shoot another in self defense in their home, work, or vehicle. The American Legislative Exchange Council also has a model Castle Doctrine bill — see the side-by-side here.

Event organizers were clear that the protests were not about the gun laws, but instead about protecting First Amendment rights.

But Is It Legal?

The Open Meetings law includes this provision (§19.90):

Use of equipment in open session. Whenever a governmental body holds a meeting in open session, the body shall make a reasonable effort to accommodate any person desiring to record, film or photograph the meeting. This section does not permit recording, filming or photographing such a meeting in a manner that interferes with the conduct of the meeting or the rights of the participants.

The statute also contains this provision (§ 19.87(2)):

No provision of this subchapter which conflicts with a rule of the senate or assembly or joint rule of the legislature shall apply to a meeting conducted in compliance with such rule.

The legal issue here appears similar to the one that arose in the challenge to Governor Walker’s collective bargaining law. In that case, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne alleged that the union-busting law should be struck down because it was passed in violation of another provision of the Open Meetings law requiring notice. In part, Ozanne’s challenge failed because the legislature had passed a rule that trumped the Open Meetings law.

Likewise, here the Assembly had a rule banning cameras and video, but under the court’s ruling in the Ozanne suit, that rule trumped the Open Meetings law permitting their use.

Despite this, both the Wisconsin and U.S. Constitutions have provisions protecting the right to free speech, free assembly, and a free press. “The gallery is a free speech area,” says attorney Jim Mueller, who was ticketed in October for violating the Assembly rule. “Even if there are rules against signs, they’re unconstitutional. It is our right to peaceably assemble and petition the government.”

By: Brendan Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy, November 2, 2011

November 4, 2011 Posted by | Democracy, Freedom, Wisconsin | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Wisconsin GOP Stumbles In Effort To Rig Recalls

Republican efforts to inoculate themselves against recall hit a snag Monday when a moderate Republican announced his opposition to a plan that would permit recalls to happen in newly-drawn partisan districts.

Senator Mary Lazich introduced two bills on Friday that opponents say will rig recall elections in favor of Republicans. Democrats plan to start collecting signatures on November 15 to recall Governor Scott Walker, as well as state Senators who voted in favor of collective bargaining limits. Lazich’s bills are the latest in a series of moves by Wisconsin Republicans to change the recall election rules in their favor.

Redistricting and Recalls

One of the Lazich bills would have required that recalls be conducted in the new legislative boundaries re-drawn in this year’s partisan redistricting process. The law enacting the redistricting map says the new boundaries are not to take effect until November 2012, and the state elections board had determined the recall elections would take place in the old districts.

Lazich’s bill would overturn the election board’s determination and make the new maps effective next week, making a recall more difficult by putting GOP Senators in the much safer districts they created for themselves earlier this year. It would also put the maps into effect before two legal challenges to the new boundaries were resolved.

According to Jay Heck of Common Cause Wisconsin, holding recall elections along the new boundaries would be “terribly confusing,” with “voters unsure about whether they are eligible to vote in their district, which could deter voters from turning out.”

It also would have put some voters into the position of recalling a Senator they never elected in the first place, and preventing other voters from recalling the Senator that they put in office.

“I’m not going to vote for [Lazich’s bill] because the people who sent me to Madison are the ones who should decide whether I ought to be recalled or not,” said Senator Dale Schultz (R-Richmond Center). “I’m not interested in further adding confusion by changing the rules.”

With Republicans holding only a one-vote Senate majority, Schultz’ vote against Lazich’s bill means that it will not pass (assuming all Democrats oppose it). Senate Republicans held a 19-14 majority until recall elections this summer removed two Republicans from office, narrowing the GOP majority to 17-16. In March, Schultz voted against Governor Walker’s controversial Act 10 limiting collective bargaining rights, but under the Senate makeup at the time, his opposition was not enough to keep the bill from becoming law.

For some, the fact that extreme Republican bills can no longer be steamrolled through the legislature is proof that last summer’s recall elections were effective.

Notary Requirement for Recall Petitions

Another Lazich proposal introduced Friday and originally scheduled for a vote Tuesday (but delayed until Wednesday) would add an additional layer of process by requiring that each page of recall petitions be notarized. Organizers need over 540,000 signatures to recall Walker, and with up to ten signatures per page, more than 54,000 pages will need notarization. Lazich said the bill would bring “a little more accountability” for recall signature gatherers, but Common Cause’s Heck says the bill “assumes Wisconsin citizens are dishonest” and is intended “to result in fewer recall signatures.”

Scot Ross of the liberal One Wisconsin Now says of the last-minute bill that “if Mary Lazich thought recall signature notarization was such an issue, she had the last 20 years of her undistinguished career as a state legislator to do something about it,” pointing out that Lazich did not introduce bills to change recall election rules when Republicans threatened to recall former Democratic Governor Jim Doyle or Democratic U.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold.

Additionally, the notary bill may be unconstitutional. Article XIII, Section 12 of the Wisconsin Constitution deals with recalls, and sub-section (7) states:

Laws may be enacted to facilitate its operation but no law shall be enacted to hamper, restrict or impair the right of recall.

Other Recall Rigging

These bills are part of a larger GOP effort to control the way elections and recalls are conducted.

Lazich, a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), also introduced the ALEC-inspired voter ID legislation that will make it significantly more difficult for students, people of color, and the elderly to vote in Wisconsin.

In late September, Republican lawmakers announced they would give Governor Walker authority to reverse two elections policies developed by the non-partisan Government Accountability Board.

One policy would have allowed voters to access a form online, print their recall petition, sign it, then send it to the group coordinating recalls. It would have made it easier for those collecting recall petitions because the groups would not have to gather the signatures face-to-face and door-to-door.

The other would have permitted universities to put stickers on student ID cards that could then be used for voting. Wisconsin’s new voter ID law permits the use of student IDs for voting, but only if the ID includes certain information not currently on any of the student IDs issued in the state. The sticker would have allowed student IDs to meet the necessary criteria, and made it easier for students to participate in recall votes.

The Republican-led Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, led by ALEC member Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) and Rep. Jim Ott (R-Mequon), told the Board these matters should not have been adopted as “policies,” but instead as administrative rules, which require the approval of Governor Walker. Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) told Republicans that, by giving Walker veto power over the rules that govern his recall, “you have given the governor control of the chicken coop.”

The elections board backed down in response to pressure from Republicans, leading to accusations the non-partisan board had become politicized.

Even without these efforts, Governor Walker and state Republicans already have an advantage in the recall elections. A loophole in campaign law allows for unlimited funding and spending during the recall signature-gathering period. These additional efforts by the GOP to change election rules in their favor suggest that Walker and his party are taking the recall threat seriously.

By: Brendan Fischer, Center For Media and Democracy, November 2, 2011

November 3, 2011 Posted by | Collective Bargaining | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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