Tuesday’s primary election includes 2 amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution. Here are 6 Reasons to vote NO on both.
Tuesday’s primary election includes 2 amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution. Here are 6 Reasons to vote NO on both.
The Aug. 13 partisan primary is just days away.
The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here.
This coming Tuesday, Aug. 13, voters across Wisconsin will go to the polls in a primary election that would be unremarkable at the statewide level but for the appearance of two referendum questions on proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution, which will appear at the tail-end of the ballot.
This will be the first time in the state’s history voters are being asked to decide on changes to the Wisconsin Constitution in a low-turnout August primary. And the amendments on the ballot —which are confusingly worded – could have sweeping implications, not just for the ability of Wisconsin to respond to emergency situations, but also for the balance of power between the governor and the legislature.
Here are six reasons to vote “no” on both of these amendments.
1. If passed, the amendments would allow for more legislative gridlock, even during emergency conditions.
The second question before voters on Tuesday is the clearer of the two. A “yes” vote on Question 2 would overturn a law that’s been in place since 1931, which gives the governor the authority to accept and allocate federal funds during emergency scenarios. Under the new constitutional amendment, the legislature would gain new veto authority over these sorts of funds.
Supporters of these amendments, like the conservative Badger Institute, argue that this change would “help rein in wasteful, out-of-control spending of federal grants in Wisconsin.”
Yet the important question here is how the legislature would use the new authority it would be granted. Would it really limit itself to oversight of spending that most voters would find wasteful, as opposed to (the far larger amount of) spending Republicans argue is wasteful?
The evidence here is not reassuring. During the first year of the pandemic, Wisconsin had the least active full-time legislature in the country. While other state legislatures (controlled by both Republicans and Democrats) met to deliberate over how best to respond to the health and economic impacts of the pandemic, legislative action in Madison was largely gridlocked. Fortunately for small-business owners and others suffering from the pandemic’s effects, the governor had the authority to speed aid where it was needed. But the prospect of more legislative involvement in the allocation of federal emergency funds does not bode well.
A “yes” vote on either of these questions would simply expand the legislature’s authority to block aid from getting to where it needs to go the next time Wisconsin experiences a devastating tornado, a pandemic, or an economic crisis.
A “no” vote allows us to stick with the arrangement that’s worked for our state for nearly 100 years: in an emergency, unanticipated federal funds go to the governor’s office without a strong legislative veto. The legislature’s behavior over the last six years shows it simply does not deserve that power.
2. Child care programs could be at risk.
If the amendments on Tuesday’s ballot pass, their effects might not be limited to a hypothetical future emergency. Instead, they could jeopardize funding to the state’s response to child care shortages.
Child Care Counts — a program which supports thousands of child care providers with stabilization payments — is currently being financed by more than $100 million in federal pandemic relief. These funds will extend the life of the program through June of next year. Should the amendments pass, the legislature might gain the ability to block spending under the program.
Would they actually go through with it? In prior sessions, Republican legislators have refused to put Child Care Counts in the budget. In the most recent session, Republicans voted in committee at 2:30 a.m. to remove these funds from the budget. That same Joint Finance Committee has also blocked the Evers’ administration’s request to use $15 million that the legislature has already appropriated for a child care fund. And the Republican-controlled legislature quickly gaveled in and gaveled out of a special session on child care called by the governor last September.
A “no” vote on the amendments says that we can’t afford this kind of obstructionism when the state faces a significant undersupply of affordable child care.
3. Efforts to support direct care workers could also be at risk.
Earlier this month, Gov. Evers announced a plan to use federal ARPA dollars to boost pay for direct care workers and providers serving older adults and individuals with disabilities through creating a minimum fee schedule for Home and Community Based Services providers. The plan will support workers in a sector that is critical to caring for an aging population, but which struggles to recruit and retain an adequate number of employees.
If the amendments on the Aug. 13 ballot pass, however, the minimum fee schedule could face the same fate as Child Care Counts. The legislature would get the opportunity to halt the fee boost. But a “no” vote would prevent this from happening, ensuring that direct care workers around the state see better wages.
4. These amendments will weaken checks and balances, giving more power to a legislature that is already unaccountable.
Supporters of the two amendments — which passed the legislature with only Republican votes — also argue that a “yes” vote will increase checks and balances, restoring power to a legislature whose authority is being trammeled by an imperial executive branch. But this argument simply won’t hold water, either.
Consider the context. Beginning with the enactment of the 2011 gerrymander – one of the most severe in the history of the country – Republicans in the state’s legislature have taken actions to expand their power, limiting their accountability. Then, in the months preceding the inauguration of a Democratic governor, the legislature enacted a series of lame-duck laws that expanded its authority further. This included, among other things, major expansions of the power of the legislature’s sixteen-member Joint Finance Committee (JFC).
Indeed, over a third of the new veto rules enacted to empower the JFC since 2000 were passed during the 2017–18 session of the legislature.
Under those new rules, the legislature made the JFC the final word on major statewide policy decisions — allowing its members to block the implementation of programs that had already been authorized by the state legislature for months and years. These new rules also expanded the legislature’s (already significant) control of federal funds, imposing new limits on the executive branch’s ability to negotiate with the federal government a plan to expand Badgercare under the Affordable Care Act.
In July, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in Evers v. Marklein that several of JFC’s powers violate the state constitution’s division of responsibilities between the legislative and executive branches. This was a 6-1 decision that included liberals and conservatives alike. And it will likely tee up more challenges to the other legislative veto powers JFC has been given over the years.
A “no” vote on these questions would, if anything, be a vote in favor of the checks and balances already contained in Wisconsin’s state constitution. A “yes” vote, by contrast, would give more power to a legislative branch whose leaders evidently have little regard for the separation of powers.
5. Vague language on the ballot in a low-turnout election is an insult to voters.
If you find the language in the amendments stupefyingly vague, you’re in good company. While it seems reasonably clear that they would contribute to gridlock during emergency scenarios, important questions remain about how far they would extend the legislature’s authority.
This is especially true of Question 1, which asks voters to approve an amendment to the Constitution which forbids the legislature from delegating its “sole power to determine how moneys shall be appropriated?”
Yet what counts as a “delegation” of the legislature’s power? What is its “sole power”? Because the legislature already has the authority to appropriate state funds, does this language only apply to federal funds? Or is it possible that future lawmakers would try to use the language to broaden the legislature’s existing powers even further?
As the University of Wisconsin’s Bryna Godar points out, there aren’t easy answers to these questions. And the state is under no obligation to provide voters with plain-language descriptions of the amendments or their implications, even if there were.
Yet for all their vagueness, if these amendments pass, they will be far harder to repeal than a law passed by the state legislature. Constitutional amendment language must be approved for the ballot by two successive sessions of the legislature before being presented to voters at the ballot box.
The fact that this kind of language is appearing at the end of a ballot in a low-turnout August primary is an insult to voters. The best way of responding to that insult is to vote “no” on both Questions 1 and 2.
6. Consider who stands to gain and lose from these amendments.
Vocal supporters of a “yes” vote on these amendments — which consist of Republican legislators, the state’s largest business lobbying group, and three conservative policy organizations — argue that their passage will improve transparency, oversight, and accountability to voters.
Yet as any observer of Wisconsin politics over the last several years might note, the legislature has been more or less allergic to enacting policies that have broad support in the Wisconsin electorate – like expanding access to child care or enacting paid family and medical leave.
Wisconsin’s legislature finds itself increasingly out of step with the preferences of Wisconsin voters. The legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has used the power it has amassed over the years to further stall popular efforts like the expansion of Badgercare. Taken together, these actions might explain why the latest Marquette Law School Poll finds that only 34% of registered voters approve of the job the legislature is doing, while 58% of voters disapprove.
A legislature that is this out of touch with the electorate hardly warrants more power. By voting “no” this coming Tuesday, Wisconsinites have a chance to stand up to a power grab. It’s at the very end of the ballot.
For more information on where and how to vote on Tuesday, as well as what is on the ballot, you can visit myvote.wi.gov.
This piece is written by Phil Rocco, associate professor of political science at Marquette University. Rocco is a regular contributor at The Recombobulation Area, and the winner of a gold award from the Milwaukee Press Club for his work at the publication.
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