Maybe things are even less over in Wisconsin than I thought (via):
Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi issued a temporary restraining order Friday, barring the publication of a controversial new law that would sharply curtail collective bargaining for public employees.
Sumi’s order will prevent Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the law until she can rule on the merits of the case. Dane County Ismael Ozanne is seeking to block the law because he says a legislative committee violated the state’s open meetings law.
Sumi said Ozanne was likely to succeed on the merits.
“It seems to me the public policy behind effective enforcement of the open meeting law is so strong that it does outweigh the interest, at least at this time, which may exist in favor of sustaining the validity of the (law),” she said.
joe from Lowell
Hey, this judge is giving an Open Meeting Law teeth!
No fair!
rufflesinc
Keep your fingers crossed. The wisconsin supreme court is one of the most partisian in the nation (edge to GOP). Not only do they snipe over the merits of decisions, they also snipe over administrative stuffs.
Bill Section 147
Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi is Hitler, Stalin, Mohamed and Satan. If she is/was conservative she is/was a mole.
Follow the money…and Soros is pulling her string.
Also too…what kind of name is “Sumi?”
Suffern ACE
@Bill Section 147: “Sumi” is actually a quite funny name for a lawyer.
Steve L.
Don’t retreat, reload!
dmsilev
@Bill Section 147:
Teahaddist: “Well, it’s only one letter away from Suni, which is just a misspelling of Sunni, so she’s obviously an Islamofascist mole appointed by the Kenyan Usurper to Sap and Impurify Our Precious Bodily Fluids.”
dms
dmsilev
More seriously, is there also a potential legal challenge due to the fact that a budget bill was passed under the rules for non-budget issues?
dms
Chuck Butcher
WI’s Open Meetings Law is pretty clear and judges tend to not care for ignoring law. Even partisan judges. The end question is “so what?” since they still have the numbers to just do it over with proper publishing.
piratedan
open meeting laws are one of the only ways that we can avoid the broccoli mandate that is being pushed by those green groceer collectives. I wondered why these state GOPpers went tharn on this stuff when they had the numbers to ram thru whatever they wanted anyways….
Legalize
@Chuck Butcher:
Not if the legal challenges drag out long enough to get some Senators recalled. Or if the imminent threat of recall can rattle some cages.
cleek
awesome news.
Litlebritdifrnt
Activist Judge Eleventy! From what I understand the more important thing right now is that there is an election for a seat on the Supreme Court there on April 5, 2011. The result of which could swing the court the other way. Also from what I understand all of the interested parties are now going balls to the wall (if you will excuse the expression) to get the lib elected.
ed
TPM says, “meh”:
joe from Lowell
@dmsilev:
The budget bill wasn’t passed under rules for non-budget issues.
They stripped out the anti-bargaining law and passed that through the regular order, thus proving the protesters’ claims that the proposal had nothing to do with the budget.
SFAW
But what about for a rock band?
You should be signing as “JDR”, not “dms”.
Well, it might give the locals some time to get the recall petition signature requirements met. I hear they’ve almost reached the 20% mark.
Bulworth
Damn activist judges justices.
Jennifer
Cue “activist judges!” rant on Faux News and every rightwing website in 4…3…2…
Skreeeeeee! Skreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
SFAW
dms can certainly speak for himself, but I think his point was: Walker et al. justified the bill by saying that the municipalities needed this law, so that they could fight the budget-busting muscle of Teh Evul Unions. Because even though Teh Evul Unions gave a lot of concessions prior to the bill being “passed”, doncha know they’d turn right around and get them all back – IF they were allowed to continue to bargain collectively.
Ergo, a budget bill.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Let me begin by renouncing the broccoli mandate, as well as Stalin. With that out of the way, I’ll reiterate that judges often take a dim view of law flouting. It’s sort of an occupational hazard, if you will. So this is not that surprising. And of course very good news.
In other (potentially) good news, dissatisfaction with Gov, Napoleon Heartland(TM) also know as King John I of Ohio, continues to grow as more of his plans become clear. Such as, budget cuts to governor’s staff $176K (just slightly more than annual salary for his chief of staff), or ~5.5%. But the cuts to Bureau of Children with Medical Handicaps are $1.25M or 14%. And yes, that is million. Priorities, he’s got some.
These guys (radical R governors) may be President Obama’s best re-election operatives. So there’s that.
Jude
Thanks for the link, Comrade!
NonyNony
@Chuck Butcher:
The answer to that is “if they could have done it without the end run, why didn’t they? Especially when a Democrat was standing there telling them that they were clearly violating the law and needed to give it 24 hours”.
The answer is that they were trying to terminal a PR nightmare that had been going on in the capitol, and giving it another 24 hours would have made it worse. If they have to go through it all again, the unions will make sure that their PR nightmare continues.
Plus now people trying to recall those Republican Senators have another weapon in their arsenal – not only do they hate unions but they apparently also hate democracy and are incompetent jackasses to boot. Might make it easier to get a few signatures from wavering independents if you have evidence of an incompetent power grab that violates the law.
Jennifer
@SFAW: According to reports last weekend, they had already passed 45% of the signatures needed to recall…
dmsilev
@SFAW: Essentially, yes. Now, that’s a political argument not a legal one, but I’m wondering whether weeks of public statements by Walker and the GOP that they had to break the unions for budgetary reasons has any legal weight.
dms
PeakVT
Dane County Ismael Ozanne
Is “Ismael” an office in Dane County, or is that sentence short a few characters?
If the judge blocks the law, the lawmakers are certain to re-pass it. That’s bad in the short term, but good in the long run if it gets more people mad.
Jude
@NonyNony:
“The answer is that they were trying to terminal a PR nightmare that had been going on in the capitol, and giving it another 24 hours would have made it worse. If they have to go through it all again, the unions pissed-off people of the State of Wisconsin will make sure that their PR nightmare continues.”
Fixed that for you, buddy.
Arthur
@dmsilev:
This presumes feats of literacy previously unheard of among teahaddists
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Ahem.
I believe the expression you are looking for is “fluffing their pillows in the pied-à-terre”
/David Brooks
Bob Loblaw
Activist judges and insidious brown people. What the hell kind of names are Sumi and Ismael anyway?
Poor Republicans, when oh when will they break free of their foreign liberal commie oppressors?
SFAW
They’re something like three (or more?) weeks into this drive, and they only have 45%?
Hence my “20%”. I was aware they had somewhat more than that, but it’s still pretty unimpressive. I will become un-unimpressed when they actually recall more than 2 State Senators. I think I bet someone a couple of beers that this whole thing will disappear without any serious damage to the Rethugs. I hope I lose, but my beer-bet record has generally been pretty good. Unfortunately.
SFAW
Now THAT is a great name for a rock band, especially a Bieber-esque one.
NonyNony
@Jude:
Sure, it’s ultimately the pissed-off people of Wisconsin.
But contrary to a lot of folks beliefs, pissed-off people just don’t spontaneously organize themselves into protests[*] – someone has to organize them. And apparently Wisconsin’s unions actually remember how to do that.
[*]When pissed-off people spontaneously take to the streets to express anger over some outrage without any organization, we don’t generally call that “protest” – we usually call it something like a “riot”. If you’ve reached the point of riot you’ve REALLY pissed people off. At least in the US where it takes a hell of a lot to get a mass of people up to express themselves all at once (or, depending on your city, one really good sport-of-choice victory).
Seitz
@dmsilev:
At first I was disappointed that the judge didn’t rule on that issue, though I’m not sure whether that was even brought up. Upon second thought, I think it’s in the Dems interest to keep that on the back burner. Let this issue go to appeal, and if it gets struck down, let the Senate re-pass the bill after giving proper notice. THEN they should sue on the budget issue. That drags this out, and the longer this stays in the headlines, the better off the Dems will be.
Jude
@NonyNony:
I’m just telling you what I know. I live in Madison, and I’m in a union. There’s been nothing from my union (public employee one) organizing any demonstrations. I’ve just seen thousands of pissed-off peoplemobilizing for what’s important to them. The Wednesday night when the bill was passed illegally? There wasn’t any organization that brought thousands of people out in the street that night. It was phone calls, Facebook, and Twitter–basically, all word-of-mouth stuff.
Yeah, there’s some organization to the weekend rallies, but on a day-to-day basis? Pretty much just spontaneous citizen action.
Chuck Butcher
I like it when these asshats are handed their hats in any manner. As for why they did it – foot stamping, trying to get (D) Sens back, … ?
Jennifer
@SFAW: Nope. As of last weekend, they were 2 weeks into the drive. They have, I believe, 8 weeks from the time they file the petition.
I’ve run statewide petition drives before – 45% of needed signatures gathered in two weeks is not only good, it’s unheard of.
justawriter
The repubs will now outlaw open meetings about prank phone calls.
SFAW
OK, thanks for edumacating me. More than happy to lose my beer-bet, but they ain’t home free just yet.
jcricket
Hey Republicans – Now THIS is what overreach looks like.
The biggest reason 2010 was such a Republican rout was because Republicans were massively motivated and Democrats de-motivated. The make-up of the electorate determines how big the swing is, not some true change in sentiment.
Republicans could have taken their win and slowly dismantled everything in a way that kept their supporters reasonably happy while continuing to demoralize and confuse the Democrats.
Instead Republicans went bat-shit insane and tried to do everything they’ve ever wanted ™ at the same goddamn time. Looks like it’s backfiring on a massive scale. Every single Democratic-leaning interest group is getting their budgets slashed, their rights attacked and have a motivation to fight back at a level probably greater than the 2007/2008 motivation to get our George Bush.
If Democrats sustain this momentum into 2012 (not a given) I’d expect to retake a lot of the losses in the House (maybe even squeak back to control), narrowly retain control of the Senate and more importantly, Obama cruises back to a win.
On the other hand, if Republicans succeed at all their plans, the economy will plunge into a second recession, Republicans will win everything in 2012, and then plunge us into a Depression.
SFAW
Nah, they’ll outlaw activist judges who try to tell them that they (i.e. Rethugs) are breaking the law.
kideni
There’s another case going on at the same time, brought by Dane County, that charges that there are fiscal elements in the bill and therefore its passing was improper, so that issue is out there (here’s an article that explains the county’s suit). The WisPolitcs budget blog has a good rundown of what happened this morning and what the various sides have said.
kideni
And yes, the state supreme court election is really important. It’s hard to dislodge an incumbent judge (unless you get outside rightwing groups running the sleaziest ads against the incumbent that anyone can remember, as happened three[?] years ago), but I don’t think it hurts that on that same day Milwaukee County will be filling their county exec spot, as will Madison’s Dane County, and Madison will also be electing a mayor, so turnout in the two most populous, left-leaning counties in the state may be higher than during a run-of-the-mill judicial election.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
every situation is different, and to explore each case individually could take years and possibly enrich attorneys.
i say let the chips fall where they may.
RSR
I’m not surprised at all at this at the local level. We’ll see what happens as it flows up. But I think there’s a strong case to strike the committee and senate votes over the open meeting issue.
Which would be quite interesting in the long run, because it seems the GOP activists have lost some enthusiasm for the process now that they’ve ‘won the battle.’
Meanwhile, recall efforts and the supreme court election campaigning remain a Democratic priority.
Stillwater
This is great news. The hauloff of anti-democratic legislation Republicans pushed through in violation of prodecural guidelines ought to be reviewed. It’s just surprising (I know it shouldn’t be) that a judge would actually do the right thing here.
Stillwater
@RSR: because it seems the GOP activists have lost some enthusiasm for the process now that they’ve ‘won the battle.’
The GOP has consistently shown that they hate democratic procedure, and hence, democracy itself. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth over the mere mention of delaying the implementation of these anti-democratic laws, let alone a review of the anti-democratic methods used to get them passed.
feebog
I had dinner with a Wisconson state representative Monday night. This is exactly what they were hoping for. He said they realistically only have a chance to flip 3 seats, but that all 3 seats can be won. He also said that in one of the Senate districts they collected 40% of the signatures needed in the first week. He had little doubt that they would get the signatures necessary in those three districts. If the Dems can fiip the Senate, and the court cases can be extended on appeal, the whole bill could be blocked.
rikyrah
this is a good first step about this hideousness. a judge who actually follows the rule of law.