Governor Walker’s New “Budget Repair Bill”

Just over a week ago, on Friday, February 11, I received a message in my work email from Governor Scott Walker. It was addressed to all Wisconsin state employees, and it began innocuously enough:

Thank you for your service to your state and your fellow citizens. I know that you have worked hard during this economic downturn to ensure that our citizens continue to receive great service, despite our state having fewer and fewer resources.

Despite this seemingly respectful opening, Walker’s email and its contents were to trigger massive protests that would erupt across the state, drawing national and international attention.

It’s been a lesson in politics for all of us, including me.

Walker was writing to announce his new Budget Repair Bill. It included various “belt-tightening” measures we state workers had expected, such as increased payments to our health insurance plans and pensions. But then, he went on to add these fateful and unexpected words:

Given the above changes, the bill also makes various changes to limit collective bargaining.

That was an understatement. The Budget Repair Bill strips public-sector unions of virtually all power. It abolishes some unions altogether, including the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA), which represented my boyfriend Ron and me when we were TAs in grad school.

So the bill cut to the heart of many of us.

Nevertheless, Walker’s email didn’t ruffle my feathers much—at first.

Ron and I were focused on our work. We work together as stream scientists at the state Department of Natural Resources, and the day before Walker’s announcement, we’d had a twelve-hour workday attending a water quality conference. Now we were back in our cubicles, focusing on the large, intensive watershed study we’ve been working on, an effort to help the state improve its water monitoring.

Meanwhile, we were coordinating our usual social events with friends. We’d declined invitations to go to a UW hockey game with one group and a contra dance with another group, because we were still tired after our conference. We hoped to spend Friday evening at a nice, quiet restaurant somewhere with just one or two others, decompressing after the busy week.

Most of all, we were excited about the arrival of our four-month-old kittens, who we’d met when they were too young to be moved to our house. The rescue agency had told us we could have them on Sunday, in two days. All week, we’d giddily been counting down “till kitties.” At Thursday’s conference, at one point, Ron had leaned over and drawn a little silhouette of a cat head on my notepad, making me grin. In a work email to me, instead of signing off “Love, Ron,” he’d happily signed off “Kitties, Ron.”

Friday evening after work, we walked to the Capitol, which is just a block from our building. We’d arranged to meet our friend Dave, and we’d chosen the Capitol as a meeting place because it’s a convenient landmark right in the center of town. The night was cold and dark, as always in February. Our breath came out in clouds around our scarf-wrapped faces; our feet made that wonderful crunching sound in the hardened snow as we walked.

We found Dave bundled in a jacket, staring up at a second-story window of the giant domed building. Dave is as mild-mannered as they come, so we were surprised to find him incensed. He was stewing over Walker’s announcement, which we hadn’t thought about much till now.

Dave had once been president of the TAA. “I feel like throwing a rock through Walker’s window,” he said. “I’m not going to—but I feel like it!”

As we walked to dinner, he gave us a little lesson on unions. He explained that the bill would dramatically undercut state unions’ power, making it much harder for unionized and non-unionized employees to get fair pay and benefits. He also told us about Wisconsin’s long history of progressivism—this had been the first state in the country to allow public-sector unions long ago. The bill would wipe away something like eighty years of progress on Wisconsin workers’ rights.

We felt sobered. We’re not originally from here; we moved here five years ago, me from Oregon and Ron from Michigan. And we’re not super political people. We vote in every election including midterms, and we read news headlines and often watch The Daily Show, but we knew little about the political process and didn’t know any of our local representatives’ names.

But we had started paying more attention to politics this past year. Walker’s election surprised us—we didn’t know anyone who supported him. In the last few months, we’ve been trying to learn more, trying to understand the Tea Party and read up on important topics like health care and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We even recently started a political “book group” with our friends to read about the issues.

Learning the Budget Repair Bill’s significance from Dave was depressing. I felt angry. I believe in dialogue and democracy, and it seemed undemocratic to enact such a big change without campaigning on it. Dave said it was common to announce unpopular changes on Fridays like Walker had. I thought: If it’s going to be so unpopular that you have to sneak it past people, is it really the right thing to do?

But Ron and I still didn’t think about it much over the weekend. Kitty Day finally arrived, and we were enamored with our two new little companions as they slowly emerged from their hiding places and allowed us to pet them. Our one-bedroom apartment is small but feels spacious, with hardwood floors and big windows that overlook Lake Monona. The cats quickly came to love the sunlight streaming in the windows, and soon they were happy and comfortable.

Little did we know that they wouldn’t be our focus for long!