(The Center Square) – Wisconsin may have just celebrated the last anniversary for Act-10.
Act-10 became law in 2011, changing how many public sector workers, particularly teachers, could negotiate contracts.
The MacIver Institute said Act 10 has saved taxpayers in Wisconsin more than $35 billion during the past decade-and-a-half. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court appears poised to strike the law down.
Will Flanders with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty believes if the court does, all $35 billion of those savings will disappear.
“The best hope is to convey just how devastating this will be to school districts, to local governments, and to taxpayers across the state if [Act-10] goes away,” Flanders said in an interview on News Talk 1130 WISN. “[Those] $35 billion in savings, that’s immediately going back on to the property rolls, at least a lot of it will immediately go back on the property tax rolls.”
Flanders said it will take a few years for some of the savings to be erased because schools and local governments will have to negotiate new contracts.
Flanders said while Act-10 mostly focused on schools, every government in the state will see costs jump if Act-10 goes away.
“For school districts [the savings] were about $1.6 billion in annual new costs…And local governments [the savings] are about $480 million in new annual costs,” Flanders explained. “But all told, we’re looking at about $2 billion in annual new costs. And that’s going to be borne by all local governments across the state.”
The challenge before the Wisconsin Supreme Court challenges why some public employees, particularly police officers and firefighters, were not covered by Act-10’s restrictions. Act-10 has survived legal challenges in the past, and Flanders said if the Wisconsin court kills it, it will be for purely “political reasons.”
Though, Flanders said there is a chance that some pieces of Act-10 may survive.
“We have a Supreme Court ruling at the national level that says folks can’t be forced to pay union dues for political purposes,” Flanders said. “It would lead to a challenge immediately, because if we repeal Act-10, some of those things would go back into law. So, there is a potential for something at the federal level.”
