What Does Tony Evers Election As Governor Mean For Act 10?

WISCONSIN -- As Democrat Tony Evers declared victory early Wednesday morning at a post-election party at Madison's Orpheum Theater, analysts say that although Republican Gov. Scott Walker may be defeated, his landmark legislation is likely here to stay.

That legislation is Act 10: Walker's signature legislation which largely ended collective bargaining for most public employees. At once, Act 10 undercut a funding source for public-sector unions, while at the same time helping to balance state and local budgets that were still trying to climb out of the recession.

The result of Act 10 set state politics aflame, and resulted in week-long protests outside the State Capitol building, and predated an unsuccessful recall of Walker in 2012.

In Evers, Wisconsin voters had arguably the state's biggest opponent of ACT 10, the law Walker signed into law in 2010 that restricted collective bargaining for Wisconsin's public educators.

It's hardly a secret that Evers, the head of the Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction, would work to repeal Walker's landmark legislation.

Yet repealing Act 10 requires clearing two major hurdles. After Evers is sworn in as Governor this January, he will be staring down a Republican-controlled State Assembly and State Senate that will undoubtedly oppose any repeal of Walker's signature legislation.

Evers said that if Republicans continue to control the Legislature - which they will - he believes a compromise could be reached that would give workers more bargaining power but still require them to pay a portion of their health care and retirement costs, according to a Journal Sentinel report.

Additionally, Evers will also be facing an electorate that's nearly equally-divided on Act 10. According to a Marquette University Law School Poll conducted in October, almost eight years after its passage, opinion remains divided on Act 10.

Forty-two percent of people surveyed say they would like to see collective bargaining returned to what was law before Act 10, while 43 percent say they want to keep Act 10 as it is now. Fifteen percent said they didn't know what they'd rather see.

Between 2012 and 2014, polls conducted by the Marquette University Law School revealed that Wisconsin residents favored keeping Act 10 reforms in place in every poll.

Supporters of Act 10 say the bill has saved local municipalities millions of dollars by keeping personnel costs flat.

In a May column in the Journal Sentinel, Christian Schneider said it may be nearly impossible to reverse the effects of Act 10 now that local governments have used its budget-shaping provisions to paint a new school funding picture.

"If Democrats reinstate Wisconsin as a union utopia and teachers and local government employees once again start to collectively bargain, it will certainly increase the cost of providing services, and thus push property taxes significantly upward," he wrote. "That is, of course, unless the Democratic candidates want to move back to a system in which the state provides aid to local governments and school districts to subsidize these benefits. If that is the case, Democrats should be willing to provide examples of which state taxes they would raise to provide the billions of dollars it would take to restore this aid model."

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