Channel 3000 Excerpt:
Gov. Scott Walker signed a sick leave bill on Thursday. The bill said that statewide employee leave provisions trump local ordinances and prohibits cities, villages, towns and counties from adopting their own.
The Republican measure came after a state appeals court upheld a Milwaukee ordinance requiring employers to give workers paid sick leave.
As far as I'm concerned, Walker signing the bill striking down Milwaukee's sick leave ordinance was much bigger than the law itself or local control angles and issues. It's the idea that a small group of ideologues in a state legislature and an authoritarian governor, most of them not from or representing the city of Milwaukee, can counter and unilaterally over-rule the will of the people not because the ordinance is unconstitutional or illegal, but simply because they disagree with it. That's fascism.
Let this be a lesson to any Wisconsin community that thinks it has the will to empower itself with democratic rule - you'd better run it past Walker first.
2 comments:
The sick leave ordinance passed 69%-31%, and was completely disregarded. Absolutely amazing. I fear it is but the first wave of many such measures (especially now that recall elections are looming around the corner).
Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt (R) said in Assembly, it would be a disaster, "if we’re just going to allow citizens to simply vote themselves all sorts of benefits.” You could replace "all sorts of benefits" with anything, that's what democracy looks like. But to over-rule the will of a 69% vote, this is the stuff of banana republics.
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