The Wisconsin Assembly passed significant legislation regulating the payday loan industry and affecting collective bargaining practices for UW System faculty and staff, but failed to vote on bills regarding the powers held by the state superintendent and the creation of regional transit authorities by press time of 4:00 a.m. Wednesday.
Currently, state employees and UW System faculty and academic staff are covered under the State Employment Labor Relations Act. This act details what are considered unfair collective bargaining practices for employers, inlcuding intervening in employees right to unionize or intimidating them from joining a union.
Under the bill passed Tuesday night, UW System faculty and academic staff would be prohibited from using any money received to discourage their employees from unionizing.
Supporters say it will prevent intimidation from employers, although critics are attacking it for violating free speech.
“It says that money received from any source…could not be used to inform UW employers what all their options are,” Robin Vos, R-Racine, said.
A few Republicans also spoke out against the fact the bill had not had a public hearing in the Assembly, and so their constituents had not had the opportunity to speak out on the bill.
Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, said although he supports labor rights for UW System employees, he thinks the bill goes “way over the line.” He fears that employees would only get one side of the story.
Rep. Fred Kessler, D-Milwaukee, however, said the bill is not intended to stifle discussion, but to prevent employers from intimidating their employees against unionizing. Many times, employees will hire private companies to discourage collective bargaining and make their employees attend meetings to listen to anti-union information.
The Assembly also passed an amended payday loans bill with a 62-36 vote, with regulations on auto title loans.
This is a bill that would put a limit on loans to $1500 and place more regulations on where lenders can set up shop in residential areas.
Roll-over loans would also be prohibited, which is when a borrower’s sum can be lumped into a larger loan at a later time and lead to what legislators have said is a vicious cycle of debt.
The Senate had already passed their own payday loans bill, which had a less harsh limit on the amount a borrower can take out. It would also ban roll-over loans, as well as auto title loans.
“We as a state cannot allow these predatory practices to continue” Sen. Jim Sullivan, D-Wauwatosa, said at a public hearing in March. “The number of payday loan institutions has gone up from 346 in 2004 to 548. This is an industry that feeds off of a viscous cycle of debt, and I believe that reform is only answer.”
Under one of the other controversial bills the Legislature was slated to take up, the state Superintedent, Tony Evers, would have more authority to intervene in low-performing school districts.
If Evers has identified a school district as struggling, he could direct the local school board to implement changes such as a standard curriculum and academic support programs.
For school districts that are in the 5 percent of the lowest-performing in the state, Evers could make the school board institute annual performance evalutions and academic staff training.
If a school is low-performing for four consecutive years, the superintendent could intervene himself and institute further change.
Some are saying this bill would take control away from local school boards and districts, however supporters think this may be one of the only ways to save some of Wisconsin’s struggling schools.
One of the bills on the Assembly’s agenda included legislation to authorize the creation of regional transit authorities throughout the state. Villages, towns, cities or counties could establish their own RTAs, or join together for combined RTAs that could, among other things, create public local transit systems, and develop specialized systems for older or disabled populations.
In a public hearing last month, Greg Seubert, transit director of Wausau Metro Ride, said the RTA bill offers a viable solution to the funding problems and cuts in services many transit systems have been experiencing in the state.
Seubert said, over the last decade, the pecentage of transit operating costs by the state has decreased, and the transit system has had little choice but to cut services and raise passenger fares. State funding for local transit system is also allocated porportionalluy according to the amount of expenses a transit system is incurring, so by cutting services, they are losing state funding.
