A Potentially Costly Election

The Costly Supreme Court Election

This April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election will almost certainly be the most expensive judicial race in American history…in more than ways than one. The candidates and their allies will spend a fortune, sure, but the election’s outcome may end up costing taxpayers more than anyone.

In December, a Dane County Circuit Court judge struck down Act 10, Governor Scott Walker’s landmark 2011 law that, according to the most recent MacIver Institute analysis, has saved Wisconsin a total of $31 billion.

Even before the Supreme Court accepted a direct appeal of the case, (alleged) conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn announced that he would recuse himself since as Walker’s legal counsel he helped author parts of Act 10. Without him, conservatives are outnumbered 4-2 and the Court’s liberals would all vote to overturn the law.

Left-wing Justice Janet Protasiewicz should also recuse herself after repeatedly prejudging the case by blasting Act 10 on the campaign trail two years ago, but since she lacks Hagedorn’s moral standards she most likely will not. Fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring when her replacement is elected in April and sworn in this summer, so the Supreme Court race will likely decide whether Act 10 is repealed or not.

Unlike the deeply unethical Protasiewicz before him, conservative candidate Brad Schimel has not said how he would rule on Act 10, but it may be safely assumed that since he was Attorney General while Walker was Governor, he would not vote to overturn it. His liberal opponent Susan Crawford, on the other hand, absolutely would.

She was the lead attorney for the Madison Teachers Union when it unsuccessfully challenged Act 10 before the Wisconsin Supreme Court shortly after it was enacted in 2011.

“This is not just about restrictions on collective bargaining, there are a whole host of provisions in this law that are really aimed at crippling employee unions,” she said at the time. “The constellation of the provisions in this law operate as a whole to essentially eliminate public employee unions and eliminate the right of employees to associate with them.”

Nothing she has said or done in the 14 years since would suggest that she thinks any differently about Act 10 today. And she is just as wrong today as she was back then about what the law actually did.

It did not kill public employee unions in Wisconsin; it simply ended their ability to hold local government entities hostage by limiting the issues on which unions could collectively bargain. It also forced public employees to pay just a small amount of their own health insurance premiums and contribute just a little toward their own pensions.

Prior to Act 10, they had been paying nothing for either one: Taxpayers were stuck with the entire bill. Even after the law was passed, public employees were only required to pay 12.6% of their health insurance premium costs and 50% of their pension contributions. By contrast, private sector employees pay an average of 28% of their premiums and don’t have pensions at all.

MacIver’s most recent analysis of Act 10 found that real total savings have hit $31 billion over the past 14 years. That amounts to $5344.83 for every man, woman, and child in Wisconsin or $21,379.32 for the average a family of four.

Act 10 has thus saved the average Wisconsin family $1,527.09 per year, and if it is repealed, the average family will pay an additional $1,527.09 each year in perpetuity. But that doesn't tell the whole story: Because Act 10 has saved local school districts so much money, they haven't been forced to go to referendum as often as they otherwise would have.

And school districts have gone to referendum a whole lot over the past 14 years. Last year alone, school districts put 241 funding increases on the ballot and voters passed 169 of them for a staggering $4.4 billion in new tax revenue. Dozens more school referenda will appear on ballots this Spring.

If this many school districts are raising taxes while their Act 10 savings are still in place, one shudders to think how often they will demand more money in new referenda once the law is repealed.

And make no mistake, with Crawford on the bench it will be repealed. She tried and failed to do so as a teacher’s union attorney 14 years ago, but she will finally get her wish as a Supreme Court justice. And Wisconsin’s taxpayers will be the ones paying for it.