David Michael Miller
It looked too good to be true. Maybe it was.
A few weeks ago, the State Assembly passed important legislation to close the state’s troubled youth prisons and replace them with smaller regional facilities and county-run programs. The plan, based on national models and championed by Democrat Evan Goyke of Milwaukee, had the support of Republican Gov. Scott Walker. It passed the Assembly on a 95-0 vote. For once, it seemed state government was actually functioning like a body of professional adults.
Then, in a power play, Speaker Robin Vos adjourned the Assembly for the session. That meant that everything the Assembly had passed, including the youth prison legislation, was dumped in the Senate on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. With the Assembly gone, the Senate couldn’t change anything they had passed without killing the bill and taking the blame for it.
There’s little doubt that Vos’ move was retaliation for his feeling of betrayal over agreements he made with Walker and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald to end the state budget deadlock last year. Vos thought he had ironclad commitments from Walker and Fitzgerald — only to find the majority leader and the governor later brokered their own deal for Walker to line-item veto things the Speaker wanted.
Vos texted Walker at the time, “I won’t forget this.” And he didn’t. Excluded from a meeting between Walker and Fitzgerald over the budget, Vos retaliated by keeping Fitzgerald from any role in crafting the Lincoln Hills legislation. Now, Fitzgerald isn’t concealing the fact that he’s willing to scuttle the bill — not out of any real concern with substance, just out of spite for not being included in the process. He’s going to teach Vos a lesson after Vos tried to teach him a lesson. Both men are acting like kids, even as they use kids and staff at Lincoln Hills as pawns in their game of one-upmanship.
If the impasse isn’t broken by the time the Senate finishes its work on Tuesday, nothing will happen at Lincoln Hills — where allegations of abuse of residents and unsafe conditions for staff remain under federal investigation — until next year at the earliest.
Capitol insiders think there’s a chance that eventually somebody will blink, if only because Republicans don’t want this hanging around their necks as they go into November. But whatever happens, you can be sure it won’t be because GOP leaders give a damn about the substance of the issue.
This is all on the Republicans. They control the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature. The minority Democrats offered ideas and cooperation toward a solution. It’s only petty political grievances between the state’s top three Republican leaders that will prolong the misery at Lincoln Hills — which, it turns out, is not the most dysfunctional institution in the state of Wisconsin.
Editor's Note: After this story was published, the Associated Press reported that the Senate was nearing a deal that would advance the Lincoln Hills plan in the Legislature.That deal may require an extraordinary session of the state Assembly later this week.