Vetoes by Governor Change Eligibility for Retirement Benefits and Collective Bargaining Rights But May Not Impact Many Individuals
2011-06/27 Dean R. Dietrich Printer Friendly PDF Version

On Sunday, Governor Walker signed Assembly Bill 40, known as the Budget Bill, into law as Wisconsin Act 32.  The 532-page document is the new financial road map for the State of Wisconsin.  A number of substantive changes have been incorporated into the Budget Bill and along with the Budget Repair Bill, have significantly changed the landscape for collective bargaining and employee benefits for local government employers.

The Governor issued three vetoes that have some impact on local government employers at the time of signing this Bill into law.  One of the vetoes affected collective bargaining rights for public sector employees.  Under the language of the Budget Bill, as now amended, any bargaining unit that is comprised of “an emergency medical service provider for emergency medical service departments” would be considered a public safety employee and, therefore, eligible for the full panoply of collective bargaining rights as amended to affect all public safety employee bargaining units.  This legislative provision originally applied to emergency medical services departments in Door County and Washara County where bargaining units exist of only EMT personnel; however, the language now applies to any bargaining unit of EMTs that may come to exist in the State of Wisconsin.  This may not impact many employers at this point but may be a topic of interest for future bargaining units. 

The second veto relates to eligibility for WRS payments if an employee is deemed a required participant in the Wisconsin Retirement System but is employed by the local government unit for less than five (5) years.  The vetoed legislation would have allowed a participating employee with less than five (5) years of service to receive a prorated amount of retirement benefits based on a prorated amount of service up to five (5) years.  Through the veto process, the legislation now provides that a participant who has less than five (5) years of credible service would not be eligible for any type of annuity or payment under the Wisconsin Retirement System if leaving employment prior to the five years of service.  This five-year eligibility timeline would apply to any new employee who becomes eligible for WRS participation after the effective date of the new law.

The third veto eliminated a new state statute that codified the requirement that a local government unit pay employer contributions into the Wisconsin Retirement System “in an amount that is at least equal to all employee-required contributions under that retirement system.”  This proposed new statute §66.0604 appeared to be a codification of a requirement that generally existed under the retirement statutes (Chapter 40) but also seemed to imply that the local government unit could wait until December 31 to make all contributions required for employees for that calendar year.  Governor Walker vetoed this provision at the request of the Employee Trust Funds Department because of the confusion created by this new statute.

Local governments now have the task of assimilating the changes in the Budget Repair Bill and the Budget Bill into their local operations and beginning the process of managing their employees under this new environment of collective bargaining and this new environment of local government human resource management.  Ruder Ware attorneys are available to help local government units make these changes in order to create more efficiency and productivity. 

Please feel free to contact Dean Dietrich, the author of this article, or any of the attorneys in the Local Governments & Municipalities Focus Team, or the School Districts and Educational Institutions Focus Team of Ruder Ware: Steve Immel, Jeff Jones, Steve Lipowski, Randi Osberg, Ron Rutlin, Mary Ellen Schill, Bryan Symes, or Kevin J.T. Terry, if you have questions in regard to this update.

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