Wisconsin officials couldn't agree Friday about whether an explosive law taking away nearly all public worker collective bargaining rights was about to take effect after a nonpartisan legislative bureau published it despite a court order blocking implementation.
The head of the Legislative Reference Bureau that made the move Friday afternoon, as well as a nonpartisan attorney for the Legislature, said the action was merely procedural. But Republican legislative leaders, who encouraged the bureau's action, insisted it meant the law would take effect Saturday.
Gov. Scott Walker's office, meanwhile, would issue only a vague statement saying simply that the administration planned to carry out the law as required.
The action late Friday was just the latest in a series of parliamentary and legal maneuvers employed over the past six weeks to enact a bill that prompted Senate Democrats to flee the state to block a vote and brought on waves of Capitol protests that grew to more than 85,000 people as Wisconsin became the center of a national fight over union rights.
A state judge declined to take emergency action on the matter. In an order issued late Friday, Dane County Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien said she didn't know what legal significance there was to the publication of the law on the Legislature's website. Ordering it removed, as she said the district attorney wanted her to require, would mean nothing, the judge said.
