Speaker Vos, Senator Fitzgerald
Leaders in the Wisconsin legislature are indicating that they’ll reject a new contract for Wisconsin State Patrol troopers – one which includes an average pay hike of 17-percent. “My hope is we can vote that contract down,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. “They can go back to the negotiating table, have a more reasonable offer that comes to the legislature, but at a time with such fiscal difficulties in the state of Wisconsin, I just can’t support a raise that big.”
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald also said that the Walker administration should renegotiate the package.
Members of the Wisconsin Troopers Association were among law enforcement unions exempted from the public employee bargaining limits in Act-10. The two-year contract was supposed to take effect in July of 2013, but the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations never acted on it. Union members ratified it about a year ago.
Most state employees got one-percent raises in each of the last two years, but no pay hikes are included for the next two years in Governor Scott Walker’s proposed budget.