Their Bills Would Vastly Expand State Government, and Enable Dismantling of Our Administrative Code
Today, in a joint hearing of the Assembly Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency Committee and the Senate Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs Committee, we heard four bills authored by Republicans that would seriously jeopardize basic protections and government services. The Democratic members of the Assembly Committee on Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency issued the following statements:
Democratic Ranking Member on the Committee, Representative Mike Bare (D-Verona), said: “These bills would allow for a systematic dismantling of basic protections and government services that exist in administrative code. The lead Republican author said the intent of the bills is to ‘Make JCRAR great again,’ but what they’re really trying to do is make it unconstitutional again and restore their legislative veto over rulemaking. The bills will also cause a massive expansion of the size and scope of the executive branch, and hand a blank check to conservative law firms to sue the state. One of those conservative law firms, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, confirmed these bills will face constitutional challenges, and that these bills are not a silver bullet for ensuring the Legislature can exercise its oversight role.”
Representative Angelina Cruz (D-Racine), said: “Legislation should be crafted with one goal in mind: to serve the people more effectively, and not to create bureaucratic chaos that undermines critical services. These bills do nothing to streamline government—instead, they create unnecessary hurdles that delay, weaken, or outright block the delivery of services our constituents depend on. If we truly care about efficient and accountable government, we should be investing in solutions that improve outcomes, not political maneuvers that create dysfunction.”
Representative Francesca Hong (D-Madison), said: “The legislation brought by legislative Republicans does the opposite of shrinking government, it expands the responsibilities of our agencies, weakens expert rule-making, and seeks to issue gigantic paydays to far-right groups like WILL that will now have a financial incentive to bring more politically motivated lawsuits against our executive branch. To be clear, Legislative Republicans weren’t seeking to regulate government today, but to distort and confuse the rule-making process in order to dismantle it”.
