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Legislative Update

June 24, 2005

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Governor's Action

On June 22 the Governor signed into law AB 438/ ACT 15. The act provides $22.5 million GPR this year to cover a fuel and utility shortfall for the UW System.

Legislative Activity

After an all night session, the State Assembly passed the 2005-2007 biennial budget, as recommended by the Joint Committee on Finance. The vote was 56-40 with 4 Republicans (Kreibich, Lasee, Nass, and Vukmir) joining all of the Democrats in voting against the budget. It is expected that the Senate will
A comparative summary of budget recommendations (Governor’s budget to Joint Finance Committee/Assembly approved budget) is available online at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lfb/2005-07budget/JFC/tableofcontents.htm (pages 721 through 737).

The Assembly Children and Families and the Senate Judiciary, Corrections and Privacy committees held a joint public hearing on Monday, June 20. The committees took up AB 499/SB 243, which prohibits human cloning and parthenogenesis and establishes penalties for violators. This bill bans both therapeutic and reproductive cloning. AB499 was made a special order of business on the June 23 Assembly calendar. The Assembly voted to pass the bill with three amendments on a vote of 59-38. Text of the bill/s may be found at: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2005/data/AB-499.pdf and http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2005/data/SB-243.pdf. Legislators did receive a letter on June 21, jointly authored by Jim Haney, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce; Mark Bugher, University Research Park; and Tom Still, Wisconsin Technology Council, urging amendment of AB499/SB243 to allow therapeutic cloning (which has a direct relationship to stem cell research).

AB-343, prohibiting the University of Wisconsin System from advertising the availability of, prescribing, and dispensing certain hormonal medication to prevent pregnancy, passed the Assembly on a 49-41 vote on June 16. It has been referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Children, Families, Aging & Long Term Care (chair is Senator Roessler).

Rep. Marlin Schneider has introduced AB-503 (on June 17) which provides for the establishment of ‘domestic partnerships’ and extends health care coverage to domestic partners of UW System employees and annuitants and state employees and annuitants; further, this bill defines marriage as a civil contract between one man and one woman. The bill has been referred to the Committee on Insurance.

Rep. Jeffrey Wood is circulating a draft for and seeking additional sponsors of a bill relating to approval of collegiate transfer programs in certain technical college districts. This bill seeks to direct the WTCS Board to approve a liberal arts collegiate transfer program in any technical college district in which there is not a UW 2-year college campus.

Federal Update

On Thursday, June 23, the U.S. House of Representatives supported an amendment offered by U.S. Rep. Obey to restore a $100 million cu the House Appropriations Committee had made to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.