By Kirsten Adshead | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON — This week in Wisconsin politics was one of conflict.

Tea party activists took on the Government Accountability Board, or GAB, which also accepted recall signature challenges from incumbents hoping to outsmart recall committees.

A new fiscal forecast projecting a budget deficit had lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pointing fingers, while a plan to plug part of the hole with money from the national mortgage settlement garnered its own criticism.

And in Dane County, a judge handed the NAACP a minor defeat as part of a lawsuit protesting the state’s new voter identification law, which requires Wisconsinites to produce a state-issued photo ID before they are allowed to vote.

Progress on the recalls

A tea party group is continuing its efforts to verify signatures on recall petitions, even after GAB Director Kevin Kennedy said the agency’s rules don’t allow third-party challenges. GAB oversees the state's campaign finance, elections, ethics and lobbying laws.

Verify the Recall, a joint venture of the Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty and We the People of the Republic, tea party organizations aligned with fiscal conservative movements, bills itself as a grassroots effort of more than 12,000 volunteers.

Ross Brown, of Madison, one of the founders of Verify the Recall, said the group has found enough problematic signatures to cast doubt on whether Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and perhaps state Sen. Terry Moulton, R-Chippewa Falls, will face a recall election.

“We’ve found fake names in this process … we’ve found things that are questionable. We’ve found a series of signatures deemed invalid, because they are missing dates, or other things,” Brown said.

Lori Compas, of Fort Atkinson, who has led the campaign against Fitzgerald, said she is confident the senator will face a recall election.

Fitzgerald "can complain about the process all he wants, but the facts are the facts,” she told Wisconsin Reporter. “Anyone can go online and see the petitions, see our effort was honest and legitimate.”

All four GOP incumbents facing recall elections met Thursday’s deadline to file challenges to the signatures collected against them.

The GAB posted the challenges online Friday.

Gov. Scott Walker can challenge petitions to recall him through Feb. 27, and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch has until March 5 to file challenges.

Brown said Verify the Recall intends to challenge in court the GAB's decision not to accept third-party verification.

Walker fills budget hole with mortgage money

Wisconsin will get a $140 million share of a $25 billion national settlement with banks accused of mortgage and foreclosure abuses.

Walker and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced Thursday, however, that $25.6 million — the majority of the $31.6 million coming straight to the state government — will be used to plug a hole in the state budget.

In addition to the money going directly to the state, Wisconsin also is expected to receive:

• Up to an estimated $60 million in benefits from loan term modifications and other direct relief;
• About $17.2 million in uniform payments of up to $2,000 for eligible Wisconsin borrowers who lost their houses to foreclosure from Jan. 1, 2008, through Dec. 31, 2011, and suffered servicing abuses;
• About $31.3 million in refinancing benefits for eligible borrowers who are making payments but owe more than their houses are worth. 

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker in the 2010 gubernatorial election and may be a Democratic candidate if Walker faces a recall election this year, criticized the governor for using mortgage settlement funds to fill the budget hole.

Barrett told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that "hundreds and possibly thousands have lost their homes because of this bait-and-switch" by lenders who pushed subprime mortgages during the housing bubble.

"The worst thing that can happen now is for the state of Wisconsin to employ its own bait-and-switch," he said.

The mortgage settlement was announced on the same day a new fiscal estimate came out from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a nonpartisan office that provides fiscal and program analyses to the Wisconsin Legislature.

Projections show a $12 million budget surplus in fiscal 2012, ending June 30, and a deficit of $143.2 million by the end of the biennium, on June 30, 2013, according to the report.

The projected deficit, based on lowered economic expectations nationally and a decline in expected state tax collections, is a $215.9 million swing from the $72.7 million balance the bureau projected in October.

Voter ID law to take effect

Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Flanagan on Wednesday rejected a request from the NAACP to stop Wisconsin’s new voter ID law from taking effect next month.

Flanagan ruled that affidavits the NAACP presented explaining why people are having difficulty complying with the new law were insufficient evidence for him to stop the law from taking effect.

The lawsuit is among three that have been filed against the voter ID law.

The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, has filed a lawsuit in Dane County, while the American Civil Liberties Union has a federal lawsuit pending.

A Wisconsin Reporter analysis this week found that Wisconsin courts increasingly are being used as the final arbiters in new laws, particularly laws concerning controversial issues.

Videos of the week