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Two Republicans in the state Legislature are shopping around a bill that would allow constituents to fine their legislators for missing work. The legislation – called the Accountability to Constituents Act – would only apply to prolonged, unexcused absences, such as when lawmakers, like 14 Senate Democrats did earlier this earlier, flee the state to stall pending legislation.

frank lasee

State Sen. Frank Lasee (R-De Pere), a former state representative elected to the state senate last year, and State Rep. Tyler August (R-Walworth), a freshman, are seeking co-sponsors for the bill, according to a statement they released last week.

The Democrats fled Wisconsin for Illinois for three weeks in late February and early March in an attempt to block passage of Gov. Scott Walker’s Budget Repair Bill, which, if put into effect, would limit the collective bargaining rights of most public employee unions in the state.

By leaving the state, the Democrats disrupted the two-thirds “supermajority” required to pass budget items. The Republican majority, one seat short of meeting the quorum requirement, removed fiscal items from the bill and passed the union restrictions. The Democrats returned shortly thereafter. The legislation is still being fought in court.

Tyler August

In the Democrats’ absence, Senate Republicans voted to impose $100-a-day fines on the Democrats for missing session days but never collected them. Senate leadership also threatened to withhold the Democrats’ paychecks but never did so.

The bill from Lasee and August would allow constituents to request the fines of $500 a day when a legislator “is absent without leave for more than three legislative days.” The fines could not come from gifts or campaign funds. “The fines must be paid from personal money,” the sponsors say.

“If they run, they pay,” Lasee said in a statement. “Legislators are elected to go to Madison to represent their constituents and vote on important legislation that is before them, whether they like the legislation or not.”

Another such flight seems unlikely, at least for now. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald told the Journal Sentinel shortly after the 14 Democrats returned to Wisconsin in March that “he’d received assurances from Democrats that they would participate in future session days, relieving his fears they would again leave the state to prevent passage of the state 2011-13 budget later this year.”

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