| By Big Radio News Staff |

Local state lawmakers say a judge’s move to overturn Wisconsin Act 10 is a win for public workers and teachers.

Monday, Dane County judge Jacob Frost reversed former Governor Scott Walker’s Act 10 — the 13-year-old law that strips public employee unions of most of their their collective bargaining rights.

Democratic state Senator Mark Spreitzer says if Frost’s ruling survives legal challenge, it’ll do away with a law Spreitzer says has for years been a divisive force that has “pitted” Wisconsin workers — private sector union members, public safety union members, teachers and public employee union members — against one another.

Act 10 stripped back teachers’ and public employee unions’ collectively bargaining rights, eliminating their ability to bargain on health insurance benefits, and allowing them to bargain only on base wages based on the rate of inflation.

Democratic Assembly District-44 elect Ann Roe says Frost’s ruling could reverse years of damage to public education that she blames solely on Act 10.

Roe says the pressure of Act 10’s rules on employees’ paychecks–and their morale–for years has chased good teachers into retirement, and dissuaded young people from wanting to work in the state’s public school system.

Spreitzer says it could take a few years for some local governments, school districts, and public employee unions to re-calibrate how they’d collectively bargain.

Spreitzer says he thinks that would be enough time for local governments and taxpayers to ready for any fiscal impact while giving public employees and teachers a better long-term view of their own finances.

Republican lawmakers call Frost’s ruling Monday “political activism,” and some of those lawmakers say they’re calling for a legal appeal to keep Act 10 in place.

On Monday, Big Radio reached out to multiple local school districts and public employee unions for comment. As of late Monday, those groups had not responded.