Opinion

On, Wisconsin!

When in early 2011 a newly inaugurated Gov. Scott Walker put forward a plan to reform Wisconsin’s state-employee unions and bring their benefits more in line with the private sector, he was warned he was going too far.

When it was clear he had the votes to pass his reform, Democratic legislators fled the state and activists occupied the capital.

When the legislation passed, unions forced a recall election and managed to get some of the reforms thrown out in court.

But now it’s Walker who’s enjoying the last laugh.

Last June, he survived the recall election by a large margin. And on Friday, a federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality of his entire bill.

Meaning that he’s been vindicated both politically and judicially.

Governors in Albany, Trenton and Hartford might do well to take note.

The key elements of Walker’s Act 10 prohibited public employees other than first-responders from collectively bargaining for anything but base wages. It also forced public unions to be recertified annually and ended the automatic dues checkoff.

A lower-court judge tossed out key elements of the law last September. But on Friday, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit overruled him, upholding Act 10 “in its entirety.”

That’s a huge win. And its message for other states cannot be overstated.

As Walker noted, Act 10 was “vital in balancing Wisconsin’s $3.6 billion budget deficit without increasing taxes, without massive public-employee layoffs and without cuts to programs like Medicaid.”

Granted, the tri-state region is not Wisconsin. Other political factors are at work here.

But Scott Walker’s success in getting his reforms through the teeth of this opposition — and in a state that was the birthplace of modern progressivism and went for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012 — surely sends a message that fortune favors the brave.

That’s something governors in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — all trying to balance budgets bloated by public-union excesses — might think about next time they are advised that real reform just isn’t possible.