Sources in the Wisconsin Assembly told "The Dan O'Donnell Show" Thursday evening that today's delay in voting on the Governor's mask mandate was only temporary and that Republicans are poised to overturn the mandate next week.
"It was only a temporary delay," said one source. "We're going to vote next week and we're going to end it."
While the stated reason for the sudden move to delay Thursday's scheduled vote was concern over the potential loss of $50 million in food stamp aid if the mask mandate was repealed, sources indicated that Republican Assembly leaders were also looking into the possibility that the resolution the Senate passed earlier this week might inadvertently give the Governor greater emergency authority down the road.
Assembly Republicans are having the Legislative Fiscal Bureau look into the matter.
There was so much concern about the issue Thursday that a number of Republicans told leadership that they would prefer to hold a vote after it was resolved. This matches up with what Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told reporters earlier in the day.
"Our job is to guarantee when we pass legislation we know what the ramifications are," The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted him as saying. "Unfortunately our Senate colleagues passed it, they didn’t necessarily do the same due diligence."
The Senate passed the resolution in an 18-13 vote on Tuesday. Both houses of the Wisconsin Legislature need to pass a joint resolution to end Governor Evers' latest emergency order, which was issued earlier this month. The Governor's repeated declarations of new public health emergencies is being challenged in the Wisconsin Supreme Court as an unlawful effort to skirt state statutes, which require a joint resolution of the Wisconsin Assembly to extend public health emergencies beyond 60 days.