Friebert, Finerty, & St. John, S.C.

Attorneys at Law
Two Plaza East Suite 1250 330 East Kilbourn Ave. Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone 414-271-0130 Fax 414-272-8191 www.ffsj.com

January 8, 2012

To all concerned: The GABs assignment of the January 17 due date is largely a function of math. It began with the registration of the recall committee on November 15. The recall statute, 9.10, Wis. Stats., provides 60 days for the circulation of signatures. Because the day after the event that starts a clock ticking is day 1, a truism that applies throughout the statutes, see 990.001(4), Wis. Stats., the calendar confirms that day 60 is January 14 a Saturday. Section 990.001(4) proceeds to specifically state that when the last day of a time period falls on a Saturday and the agency to which a filing or submission is due does not have duly established official office hours that day (and the GAB does not), such act may be done on the next succeeding day that is not a Sunday or a legal holiday. January 15 is a Sunday, so that cannot be the due date. And Monday January 16 is Martin Luther King Day, a legal holiday. Section 995.20, Wis. Stats., lists Wisconsins legal holidays. The list includes January 15. The last sentence of the statute states that whenever any legal holiday falls on Sunday, the succeeding Monday shall be the legal holiday. In 2012, January 15 is a Sunday so January 16 is the legal holiday. In sum, our 60th day is January 14 a non-business day. The next day the GAB is open for business is January 17, our actual due date.1 Neither the statutes nor the calendar can be read a different way. There is not even a silly argument to the contrary. And it should be remembered that the mechanics of the calendaring process do not come from the law of recall or even election law they govern the way time is computed in connection with the enormous number of deadlines, acts, time limits, etc., that exist across all of Wisconsins public administration. There simply is no argument for a different deadline. While the details of the calendars arithmetic, above, are technical and boring, they are not complex or open to different interpretations. As a separate matter, we have relied on the fact that the GAB assigned us the January 17 deadline. Tweaking the rules right before the game starts is one thing. But the notion of changing the deadline after the fact is unthinkable, even if an argument could be made that the law permitted it. Whatever one might think of the GAB, it is an agency of government. It gave us a deadline and in doing so, if gave hundreds of thousands of us the legal right to rely on it.

We should not, and will not be, obtaining additional signatures after January 14, 2012.

And GAB was correct in assigning January 17 as our deadline. The letter setting that date reflected the same calendar math set out above. As a related point, recall petitions, like all election petitions, are governed by the principle of substantial compliance. If the petitions contain the key required information and are effectively certified, signatures gathered within the 60 day window will be deemed valid. It is a foregone conclusion that we will file many tens of thousands of valid signatures more than needed to force Scott Walker to face the voters. No dirty tricks and no legal gamesmanship will change this.

Best Regards,

Jeremy P. Levinson, Esq. Counsel for Committee to Recall Walker