Idiots. The Dane County supervisors have intentionally tied their own hands and limited their ability to manage the county.

As their years-long holdout against Wisconsin’s 2011 collective bargaining law ends this month, thousands of public-sector workers in Dane County will lose union protections. But some significant and unusual non-union rights will replace them.

In consultation with employee union members, the county board has adopted rules that greatly limit the authority it could have claimed in deciding disciplinary matters and employee disputes over pay, benefits and working conditions.

Instead of being able to decide those things unilaterally as Act 10 allows, the county passed an ordinance and employee handbook that allows employees to bring in impartial arbitrators whose awards can be rejected by the county board only in limited circumstances.

County and union officials say the rules are meant to re-create, to the extent legally possible, the union rights taken away by the controversial state law that banned collective bargaining and payroll dues collections for most public employees.