Progressive Thinking

For 50 years, the Legislative Audit Bureau has worked quietly behind the scenes monitoring funds and agencies to ensure state government delivers quality services.

MADISON - “Happy Birthday!” I told eighty auditors and other legislative leaders at a recent Capitol gathering. The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) recently celebrated 50 years of service to the people of the State of Wisconsin.

LAB is the agency that works quietly behind the scenes to ensure state government delivers quality services. The agency has earned high marks for its work in national circles and criticism from both sides of the aisle in its detailed depiction of problems and recommended changes to state government.

As described in the words of former State Auditor Janet Mueller, the LAB serves as “the Steward of the People’s Money.”

You might not have heard of the LAB, but they work methodically to ensure your tax dollars are well spent.

Half of the Audit Bureau team focuses on financial auditing. As a highly trained team of certified public accountants, these professionals are skilled in government accounting. They check and recheck records, and in some cases, must reconstruct records to review the accuracy of agencies’ reports.

The financial auditors are responsible for completing many audits required by state and federal law. Their work includes monitoring funds overseen by the State Investment Board; the State Lottery Fund; the State of Wisconsin itself and the Single Audit – a comprehensive accounting of all federal dollars flowing through state government. The details of the Single Audit are truly astounding as, thirty cents of every dollar the state spends is from Uncle Sam - with some programs larger. For example, forty cents of every transportation dollar spent is federal as is fifty cents of every health dollar spent.

Financial auditors answer questions like “How much money was spent?” and “Are adequate safeguards in place to assure money was properly accounted for?”

Program auditors make up the other half of the Audit Bureau team. They answer questions about state programs such as “How well is the program working?” and “How might the state improve service delivery?”

Program auditors often work closely with financial auditors. For example, the troubled Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s performance was examined thoroughly by both financial and program auditors in three separate audits.

Early audits of WEDC showed no clear budget or consistent accounting practices in an agency that distributes tens of millions in grants and loans and hundreds of millions in tax credits. Even the most recent audit found WEDC lost track of loans. Millions in other loans were written off when companies failed to deliver promised jobs. WEDC broke federal rules and, as a consequence, Wisconsin paid penalties. Remarkably, WEDC failed to independently verify that companies given tax dollars to create jobs actually did as they promised.

Sometimes the auditors do such a good job, state leaders want to get rid of them. I think of this as “Killing the Messenger.” For example, in the FY 15-17 Governor’s budget, he removed the requirement for LAB to financially audit WEDC. Thankfully the legislature replaced the requirement, and LAB will issue a new WEDC audit this spring.

Following the release of the third disturbing audit of the WEDC, two Assemblymen, Rep. Craig (R-Big Bend) and Rep. Jarchow (R-Balsam Lake) circulated a bill to abolish the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and replace the agency with partisan “Inspector Generals” to be housed in the very agencies they oversee.

Again, thoughtful lawmakers prevailed and the bill died. Wisconsin needs more nonpartisan oversight, not less. We need LAB’s steadfast efforts in evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of state government.

Later this month, the Legislative Audit Committee, which I serve as ranking minority member, will meet to take up a new crisis in state government: the care of veterans at the Wisconsin King Veterans Home.

All citizens can contact the Legislative Audit Bureau through a toll free hotline (1-877-FRAUD-17) for citizens to report fraud, waste and mismanagement in state government.

Congratulations to State Auditor Joe Chrisman and his dedicated staff, and to former state auditors Jan Mueller and Dale Cattanach who helped make LAB the award winning team it is today. Wishing the LAB many more years of service as the Steward of the People’s Money!

In every quarter since the first Walker Budget took effect, Wisconsin has trailed the nation in total private job creation. The Republican plan is not working.

ASHLAND - Quarterly numbers released Wednesday show that Wisconsin lost 509 manufacturing jobs. For 19 straight quarters Wisconsin has trailed the nation in total private job creation. That’s every quarter since the first Walker Budget took effect in 2011.

My Republican colleagues keep saying that they have a plan for growing Wisconsin’s economy. They’ve been saying it for 6 years, but simply saying something doesn’t make it true.

Take the Manufacturing & Agriculture Tax Credit, which took effect in 2013. “What we’re trying to do is grow jobs, so it’s very much in keeping with that,” budget committee chair Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said. “Come to Wisconsin. Make things here,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Burlington).

Earlier this summer I released a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo exposing that 20,527 fewer manufacturing jobs were created in the three years after the Manufacturing Tax Credit took effect than in the three years before.

This week’s news is even worse for defenders of this shameless giveaway. We didn’t just create fewer jobs, we lost manufacturing jobs. And the credit is going to take $209 million of working taxpayers’ money next year and put it in the pockets of wealthy individuals who aren’t using it to create new jobs. 11 people earning more than $35 million will be handed $21.5 million of your money.

The plan isn’t working. It’s time to stop picking working taxpayers’ pockets for this entitlement for the already entitled. Handouts like the Manufacturing Tax Credit are preventing us from making investments in our roads and schools. Those investments would actually grow our economy.

We see ourselves stuck with two choices, and not just in presidential elections. But we have more power than we know, more choices than we realize.

ALTOONA, WI - Henry Ford famously said his customers could get one of his cars in any color they wanted as long as it was black. American consumers have come a long way since the days of the Model T.

American voters haven’t. Ford’s “they can have what I say they can have” philosophy is nowhere to be seen anymore in commerce but it still looms large in elections. Some 150 years ago Boss Tweed quipped “I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.” It’s not so very different today.

As Daily Show host Trevor Noah recently wisecracked: “When it comes to everything except presidential candidates, Americans have the most choices for more things that anyone else in the world. Like, I can walk into a supermarket — any supermarket in America — and choose from literally 400 different kinds of yogurt…. And yet, when it comes to selecting America’s leader for the next four years, you’re stuck with two choices: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Or to put that in yogurt terms: vanilla and Sriracha baboon anus.”

This is the truth, but not the whole truth. We see ourselves stuck with two choices alright, and not just in presidential elections but all partisan elections. We can vote for major party nominees who occasionally win but rarely do what we want once elected and regularly sell us out. Or we can vote for minor party candidates who seem less compromised and more likely to act in our interests but never win. An inadequate and profoundly unsatisfying choice, to say the least.

Here’s what’s amazing. As demanding as we are as consumers, that’s just how passively accepting we are as citizens.

We don’t have to be passive. We don’t have to be accepting. We have more power than we know. And we have more choices than we realize.

When major party establishments offer us bleak and bleaker, our choices are not limited to either holding our noses and selecting what we consider the lesser of evils or saying the hell with it and casting a protest vote for someone with no chance of winning. There is another option.

Almost exactly a century ago, farmers in North Dakota were at wit’s end about the insensitivity of elected officials to their economic plight. A couple of socialists organized tens of thousands of disgruntled North Dakotans and lined up reform candidates to run for office all across the state. But they didn’t run under the Socialist Party banner. Their movement and their candidates were embedded in North Dakota’s ruling Republican Party and in a few short years they took it over.

Almost exactly a century later, at the beginning of this decade, anti-government feelings smoldered in poor, recession-ravaged communities and was fanned by rich right-wing ideologues, exploding into a prairie fire that swept the country. It was dubbed the Tea Party, but it was not a party at all. Its organizers took cues from those North Dakota socialists and embedded their insurgency within the Republican Party, and in a few short years lightning struck again in the same place. The GOP was pretty much taken over.

Now go all the way back to the 19th Century. The Progressives of the late 1800s tried for a time to establish a separate party, but did not truly gain traction until their kind were embedded in both major parties. Once you had Teddy Roosevelt successfully running for president as a Progressive on the Republican ticket and some years later Woodrow Wilson winning the presidency as a Progressive on the Democratic ticket, the major parties had no choice but to embrace the Progressive agenda and enact Progressive reforms. America was radically transformed.

Consider what was done by Wisconsin’s legislature in 1911 alone. Child labor laws and protections for women in the workplace were put in place. Workers’ compensation was established to help injured laborers. And so much more. Railroad regulation. Insurance reform. The first state life insurance program anywhere in the country. The nation’s first system of taxation based on ability to pay, namely the progressive income tax. America’s first vocational, technical and adult education system. All done by a legislature made up almost entirely of Republicans and Democrats. All done by Progressives embedded in those major parties.

All done by people who refused to accept the dismal choice we assume we are stuck with today.

MADISON - I applaud the efforts by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to make their campus more inclusive. They are taking the appropriate steps to ensure every student, regardless of the color of their skin, is treated fairly at UW-Madison.

As our flagship university, it speaks volumes that UW-Madison's leadership is listening to the student body's call to create an environment that reflects and respects the backgrounds of everyone. I applaud the university leadership, the student leadership, and activists for working together to improve and strengthen UW-Madison.

We live in a world made of people from all walks of life and backgrounds. It is important that students' educational climate reflects the multicultural and diverse world they will join after leaving collegiate life. The investment UW-Madison is making better prepares our young students for this transition.

As a mother who has a child attending UW-Madison, I am grateful the school is taking the appropriate steps to ensure she receives an education in the most inclusive environment possible.

Spending on Wisconsin’s Medicaid Program, which provides health care for low-income families, is going up. Where is the money going? Is health care really costing that much more?

MADISON - Medicaid is the joint federal-state program that pays hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and other health professionals to provide care for low-income families, including frail elderly persons and individuals with disabilities. It has been the fastest growing part of the state budget.

What’s going on with Medicaid spending? Where is the money going? Is health care really costing that much more?

We pondered these questions at a recent gathering of regional health administrators in La Crosse. I shared budget numbers from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The state budget is growing – it’s $7.5 billion more than a half-dozen years ago – with health accounting for about $3 billion of the increase.

But the number of people served by the state’s programs grew by only 20,000. Did each new person really cost the state $12,500 a month?

Why are costs increasing so fast at a time when the number served by the state has slowed?

After the presentation, a local health administrator said to me, “I wonder what happened to all the money. The hospitals haven’t seen a raise in a long time. I don’t think the doctors have either.” I can add from many conversations with local administrators, nursing homes haven’t seen much of a raise either.

Just where did the money go?

In 2011, an audit by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) shed some light on the Medicaid program. Auditors found the Department of Health Services (DHS) spent 40% of administration on contracts with private companies to manage the state’s programs. In four years, those contract dollars increased 73%. Almost 1,100 full-time private company employees are working under just one of those contracts.

Auditors reported contract amendments to private companies running Medicaid were made without legislative authorization and without budgeted appropriations. The contracts were no bid and were not reported to DHS’ own purchasers, accountants or procurement managers.

Contract dollars have also increased over the years. For example, in fiscal years 2016-17, private companies getting paid to administer Medicaid reaped a 30% increase or $120 million more than the prior budget.

Most astounding, auditors found DHS could not answer basic questions about how much each “subprogram” (i.e., BadgerCare, SeniorCare, Family Care) cost taxpayers.

“If my CFO [chief financial officer] couldn’t tell me how much we were spending, he would be fired on the spot,” one hospital administrator told our group.

Others had similar reactions. “What you are asking from DHS is what we do every day,” one told me. “We are constantly doing the math to see how to deliver better service at a lower cost.”

Getting health programs running properly benefits all of us. Money going directly to well-run health service means people stay healthy and are more productive. Money spent on no bid health contracts to companies who can’t help the state answer basic management questions – like what are we spending the money on – is money that can’t buy roads, teachers or nurses.

Wise management means looking at all options for funding. Using federal money to cover health costs frees up state dollars for other investments.

For example, expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act would cover an additional 83,000 people and save almost $400 million state dollars in the next budget.

This is money that could be spent on roads, teachers, or nurses.

Lawmakers need to ask detailed questions about health care – just like every other program. The department needs to start providing detailed answers. Let’s begin with “Where did the money go?”

Today’s Republican Party seems bound and determined to implode. For you Democrats, there is no shortage of opportunity. Are you up for it?

ALTOONA, WI - Now here’s a telling measure of how weird our political system has gotten. The Republican Party is more unpopular than it’s been in nearly 25 years and is turning more people off with each passing day, yet the GOP is undeniably the majority party in this country.

Republicans control Congress. They control two-thirds of statehouses across America. Here in Wisconsin, they control a majority of congressional seats, both houses of the state legislature, the governor’s office and the state Supreme Court.

Elections don’t lie. As much as voters dislike the Republicans, they’ve repeatedly shown they’d rather have Republicans running the government than Democrats.

The Democratic establishment shows little willingness to change and little openness to outside advice. In all likelihood this will fall on deaf ears, but here goes anyway. Democrats, you won’t likely find your way out of the political wilderness unless you:

• Stop trying to shame voters into backing candidates that wide swaths of the population find unappealing with scare tactics about what disaster will befall us if the latest ever-more-extreme Republican wins and how the catastrophe will be all their fault if they don’t vote Democratic. Only saying the other side is worse is an admission that your side is bad. Aspire to thrill voters instead.
• Stop blaming voters for your defeats with the lame excuse that they are voting against their own best interests. Figure out how they see their interests and make them a better offer. Voters can be persuaded to realign. FDR turned a whole bunch of Republicans into Democrats, and Reagan turned a bunch of Democrats into Republicans. If you are consistently falling short of 50% in elections, that’s not the voters’ fault. It’s on the losing party to do something different to become more appealing to more people.
• Stop using the vast Republican spin machine as an excuse for repeated losses. Of course opponents go to great lengths to badmouth you. Always have and always will. You can’t control that. Focus on what you can control.
• Focus less on policies that benefit a particular constituency and more on programs with universal reach where everyone pays and everyone benefits. Wisconsin Democrats staked the last several elections on bargaining rights for a small minority of the state’s workers in just one sector of the economy, and lost decisively. This kind of strategy reinforces the image of a party devoted to benefiting favored interests and also makes the party vulnerable to divide-and-conquer tactics that were indeed successfully employed by Republican opponents.
• Think long and hard about the fact that lower-income white working-class voters, especially those living in small towns and rural areas, used to support Democrats but most no longer do. There’s no shortage of clues about why they now prefer the Republicans. In those clues is a call to think bigger, to start doing things for blue-collar workers the Republicans won’t. Rebuilding governing majorities depends on it.
• Try to become more than a confederation of interest groups, confined to their own issue silos, operating largely in isolation and sometimes even working at cross purposes. Doing this requires agreeing on and then expressing overarching values that knit these interests together. Republicans do a far better job staying focused on bedrock values while Democrats concentrate on issues and try to persuade people with a torrent of facts while not being willing or able to confidently describe a coherent underlying world view.

And then if and when voters decide to trust Democrats with power, you need to actually do what you say you believe in. No more hand-wringing about how acting boldly could cost you the next election. Doing little or nothing when given the opportunity to steer the ship of state has cost you way more elections than decisive action ever has.

Today’s Republican Party seems bound and determined to implode. Democrats, there is no shortage of opportunity for your party. There also is no shortage of doubt that you will take advantage of the opening.

Green Bay Manufacturing Wages Down by $2,197, Appleton by $1,971. Janesville-Beloit area leads march to the bottom with $6,555 decline since 2015.

STATEWIDE - Leading into Labor Day 2016, Citizen Action of Wisconsin released data today which shows dramatically declining wages for Wisconsin manufacturing workers in every metro area.

Citizen Action was joined on a media call this morning by State Senator Dave Hansen, WI AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Stephanie Bloomingdale, State Representative LaTanya Johnson, and State Representative Evan Goyke. (audio recording here).

Earlier this week, Citizen Action of Wisconsin showed that the outsourcing Wisconsin jobs is continuing at an alarming rate.

Another impact of rigged global trade and state economic development programs shown dramatically in the data released today is shrinking wages for jobs that remain in Wisconsin.

“Labor Day weekend is a good time to focus on the fact that when Wisconsin workers are forced to compete with low wage countries, where the right to form unions is brutally suppressed, the jobs that stay here pay less and less,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin looked at the latest federal data, and found a startling decline in manufacturing wages in every Wisconsin metro area. Real wages (adjusted for inflation) are going down for manufacturing workers in every Wisconsin metro area. On average, annual wages declined $1,430 between 2010 and 2015.

Annual Average Wages for Manufacturing/Production Workers in Major Wisconsin Metropolitan Areas

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, inflation adjusted annual average wages in 2015 dollars)

“Declining wages may be good for multinational corporations who have no loyalty to any country, but they are a disaster for Wisconsin’s economy,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “Declining wages damage small business because workers have less to spend at the local grocery store, supper club, coffee shop, and dry cleaner. The result is less employment, and a further drag on local economies.”

"People are feeling like they have less in their pockets, and this data proves they are right," said Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary Treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. “When families are not able to put that kind of money into their pocket, the whole community suffers. Smaller paychecks not only impact the immediate family but the entire local economy."

"What would you do with an extra $1,034? That's the difference in Milwaukee for a manufacturing worker's wages from 2010 to now," said State Representative Evan Goyke. “Think of the places in your community you would spend that money, and the economic impact of taking that money out of the local economy.”

“We're seeing the state lead the way in a bad way, leading at having the largest drop in the middle class of all states, and the worst place to raise an African American child," said State Representative LaTonya Johnson. "We've seen communities lose manufacturing jobs, and go from middle class economics to places where families are forced to do without the basics.”

"We in the Legislature can and should make sure that the hard earned tax dollars of Wisconsin workers don't get funneled to companies that turn around and outsource Wisconsin jobs," said Senator Dave Hansen. "The bill we brought forth last session would ban companies that outsource jobs from receiving any state tax break, loan or grant for 5 years."

This data also directly challenges Governor Walker’s constant assertion that a co-called “skills gap” is the cause of Wisconsin’s economic woes. If manufacturers were really having problems finding skilled manufacturing workers, they would be raising wages, not lowering them.

The decline is further proof we need to stop rigging the economy by scrapping bad trade deals which stack the deck against workers and economic development policies that reward companies engaged in outsourcing and lowering the wages of their workers. Wisconsin needs bold new strategies to re-rig the economy in favor of workers.

We have problems with our drinking water around the State and muddled thinking with our legislators in Madison. What can be done?

WITTENBERG, WI - You have seen the newspaper articles about Wisconsin’s water problems. How in 2009 high level of viruses were found in city water around the state and our legislators required testing and treatment of those water supplies. In 2011 legislators repealed that requirement.

In 2010 regulations were designed to reduce phosphorus in our waters. In 2011 legislators began fighting those regulations and eventually allowed compliance to be pushed back twenty years.

In 2014 molybdenum was found in twenty percent of private wells tested in the south east part of the state. The closer the wells were to recycled coal ash sites the higher the concentration. The DNR said the evidence was not strong enough to make any link.

Unsafe nitrate levels have been found in the drinking water of 94,000 homes in Wisconsin. Legislators created a compensation fund for those contaminated wells-but only if the well supplied drinking water for cattle, not children. The EPA says two thirds of the municipal and wastewater treatment plants and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Wisconsin operate with expired discharge permits. One third of the wells in Kewaunee County have tested unsafe for drinking water. And while all this has been happening our DNR has issued citations in only four percent of the water pollution cases considered serious enough to warrant such citations. These problems have been making headlines in our newspapers on a regular basis.

What is not being discussed is the problem with contaminated drinking water in Madison, especially in the capitol building. That contamination seems to have started about the time our legislators repealed the requirement for testing and treatment of city water supplies. First it was decided our teachers were responsible for all of the state’s economic woes and had to be punished. Then hundreds of millions were cut from state aid to public schools and the university system. At the same a tax credit was created that reduced business owners state income tax to zero, a credit that required no job creation and will reduce state income by about $2 billion over the next ten years. Another law as passed that prohibited local school districts from making up their losses by raising their property taxes. Finally, the school voucher program was expanded and the decision made to completely remove the cap on the program in ten years. It was also decided to give more tax dollars per pupil to private schools than to public schools and to give parents of those private school students a $10,000 tax credit.

No logical thinking person would deliberately harm one of the nation’s finest public school systems this way on purpose. No one elected to represent the people of this state would deliberately turn against them this way. Wisconsin’s most important resource is her children and the future they represent. No one would deliberately take steps to harm that future. There can only be one explanation for the decisions coming from the capitol building that are destroying our schools. The drinking water is contaminated.

What can be done? Our attorney general and our Department of Natural Resources say they have no authority to protect our state’s water. No help there. After hours of research I have found an old remedy that was first used in 1845. Folk wisdom says not only can this remedy solve water contamination problems but many others as well. The steps involved are almost like an exorcism. On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November people around the state must gather together in specific locations during specific hours of the day and mark pieces of paper with an X. If enough of those people do this correctly the water in Madison will be clean once again.

Sen. Vinehout writes about the staff shortage facing many Wisconsin school districts and Superintendent Evers’ Work Group on the teacher shortage.

ALMA, WI - “Who will be my teacher?” my son asked me years ago. For a brief point in time, the teacher was the most important person in his young life.

As children head back to school and parents scramble with new schedules, schools are facing their own scheduling headaches. This year a teacher shortage hit many local schools. Around the state, school districts have hundreds of vacancies.

Recently, I presented an overview of state education budget issues in Viroqua. At least a dozen local superintendents, school board members, principals and teachers were in the audience. Following my presentation, the conversation turned to the teacher shortage.

Educators described an environment in which teachers in certain high demand subject areas move from one school district to another based on the best offer.

Two superintendents from neighboring school districts laughed when they realized they spent the summer bidding against each other to snag the same teacher. “Now we have teachers who come back [to our school] and say, ‘I’m getting a $6,000 increase in an offer from another school.’”

A staff member paid a $12,000 raise creates problems in districts where teachers went seven years with little raise in pay. John, a local teacher, told the group, “The impact on morale is just horrendous.”

Many superintendents, including State Superintendent Tony Evers, saw this crisis coming. Mr. Evers took a number of steps, including the creation of a Working Group on School Staffing Issues.

“Act 10 created a ‘free agency’ environment where competition for high demand and talented teachers is fierce, and financial and geographic differences put many districts at a competitive disadvantage,” stated the group’s final report submitted this summer.

I recently spoke with former Durand Superintendent Jerry Walters who now administers CESA 11, a regional cooperative sharing educational services. He explained post-retirement benefits tended to “give teachers a sense of loyalty”. After Act 10, and the loss of benefits, teachers are like sports player – open to the highest bidder. Few districts can compete in this new world.

School districts have state-imposed revenue caps limiting what they can spend. People are the heart of the school and make up nearly 80% of a district’s budget. Some districts are very short on funds. They gave few raises for many years.

“But some have money to do this,” Mr. Walters told me. “Some Minnesota schools [for example] offer a $10,000 signing bonus… For districts left behind this creates attraction and retention issues…Ultimately it’s the smaller, poorer school district at the bottom of the food chain.”

Rural schools are at a particular disadvantage. Many rural school districts pay ten percent of their budget in transportation costs and have a low revenue cap, which means they don’t have the money to make special offers.

A teacher who worked in Milwaukee, Oconomowoc, Tomah and Westby said, “As long as there is a Middleton, we will lose teachers in Westby.”

To compound problems, fewer students are going into teacher education programs. An April 2016 Journal Sentinel story reported some teacher education programs have 20% to 40% fewer students than a few years ago.

At the Viroqua event, a local elected official, Karen Dahl told the group, “Young people don’t want to go into education because [some in] Wisconsin denigrate the profession and the value of education.”

State Superintendent Evers’ working group offered some solutions to the teacher shortage: cultivate “grow your own” teachers especially in rural areas; make it easier to hire in an emergency; add flexibility so teachers can take on new roles; strengthen ties between K-12 and university teacher education and change recent laws that limit retired teachers from part-time work.

But the simplest part of the solution starts with each of us. I spoke with a math teacher who closed her Facebook page because of negative comments about her profession made by “friends.” She said, “I was in the grocery store and a neighbor came up and said that he didn’t want to pay my salary because I ‘wasn’t worth a dime.’”

Words hurt. And you can help.

Providing every child a great education means getting great people to enter and stay in teaching. We must appreciate the work educators do every day. Our children need an answer to the question, “Who will be my teacher?”

LA CROSSE, WI - Wisconsin’s universities and technical colleges are the economic engines of our state. From workforce development and biotech research to improving farm production and assisting entrepreneurs, we’ve always benefited from strong schools.

But now, after years of Republican budget cuts, businesses are losing out on valuable opportunities, our middle class is shrinking and students are graduating with record amounts of debt. In fact, Wisconsin is home to nearly 1 million student loan borrowers who owe a combined $19 billion in debt.

The student loan debt crisis is causing an economic ripple affect across our state. As a result of high student loan payments, many in our state can’t afford to buy a new car, purchase their first home, open a business or simply start a family.

Democrats, led by Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine), have made it a priority to ease this burden. Working with students and families, we’ve introduced the Higher Ed, Lower Debt Bill. The proposal would allow individuals to refinance student loans at lower interest rates and provide targeted relief to working families who are struggling to make ends meet. It’s a commonsense and effective solution to lower student loan debt and make college more affordable.

Unsurprisingly, Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans have sided with big Wall Street banks to block this bill from passing. As a result, graduates continue to pay high interest rates on increasingly burdensome monthly payments and our economy continues to suffer.

Across Wisconsin, families are urging action to lower student loan debt. Other states including Minnesota are already leading the way and championing new and innovative solutions to help families afford higher education. Rather than ignoring this crisis and falling further behind, we should tackle this issue head-on and expand access to our colleges and universities.

This election offers voters an opportunity to join with Democrats, stand up against the special interests and chart a new course. Together, we can make student loan debt relief a priority and expand economic opportunities for Wisconsin’s hardworking families.

WEDC claimed to create 483 jobs in the economically depressed Sherman Park neighborhood, but all were actually in the suburbs. Neighborhoods in economic distress need job creation strategies at the scale of the problem.

MILWAUKEE - At a news event in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park Neighborhood today elected officials and community leaders spoke out about revelations that the jobs agency created by Governor Walker, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), misrepresented its impact on jobs in the area.

Speakers at the event included elected officials such as State Representative LaTonya Johnson, State Representative Evan Goyke, State Representative David Bowen, and Alderman Chevy Johnson. The event also included community leaders such as Reverend Willie Brisco, President of WISDOM, and Martha De La Rosa, Executive Director of Wisconsin Jobs Now.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin revealed late last week that WEDC claimed only to create 483 jobs in the economically depressed Sherman Park neighborhood, the scene of civil unrest ten days ago. However, Citizen Action research discovered that the small number of jobs claimed by the WEDC were not created in Sherman Park, but in exurbs like Hartland.

WEDC CEO David Hogan responded to Citizen Action’s research today, but admits that WEDC’s impact map inaccurately attributed jobs to Sherman Park that were created in other areas such as western Waukesha County. Hogan said in his response: “When the physical address data cannot be precisely plotted, such as when a P.O. Box is provided, the system generates an approximate location. That is what happened with the companies identified by Citizen Action.” This statement constitutes an admission that WEDC does not even have accurate records of where its tax credits, loans, and grants are supposedly creating jobs. In one case the jobs were created 25 miles to the west in Harland. The response suggests that this was only a problem with an impact map on the website, but in fact WEDC’s written profile of what jobs were supposedly created in Assembly District 18 contains the same errors.

The Sherman Park neighborhood and other communities in Milwaukee’s urban core have borne the brunt of the outsourcing and deindustrialization that has taken place since the 1970s. WEDC actually claims to have created more jobs in up scale Waukesha County than in Milwaukee County, despite the much greater need for expanded opportunity.

WEDC’s inability to track the locations of the jobs it claims to create is a symptom of a bankrupt economic strategy. It is clear that Sherman Park and other economically devastated areas like it have been abandoned by Governor Walker’s failed economic policies. Now that the dust has settled in Sherman Park, we need public interventions at the scale necessary to truly guarantee full opportunity for everyone in our great state.

The Republicans started as a party of liberation under Lincoln, but has morphed into a party of the privileged. The Democratic Party has become synonymous with handouts. Big change is coming. What form will it take?

ALTOONA, WI - There is never a shortage of grumbling when it comes to politics, but there’s no denying that typical American discontent has turned into a level of ire rarely seen. Most people in this country currently think both major political parties suck, and not without good reason.

The Republican Party started as a party of liberation under Lincoln and was a party of opportunity that worked for a broad expansion of the middle class under Eisenhower. Even a corrupted soul like Nixon once proposed a guaranteed basic income for every American family. The GOP has since morphed into a party of privilege. Both its rhetoric and actions regularly show a devotion to hierarchy — rich over poor, man over woman, white over brown or black, old over young, straight over gay, management over labor.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has become synonymous with handouts. It is widely seen as the party of entitlement. This irks loyal Democratic partisans to no end, but the truth is the party’s actions over the years have repeatedly reinforced this image.

Most Americans deeply value equality. Our nation was born out of rebellion against a king’s power. The rejection of royalty is in our DNA, giving us a natural sense of fairness and distaste for privilege. Getting to start out at third base is repugnant to most Americans. But at the same time, there is a widespread belief that you should earn your keep. Taking without paying, getting without giving, rubs your average American the wrong way too.

All this leaves most people in this country at odds with what the two major parties presently stand for. In fairness, what the major parties have become is a reflection of two generations worth of emphasis on individual advancement and self fulfillment in American society. Both privilege and entitlement are products of me-focused politics. But conditions require — and predict — a politics that is more we-centered, and visible signs indicate movement in that direction. That leaves the parties in step with where we’ve been but out of step with where we’re headed.

Entitlement needs to give way to a focus on service, to each other and to society as a whole. Privilege must be replaced by a commitment to equality and democracy. The longer the parties fail to change their ways and remake themselves, the more likely it becomes that a new major party will eventually emerge. Having so many voters looking at the parties and increasingly despising what they see is not a sustainable condition. It creates a vacuum, and nature hates vacuums.

Big change is coming. What form it will take and when it arrives is up to the parties . . . and the people.

Western Wisconsin was hit with severe rainstorms in the past few weeks, floodwaters washed out roads and left silt everywhere, in the house, the garden, the barn, and the farmyard. Sen. Vinehout provides important information for flood victims and others.

ALMA, WI - “It gets overwhelming,” my neighbor told me. We were walking through her flooded barnyard. Floodwaters left silt everywhere: in the house, the garden, the barn, and the farmyard.

Family members were working hard to clean up. But they were filled with unanswered questions: where to go and what to do?

Western Wisconsin was hit with several severe rainstorms in the past few weeks. Early morning on August 11 parts of Buffalo County received 5 ½ to 11 ½ inches of rain in just 45 minutes. The beautiful rolling hills intensified the power of the water as it raced towards the lowest point.

Huge gullies opened up. Roads washed out. Crops were damaged. Fence lines washed away. Pastures became lakes. Cattle and pigs were lost. Concrete buckled. Trees were uprooted. Small sheds floated away. Farm machinery flooded. Flower and vegetable gardens were covered with black muck.

Roads and driveways acted as dams with water pouring across and eventually washing away the road. Many people lost all or part of their rural driveway. But others lost their home and nearly every possession. The flood seriously affected farms and homes along creeks or rivers.

Rain continued to fall in the coming week. New storms frustrated cleanup efforts and discouraged many people. Temporary road repairs washed away as more water came racing down the bluffs.

County and town officials worked hard to keep people safe and roads open. However, the rural nature of Buffalo county made it hard to get word out to every one affected by the storms.

County workers set up a hotline to call and report damage and to collect details on the problems people face. If you have flood damage, please call 211. If you are using a mobile phone you should call 1-800-362-8255.

It is important for people to report all types of flood damage, even if the damage is covered by flood insurance. The type of damage and the estimated costs of repair are details county officials need when applying for state and federal help. Under federal emergency management rules, the cumulative totals of damage and repair costs determine the level of help available.

Immediate help is available including free flood cleanup kits, bottled water, and rural well testing for areas where flooding may have caused well contamination. These supplies are available at four locations in the county: Gilmanton and Lincoln Town Halls, Ponderosa Bar and Grill in Cream, the Waumandee State Bank and the county Health Department at the courthouse in Alma. The Red Cross and county staff are working to help families displaced by the floods.

Long-term problems are going to take the work of many to solve. Town, county and state officials are meeting to go through options and programs that may assist people.

Repairing rural roads is a huge challenge for every town board. For many years, the state budget provided less money than towns needed to keep up with routine wear and tear on roads. With the recent floods, new problems appeared and old problems are worse.

Likewise, conservation structures – dams and so forth – were not built to handle the storms we experienced. Again, state support has lagged behind needs.

Representative Chris Danou and I will be working with our local officials to find any available emergency assistance. But we need your help in compiling a list of damage and needs.

If you lost crops or fencing or if your farm needs grading or repair of conservation structures, please report the damage. The application process for various programs takes time and your phone call will get that process started.

Disasters bring out the best in the community with neighbors helping neighbors. However, when the damage is more than one person or a whole neighborhood can take care of, it is important to call the county hotline at 211. By calling, folks can get assistance and the county gets a better understanding of the extent of the damage.

You can reach me at 608-266-8546 or toll free at 1-877-763-6636 or email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Cleaning up our neighborhood is going to take a long time. Taking a break from the cleanup to make a phone call is a very important first step.

What happens if we turn our educational system into a supply chain of workers to fit our jobs, a place to manufacture workforce competent doers, but not critical thinkers? Company President and former Chair of the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce examines the shortsightedness of business leaders and politicians who attack our K-12 and university systems.

GREEN BAY - Having been in business my whole career, I found most business people to have relatively good intentions. Obviously, there are the bad actors, but the same can be said for any sector in our community.

However, I find that most business people abdicate their voices to organizations like the Chambers of Commerce and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce when it comes to issues of substance, like education. That is not only unfortunate, but it is done at their peril. When it comes to education, the sustainability of their business future and the future of the communities they serve is at stake if they do not get it right.

I know a bit about what I speak as I was Chair of the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce in 2003. I chaired the Bay Area Workforce Development Board for 8 years, the Employers Workforce Development Network for over 4 years, the Wisconsin Workforce Development Association for about 2 years, and the Wisconsin Council on Workforce Investment for about 4 years.

One of the things that was very clear to me not only as a company president, but also as one deeply immersed in the challenges of our economy was that we have an education system that is only somewhat designed to give the workforce competent “doers”, but was somewhat challenged in creating quality “thinkers”.

It is not that the graduates of our technical colleges and universities didn’t go in with a desire to learn and explore, it is that the system is no longer designed to generate quality thinkers, but rather doers with various levels of quality.

In some cases, the university system really made an error when they made the student the customer, as that resulted in some students with high debt and somewhat worthless degrees (but I digress as this is for another day). In other words, we have designed a system that is intended to feed the workforce needs of employers rather than the various needs of the both the employer, the community, and the environment which supports both.

And, because our government leaders continuously attack the K-12 system and heavily promote ideas like STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), we are getting people who only have developed the left side of their brain. Thus, they may be ok at doing, but because they haven’t developed the right side of their brain where innovation and creativity flourish and they never become great thinkers.

Furthermore, even those that are good thinkers are soon institutionalized by the companies and organizations that employ them and soon become completely disengaged. Instead, we need to think of STEAM where we insert the Arts as a very integral part of education. STEAM will give us an innovation economy which will make us globally competitive while supporting the long-term viability and richness of our communities.

The concept of “institutionalizing their people” is important because this may help explain the business leaders’ ambivalence to what our current governor, legislature and WMC are supporting when it comes to education.

When I had my Sustainability consulting company, I would ask my clients in the “C” Suite (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.) what was their most important asset and they would always respond the same “our people”. I would respond “then why do you treat them so poorly if that is the case”. They were genuinely hurt and offended because they truly believed what they said that their people were so important.

I then painted a picture of how it could look. Have you ever had a real two-way dialogue with your employees to determine what they thought was important, what they value in life, what they want to really do. Have you thought of focusing less on profits and more on purpose? Have you ever invested in your employees in things that they want even if it doesn’t have a line item benefit to the company; like running for a school board, or volunteering for a community board, etc. Have you ever considered allowing your employees to be involved in the community in a meaningful way on company time? Have you ever brought in the arts into your organization to rekindle the use of the right side of the brain?

At my last company, they prided themselves on the success they had with process. I had the opportunity to address their board last year, and I said this: “you are ok with process, but terrible with people. If you were great with people, you would blow process out of the water”. This was received well which showed that it clearly fell on deaf ears.

For business to allow Governor Walker and the current legislature to attack K-12 and the university system with funding cuts and other onerous policies is mind boggling. When we need high degrees of innovation and creativity in our economy to be competitive in a global sense, to defund the arts and other right brained curriculum in our public K-12 system and only focus on work related skills is not only troubling, but it is going to further increase the dearth of talent that the community and companies truly need.

And to try to destroy our world class public university system by not only drastically cutting funding, but by denigrating our talented professors and researchers is wrong headed on so many levels and will prove to be disastrous to the Wisconsin Idea. This tacit attack on people who are educated in critical thinking and instead fostering an atmosphere where our education system is only meant to be a supply chain of workers for business is undemocratic, myopic, and dysfunctional.

This kind of thinking and policy will in very short order not only kill our economy and middle class, but it will also lead to a dearth of the leadership that is much needed in our communities; whether volunteer, governmental, business, or NGO.

I am not enough of a conspiracy theorist to think that may be a sinister motive. But, for business and other leaders to sit quietly by and allow this to happen, will create a very negative legacy that will take mega-investments to reverse. We are all better than this.

MADISON - When Donald Trump came to Wisconsin on Tuesday, we noticed that he went to a fundraiser sponsored by the owners of Kwik Trip. So we wondered who else those owners supported, right here in Wisconsin. Here’s the answer:

Kwik Trip owners boost Trump, Wisconsin GOP

Another big story this week was the filing by Attorney General Brad Schimel, who urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to take the John Doe II appeal. His filing was, to say the least, galling:

Schimel has WMC dirt on his hands in John Doe II filing

We also posted two items on some of the consequences of the disastrous rewrite of the campaign finance law enacted last December. One story noted that the increase in donation limits allowed some of the richest people in Wisconsin to give even more than ever:

Higher contribution limits net $251K more for legislative, statewide officeholders

And the other one noted how the new law has made it harder to figure out who may be getting sweetheart deals from our elected officials:

New campaign finance reporting laws shroud, mock transparency

I hope you like this week’s offerings.

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P.S. If you appreciate our dogged pursuit of the money trail, please send us a tax-deductible donation by clicking here or by mailing it to 203 S. Paterson St, Suite 100, Madison, WI 53703.

MILWAUKEE - Over the weekend, another young black man lost his life and civil unrest exploded in MIlwaukee.

Our hearts go out to all the residents of Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood who have experienced this weekend’s civil unrest, to the family of the young man who lost his life, and to the peace officers who have put their lives on the line to protect public safety. As public order is restored, it is important we take stock of what happened, and what we have to do together to create a Wisconsin where everyone has an equal chance to live a fulfilling life.

Although the violence and property destruction seemed spontaneous to outsiders, for many African American residents it was a predictable outpouring of frustration flowing from unbearable racial inequality and exclusion. Shocking statistics support this, as the Milwaukee metro area has for many years consistently ranked among the worst in the country for African Americans across a variety of indicators including, segregation, incarceration rates, black male nonemployment, child poverty, and many others.

African Americans in Milwaukee, who came during the Great Migration to work and work hard and claim their piece of the American Dream, where drawn by the plentiful opportunities to work in union manufacturing jobs. They have borne the brunt of deindustrialization since the late 1970s. According to the UWM Center for Economic Development, the percentage of African Americans working in manufacturing declined from 54.3% in 1970 to 14.7% in 2009.

Many leaders in the Milwaukee area seem to see this as a natural phenomenon beyond our control. But the economy is not a natural disaster or an extreme weather event beyond our agency to influence, it is human made. What has been lacking in Milwaukee is the courage and vision to fight for solutions up to the scale of the problem. Once the dust is settled in Sherman Park, the question will be which public officials, which community leaders, which corporate leaders are willing to stand up and fight for public interventions at the scale necessary to end Wisconsin’s system of economic apartheid and truly guarantee full opportunity for everyone in our great state. This means striving to create an economy where everyone who wants a good jobs can find one near their local community.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin and our over 12,000 members in the Milwaukee area look forward to continuing to work with everyone in the community who wants to work toward economic and social transformation.

$472.1 million in awards to businesses through August 1 this year produce fewer new jobs, but would go far in covering the cost of reforming our state’s flawed school funding formula or funding repairs for local roads.

ALMA, WI - “Where did all that money go?” Dennis asked me during a recent visit to the Jackson County Fair.

Dennis is one of many constituents who ask where the money for schools and roads is as our state recovers from the recession. Economic recovery means more money and more money should equal more resources for the public. Instead, state funds are very tight. For example, state aid to local public schools is less now than in 2006.

One reason is that the state is not collecting tax money from some large, and in several cases, very profitable companies. Recently I received a memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau detailing the awards given out for one large tax credit known as the Enterprise Zone Tax Credit. This credit – originally conceived to help rural communities – has morphed into large credits for single companies.

The memo contained a list of the total awards made and the companies that received them:

Amazon.com $10.3 million

Bucyrus International, Inc. $20.0 million

Direct Supply $22.5 million

Dollar General Corporation $ 5.5 million

Exact Sciences Corporation $ 9.0 million

Fincantieri Marine Group, LLC $28.0 million

InSinkErator $15.5 million

Kestrel Aircraft Company, Inc. $18.0 million

Kohl’s Corporation $62.5 million

Mercury Marine $65.0 million

MKE Electric Tool Corporation $18.0 million

Northstar Med. Radioisotopes, LLC $14.0 million

Oshkosh Corporation $47.0 million

Plexus Corporation $15.0 million

Quad/Graphics, Inc. $61.7 million

Trane US Incorporated $ 5.5 million

Uline, Incorporated $18.6 million

W Solar Group, Incorporated $28.0 million

Weather Shield Mfg, Incorporated $ 8.0 million

TOTAL (through Aug. 1, 2016) $472.1 million

All of those award amounts are refundable tax credits. This means a company can claim the credit directly against taxes owed. If the company owes little or nothing in taxes and claims the credit, they can receive a payment from the state in the form of a refund.

Owing little or nothing in state taxes is made possible, in part, by changes in tax law for corporations that date back to 2011. Majority legislators passed the Manufacturing and Agriculture Tax Credit that resulted in very low tax liability for some. A recent study released by the Wisconsin Budget Project found most of this credit goes to reducing taxes for millionaires, including “some tax filers with incomes of over $1 million receiving tax cuts of more than $100,000.”

That list of Enterprise Zone Tax Credit awards includes the total credits that can be claimed over a 16-year period (2009-2024). Different companies are on different schedules. One company’s contract began in 2009. Seven of the listed companies have contracts that go back to 2010. The remaining contracts were written since 2011. The credits are awarded for various business activities. Some credits are given for jobs created or retained, for training or buying from Wisconsin companies. In every case, the “Enterprise Zone” created is the footprint of the company itself.

Credit compliance is overseen by the troubled Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which does not have a good track record for independently verifying that jobs were created. Three separate audits by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau showed that not one single job created was independently verified.

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that WEDC’s claims of jobs created were based on “faulty calculations”. They went on to report, “The agency gave out almost $90 million more in awards, but the total number of related jobs fell by nearly 6,000.”

The cost of the Enterprise Zone Tax Credit and the Manufacturing and Agriculture Tax Credit would go far in covering the cost of reforming our state’s flawed school funding formula or funding repairs for local roads.

Funding for road repair is something on the minds of many in Wisconsin. We were reminded once again that in a short time the power of Mother Nature and water can demolish our roads. I offer my heartfelt thanks to the road crews, law enforcement, emergency management, the Red Cross and county officials all of whom worked tirelessly to keep the people safe in the aftermath of the torrential rains and flooding that hit western Wisconsin. We will not be back to normal for a while but we are all safe. If you need help please call 211. And read Rep. Danou’s column this week.

Many Americans distrust both of the country’s major political parties this year, especially young voters, but is there another option?

ALTOONA, WI - Here we sit, with most Americans deeply dissatisfied with and alienated from both of the country’s major political parties. This condition is likely to worsen before it gets better, as young Americans are especially disgusted with the two major parties.

For the time being, the clear majority of Americans are feeling doomed to either sit out elections and surrender their vote or engage in the distasteful exercise of Lesser Evil Voting. The only alternative to LEV they can see is voting for a minor party like the Greens or Libertarians, and visions of spoiler candidates and wasted votes dance in their heads at the thought.

There is another option, but it is one scarcely remembered because it hasn’t been tried in a very long time despite proving successful in the past.

In the early 1900s, farmers in North Dakota were at the mercy of powerful cartels and couldn’t get fair prices for their grain or credit at a reasonable interest rate. They were at the mercy of powerful cartels. In hopes of getting out from under the thumb of the out-of-state tycoons who were gouging them, they banded together to form a political organization called the Nonpartisan League (NPL).

Some say the NPL was the idea of a former Socialist Party organizer named Albert Bowen. Others figure it was the brainchild of flax farmer-turned-political agitator A.C. Townley. One way or the other, Townley and Bowen teamed up and Townley was soon driving across the state in a Model T Ford spreading the word about the NPL. Bowen and Townley enlisted tens of thousands of followers.

The NPL gained power by making use of a creation of the late-19th Century Progressives: the primary election. The primary system adopted in North Dakota and other states like Wisconsin not only gave voters the power to nominate major-party candidates, but most importantly allowed voters to participate in a party’s primary even if they did not belong to that party. By putting NPL-endorsed candidates up against those favored by the state’s political machine, the NPL took over North Dakota’s dominant Republican Party in 1916. A wheat farmer and NPL member named Lynn Frazier was elected governor with almost 80% of the vote and NPL-backed candidates won every other statewide office except one as well as a majority in the state assembly.

Upon gaining power, the NPL acted, giving farmers credit at significantly lower interest rates through the establishment of the state-run Bank of North Dakota opened in 1919. A state mill and grain elevator was completed in 1922, providing a fair market for grain and a source of feed and seed. Insurance was provided against fire, tornado and hail damage.

The NPL’s enduring legacy in North Dakota stands as an inspiring example of what is possible when people declare themselves free of unresponsive major parties while simultaneously using elements of the two-party framework to force change. The NPL stands as proof that the dismal choice between Lesser Evil Voting and wasted votes cast for spoiler candidates from minor parties is a false choice. There is another way.

This survey on Internet access now being conducted by the Public Service Commission will paint a more accurate picture of broadband coverage in Wisconsin. Participate and your responses will help inform lawmakers on how to bring our state into the twenty-first century.

ALMA, WI - Do you have a great Internet connection? Less than what you’d prefer? Makes it impossible for you to do your work or your children’s homework? No service at all?

Make your opinion known!

The state is taking a survey of how Wisconsinites connect to the Internet. The survey is free – and ironically – available online. Those without Internet – or such a slow connection they cannot fill out a survey – can let their voice be heard by calling the following toll-free phone number - (877) 360-2973.

Home connections and businesses are measured in separate surveys. You can reach the residential survey here: https://www.research.net/r/WI_PSC_broadband_survey

Businesses can voice their opinion here: https://www.research.net/r/WI_PSC_business_broadband_survey

To prepare for the survey, make sure you know your Internet provider and the number of electronic devices in your home or business that connect to the Internet. The survey will ask for your address, the type of problems you experience, and if you have students in the home who also have Internet problems.

The Public Service Commission – the state agency responsible for supervising public utilities – is conducting the survey. The state must improve information on who is well served and who is not. The current map of where broadband exists is based on information from the companies who provide the service – not from customers.

As a consequence, the state broadband map is inaccurate. Service in an area that appears covered on the state map can be very uneven.

Some companies inaccurately described both the areas they cover and the speed available. People complained about the inaccuracy of the state map and the illusion the map conveys to policymakers.

In conversations with the State Broadband Director earlier this year, I shared examples of how the map misinformed state leaders. For example, one company advertised speed with the modifier “up to” as in “up to 10 Mg.” However, the company didn’t tell the consumer the only way to get that speed is if he lives right next to the company’s equipment and no other customer tries to get on the Internet.

A few years ago, large companies successfully lobbied to remove state oversight of telecommunication companies. Consumer protections and penalties for companies not complying were removed. This makes keeping companies accountable very difficult. The lack of oversight encourages some companies to look for ways to appear to provide coverage without actually delivering it.

Some companies provide fabulous service at a very reasonable price. They do this despite the lack of oversight by the state. Many of these companies are local, customer-owned cooperatives. The Co-op model provides accountability directly to local customers who serve as the Co-op directors. People with problems call a local person or walk into a local office. In western Wisconsin, cooperatives are leading the way to build out reliable, high speed broadband to rural customers.

Pitted against the smaller local companies are the large telecommunication companies with expensive lobbyists in Madison. The result of the uneven resources between small, local companies and large multi-national companies means the Public Service Commission often views the large companies as “walking on water” while having little information about the small local companies who are working the real miracles.

Broadband has become a necessary service to all communities. In the twenty-first century, broadband is as necessary as electric power was nearly one hundred years ago. Businesses cannot function without broadband. Young people know more than many how vital fast Internet is to life today. They are leaving rural Wisconsin because they do not have reliable, fast and unlimited access.

State and federal money has been invested in building out broadband. Too often however the large companies used the access problems in rural Wisconsin to apply for that money and then did not deliver the goods to our underserved areas.

Just tracking the company’s progress in building out service is difficult for the state because there is no independent verification of new customers served.

If you have great service, poor service or no service at all, please take the time to fill out the survey and let your voice be heard. Your investment in time will help those working hard to bring Wisconsin into the twenty-first century.

Historic reductions in state aid to schools and Madison imposed revenue limits have left cash strapped local schools with no alternative but referenda to fund operations.

ALMA, WI - “Is the strategy in the state to move all funding for schools to the local level?” a local school official asked me.

I hesitated. No one in Madison – that I know – intentionally wanted to increase property taxes. However, one result of historic state cuts to schools is an increase in property taxes.

Ironically, taxpayers themselves are voting by way of referenda to raise their property taxes. But they are doing so because state law has left cash-strapped schools no other options.

Schools are under strict state imposed revenue caps. They cannot just raise local taxes to offset less state aid, but voters can override the revenue cap by passing a referendum to raise property taxes.

Many communities are voting to approve school referenda. According to Department of Public Instruction records, voters are on track to consider over 100 different school referenda in 2016.

The process is not new. However, twenty-five years ago the reason voters passed a school referendum was to borrow money for construction projects, for example to build a new school.

About ten years ago, school referenda for operating costs – the routine expense of running the school – began to replace debt as the majority of referenda in our state.

Even as school boards sought money from taxpayers to operate schools, actually passing the referenda a decade ago was roughly a 50-50 chance.

Now voters approved 78% of all school referenda. Referenda specifically to increase taxes to pay for school operating costs passed at a rate of 82% this year.

Many of us just wrote a check for the second half of our property taxes due the end of July. The memory of a big check you wrote may be fresh in your mind.

Property tax is the largest single tax we pay in Wisconsin. The state uses the value of property to determine how much state aid your local school district receives. The higher local property values the less aid your district gets from the state.

Many of you may remember Governor Tommy Thompson’s promise about state school aid back in the mid-1990s. Thompson promised that two-thirds of the school costs would be picked up by the state.

He then gained legislative support for over $1 billion new state dollars for schools. This action had a direct impact on property taxes. In tax year 1996, the school portion of property taxes dropped by 16% leading to a decline in overall property taxes of over 6%.

Today the state contributes almost half of the money for local schools – well short of the two-thirds funding from years ago. For taxes paid this year (2015 tax year), overall property taxes increased 2.3% to the highest level – $10.6 billion – in the history of our state.

When the referenda passed this year kick in, next year’s property taxes in those districts will be higher.

With eight out of ten referenda passing, and state school aid below 2006 levels, I find it not surprising that people suspect state lawmakers are going to put the whole cost of schools on local tax payers.

Many Wisconsin residents look to Minnesota and see that the state contributes almost 70% of the total aid for schools. Property taxpayers in Minnesota only contribute one quarter of all school costs. Wisconsinites say if Minnesota can do it, why can’t Wisconsin.

To substantially lower property taxes in Wisconsin the state would need to contribute a much larger portion of school costs.

Many of my colleagues say the price tag on school funding reform is just too high. But, without increases in school state aid, property taxes are just too high.

We can solve our school funding problems at the state level. I did the math. I constructed an alternative budget that fully funded State Superintendent Tony Evers’ Fair Funding for our Future, which would reform our school funding formula.

Property taxpayers are committed to their local schools but cannot continue to pick up more of the costs of school. The solution requires a commitment by lawmakers to adequately fund public education – for the sake of property taxpayers and our children’s future.

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There was a time when the state provided two-thirds of school funding but that level of support has eroded over the years. Property taxpayers are committed to their schools but cannot continue to pick up more of the costs. Kathleen notes that she created an alternative budget that fully funds State Superintendent Tony Evers’ Fair Funding for our Future. A commitment by lawmakers to adequately fund schools would reduce the burden on property taxpayers.