 Today, we are lucky to have Craig Thompson, he's the executive director of the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin. And I'm going to do announcements a little bit later, because Craig actually has some place he needs to get to. He has a fabulous 10-year-old child who would really like him to get back to the bathroom and pick him up. So I'm going to introduce Craig and let him have some time with you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here with you this morning. And I also know that you're all very busy and you've got a very full agenda before John told me after 10 minutes, I actually dropped through the floor. So I am going to move on. And then I didn't even know a thing that immediately following me is Congressman Petry, which makes me even that much more humble than want to move along, because quite honestly, I don't know if anybody else in their career has done more than the subject that I'm about to talk about, which is transportation in the state of Wisconsin than Congressman Petry has. So I will be brief. You have a sheet of paper before you at your table. And what I'm here to tell you about is when you go to the ballot box in November to vote for governor and for legislators and local races, there's also going to be a question of your ballot and all the ballots across the state, asking whether or not you would support a vending of the state constitution basically to ensure that the transportation user fees you pay in the form of the car registration and gas tax pass the state and the transportation budget and be used for transportation purposes and that it cannot be diverted to be used for other purposes. The actual question as it will appear on the ballot is on the right-hand side there. I'm not going to read that all to you though, but it is the actual language that would go into the Constitution and legal jargon, but the net effect is that it would require that those dollars have to be spent on transportation. So why use this question on the ballot, the first question. Wisconsin and some other states in this country, although I haven't mentioned that a lot of other states in this country went through this and not changed it, because the majority of states in the United States right now already have language in their constitution stipulating where transportation user fees can go, including the majority of our neighbors here in the Midwest. But in Wisconsin in the early 2000s and into the early to mid 2000s, as we had problems in the general fund in making ends meet, took the course of really three different budgets, we reached into the transportation fund and used some of that money to try to help each time on a one-time basis balance the fund in the general fund. And to the tune of just about one and a half billion dollars that we did that with. Now, that does not mean there was a one and a half billion dollar loss to the transportation fund. It was a good majority of that money really was replaced in the transportation fund, but with general obligation bonds that were issued and the debt service being paid out of the general fund. So to us, the net effect was several things. It really eroded the conference of the public that their transportation user fees were being paid for being used and what they were intended to be used for, which is the upkeep of our transportation system. And the erosion of that trust has led to other things that we believe have caused some problems with funding and transportation. And on the general fund side, while we used that to try to fill in some holes for a couple specific budgets, we're going to be paying for that for quite some time. This last budget that just passed, there was $350 million in there of our general fund money that was going to pay the debt service for those tax transfers. There'll be that similar amount to next budget and the budget after that and the budget after that. And we really don't think that's a very good idea. As a matter of fact, either did Moody's when they downgraded our bond rating after that, citing that as one of the reasons and the National Peace Center of the States talked about Wisconsin getting itself in trouble because of that as well. Now, we have not transferred funds off to last several budgets, but we do believe it's important to ensure that the public and the water and public has confidence that we won't get into doing this again. And one of the reasons that it is very tempting to do it out of transportation. Some of the questions we've had is, well, why just protect the transportation fund? What about any segregated funds? There have been some other segregated funds that have been used. None of them anywhere near the dollar amount from the transportation fund. The other one, which still wasn't even close, but at some level was the patients compensation fund and that has already been, that's been litigated and resolved. The reason that the transportation fund is, it can be tempting is, really, in our initial language of Wisconsin's constitution, it spells out what elected officials can bond for and what they cannot. And what such a can bond for is capital improvements such as roads and things like that. You can't bond for ongoing operations for what I think we all hope are pretty obvious reasons. Well, what we did when I talked to him up before was, we took a certain amount out of the transportation fund and then whatever hole was there or some amount of that, then we said, we're going to bond to pay for infrastructure for that entrance. So technically we were binding to pay for what was allowed, which was infrastructure, but really we just formed kind of a way to get around really binding for ongoing operations. And so it takes that ability away. Some have said at the time, for a while, some said, but do we really want to limit the flexibility of our elected officials to respond to different things? My answer to that is, in this instance, yes, we do. We actually have to absolutely do it because we're going to be paying, rather than having to make the hard decisions about raising more money or reducing the level of spending, this really was an easier way out at the time, but one that we've been able to be paying for for a long time. And so we formed a coalition, you'll see in the back now, the number of groups that are members of this coalition now and they range way beyond groups that are in transportation to statewide groups and grocers and housing and retailers and National Federation Independent Businesses. Quite a few chambers of commerce across the state, peer groups of yours. And we asked the legislature to, the only way you can amend the constitution of Wisconsin is two ways. One is a constitutional convention, which has never happened. And the second is the legislature has to vote in two consecutive sessions on the same piece of legislation without amendment. And if they do that, then the question will go on the ballot for the voters. So it's a pretty arduous process to go through. It doesn't happen terribly often. Back in 2010, in order to sort of really get this going, we asked county governments in the state to put an advisory referendum on their ballots, asking the public whether they would support the constitutional amendment to protect the transportation fund. In 58 of the 72 counties did that. It was on the ballot here in Sheboygan in 2010. And in all 58 counties that was on it passed overwhelmingly and the average statewide vote was 700% yes. Subsequent to that, the legislature voted in a very large bipartisan fashion, 80 pages with 83 to 13 in the assembly and 26 to six in the Senate passed first consideration. And they came back and voted in equally large bipartisan fashions last session to pass second consideration, which means it goes on the ballot. And I do want to mention all the legislators here in your area voted yes on that and helped to move that forward. So that's how we got here. That's how the question is going to be on. We asked that you vote yes for some of the reasons that I just outlined. There's a lot more background and reasons if you go to the website, voteyesfortransportation.com, which is on the sheet of paper here. I'll tell you, in addition to it passing well in 2010 in the legislature, we did go out and do some polling earlier in December. And we are still feel very confident when the public's at. We're still a very strong members for support from the public across parties, across age groups, across geography and the state. So, but we still feel it's important that we get out and inform people that it's going to be on the ballot. There's no misunderstanding of that. We don't want to be complacent. We won't be running a huge campaign that generally you think of for statewide for something like this. You probably won't see a lot of TV ads or that sort of thing. It really is going to be more grassroots getting out, talking to groups like yours, making sure that if there are any questions that we answer them and that people just understand why it's on here and what it is. For the most part, what we also found out through that polling and Adam Pan and I reached back on this, the public just feels that it is just common sense. This is what the money was supposed to be used for. That's what it should be used for. And so, quite frankly, that's what we'll see in a lot of our messaging. So with that, I would try to close my comments and take any questions if there are any. If not, I guess my one ask would be, if you consider, as I mentioned, there's quite a few chambers around the state that have signed out in support of this. We're not asking for any money or anything like that. Just that if you're interested, if you support or you wish to support her, we would share all of our materials that they could be sent out via your email communications and those letters and things like that. So with that, I will end and let the Congressman follow me. Thank you very much. Drive safely on your way back. We want to make sure that our transportation first we can get back safely. So this is very important and we should avoid the roads. Next, we have, we are very honored to have Congressman Petri here with us today to give us a little speech. And he also has a friend with him. So he possibly might bring up his friend if you all can really make sure I'm with you. I'm going to bring my little friend with me, but they do have kids in school, they're doing these things. Now, this is called class family. And there was a bear for a while, it also is a sort of thing. And the kids over in a wild rose grade school, I went over there a couple of weeks to do a day visiting the wild rose school system. And they colored this up and made it up in one. Plot Stanley did spend a day in the district coming around with me and then visit Washington and then Korea and Plot Stanley to come back and report with the pictures and all that. So he got to attend the meetings, he had his picture taken by the TV cameras in the back. And he got to meet the Dan Lenny dude and all kinds of other exciting people. And he's been to school. And he's been to Chicago. And he hasn't had a brawler's yet though. But anyway, that's what my friend is all about. I just want to have some other presenters from the state senate and from the state assembly of things going on in Madison and it's the off year, but they're dealing with a lot of different issues. The national level of the president just submitted his budget, March 4th. And that's a huge document. It's more of a wish list than is necessarily a plan in Washington. A lot of times, whether it's if you have a democratic Congress and a Republican president or vice versa, people say, well, it's been on arrival. But it is nonetheless important because it does provide different ideas of things that they're working on. And some of them are included into law as the process goes forward. As we know, it's been a pretty complicated and some of the dysfunctional process in Washington where we're not doing a regular order on a lot of the budget, but the extensions and all of the rest. I just thought I'd touch on a couple of the highlights there, I'm gonna talk a little bit about transportation. The, basically, the budget would continue with a provide for deficit spending. Through 2024, would establish a federal universal preschool program, expand the urgent and tax credit for workers living in households with no children, fully fund the highway trust fund, but not with a dedicated revenue but with a corporate tax reform would extend emergency unemployment benefits for one year, would provide for doubling their size tax on cigarettes and then indexing that to the rate of inflation, try to remember corporate tax reforms that would produce additional revenue and a new tax on large financial institutions. So those are some of the highlights there are a lot of other things in it. The thing that I might just want to mention is quite about transportation here. I've been chairman of the highway committee in the House of Representatives for many years and that is a, one of these things is not a particular partisan thing, we all know one of the basic jobs of government is to help provide for, whether it's at the local level or the next level, for basic transportation infrastructure and the federal government has provided a framework. It's a federal-state local partnership to normally pass a bill for six years and it's very important that we do that because it takes a year to, when they sort of set up the parameters in Washington then the state departments have to work that through and the legislature can work on their budgets all the way to products and accountants and so on and so forth. And if we start degenerating into doing these short term year, two year short term extensions what will happen is it will work with that and it's less and less efficient because it will be stopping and starting which is hard to do and the states and other units of government will attend and start delaying major projects because they're not sure if they're gonna be able to fund them but we are, the current program expires at the end of September so we've been having hearings for the last year or two on reauthorization and working on it. The good news is that it's not partisan, the administration and new secretary of transportation have opened a box from North Carolina been overmeeting with us, they really wanted to be part of trying to work out something. The bad news is that the federal program has traditionally been funded by user fees, gasoline and diesel fuel tax or there's a higher tax and some other taxes on the trucking industry and of course we all know that it's a good thing that vehicles are more fuel efficient but that means that it generates less revenue and the economy's been down some and there's a lot of work being done on alternative fuels and so the bottom line is that the projections are we do a new bill for the next six years the revenue coming in from the traditional streams of gas tax and diesel fuel tax will only cover about 60% of the current flow. So one idea would be to cut it back 60% and turn it back to the states that you basically raise some money to pay for it. Which is not never pleasant, another possibility and that basically what we've been doing is saying all options are on the table, we're trying to work this thing through the federal, federal, last time the federal government's, federal gas tax is now about 18.3 cents a gallon I think the state tax is about 26 or 28 cents a gallon. It's not gonna change since 1993 and it's not indexed so that's the best part of the problem with the other places we mentioned. The National American Association of Truckers, this job is not to make life more expensive or difficult for their members, came in and asked that we raise the diesel fuels tax on the trucking, on their members because they need roads, they looked at all the other alternatives, they're very afraid that their members are gonna get nickels of dime with increased tolling and other things that they course them off the interstate, all the rest of it. So they find that the spending and the reviewing have to come in so that's what they want us to do. We're likely to, but we're trying that the president is suggesting maybe using corporate taxes or other things. The program, it works better at the state level and certainly at the federal level if there's a dedicated stream of revenue like gasoline or diesel fuel tax because at the state level and at the community level part of this program, which may be controversial in some areas, but is important part is about 20% of it is mass transit and what the states and local like I was just on in Dallas meeting with a number of these places, Denver. They're busy trying to expand the mass transit system. They don't want to have much room in school and they have to start growing up. They have to fix transit, they have developers and build buildings, they're on the stop and so I think it was perfect and I could all of it. If they get a federal commitment or some small portion of the money for a number of years for them to do one of these transit projects, they actually can bond against that revenue because it's from a dedicated source and hope for providing that investment in great deal. And they can't do this at the end of the cooperation by the Congress. People aren't going to make some bonds based on a vote every year by a legislature. So when you get into the dynamics and how it works, it really makes the whole thing work a lot better if we can have some kind of a trust fund stream of revenue. So that's what we'll be wrestling with. The likelihood is that the project we thought we'd get through this year, but now they're saying we may run out of revenue just to keep the current program going sometime in July or August of this year. So there may be one of these crises and hopefully everyone will pay on us to figure out how to get some program in place to move forward. One more thing real quickly, I have been chairman of that committee for 12 years or I think the Republican and then was in deviation and back now with this Congress on the surface transportation thing. And of course, you go away from something and then you come back, things change. And two things that really struck me, I had these talking points and I would say that 50,000 people eat our diamond nations highways. The answer now is more like 30,000. It's becoming much safer with better design, with better vehicles. And all electronics moving into these vehicles, it's really amazing. And the second thing is that we're having hearings and briefings discussing technology and transportation more and more. There's a dedicated part of the spectrum for service vehicles that are putting houses and computer ships into these things and they're already, there's competition going on between Google and the traditional auto industry to develop autonomous vehicles. If you fly frequently, you gradually become aware of the fact that the planes fly themselves. Because they can take the flight, it doesn't necessarily have to take off or land and let the machines will do it. And that has huge implications for the trucking industry that it will revolutionize the way we think about transportation and we organize, I think, over time cities and with our lives as much as the development of the vehicle did under years ago when we moved to cars. So it's actually a very interesting and exciting thing. They think it's going to be happening faster rather than slower, not overnight, but they're layering this technology to find an expensive power. Now they have to park themselves. She can go on to Autobahn and push it and it will drive itself on super highway in that type of situation. She's slowing up and she's keeping track of things. But they do expect this technology to be layering in increasingly over the next five or 10 years. And the single autonomous vehicles that do exist will suddenly start becoming more and more available. So it's a whole new different world out there. It's kind of exciting, an opportunity to be part of it and make sure that as best we can, we provide a good framework for people to be innovative and responsibly develop this technology. Anyway, thank you for giving me a chance to work with us. I'm going to be asking our state representatives and our state senators to come up and sit at the table if you wouldn't mind. So first we have Representative Ennsley, Mike Ennsley. We have the retiring representative, Lenny Hughes, and he actually is going to be in his term Ennsley in the game, correct? So he's with us only for a short while. And then we have State Senator Joe Levin, and, oh, there you are. I couldn't see behind John. So if you could come up, we can. Did State Senator Brogdon show up? Not yet. So we are, unfortunately, Sleep Castle is normally here with us, but our representative to Castle is ill today, so he is not able to leave him in time and sit with us. These gentlemen are going to be splitting their time with each other, so. You all got to get along. You all got to get along, that's true. Is everybody out for one up, Senator Ann Alton? Ann Alton. We just started, so I'll just start with you. There was a pretty simple view, and that is when I first ran for office two and a half years ago, especially when I was on the rural area and started to talk to some of the farmers, but the first thing that, other than the fact that I used to drive a garage, I used to go to the company with the roads that were in a very good shape, but once I got out into the townships, I realized that talking to the various town board members and town chairmen and things that obviously an urgent issue was the fact that over the last many decades, the agricultural equipment has gotten significantly larger and significantly heavier and at the same time it's taking a greater toll on the infrastructure, everything from the roads and the bridges and culprits and things like that. Maybe my associates here will comment a little bit further. I mean, one of the things we're doing right now is there's a bill out there called the people with some husbandry, which is addressing this exact issue, and that is what are we going to do about the fact that a lot of our rural roads and the agricultural areas are deteriorated at a much, much faster pace due to the size of the way of the equipment. I guess in addition to that, and I've already had a comment before, the bottom line is that the funding source for maintaining the infrastructure with regard to the registration fees of the gas tax aren't keeping up with the levels that they have in the past and things like the hybrid cars, electric cars, and just significantly more fuel efficient cars, but at the same stage, you don't require that type of, that is much fuel, I should say, and that's where we're not keeping up. So it's a task that doesn't have a lot of easy answers. We're working with them, but the fact remains that infrastructure is a priority and we need to put together a strategy to maintain the funding that we need. So you're tiring, right? There you go. You're just saving it for after I talk. I think it's over. Yeah, so yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be with you again. I'm Joe Leipmann, I represent the ninth senate district, which includes most of Sheboygan County, Southern Manawak County, and the Hilbert Potter children area in County and County. And it's always great to stop by and give updates to not only this chamber group, but I think one of the things that we enjoy best about our legislative responsibilities is having the ability to communicate and talk with the people that will represent about what's happening in your state government and your state capital. And I think all my colleagues would agree that there is a lot happening in the capital at this time. The winter spring session is nearing an end and there are a lot of proposals that legislators have been working on for almost two years now that they would like to see come to fruition before this voting period comes to an end. And so yesterday, I was actually Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week, I've been in hearings basically from 8.30 in the morning until 5.30 in the afternoon. And bills are just making their way through for final consideration. Without a doubt, the main focus of the Senate and the legislature as a whole and Governor Locker over the past couple of months has been in regard to the positive fiscal situation that the state of Wisconsin finds itself in. Because of, I think, continued fiscal discipline and budget management at the state capitol and because of the fact that our economy in Wisconsin is growing, better than actually we anticipated it would be just a couple of months ago, we now in Wisconsin are projected to have a billion dollar budget surplus in the current two year budget that we're currently in, it's the 1315 budget. So right there, I would stand up and celebrate and say, go on, are the multi-billion dollar deficit days that we've lived through in this state for years, almost 15 years. Under the last two budgets that we've been in charge of, the state has been running in the black and it has had surplus budgets. And again, the current projection is that if everything continues as is foreseen, we would have about a billion dollars of more revenue coming in to the capitol than what we had planned for when we passed the budget. The Governor, the Assembly and the Senate have said, you know what, we passed the budget, we feel good about the sustainable and good investments that we made in government programs, hundreds of millions of dollars more for our public schools, hundreds of millions of dollars more for Medicaid and medical assistance programs, hundreds of millions of dollars more for government programs and services. Those are all covered in the budget. This revenue surplus goes beyond it and we think we should slow down that revenue stream. We should let the people of the state, the hardworking people of the state who are earning the income taxes or the businesses that are generating the corporate taxes, we want you to keep that money instead of having to come down to state government first. And so, last week and a couple of weeks earlier in the Assembly, and I think just earlier this week or so, Governor Walker signed a number of special session bills into a lot of government. Is he gonna sign them? There's so much going on, I don't even remember if he signed them. But they're on his desk, I believe. Yeah. And, because we just did that on Tuesday, didn't we? Yeah. So it comes back to you guys for a little bit. There you go. So in a couple of days, the Governor will be signing really an impressive tax relief package for the citizens of this state. About $900 million of money will be kept in your pockets instead of coming down to the state capital. Like I said, we're slowing down that stream of revenue that was projected to come in over the next two years. The focus of the bills that we passed are in property tax relief. We will basically commit a $400 million of additional state money to our technical college system over the next year. And that will mean the technical colleges will levy less on the property tax bill in 2014. And so every property tax, average property in Wisconsin will see a reduction in their property taxes by about $100 in 2014 because we're gonna offset levy revenue for the technical colleges with state money. And again, that will result in about $100 for the average property in Wisconsin. We then focus on income taxes. And we did a lot with income taxes in the state budget. We lowered every income tax bracket just back in June. And people are gonna see the benefits of that in this year. Every income tax bracket was lowered. But in this bill now, with the projected surplus, again, to help you keep more of your money, we're further lowering the lowest income tax bracket in Wisconsin. So those people earning $15,000 or less will have their redrop from 4.25 down to 4%. It actually impacts everybody really because we have an escalating income tax in Wisconsin. So the first $15,000 that you earn will be taxed a little bit less as well. But we really kind of geared this towards the low income people of this state. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge savings. They'll save about $60 in income taxes this year. But I don't know, I talked to a lot of low income families and $60 is a welcome $60. You know, that can help with a higher heating bill or with a medical expense that they weren't anticipating because of the changes in healthcare, whatever it may be. I'm not going to apologize for getting those people $60 back in the income that they've earned. And then for everybody, the governor and the legislature have agreed to update our withholding tables for income taxes in Wisconsin. And this will happen again in April. So in April, our income tax withholding tables will be updated. And that means that the average income earner in there in Wisconsin will pay $58 less or will keep $58 more of your income in every month you check. And that equates to about $600 for the average family that you'll keep and never send down to the state capital. So you add that all up and that's the $100 in property tax relief, almost $700 in income tax relief. And that's a nice chunk of money that the good, hardworking, middle-class families of Wisconsin are gonna be able to keep over the next year instead of having to send down to the state capital. In addition to that, again, we've invested an additional $35 million with this surplus into worker training initiatives. You know, I just met with one of the largest employers in our community a couple of weeks ago. They're struggling to hire 20 people because the skill set just isn't there. And we're talking about wages of $50 to $23 an hour. So we wanna continue to work with businesses to help them find the people that they need to fill the jobs that are there. So we're investing $35 million more into worker training initiatives. One of the cool parts of it, too, is that a chunk of that is dedicated to helping more people with disabilities get employed. I know any of you have a chance to spend time at RCS or groups like Hearthstone. The opportunity to have a person that has a disability but has huge ability to help them find a job is just so rewarding. And a big chunk of that money is gonna go to helping more people with disabilities get jobs. And then to maintain our fiscal stability, again, we're pretty proud of what's happened in this state. So on to the multi-billion dollar deficit days, we're now running in the black. We don't wanna mess that up. So we hold on to a chunk of that projected surplus as well. It's about $100 million that we hold on to and say, let's just, let's not lose the momentum that we've gotten here. So if an unexpected expenditure comes up or if the economy does dip over the next couple months, we've got $100 million that we can work with and not have to go back to US taxpayers and say, hey, we gotta raise taxes at this time. And with that, I should also mention in addition to that $100 million, so we have $254 million right around there in our state's rainy day contingency budget fund. When we took office in 2011 with Governor Walker, there was $2 million in the rainy day fund. I've got this in my hand though. $2 million, I think it is. $2 million in the rainy day fund. Right, $2 million. We've now increased that to $279 million, excuse me. That's the largest balance in the state's rainy day fund in the history of the state of Wisconsin. We think that's an appropriate amount. Again, if you don't want to put more money in there that's necessary, that means we're taking more of your money and having government hold on to it. And we'd rather let you, I use that money and have that to be able to support your family or businesses. There's a lot else that's going on. I try to keep it informed so this handle can give you a little bit of an overview about what I've worked on. I wanted to mention though as well the supporting local jobs part that I have in the handle is I think this is important for business people like yourself to understand. The state of Wisconsin over the past year has worked with a lot of good local businesses in providing assistance, tax credit support, low income loans, whatever it may be. And this is just a list that WBDC and maybe like the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Organization have worked with here in the Sherbrooke area. And some people have criticized that. They're saying the legislature has been focused on helping the corporate elite, the wealthy corporate people of our state. That's what their argument is. Well, this is the corporate wealthy that we're trying to help. These are the businesses of Sheboygan, Manitowoc and County of County that want to continue to operate here and create jobs here, employ people here. And what we do is provide them with some tax incentives, some incentive to stay growing there. You know, Venus right here in Sheboygan County, Sheboygan Falls is a real good example. Venus Manufacturing employees, hundreds of people here in our community are in important business. They get support from the state. Hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to help them continue to grow in this area and bring more jobs to this area. In addition, Venus is the main benefactor of the investment that the state of Wisconsin has made in the Plymouth to Sheboygan Falls rail line. I think that's $14 million of state tax money is going into that rail line. And that's the help of business like Venus Manufacturing. That's the money that we are putting into helping businesses. And again, that gets criticized, but I think you need to bring it home to understand that these are the people that work at Venus. These are the people that work at Booth. These are the people that work at Rockline. That's who we're working and trying to help here. And I think that's a smart and a worthy investment because when those businesses do well, they continue to pay taxes to the state. They employ more people. We're going to pay taxes to the state. That's going to help us to be maintaining the good fiscal balance that we've been able to do in the state of Wisconsin. So that, I know everybody's looking forward to questions and not the answer in a rebutt. And we have a chance to say something. Thanks. Thanks. The last few times we've been at the Chamber of First Friday, we've had five of us here. So we've taken one representative, one senator, to give updates, and they just asked for questions. So if they take one, there's only three of us. I'll grab the mic from the minister, too. The session is near and then. This time next month, we'll be done. Two or four sessions in the lab, and then the person we can email to sort of get the bills that, like the surplus bills that we passed in the assembly a few weeks ago, and I was sent a pass. There's one minor difference in it, so now I'll ask the back of the assembly. And we need to take that amendment or we need to kick it off with our Senate friends. But try to reach agreement then. I want to send it to the governor, and that's going to be done with multiple houses. So that first week in April, we'll leave open to put these bills to a back and forth and get some resolution. As the senator said, there's a number of bills out there that we haven't gotten the resolution on that aren't ready to go into either house. I don't know if we'll get that done in the next two weeks, if not, then we start over again. Somebody starts over again in January. And with some of those same issues, we're trying to get a resolution on them. We have several issues. The fire movements, the acre movements on the road is a big deal for townals. And for the acre, as I said, they can continue to do that for business. It's important for the gravel pits and those types of trucks that are going on common roads all the time to get some resolution on that issue. You've heard a lot about comic park. We haven't reached a resolution on how to deal with that issue. We haven't reached a resolution on school accountability, where we've all not only choice schools and charter schools, but public schools are accountable for their performance. And if they're actually teaching the kids what they should be teaching them, and are we getting the results that millions and millions of dollars are afraid of education? Are we getting the results that we want from our public schools, charter schools, and charter schools? So there's a number of issues out there. And yes, there's a lot of work being done in Madison. And we're trying to get a resolution on those. I was at a town association meeting last night in Five Night County. And the county administrator at Five Night County was, I won't say it's complaining, but he was concerned about the number of baby boomers that were starting to retire and the needs to replace that. Well, I'd just like to say that I'm meeting the charge of the baby boomer. They're seeking to retire. And I'm proud of that, that I'm doing that. And so I'm looking forward to retirement. I just want to say that organizations like this, the business community, the chambers, I've represented parts of Five Ponies, over the actually six ponies, over the over 12 years. And groups like this throughout the district, throughout this part of the state, are so very important for the success of legislators. The input we get from groups like this, the give and take we can have with the business community is so very important because quite often, legislators do not come from that background. Do not come from the business background. And a lot of them start out as staffers and interns and spend a lot of time in the public sector and don't have that business background. It's been refreshing to over the last 12 years, actually for the last 26 years. 26 years in county government and state government to have a relationship with the business community and know that the business community is looking to step up and let their voices return and that's a good thing. And you need to be able to do that. I don't know if this seat will be filled with some members of Shwaya County. The district now has very low Shwaya County actually. I don't know where I live. It goes all the way to Markford up to the whole state and I have six individuals that contact me interested in the position. One of them is from the farm in Shwaya County that's in the district but it's such a small portion on this very, this could be very hard for somebody to win that seat from Shwaya County in the future. So you would still have a representative of how we see for that part of the county but we may not live in the county. So with that, we'll open up the questions and we'll all be happy to answer the questions but feel free to ask your questions. I don't know if somebody from the chamber's gonna run this but raise your hand and we'll call on you. Well, you're thinking of questions. Auditor Benz, one bit of information that I forgot to mention is in regard to transportation and part of the effort that we've been working on in the past couple of weeks has been related to the transportation budget as well. Again, we are projecting that we'll have about a billion dollars of extra revenue in the general fund of the state of Wisconsin but then as Craig mentioned and as I'm poking your understanding, we have a separate transportation budget and along with the surplus projection of the general fund there is a projection that the transportation fund will see a surplus of about 80 million dollars in the remainder of this budget and so what we did or what we're gonna do next week Tuesday evening in the Senate and you guys have done it already is we commit about 35 million of that projected 80 million dollar surplus in the transportation fund to more road projects in the state of Wisconsin to move forward some of the important highway projects that have kind of gotten a little bit behind over the past couple of years. That doesn't unfortunately mean 23 directly but it will help as 23 continues to be on target for 2015. I will share that myself and a couple of senators are looking to see if there is something that we can do for some local road dollars as well because counties and local towns and municipalities are struggling with some maintenance costs and it's just been enhanced with the winter. So we're trying to see if there's something that we can do next Tuesday to maybe help our talk. In the budget that we passed we do help out the towns and municipalities with a nice increase but we're looking to see if anything more can be done here before we leave a session. So with that, questions? I actually have a question. Linda. We're just talking about how in the center is that one of those things that you participate in something or? Some of us get calls even on municipal issues to get a call but that's really a local government issue. I mean we provide support to local communities and to counties through a number of different dollar streams but you know local infrastructure would be a responsibility of a local government. Charles. It was a cause of the surplus. You said it's increased revenues more than expected. Did you change your budgeting from the previous two-year annual budget? Did it reduce what you explained in the beginning? Did some of that come about? Well, I mean if you haven't realized you've got a conservative group of people leading the legislature right now and a conservative governor. So when we passed our budget back in June, we did that with conservative budget projections for revenue. Part of the problem that we've gotten, part of the problem we've gotten into messes in the past with these multi-billion dollar deficits is that even when the fiscal bureau was telling the legislature that revenue growth was only gonna go up by 2%, the legislature and the past governors would pass budgets that thought they were gonna spend 4% or get 4% or 5% new revenue. And that would have led to the deficit problem. So that's been a big change. We've been much more disciplined and conservative in our budgeting since Governor Walker and the Republican legislature to charge in 2011. So we tightened up those revenue estimates back in June when we passed the budget. And because of the fact that, again, income taxes are up, corporate taxes are up, sales taxes are up, excise taxes are up, everything's coming in a little bit better than what we had anticipated. And so that accounts for about 800 million, of the 700 million of the projected surplus. And then on top of that, I mean, we maintain good budget management, the tune of about $200 million in savings from what was proposed to be spent by your government. We've kind of tightened things up or not tightened, but we just spend only what had to be spent. And so it's projected that there would be about $200 million savings in spending during that period as well. And that comes to the billion dollars. Councilor? Yeah, well, over a year ago, some of the top rates of capital growth were people who recognized capital gains that were lower than what we reported in that year. So one of the arguments we had to meet for a great debate, by the way, they don't know if this is a permanent increase in revenue, extreme wealth, federal and the state level, or maybe part of it, or remember, maybe part of it, one time because of people adjusting and recognizing some gains as lower rates to avoid changes to the tax level. So I don't think you are being a little cautious about not assuming that good times will keep growing on this. I think another one of the things we're seeing in Wisconsin is in the last three, in last two budgets, the last three years, we have tried through tax, laws on the change, and through the regulatory reform to make Wisconsin a better place to business, a friendlier place to business. And we're seeing results of that. And then people are hiring, more people are going back to work, beginning raises, and that's why we see the increase in the income tax and sales tax. The other thing we've seen is that as the economy starts improving, there's more trucks in the road. And a lot of the increase in the transportation budget has been because of tax on diesel. That's where the biggest increase has been. So it's showing that if you make your state a place to business, a place friendly to business, you're not trying to kick them out, we didn't raise a warehouse tax like I did in Minnesota, and we got the worded Amazon to put the warehouse in Wisconsin. Those types of actions that we kick are reflected in some growth in the business that can make the economy start to see results of that. What's the status of user fees in other areas? Like I think DNR generates improvements on our user fees, are those protected as well? No. Some of us were honored to protect, everybody said we'd get a fund, but that wasn't going to happen. The transportation fund, I mean it should be a low-brainer with all of them. If you're a farmer and you pay a tax, that's an additional surcharge on every bank of fertilizer for cleanup of fertilizer skills, that's the money you go. And if there's too much money in there, we should lower that surcharge. But no, the other ones are not protected, and there's a lot in your right, there's a lot of them. But overall, I mean I think it's important to understand, in 2009 alone, taxes and fees in this state were raised by $3.14 billion. That was just in one year 2009. Since 2011, we've had a decline in taxes and fees to the tune of almost $2 billion. So we're going in the opposite direction where we were and we're trying to discipline, not only through the Transportation Protection Amendment, but by disciplining ourselves that a fee should be for what it's supposed to go for. Another comment too, I would be very mislead if I can say this, but leading government, we're talking about bringing in extra revenues and things like that. I think there's an impact, even though we're probably still taking our first early steps within the various agencies in the state government. I know Corrections has been looked at and we're looking at a lot of extra dollars just by eliminating a lot of the different waste and abuse, and in some cases, fraud that's going on within the state government. And I think that's going to continue to be very crude just because there's so many agencies that haven't had a thorough look yet. So I think that's just another, for me anyway, it's important. I don't know like that, but the government is trying to run more lean and implementing lean practices just like most businesses do as well. The discussion, talk radios, and there's a proposal that would, so CTAP, this is where public record of criminal activity is maintained on a database website that is available to the public. The proposal is that if you were charged and the charge didn't come through to conviction that the charge wouldn't appear on the website. I think that's what the proposal says. And all other convictions were beyond there. Is it misdemeanors and felonies? Or felonies for sure? Yeah, I would. I don't know. So I don't know where that proposal's at. If it's got some links to go through, IA's know there's concern with it. I think most people that have been contacted to me over the past couple of days thinking that it may have taken up in the final days here are that they don't think we should restrict that information. I'm not sure if they really understand that it's just four cases that don't go to conviction that would be included. But I don't know if I see that getting through in the final couple of weeks of the legislature. And I support maintaining that public access to that information. It's a public record, and I do support any feedback. Give us a report on that, because that seems to be a real topic. There's a bill out right now. It's an assembly bill of 760. And it creates a grant program that would be administered by the Arts Board, which is a part of the state's Department of Tourism. The bill requires the Arts Board to award grants on a competitive basis to businesses, art organizations, local art agencies, and businesses that develop organizations and associations that work to promote the following items. Number one, individuals or organizations whose products or services can emerge in artistic, cultural, creative, or aesthetic content. Number two, job creation. And number three, economic development. And under this bill, such a grant may not exceed more than $40,000 in the bill from the University Arts Board from awarding a grant unless the proposed grant recipient has secured the non-state sources, the non-state monies, if you will, equal to that, at least twice the amount of that. So it's a, we had a hearing on it. I think that was last week or the week before. Had a lot of artistic people there. You can just tell by some of the things they brought with them. A lot of excitement. And, okay. Like, they're not interested in here. They're not interested in here. Yeah, that's how it works, absolutely. So, okay, I think it, especially for Chauvin County, I mean, it kind of fits in with some of the things that we've done. Some of the things we want to continue to do. So if you want more information on it, let me know, and I think, you know, give me some information to look into and share with you. Okay. But I think that this is something that's what I think it has a little chance of moving because it's going to help overall tourism, right? More revenues and having more visitors and things. And then it'll show up our state very well as well. I was going to ask about the transportation part of the gas tax. And Wisconsin used to index it to actually increase the cost of living and the other one was the cost of inflation and other things on it. Gas prices is probably about 35, 40 cents. Well, that's a couple of weeks around the state. I'm not sure who to blame, but we need more money. More funds for the roads and gas taxes are used as a user fee and then we have to solve the issue with hybrids and other things. Is that an idea that's ever being talked about again or is that heresy to bring up? Well, I think at least for myself and my colleagues in the Sunway, the Republican side, we were not comfortable with the automatic indexing. For reasons. We weren't both at it. And it would be easy for us to say, well, I didn't raise taxes, there's someone else that didn't allow that to go in or she's automatic, they're going out, don't blame me. And as an electrician, I don't think that's an excuse. If I wanted to go up, I should go for it. Number two, a lot of us did not feel comfortable raising the gas tax when the money was going into the general fund. Because actually in no way I was supporting an increase in the gas tax when it wasn't secured for what it was meant to be. Now, we can have that discussion after November. And while you find people who want to restrict that money to where it's supposed to go in the Constitution, we can have that discussion. Up until then, I don't even want to have that discussion because it's not going to replace it's supposed to go to. Yeah, I was going to talk about, if we go on more CNG for a lot of vehicles, particularly trucks on the I-Wars, will they be taxed? Well, there we are. Gas tax applied, is that the hot hole will they be skirting in the air like electric vehicles today for CNG? See, quick trip, adopting an awful lot of contrast-added gas stations for a lot of years. Maybe I can talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, on the top of the list, quick trip comes out all the time. There's been about $500,000 of pump I'm just putting it in there. The real price of natural gas right now is about $0.30 a gallon on an energy-efficient basis to gasoline. Now, obviously they've got to pick up the pump and the infrastructure, so it'd be a couple dollars, but it'd be a little bit cheaper than, so everyone from Schneider, trucking, the UTS, the women and the brother, is looking at this thing. It's a little bit of a chicken and egg. People like Rick Rick are going ahead and figuring we're gonna take the risk, put it in. It's gonna happen pretty fast over the next five or 10 years. There are new engines coming out. Again, they cost more at first, but so that's gonna happen. One of the things that's been just maybe worth mentioning, we've been having meetings and having people coming in from different states, because every state, not just not so much, all would be wrestling with it. A lot of states have been wrestling with how they're going to come up with their share. And Virginia, and a couple of other states, what they've done, it's a little bit of a big remember, they've got rid of the gas tax, but they've subject to gasoline to the sales tax. And then that is a way of indexing it. In fact, it's a percentage of the price of gasoline and it panicles up and down as the price of gasoline is on the solid that whole Wyoming, which is a 15 country of 80% of the Republican very conservative and the lowest gas tax in the United States. They were paying for their roads through royalties on mineral rights and things and they were declining. They had a long three-year debate because they don't have mass transit there. They're driving 30,000 miles a year. They've got 80,000 more gasoline because they're carrying a kingdom. They haven't had their own, someone had a paper. Either they were going to do it or they're going to send the bill to their kids by borrowing money and the responsible thing was to, it wasn't popular, but it's been well accepted.