 The incumbent is Devin Lemieux, he's a Republican, and the challenger is Kyle Welton, and he is a Democrat, and he is challenging. I did put a map on your table so you can kind of see where the ninth district is, and it's basically most of Sheboyton County, at least the eastern part, most of Manawar County in the southern part, and a little bit in the middle of Calumet County. So with that, I think I'll flip a coin to see who wants to go first. I'll let the challenger call it. Nope, I'm sorry, head. It was shining so much I couldn't see what it was. I guess then I'll let Devin decide you want to come up or do you want to defend? I'll go second. Okay, you go second? All right. It's all yours. I'll let the candidates know the ground rules. I'm going to give them ten minutes each, and we'll have some questions in hand. So wait a minute. Sounds good. Can everybody hear me? Is that better? Okay, there you go. Well, first off, thank you all for having me here. Thank you, Scott, for arranging this. I think you can all say that we're grateful there's only 15 days left until we can watch a packer game without any political ads. And I want to take a moment and congratulate the Rotary Club on the citation award that was given to North and South Interactive. Certainly an incredible achievement for the students, but we all know that that doesn't happen without dedicated advisors and community members, and that's where you all come in. So I was born and raised here in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, just one of four kids. And growing up, my family fell on some hard times. After my parents left, my mom had to work three jobs for a couple of years just to pay the bills, and that's what's inspired my life in service. It's an experience that never left me, and it informed an understanding in me at a very young age that no parent should ever have to work multiple jobs just to support their family. And so I've gotten involved to fight to make sure that no parent ever has to make that same sacrifice. I serve as a school board member here in Sheboygan because I believe that education is a great equalizer. It provides every child, regardless of their parents' income and ability, a shot at the middle class and the quality of education. I serve as president of Habitat for Humanity Lakeside, building homes for families in need because I believe that every child deserves a decent place to live. And I spent a year fighting the opioid epidemic with the Wisconsin Recovery Community Organization because we're not doing enough to battle addiction and combat this, tearing our families apart. But what I can tell you is frustrating for me is that the more that I've gotten involved, the more people that I meet, the more that I go out through the community, the more I find folks still struggling like my mother did. More parents who are working second and third jobs, more young people overburden with student debt, wondering when they'll finally make enough to have a middle class life like their parents did. And more seniors and families that are struggling to afford the cost of their healthcare and their prescription drugs and that's why I'm running for state senate. See, it doesn't seem hard for me to understand how we got to this point because when you look at the United Way's Alice Report, over one-third of households in Wisconsin right now are struggling to make ends meet by pay for things like rent and food and utilities. And when you look at it, we're dead last in your business startup activity. We're dead last in entrepreneurism. The median wage adjusted for inflation is lower than it was eight years ago and 45% of Wisconsinites believe their public schools are worse than they were just a few years ago. We're in this spot because Wisconsin hasn't invested in the structure that allow communities to grow, families to thrive and businesses to develop. If we want this to happen, we've got to make sure that we're investing the resources to make it possible. A culture of entrepreneurship and innovation starts with a world-class education. We've got to make sure that our public schools are fully funded, that we're recruiting and retaining the best teachers and that this is a state where young people want to live. We're the 10th most moved from state and the union. Part of it's because we haven't invested in transportation. As I said, we've got the fourth worst roads in the country. Wheel taxes have gone up 300% in the last eight years. When you're a person who's coming out of college and looking where you want to invest, you want to invest in a community that knows is going to continually raise your local taxes and you're going to pay an extra $637 a year in road maintenance because the state hasn't done their job in funding our roads. Our bonding rate in transportation is 22% in this latest budget. There's nothing fiscally responsible about dedicating 22% of our income in transportation to paying debt service instead of fixing the roads. We've kicked the can down the road far too long. I'm running in this race because I want to put progress over politics, community before party, and families first. I'm dedicated to making sure that we're coming together as a community and solving these problems just as you are as Reuters. Service above self. As a Marquette graduate and Caitlin, I highly encourage you to pursue that education. It was instilled in me that your life should be dedicated to service, men and women, for and with others. And the way that we move Wisconsin forward, that we tackle these challenges, that we create opportunities for entrepreneurship in the state, it's through that culture of service. It's not through playing political games and taking direction from party leaders. And so, with that, I'll close, keep it brief, and turn it over, and then we can move to your question and answer. Thank you. I'm glad to see you got the dress code for the event today. Celebrating the season of the brewers, I guess, blue and gold. It's great to be here. It's great for me to be here with a high school because I remember coming here as a high schooler. I won't tell you how long ago that is. You can maybe ask Ryan Gartman or Paul Lintink or Wayne Sather since I went to school with his kids. You can figure out how long ago that was. But it was great being here back then. I was scared out of my mind talking when I was in high school. So if you guys are a little nervous, I can definitely appreciate that. But thank you. Thank you, Scott, for setting this up. Thank you, Rotary, for what you do. I was a member of the Usper Kiwanis Club and unfortunately folded in this last year because I was the youngest member and most of the members were north of 70 years old and we couldn't find anybody to run the organization anymore. So that was too bad that the Usper Kiwanis Club folded. But services like yours are so vital to the community. So thank you for what you do for the community. I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I grew up in Sheboyin County. I guess I was with Paul and Ryan and went away to go to college, have degrees in business administration, political science. Moved back in 2002 to run my dad's business, which I subsequently bought, the Lakeshore Weekly. Look at it in Usper, a weekly shopper, a small print shop. I think it's important to have people in Madison who understand the struggles that small businesses face, people who have to pay those taxes, people who are already payroll checks to their employees, people who are dealing with the work environment that we're dealing with here in Wisconsin. I've also served nine years as a Sheboyin County-born member. It was great working with Adam Payne, Tom Wagner, those folks. I think we had a very successful run. Well, they're still doing a great job, but very successful when I was there. We rode those taxes for the nine years. Very fiscally responsible while investing in core priorities that our residents of Sheboyin County expect. Four years ago, I was elected to the State Senate. It's been a great four years. When you go into public service, you think you have ideas of what you're going to work on, but the great thing is you get to go to tour businesses, meet with groups like this, meet with chambers, talk to superintendents like Tom used to be, and they give you ideas of what you need to start working on. Over the last four years, I actually had 33 bills that I authored, signed into law. 28 of those bills have bipartisan support, so I'm very proud of that track record. I'll just highlight a couple of the bills. One allows people to register to vote online if they have a valid ID card. This makes it easier so you don't have to deal with same-day registration. We still have same-day registration, so people can, with a valid ID, go and state ID, go register the same day. But it also uses technology to clean up our voter rolls to make sure people aren't registered in multiple areas when people pass away to make sure that they're taken off the voter rolls, things like that. And the other bill I'm going to highlight is the RAINS Act, which is the first in the nation legislation which brings legislative oversight to the rule-making process. That sounds pretty exciting. But it is. It brings a legislative check to the executive branch. The executive branch oversees all the agencies, like the DNR, Department of Transportation, things like that. And when these agencies promulgate rules, once they're promulgated, they have the force of law. And under previous law, we had no ability to stop this unless we passed a law overriding it. Well, then if we passed a law, then obviously the governor is going to veto it because his agency is promulgating these rules. So we would need a two-thirds veto-proof majority to stop rules from taking effect. So you send us to Madison to be your voice. It gives us that check on the executive branch. So that was very important. I'm very proud of that bill. But things are going great in Wisconsin right now. I'm excited about the direction of Wisconsin right now. We have eight straight months of record low unemployment, 3% or less. There's a record number of people employed in Wisconsin. Every time I tour a business, they're like, I could hire 20 people today if we had more people. The economy is going great. Now, obviously, even in my district alone, the three counties I represent, there are 5500 more people working today than there were four years ago. Just think about that. 5500 more people working today than there were four years ago. Things are exciting. Now, obviously, I can't take all credit for that. I'd like to, but I can't. We have a great workforce in Wisconsin, educated, hard-working, dedicated. We have great family-owned businesses in Wisconsin that want to expand and grow in this area. When we have great schools in this area, fantastic schools in this area, so those are helping our state grow. But at the state government, what we do is we provide an environment to foster that job growth. I think we've done a great job over the last four years holding the line on taxes, regulatory reform, red-tip reform to make sure that businesses have that certainty moving forward. The two budgets that I voted on have the two lowest amounts of borrowing in the last 20 years. Just think of that. I know people don't trust that this is enough. It's not sexy talking about debt burden, but that's not inflation-adjusted. We have the two lowest amounts of borrowing over the last 20 years. Our bond grading was upgraded. We're making progress. We made historic investments in public schools over the last budget. Right now, schools are getting 10% more from the state than they were 10 years ago. 10% more from the state than they were 10 years ago. It's hard to get that news out of the media because it's not always covered. And we made significant investment in local road aides to help cities and municipalities and townships and counties improve on their roads. With all these great successes that we've seen in Wisconsin over the last four years, eight years brings on new challenges. What we need to focus on moving forward is workforce development. Making sure we get the people with jobs and the skills and the training required. So that's what I plan on focusing on in the next four years is to make sure we're investing in our schools. So they have things like FAB Labs so they can learn that skilled trade. Working with tech colleges, with Paul to make sure that they're providing the opportunity to get kids involved. Expanding youth apprenticeship programs to partner businesses with the high schools. Making sure there's broadband grants available like we've increased over the last four years in the state of Wisconsin. Welfare reform to make sure those who are dependent on government can get the skills training they need the help that they need to get back into the workforce. And the other issue that I think that we really need to deal with going forward which has sort of been an under reported challenge that Wisconsin is facing I think we've done a great job in the last four years trying to deal with the opioid epidemic and we've still worked it to be done but through the whole agenda treatment and addiction courts, things like that we're making great progress but the one area that we're sort of falling by the wayside on is mental health services we have a great shortage of mental health services in the state of Wisconsin I did pass a bill to give especially smaller schools the opportunity to contract out and provide that so they can get the kids the help that they need in the schools and it's so hard to find those services in the area so I think that's one thing we need to focus on because drug addiction and things like that it's often tied to mental health issues and we need to make sure that those who have these challenges get the help that they need so those are the two areas I look forward to focusing on over the next four years as well as keeping Wisconsin moving make sure that we're being responsible fiscally responsible with your money using it as best as we can possibly so once again thank you for inviting me it has definitely been an honor and a privilege to serve you all over the last four years to meet a lot of you in the room that I've gotten to know better over the last four years and I look forward to spending another four years serving you here, thank you just a yes or no question I asked this last week what is your status for the state of Wisconsin or for any municipality in the state would you be in support of that or would you be opposed to it I think it's an issue of local control and locally elected officials should be decided it makes sense what they can do in their communities so you would be in support of it at the local level I believe that locally elected officials should be allowed to make that decision and it's immigration is a federal issue I don't really think that the local government should be involved in enforcing federal laws like that but that's a decision for the local government to make no yes sure I have a question, what are your thoughts bringing fast speed affordable broadband to the rural area it definitely is, that's why we her question was referring to broadband grants which I brought up during my talk in Elkhart Lake their internet service isn't very good and they only have one provider and it's very expensive and slow no that's one thing we've actually focused on over the last four years is expanding grants to local telecommunication companies so this could be expanded across Wisconsin there are some challenges in this part of the state but it's especially challenging all around the state especially in the more rural northern parts of the state of Wisconsin so that's definitely important economic driver, it's a job driver I'm actually chairman of the utilities and election committee so I've overseen some of those bills that I have gone through so I was excited that we could get that help and we need to keep making those investments going forward the state should be investing in making sure that we've got broadband access in every community 23% of rural communities in Wisconsin do not have access to broadband it's an economic issue, it's an education issue in the school district we've got one-to-one devices for all of our students that they can do homework at home and get on the internet get out to some rural communities and their kids that are driving into public libraries and sitting in the parking lot so they can use wifi if we want our students to succeed and to have a world-class workforce and economic tension driving forward internet access is a fundamental piece of that in the future we have to be investing in it as a state I hear Mr. Welton saying that education needs more attention I understand it's more funding whereas we suggest that there have been additional funds going into education is it a question of just the amount that should be devoted to that and it should be a higher amount where would those funds come from would they be additional taxes or would they be a reallocation of other assets the question was about education funding is it just how much are we spending there or there are a couple of pieces to this Devin and I are both in agreement that we need to reform the school funding formula in Wisconsin right now we've got a funding formula that exacerbates inequities rather than really equalizing I think we have to make sure that we're accounting for we get the term here correct free and reduced lunch levels of poverty in that formula which we currently don't do but one is reforming the school funding formula the second piece is that we do need more resources and it's not just a matter of throwing money at it it's a matter of throwing more teachers more social workers, more school therapists and at the issues we're dealing with we talked about mental health as a crisis in our schools the rates are staggering 13% of students before they reach eighth grade show symptoms of a diagnosable mental disorder it gets to one in five when you're before you graduate high school one in four in college we've got to have the resources to address that in the school system to make sure that our teachers are ready to deal with that because they can't be social workers, psychologists and educators the other piece is that we need that for a continual investment in the infrastructure in our schools we had to do a $27 million referendum here in the school district because we got behind on maintenance after cutbacks the funding that came in the last budget was desperately needed but it didn't replace the nearly one over $1 billion we lost from K-12 education we also haven't even touched on higher education here we've lost over a billion dollars over the last decade in higher education funding in the state and every dollar you put in the UW system puts 24 back of the economy think about that folks that's 24 billion dollars pulled out of Wisconsin's economy in development and research and other investment so we do need more resources so that we have more staff because right now teachers are on average paid less than they have at any point in Wisconsin's history they're more inexperienced and moralistic people one in five new teachers leaves the profession in their first five years and the enrollment in teacher preparation courses in Wisconsin is down 28% we can't just lower licensing standards and expect that we're going to have the same quality education we've got to be investing and attracting talent just as you do in your businesses and one thing right, we do need to fix the school funding formula that is by far the biggest inequity in the state of Wisconsin especially in this part of the state we in the budget I worked on an amendment with a lot of the local legislators to make sure that schools that were capped at lower limits were given the flexibility to increase that we changed what the governor had in the budget because he had sparsity aid put in the budget for more rural districts he vetoed that out of there so we worked with the governor sparsity aid for rural districts like I have a couple in Reedsville that part of the the senate district but to also help those school districts that are capped at low revenue which are about half the school districts that comprise my senate district Random Lake, Boosburg Shiboygan Falls Keele, Plymouth Manitowah so I was fighting for our school districts to make sure they could compete with the guy who asked the question not over there but we have made great strides over the last four years in the budget the largest economic fields happening in the state of Wisconsin is Foxconn and one of our unitaro candidates who's running is suggesting that he's elected that he would open up the contract with Foxconn and do some green negotiations if you're elected or re-elected would you support that? well I voted for the Foxconn deal being elected and I think it's a great investment in the state of Wisconsin I know those who oppose it like to say it's a giveaway to a foreign corporation no Foxconn is now a Wisconsin company they're based here in Wisconsin they already have over 100 employees here in Wisconsin these are great paid jobs all the way from Racine to Milwaukee to Grebae to Eau Claire to Madison they're hiring great paying jobs I was talking to Paul at the table he's like we see business exploding even though we're not actually working for Foxconn but businesses that are working with Foxconn just imagine 13,000 more jobs added to the state of Wisconsin that's just the ripple effects of that is tremendous it's hard to imagine it's hard to understate how huge this is going to be for Wisconsin not just the construction stage but going forward and when I hear it characterizes a $4.5 billion giveaway that just frustrates me because these are credits are given out as the company is growing investing in Wisconsin and to try short change the incredible opportunity that this is for Wisconsin is it just baffles me so I would support that and what I'll tell you is that I opposed the Foxconn deal when it was proposed I hope that it's successful because if it is successful the whole state succeeds but I don't think this was a good deal for us and I don't think it was a good deal for businesses in this area and I'll tell you why is because it's just not fair Madison shouldn't be in the game picking winners and losers, right when local companies in this area were looking to expand they weren't promised for fundable tax credits for jobs they provided the EPA didn't just all of a sudden wave our ozone issues that we were having for recent development but that happened when some politicians in Madison were looking to score additional points before an election that $4.5 billion that we promised to Foxconn what's interesting is that instead of putting into this company you could have taken that money and given $300,000 to 100 entrepreneurs in every single county all 72 and you still have more than $2 billion left to invest in roads and schools I'd rather be investing in Wisconsin entrepreneurs building small businesses, investing in mainstream economy, allowing people to grow and thrive, right when I sat down with some folks at Jake's Cafe and said what's your number one obstacle from starting a new business when you're doing that, they said well I can't leave my current job to lose my health insurance health insurance cost in the market right now is just crazy high why wouldn't we take funds and allocate it and allow for entrepreneurs either to buy badger care or be covered by it for five years as they're looking to start their new business there's a lot of opportunities that we have in here that would allow for a new business growth rather than trying to fish in a foreign corporation to build a factory that may be obsolete in a decade, we don't know what direction this would pay off in 25 years may not even pay off in 50 I don't think that this is worth it in your tax dollars the other piece is that we're adding 13,000 jobs but we've got historically low unemployment this is a solution seeking a problem right, Wisconsin's not unemployed, we're underemployed the issue is that we've got wage stagnation they're starting to pick up but it hasn't grown fast enough so adding 13,000 jobs that are going to be mostly at the median wage isn't helping wage competition I just want to quickly respond just for a second when Kyle said he doesn't think the state should be picking winners and losers that's what Sheboyin County Economic Development Corporation does we have their member here, they help companies expand companies who are growing that's what WEDC does in 2017 of the top 50 brands awarded by WEDC five of them were in the senate district Johnsonville Middleport Sigma Amerequip Dalco there was one more these are companies that are expanding in our area they're paying, the state is helping them create jobs which has a ripple effect around the community so in the absence of competition with other areas of the country yes, I would definitely be a free market guy not picking winners and losers but we're competing to keep our businesses here to help them grow because it's going to help all businesses surrounding the community my question is about the rapid increase in prescription drug prices I've heard in the last month a number of stories from family and friends about the cost of their prescription medication just going through the roof I guess I'm wondering from the state's standpoint what can be done to bring that under control a reduced cost of prescription drugs well in Wisconsin we still have senior care which gives reduced rates to those who are retired getting prescription drugs that's definitely a concern we need to make sure that we continue to help those who are struggling with health issues a lot of this is under the purview of the federal government but I'm also a member of the health committee and the other party introduced a bill over the last four sessions to try and drive down prescription drug costs so I'd be looking forward to any suggestions ideas and see if we can implement them prescription costs are out of control they continue to go up and it's price gouging our families in addition to senior care we can actually add more money to those programs and provide more subsidies if we took the federal Medicaid expansion it would have saved us $380 million just in this biennium alone it's cost us $1.6 billion or $1.06 billion as tax payers over the time it's been available and the fact that we rejected it so that additional revenue we could put directly into that program I'd also be interested in seeing if we could put some regulatory authorities in this and require companies that are going to increase drug prices and to disclose why they're doing it a similar bill to this was introduced by John McCain and Senator Baldwin at the federal level the federal government won't act to be interested to see if we could do that at the state you know I'm not obviously I run the local or I'm with the local economic development organization here and I'm not too worried about jobs and what's upcoming because I see the demographic shifts I know that 20 years in the future we're likely to have even a greater workforce crunch as a matter of fact there's only two cities in the state of Wisconsin right now that are projected to actually have their workforces increased because the number of high school graduates will all pace their retirees that's Green Bay and that's Madison everyone else is going to be facing a worker shortfall the other interesting thing about this is what's happening you talked about prescription drug prices we know that in Shboy County alone the number of senior citizens is going to increase by 70% over the next two decades that means fewer people working than which half if the federal debt is correct half of them don't have a penny safe retirement right so now that's a lot of pressure not only on social services non-profits but also on the families themselves trying to figure out how to support someone who is no longer working at some point they're not going to be able to work so what any thoughts long term on the demographic challenges of Wisconsin in general because this is going to be coming and it's going to be my generation bearing the brunt of this one way or another whether it's privately or publicly any thoughts on what's about to happen with the silver tsunami and how the state may or may not want to react to that reality that's coming that's a good question yeah dame don't retire anybody this is the only crisis for all of us to think about is that we don't have enough workers to support the number of retirees that we have in our current system birth rates are going down and people are wondering why my generation isn't having kids is because they can't afford it we've got a mortgage worth of student debt and then the jobs that we're entering are often 40-50 thousand dollars a year try to raise a family on that when you pay a mortgage and all your student loans I think one thing that we can do is addressing that young professional group is allow them to refinance their student loans and help address that student debt burden it's one of the areas that you can't refinance I guess you could go get a private loan but then you lose all the protections that you've got as a government borrower and that just isn't acceptable when you're thinking about starting a family I think we've got to be working on making Wisconsin a place that attracts younger workers what we know is that folks my age want public transit systems they don't want to drive they want to walk to work they want to be able to have the ability to hop on the bus get to work come back and not worry about that we've been invested in those systems in Wisconsin in fact we kicked away a lot of that development earlier on we've got to be thinking about building an economy of tomorrow rather than keeping up track with yesterday so I don't have a perfect answer to this and I don't think anybody in public office or seeking public office has a perfect answer to this because it's the looming challenge that we're not even sure exactly what it looks like as it plays out there's a retirement aspect to it as you said people don't have any money saved up for the workers in place but it starts by making sure that you can actually start and raise a family and second that you're a place where people in my generation actually want to live work and thrive that is a great question if I was running for Congress I'd tell you that we need to secure our borders but then increase immigration because there's people who want to come to this land of freedom this great country that we live in so if I was running for Congress since I am a state senator I can't control federal immigration law unfortunately but what we need to do is keep having a growing economy because when people move to Sheboygan to get find a job with a growing company they bring their family with them they bring their spouse who's going to work hopefully they have children who grow up in the community and stay here when Foxconn starts recruiting people out of Illinois they're going to move up to Wisconsin and they're going to bring their kids and it's going to have a magnetic effect that's what's happening in Madison with Epic, a growing company with a huge campus that's what's going to happen down in these whole technology areas that Foxconn is creating in Green Bay but the best way to attract people is to have great paying jobs so people want to come here we have great resources in Wisconsin we need to make sure we're protecting those resources but fantastic lakes, vacationing snow we get four seasons up here it's exciting I think Wisconsin is a fantastic place to live and hopefully we can get that message out there