 Well welcome everybody, great day, great week, warm weather's on its way. We have a great program today, like we always do. Before I get started, let me just cover a couple of comments and notations. I'm Dave Gaston, I'm Chair of the Business Advocacy Committee. That's the committee that's responsible for organizing. Is this okay? Can you hear me better? I think I have to have it really close. So all the speakers have to remember you have to have it really close. I'm Chair of the Business Advocacy Committee for the Chamber and that committee is responsible for organizing the First Friday forums, as well as some of the other advocacy efforts. One of which is we've been really working intensely on the non-attainment status of Sheboygan County. We recently had a meeting with a number of our federal legislators to work on getting that changed. And I think we're really happy with the meeting. It's not going to be an easy process, it's not going to be a quick process, but we're working on it and we're going to stay working on it. So stay tuned and we'll give you more information. Couple of introductions. As you know, this last week we had an election and there were some results in Sheboygan. I'd like to introduce the Mayor-Elect for the City of Sheboygan, Mike Banderstein. Mike, now that you're the Mayor, there's a bunch of potholes in front of my so could you get those fixed? I think also our County Administrators here, Adam Payne, I thought I saw Adam around. There's Adam back there. OK, great. And the County Board Chairman, Roger Tastrodi, is here as well. Like, yep, there. And I think we have, I see Jim Boer and Alderman for the City of Sheboygan is here. Great. Did I miss anybody else? Where is he? Oh, Manny. OK, there you are. Manny from Senator Rod Johnson's office. Thanks. And Catherine Delahunt, our City of Sheboygan Municipal Court Judge. So with that, a couple of announcements. Our First Friday forum's coming up. You have sheets at your table, but let me just briefly review those. The First Friday forum in May is Todd Berry. And Todd always gives a very interesting overview of sort of state finances and figures and facts and add some humor. So you'll find that very interesting. And we've always had good attendance because he does such a great job. In June, we're going to bring the CEOs, the heads, of the three secondary education facilities in Sheboygan, institutions in Sheboygan County here to talk about what they're doing to better prepare or better educate our workforce, especially efforts with returning workers. I think you're going to find some of the things that are happening very interesting in that they are working on a number of issues. So I encourage you to put that in your calendar. That's going to be a good session. Then we take July off. And in August, right now, we've got Senator Rod Johnson scheduled to come here. And we had talked about possibly having Senator Tammy Baldwin. So we're still working through those logistics. But it's going to be either of those two will be here. And August and then in September, we've got the secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, Reed Hall, who will come here and talk about what has been happening and what he's been doing in the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. The next couple of pages, you'll see is the next page you'll see is a number of focal points. And I won't go through each of them, but just look at those. And I encourage you to pick up on those. They're more practically oriented kind of sessions. Pick up tidbits of information and knowledge. So you'll see there's two of them scheduled there, three of them. So please look at those and take those in if you have the time. So with that, I think we're going to jump right into our program. What we're going to do today is I'm going to introduce all of our legislators. And when I introduce them, then they'll give you their committee assignments so you kind of know what areas are going to be working while in this next term of the legislature. And then Senator Leipam and Representative Lemahue are going to give an overview of the budget process. And then we're going to launch right in the questions and answers. Think that you probably have a lot of questions that you're looking for answers and they have the answers. So anyway, so let's start with the, is Glenn here by chance? I think Senator Roulton joined us, right? Yeah. Oh, there it is. OK. It's fine. OK, let me introduce our legislators for our county who represent all or parts of our county. Senator Leipam represents the ninth district, is that right? Correct. And Senator Grossman represents, Glenn, I forgot what number is your district? 20th. 20th? OK. And Representative Castell, the 27th. Representative Ensley, Mike Ensley, the 26th. And Representative Dan Lemahue, the 59th. So I actually kind of violated what I said, didn't I? I said I was going to let you all give your committee assignments. But maybe what you could do is each one of you go and give your committee assignments and then I'll turn it over to Joe and then Dan to give the budget overview. Good afternoon, everybody. I like the fact that Dave tells us the warm weather is on the way. And I, you know, we're going to hold you to that. I'm Steve Castell, I represent the 27th Assembly District, which includes the northern portions of Sheboygan County and then the southern portions of Manitowoc County. I serve on a number of committees in the legislature and including the Vice Chair of Family Law, Ways and Means Committee, there's a new committee specifically geared towards urban education, big city education issues. And then another new committee that has been created to try to examine the relationship between state and local governments and look at ways we can improve efficiencies and ways we can improve the relationship and whatever else we might come up with. Most of my time is spent on education issues because I chair the education committee that deals with all the K-12 education issues in the state. Although the budget contains an awful lot of those things we might be talking about, the conversations have been winding up. I've been pulled into them one way or another and the thing that I have been trying to encourage people to do when they consider education policy because it's always very expensive and it's always very important is to get away from this idea of the two-year snapshot kind of planning that the legislature has typically been plagued by because we do two-year budgets, everything's in a two-year cycle and it's hard to get people to look beyond that and that's one of the reasons we have made some fairly big mistakes over the years. So what I'm encouraging is for people to get out of that box and to try to do long-term thinking, long-term planning, which is a little uncomfortable because it's not as predictable and it makes you think a little bit harder. But my hope is that after we've gone through Act 10 and all that accomplished, all that allows us to accomplish in the future, that we position ourselves in a way to take full advantage of it so that education winds up actually serving the purpose for which it exists. So with that, I'll wrap up and we'll save as much time as we can for questions. Good afternoon everybody. Mike Ensley is my name. I'm the State Representative for the 26th District. The 26th District encompasses about the southern two-thirds of the city of Sheboygan and then I also have the city of Sheboygan Falls as well as the towns of Wilson, Holland, Sherman and Lima, Random Lake, Cedar Grove, Usberg, Adel, so a good chunk of Sheboygan County. It is a pleasure to be here. Look forward to the questions. This is one of many opportunities that we have to hear directly from our constituents in a large gathering so it's very worthwhile for us and I truly do mean it's a pleasure to be here. Madison is a beautiful city but it's really nice to come back here. Just starting my second term, my committee assignments this year, things were changed up a little bit from my first term. In the assembly we had, or for the most part in my case anyways, I had three committee assignments and this year it was six. So we're kind of doubling up on the committee assignments. I am currently the chairman of the Aging and Long-Term Health Committee which handles things like family care, senior care, it gets involved in Medicare and Medicaid. There are some things that are going to be tied to Obamacare as well. So that along with sitting on the Veterans Committee I have a new appreciation for the acronyms that I needed to learn very, very quickly. In addition to that I also am the vice chair of the Small Business Committee. I see some of the tables have some of our flyers on but I'm just going to put a plug in for one of the initiatives that we're starting this term and that is to review the entire Wisconsin administrative code. For all of us, all of you that are in the business community, you certainly can appreciate the fact that there are a lot of regulations and a lot of rules that exist on the books that have a negative impact on the businesses. Some of them are just simply old and outdated and due to technology and things like that they no longer pertain. Some of them are a duplication of some of the federal requirements but the bottom line is I think this effort no matter how long it takes us is going to be a very worthwhile thing for the business community and I ask for your assistance in helping us for all of you that are in the business sector please let us know about some of the issues that affect your daily activities because what we're going to do is we're going to take these issues back to Madison and then they're going to be addressed and reviewed by the various standing committees. So I think this is a very important thing that we need to do but I also think it's a great opportunity for the business owners to start to look at some of those hurdles and things that have been put in front of us. Some of the redundancy, some of the extra paperwork that still adds cost to your operation and in many cases I believe doesn't provide any value so any assistance you can give us on any feedback any comments regarding your business we would welcome the opportunity to hear from you on that. Lastly I'll just close with my other committees. I'm also serving on the Veterans Committee also on tourism and also on transportation. Thank you much. Good afternoon. I'm Dan Lemuel, State Representative for a 59th Assembly District. That district has all the western townships in Shwetton County along with a lot of Washington Final Act and a little bit of Calumet counties. The district basically goes from the city of Hartford and the south end to the Village of New Holstein on the north end. So that's the long skinny district I have. I used to have about 50% of my district in Shwetton County with every district team. Now I have 50% of my district in Washington County. So now they look at me as one of their reps instead of just this guy that comes from Shwetton County all the time. For committee assignments I along with Senator Grossman and Senator Leibman are on on the Joint Finance Committee. Shwetton County has good representation on that committee. But we still need nine votes on the committee to change something. So if you think because we got three votes there that we can automatically do something for this area. We got a good start but we need nine votes to change anything in the budget on that committee. The other committee I'm on in the assembly is the the review of administrative rules. And as court chair I court share that it's a joint committee half half Senate half assembly. I court share that for the assembly and Mike stole a little bit of what I was going to talk about. But he did a good job of explaining what the process is. But on on your table you do have these cards that deal with the project that we're calling right the rules. And it's a it's a project that that I'm the the lead person on in the legislature. This is the initial work is being done in the assembly not the Senate. We have we have a lot more committees and a lot more people bodies to actually work on this than the Senate does because the physical size of the body. But we are going to be looking at the administrative court. There's 1,768 chapters. It's there's a picture of it on the backside of that of that flyer picture of the actual code books. This is very boring reading for anybody that's ever looked at this. If you ever have a hard time getting asleep at night go go on the Internet and start looking and reading the stuff and you'll be gone in minutes. We have as as Mike said we have committee chairs that are responsible for anywhere from two or three chapters to 200 plus chapters in this administrative court on their own. They will never find the detail that you're having problems with. They'll never find it. But those of you that work with this in your business or in your industry where there's real estate banking building whatever it might be. You deal with us all the time. You know where the problems are. So we're going to leave it up to you to tell us as as legislators where the problems are and we have the ability to deal with it. I won't go into the whole process of how we would make those changes but we can make those changes. We've abdicated our responsibility as elected officials to the bureaucrats in Madison as you've done in every other state in the country and then for sure in the federal government. We've abdicated our responsibility to the to the bureaucrats. This is an attempt to try to get that responsibility back where it belongs. That's with the elected officials. There's a website on here that you can go to. And I haven't gone through it lately myself. I should have before I came here and promised you what's going to be there. This website originally it's on my office in Madison and on that website you have the ability to interact with with our office and tell us those specific concerns you have. And then when our office gets those concerns we have a spreadsheet that shows where every chapter of those 1768 chapters are what committees they are. If they've been looked at if they haven't that's all. You should be able to find a lot of this information website yourself. We'll give that concern to that committee chair. They will then have a committee hearing on a number of subjects but that will be something that will be discussed at their committee level. So this is your opportunity to interact with us. Take these home. I've had thousands of these printed up. If there's any printers in the room you know that if you order something like this if you order 10,000 it's going to cost you a certain amount. The next 5,000 are going to cost you like nothing. So we have a lot of these printed. If you need some contact me. I'll get all you need to hand out to your business group to your association to whatever because we need your input. Without that input the project will fail. And when we have to actually make the changes we have to let the Senate help us make those changes and then we send it to the governor. But we need your help and with that I will pass the mic off to the senators and then Senator Lieberman and myself will give you a little update on the budget. Hi I'm Glenn Grossman. I represent parts of Sheboygan County for about 19 years now. After redistricting I have the western fringe of the county. Tauna Scott, Mitchell, Greenbush, Russell as well as Tauna Linden and villages of Waldo and Cascade. I am on the joint finance committee with Joe and Dan. I'm also chairman of something called Judiciary and Labor Committee which is a busy committee and I'm on some other committee. Workforce development, mining and some or other. So there's something else in the title I think. But that's it and most of our focus right now is going to be on the budget and making sure we look out for the little guy. I want to adjust the budget a little bit more to make out for the little guy more than we have right now as proposed. Thanks guys and good afternoon everyone. I'm Joe Leipheim. I have the privilege of representing the Ninth Senate District. So there are 33 state senators, 99 state reps and each of us represents a distinct district as we've shared with you. The Ninth Senate District covers all the area in Sheboygan County that Glenn doesn't represent. So it's most of Sheboygan County then the entire southern half of Manitowoc County and parts of Calumet County like Chilton, Hilbert, Potter that area of Calumet County. In the legislature this session I've got a number of different committee responsibilities. I'm the president pro tem so I'm one of the four leaders of the Senate. Senator growthman is actually the assistant majority leader in the Senate. You didn't mention that but two of us from Sheboygan County are part of the majority party leadership team in the Senate which is helpful to our area. In addition to that leadership I serve on the finance committee with Representative Lemihoo and Senator growthman. I also serve on the rules committee with Senator Lemihoo. I serve on the economic development and jobs committee, the transportation committee, elections committee, local government committee, veterans and military affairs committee and I'm also the Senate representative on the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. So you're having Reed Hall join you in a couple months here. Reed is the executive director of WEDC. There's a board of directors for that body and I was asked to become a member of that board back in November of 2012. In addition to that I also serve on the transportation projects commission and Mike Ensley serves on that as well. I don't know if Mike mentioned that but that's a key commission that determines major highway projects and which projects are going to move forward in the state of Wisconsin and so those of us that are interested in highway 23 and other highway projects we have two members of that commission from the Sheboygan County area. We serve in two-year legislative sessions. So the legislature went into office in January and we began the 13-14 legislative session and during that session literally thousands of bills usually it's about 2,000 bills that will come before us for our consideration but the biggest bill that we are responsible of taking a look at and then moving through is a state budget bill and that's really what the legislature is considering at this time. The budget process in the state of Wisconsin is a two-year biennial budget so the session started in January the new 13-15 biennial budget is slated to start on July 1st of 2013 and will run through June 30th of 2015 and so before that budget starts the governor of the state and the legislature have to decide what that budget's going to be and back on February 20th Governor Walker introduced his budget proposal now that document came to the legislature specifically to the joint finance committee as I think has been said there are 16 members of the finance committee it's majority party dominated so there are six republicans on the assembly side two democrats on the assembly side six republicans on the senate side and two democrats on the senate side and we are the first kind of body or committee in the legislature that has a look at the governor's budget that started with about two weeks of agency briefings every state agency that's impacted by the budget comes in spends a lot of time talking to us about the budget and explaining what the budget will do and mean for their state agency then yesterday we began a public hearing process so we are required by statute to have a public hearing we're having four public hearings on the on the bill yesterday we were in green dale so senator growthman and representative lemmy here and i were were for eight and a half hours yesterday we got to hear in two minute increments with no stop at all input on the governor's budget it's an interesting responsibility we're going to do that again on monday up at lambo field we'd love to have 70 000 people join us on monday at lambo field then we go to the wisconsin delz area sometime later next week i think it is and we end up in baldwin wisconsin the following week and each of the sessions are day long and literally like yesterday we started at 10 and two minute two minute two minute two minute until about 6 30 last night quarter to seven we had people testifying on the bill some of us have local listening sessions as well so i shared with you on the yellow sheet on your table some local budget input sessions that i'm going to be hosting uh my colleagues will be joining me when they can yesterday we were in plummet i started the morning yesterday in plummet at seven o'clock and i had about 60 people that came to that input session so it was a good chance for local folks to share their thoughts with me on the budget after the public hearings the finance committee begins one by one going through every proposal that's in the governor's budget and what happens is the fiscal bureau which is a nonpartisan organization they provide us with detailed papers on every aspect of the governor's budget and again we're looking at a budget that the governor's proposing to spend about 68 billion dollars over the next two years 68 billion dollars for every penny that's spent we get a paper that explains kind of the history of the program that it's impacting um changes that we might consider and explanations of what the governor is considering and then one by one day after day the finance committee takes up those papers and we either vote in favor of the governor's position we vote to amend it we vote to delete it or we vote to kind of put in our own ideas as to how the budget could be formulated the budget then becomes a finance document finance committee budget and then it makes its way over to the assembly it'll go to the assembly first and the 99 members of the assembly will have a chance to consider their input on the budget and then a document comes back over to the senate a budget document and the 33 members of the senate have a chance to have our have our input considered we have to agree the two houses have to agree on a identical budget and then that budget goes to the governor for his consideration the governor can approve the budget as brought to him by the legislature or the governor in the state of wisconsin has a line item veto power here in the state so he can line item or he could be to the document in its entirety our goal and our responsibility is to get all that done before the excuse me middle of june so that a document can be to the governor for his signage before the start of the next biennium which again is on july 1st we think we'll get it done sooner than that but we'll see how things move along here day by day again the governor proposes to spend about 68 billion dollars over the next two years that is an increase in spending in the budget that the governor's proposing in the first year of the budget spending goes up by about 3% in the second year spending would go up by about 2.1% the governor builds his budget off of revenue estimates and that's one of the challenges you know we're always kind of building our budget off of estimates as to where the revenue is going to come in the governor i think is conservative but uh maybe a little bit of a higher end than what i would like to see his revenue estimate is that we would see a 2.4% increase in revenue in the 1314 year of the budget and a 3.6% increase in revenue in the second year of the budget it's on that then that he proposes a spending plan and the governor's spending plan in most part is balanced and is structurally sound there is a tax cut that the governor's proposing and when we implement tax cuts that gets counted as spending and because we would make that tax cut ongoing there's kind of an ongoing denial of the treasury that has to be recognized in the next budget and that is some people are proposing that as a structural deficit but it's really based on the governor's proposal to cut taxes from this point forward but we'll be working through that we will be looking forward to your questions but i think the big area and my colleagues can jump in and share if there's any more the big areas of the budget that will kind of dominate most of the discussion are education policy and funding medical assistance and you know programs in which we as taxpayers invest a lot of money to help out our fellow citizens and just tax policy we've really i think dramatically turned things around here in the state of wisconsin when we started the 11-13 budget the budget that we're in right now it was projected that if the legislature and the new governor didn't do anything that budget would have a deficit of 3.6 billion dollars 3.6 billion dollars we went through the budget two years ago with a lot of bold changes and i think necessary leadership and fiscal responsibility and instead of having this budget being a deficit of 3.6 billion dollars it's estimated that we'll end on June 30th with a surplus of about 400 to 450 million dollars so a dramatic turnaround from what we were seeing that 450 then as a positive cash you know balance as we move into the next state budget and it's from that standpoint that we will build a new budget for the state of wisconsin i think overall our goal is to maintain the fiscal stability that the legislature and the governor have developed for the state over the past two years and within that stable kind of balanced budget perspective we'll do a lot of good things hopefully for the citizens of the state of wisconsin so that we want to any any gliner down on throwing anything specific about the budget otherwise we want to just hear your questions and your input because that's kind of where we're at in the budget process i think one of the things kave suggested we talk about is where each house stood on the budget um the state assembly has a 10-volt margin if you want to call it that when you have 50 votes to pass a budget we have 60 republicans we just picked one up in twosney's election with a vacant seat that in a walk show area we have 60 republicans the margins a lot closer in the senate they don't have 10 votes to to play with right now my prediction is that we brought that budget the governor's budget for a vote in the assembly and the senate it would pass neither house it would or not it would not pass either house as it's written right now i think uh senator lilam identified some of the issues uh that people are having heartburn with people in in our caucuses and in the minority caucuses they're having heartburn over school funding uh with uh with a zero percent revenue increase uh they're having uh heart heartburn over school choice expansion and charter school expansion uh they're having heartburn over the level of bonding uh the level of spending that that senator talked about the three percent growth and spending um they're having some heartburn over transportation uh the transportation portion of the budget the not only the bonding but the growth and spending uh in the transportation portion of the budget so those are some areas that that as you go through the process that the senator described um we have to uh come to some kind of a compromise on uh there without those compromises uh will be we won't be passing a budget until september october none of us want that uh so so we in the next few weeks we do have to come up with some compromises uh that's where all of you come in as we as we uh have those negotiations between uh republicans in the assembly republicans in the senate the majority majority majority minority parties as we have those debates we need to know that we've got um people behind us supporting us on our positions as we make those negotiations so so that's why it's important to hear from you in all of our offices as we go forward um i was talking to one person before before the the meal today and i said when i came into the legislature 10 years ago um and it's first of all it's hard to believe that that was 10 years ago but when i came into the legislature 10 years ago i got feedback from from constituents and and i was in a very conservative district and i'm a very conservative person i didn't hear a lot from them because they figured well we know lemme heal we know where he's coming gonna come down on his issue so why bother calling him and wasting his time listening to our complaints and he might get sick of hearing from us because he's going to say well what did you think i was going to do on that issue you know and i maybe be a little offended and i was a little offended initially when people would call me and say we just want to make sure that you're right on this issue and i said well you know what do you think but i realized as it went on that the more people that agreed with me that called me when i was having a debate with another colleague or or at a committee level i could go back to all those contacts that i had that supported me and said hey overwhelmingly my district wants me to go this way and without that support it makes our arguments a lot harder and so i think it is important that you that you contact us but but those are some of the issues that that our caucus and and republicans and democrats elect are having some heartburn on and um that will need some uh some compromises on uh there are a lot of a lot of little things too but but those are the the biggest issues that for some people will say i'm i'm a no on this budget and uh nobody had nobody has a big enough majority without without that so well that's a major one well obviously the biggest is is is in uh in education the expansion of school choice in charter schools that's that's a big expansion um and then the funding of uh of k-12 education uh how this works is the local governments like the county board have a levy limit and so they're they're allowed to raise their levy by a certain percentage or zero or or whatever it might be adam's still here yet so i gotta be careful i say that but um but they have a levy limit on on how much they can raise their levy regardless of what other dollars they get schools have a revenue or a spending limit well revenue limit how much they can can um take in and steve will probably when he gets the microphone and say let me or you screw it up this whole formula in education but basically if we give them an extra hundred million dollars statewide into public education and they're not allowed to spend anymore what we did is you give uh the residents of wisconsin a hundred million dollar property tax reduction because if they can only spend so much and it comes from two places state or property taxes well there's a little bit of a very little from two places if we give them more a hundred million more and they can't spend a dime more we just get property tax relief to the citizens of wisconsin that's what the current budget does and that's what people are having hard to burn over even though we throw money into it and the money the direct the direction is a pay for performance basically in education instead of per pupil everybody just gets the same amount of increase every time it's a it's a pay for performance basically so it's a different direction in education that's probably the biggest area yeah and dan touched on the funding of public education and i think he laid that out as simplistically as he can basically the governor proposes to invest about a hundred and twenty million dollars more in our general school aides for public schools but many school districts are at what's called the revenue cap and so even though they'll get additional state aid they don't have the ability to spend that and it will simply replace tax property tax levy and so they're kind of complaining saying well it's nice that you're putting more money into schools but we really don't have any additional ability to spend it it will simply give property tax relief to those property owners in our district the other big education item that dan mentioned is the governor proposes to expand the school choice voucher program in wisconsin so currently under state law families in milwaukee and recede county that are at certain income levels lower income levels if they are unsatisfied with the public school offerings in their school districts they can receive a voucher from the state from from state government state tax dollars a voucher of about $5,500 currently currently it's about $5,500 and the governor puts it up to about 65 okay this right right so if they're unsatisfied with their local public school district they can get a voucher again at lower income levels and then they can use that voucher to go to any voucher school in their area and the governor proposes to expand that to school districts across the state that have at least 4,000 students and that have at least two underperforming schools per the new school report card system that we all proved and endorsed last year so every school district receives a report card if your school district has two underperforming schools and you have at least 4,000 students families in that district can now be eligible for a voucher and then that voucher could be used to go to any voucher school in your area and that's an expansion obviously shabuigan school district is over 4,000 and it does have two underperforming schools per the report card so the governor's language would trigger vouchers in shabuigan area school districts charter schools currently schools can authorize charter schools and charters are kind of outside the box ways of teaching school districts can authorize them and in shabuigan county i'm trying to see if joe's here but we think we have 12 charter schools for instance in the shabuigan area school district the governor is proposing more authorizers for charter schools basically saying technical colleges could authorize schools the uw could authorize charter schools private groups could authorize charter schools so that's that's an expansion of charter school choice across the state medical assistance i'll give you a quick summary on medical assistance that's a big part of our budget um billions of dollars state tax dollars are spent on medical assistance every year the governor is trying to um sustain that program we made big changes in medical assistance in the last budget dealing with eligibility levels and requirements uh in this budget the governor is basically saying that for the first time in the history of the state we will guarantee that everyone in poverty will be able to receive assistance right now if you're in uh in poverty you might end up like on a waiting list or you might not receive assistance the governor is going to say if you're at poverty or below 100 percent poverty or below we're going to guarantee that you can get assistance the change is that currently in wisconsin we make medical assistance available to people that are at about 200 percent of the poverty level and below so the governor is going to say we're going to guarantee that if you're truly in poverty which is what medical assistance supposed to be geared towards you're going to get assistance if you're between 100 percent and 200 percent which is our current max we're going to work to get you on to an private insurance plan and to have private coverage for your health care instead of being on medical assistance taxpayer subsidized care i think again that's kind of the big easy summary there and then bonding the big issue on bonding is yeah the governor proposes about a billion maybe a billion and a half in new bonding most of that would go to the transportation fund uh our transportation fund has been rated over the years uh it's underfunded comparison to need uh when you consider the zoo interchange and the hone bridge and projects like highway 23 so the governor's proposing to bond about an additional billion dollars uh in the transportation fund area and his argument which i think has some merit is that it's a very inexpensive time to get money you know it's cheap to borrow right now and we've got all these projects that we all want including highway 23 it might be best to borrow a little bit more now at the lower rate than waiting another five ten years we typically bond for highway projects because it's a major capital investment so it might be smarter to bond more now at the lower rate than to wait years and then pay a higher interest rate and in tax policy the governor's proposing an income tax cut it would equate to about 350 million dollars of denying the state treasury and the governor lowers the two middle rates uh in wisconsin permanently would reduce the two middle income tax rates obviously everybody would benefit from that it's geared towards middle class taxpayers but everybody would benefit because as you are taxed in wisconsin and your income you move yourself up on the different tax filings so everybody would benefit but it's really geared towards the two middle rates here in the state of wisconsin and with that we want your input and your thoughts in regard to the budget and what we should be focusing on down at the capital randy some of the old sins or is it all is that all new money the billion dollars and this is where i'll dig into this the bill the governor's proposing about a billion in new bonding for highway projects um but there's also a chunk of refinancing of existing bonds that the governor is proposing and that i think you know we need to dig into a little bit more the governor did a little bit of that in the last state budget and the legislature actually paired that down the the amount of refinancing that he was proposing and i think we'll look at that again i think the bigger new bonding issue is kind of like is that smart to do it today for roads or do we delay the refinancing i think we just have to look at do we really want to keep putting that cost down the road on our on our children and grandchildren um we've had hearings before we've had some hearings uh with regard to the department heads and i i believe the secretary of transportation mark gotley who was a good friend of mine described his budget as a robust budget i think when the transportation budget came out i think you would say that new highways and the people who built new highways were winners in this budget let's see where things end up with the legislature terry my question was actually going back to the school of choice as you know i've been involved with school of choice and supporting it for many many decades right the biggest single thing i've heard about the governor's proposal is a shift in the philosophy the philosophy of school of choice away from parental choice and decision-making and into the hands of government and control and and i for one am absolutely concerned about that a lot and i know a lot of others who are concerned about that what if anything at this stage can you say about dealing with that set of concerns i've not called scott balker to find out how he really feels could make that call that'd be good right i know um boy this is a big issue i think the the the challenge that's in front of the legislature right now on choice is that believe it or not uh even after all of the craziness that we went through over the past two years most legislators support our public school system across the state of wisconsin and support good quality public education you know and and it's especially true in our area we've got good school districts that are you know in most cases doing real well but we've also supported the voucher program specifically down in failing areas of the state like the milwaukee public school district and the racine public school district i mean they have graduation rates that are just inex excusable and really had to be dealt with so what what the governor is doing is that his proposal takes it beyond that point of kind of working on trouble failing school districts and broadening it to be a much more of a apparent family choice in regard to education options and i think the legislature is just you know it's not i don't want to say struggling but yeah i guess we're struggling in a sense as to how do you how do you make that move and how do you make that expansion yeah um uh i think traditionally school choice means that you get to send your child to a school that is not dictated too too much by a government and the way the government controls schools more and more in the future is there will be tests that all schools are required to give and will be graded by and government bureaucrats come up with those tests traditionally uh traditionally private schools have not had to deal with those tests there was a sea change in this budget that you are absolutely right uh it is apparent that governor walker wants these voucher schools to have to give these tests to make sure they're doing okay the problem with that is that if very liberal people design the tests or just your average education bureaucrat uh you may wind up requiring that the private schools teach to the test as they will have to because they are graded by the test and the private schools may change in their nature and that's a problem uh some of us up here have signed on to a tax credit instead because with a tax credit the department of revenue is involved not the department of public instruction and we will not be requiring private schools to teach to a public school test and i will point out i think that voucher program is in for a little bit more of a rocky road than governor walker thinks because not every private school is going to be jumping up and down to be regulated by the state of wisconsin and you can point and feel free to call governor walker on there this this is a big issue terry uh you know the whole voucher idea starting with with milwaukee uh was was almost a no-brainer because we almost anything would be better than what mps was providing uh their success and failure rate was very poor and it was very very expensive by by the way the the mps voucher program was created most people don't know this but every school district outside of milwaukee within the state of wisconsin actually got more money to spend and or had or had to levy fewer taxes because we were saving money on that mps program the further you move out of milwaukee the more that that whole that math changes and uh it's not it's not a reliable uh thing you can hang your head anymore that's going to cost less so that's one of the things that whatever we do i want to make sure that we we know the answer to that we need to we need to run the numbers we need to have the the answers now on the accountability thing that that terry brought up it's a big deal um you've heard the phrase be careful what you ask for well along with the the the encouragement or the the discussion about expanding vouchers the the voucher proponents have agreed to greater accountability when we we produced the the legislation last session senator olson and i were the chairs of or the authors of that legislation and uh at that time the public construction was really pushing for to have their their fingernails in in the voucher schools at that time we pulled that out of the bill caught all kinds of heat for it but the conversation continued and to the point where the person was building so the governor went on record saying we want we want this accountability legislation before we pass the budget and the voucher folks from the southeastern part of the state have been saying creative accountability measures for our schools um not not all of them are in agreement but that's where they're at and unfortunately for me is the governor in the last interview he did on it happened to mention my name suggesting that i was going to solve that problem so what we've been doing is i i told both sides to fight it out and come back with their with their bottom line proposal um they weren't successful in coming to an agreement so i told them that we would be making some decisions on their behalf and uh i if i were um i'm not going to make any any bets on whether or not it becomes law but it is a good indication of what happens when you get in bed with the government eventually um it just evolves this way it's why i tell homeschool parents just stay away from the government if you don't want the government involved in what you're doing just try to keep them at arm's length and um so that's that's it's a big ugly mess right now that we're trying to find our way through something called the common i was wondering and that is a federal mandate that is really aimed at as i understand it aimed at controlling behavior of educators on every level and homeschoolers alike uh because everything will be geared to a philosophy a set of tests is that what you were talking about uh and how does that how how's the state going to respond to that i've been dealing with that question a lot and i think probably we all have to a degree i first started hearing about common core three years ago three and a half years ago so um the government explaining real quickly it's a common core standards so in the discussions that have happened about education results in the united states over the last uh decades and as we've seen wisconsin students or american students um fail to compete on the on the global stage as well as we would like them to uh one of the they've come up with a number of suggestions over the years up until this point uh the curriculum that you find in your schools can vary widely from district to district school building to school building from state to state and um the way they came to those conclusions can vary pretty widely too it's really not based on any great science what it's based on is what you know it really starts about 150 years ago a handful of university presidents saying we think this is what we would like to see and it's not it hasn't been a great process so the there were two different um efforts to create to put together all the right people and to create a set of minimal standards not the curriculum but the standards and then before i got involved um different states were involved in helping develop that process where we are at now is the the standards being uh have been um introduced to every school in the state and they're beginning to develop the curriculum that'll be done on just the way it's always been done by by the educators within those communities i've heard some of the a lot of these these concerns so i go back to what is available what we know about the common core standards and i don't i can't find where the concerns are coming from and i've asked for specifics that i could dig into it and sink my teeth into it and say this is what they're talking about and they can never give me that so there's a lot of this i understand the apprehension because it's kind of a big deal but if you if you really look at where we are now where we've been and where we would wind up if we had a a minimum set of standards uh in the classroom it's hard to find something wrong with that part of it and uh i don't i don't i just don't find the devious part of it i it just doesn't seem to be there i'd be happy to share whatever information i have available and somebody can point me point out to me where the problem is i i'll dig into it i'll give you this anecdote just because i love the anecdote because all the education people say they're doing a good job um a while ago i have a constituent who was a non-traditional student who went to a local technical college to take a class in ethics the teacher was liberal but we'll leave that aside very extreme uh in the course of the class they asked the students which country the united states fought in the revolutionary war there were nine students in the class and my friend knew the answer the other eight students had no clue as to which country we fought in the revolutionary war i almost didn't believe my friend so i took it upon myself to ask people not the kids going off to madison or the top ten percent in the class but the people you see hanging out in west bend or kiwaska or sheboygan working at the local mobile or whatever which country we fought in the revolutionary war i am certain at least 80 do not know they're not insulted by the question they consider it like i'm asking some obscure question like how would you expect me to remember that it makes me think that maybe we need a common core on the other hand uh like steve says the common core is not yet out on social studies and our history um i don't trust the people in washington and at all and particularly the people dealing with schools of education to this side you know i i don't know what they put in the common core how many slaves george washington had or you know vital information like that and uh so yeah it's something we have to watch very carefully and i it does not seem to me that we need a national or international test uh though when you i think of this anecdote the complete inability of schools to apparently put in kids heads which country fought in the revolutionary war good nice kids i'll tell you a funny story recently i asked this stuff i i also asked the the people in madison who i run into who are not students sometimes they asked kids to go to madison which means the top flight kids and i i recently talked to a you know the other night a salutary in at a local high school in madison and she did not know who we fought in the revolution i wore so it gets out there pretty much the schools are pretty bad employees with wisconsin retirement from their health health insurance their salary and the legacy costs of these people i just don't understand where the other is coming from in this yeah that's again a department of transportation issues specifically the governor and the administration are proposing to hire an additional 160 180 new engineers they would be state employee engineers within the department of transportation the total number though is about 700 new employees other areas that the governor puts new people into a lot of areas in the department of revenue to track down delinquent taxes and individuals that are not up to date on their taxes they say the department of secretary secretary channeler was in and he said that that's a actually a positive proposal they'll bring more money in than what it'll cost the governor puts more people into freight fraud and waste in our medicaid programs but the big area is the 180 for the department of transportation we question that specifically in the finance committee and we're asking for more information just yesterday i contacted the secretary's office and i want him to provide to me the specific analysis or study that they did to show that we would be better off hiring you know new state employees considering all the legacy costs and what we're currently getting in contract they've been a little bit slow in wanting to release that information but i think before the finance committee does anything on that we'd want to have that you know a certain documentation to allow us to look at whether or not that's really the case the secretary is also saying that he needs to have a balance between private contractors and in-house engineers to kind of keep each other in line and he thinks that this is the right balance for the state department of transportation but i can tell you that there's a a large degree of hesitancy on that on that proposal by the department of transportation oh just my two major things that i want to change the budget what are those um the university did very well on this budget they're getting a six percent up reach of the two years and i don't think that's necessary but he's also saying there's no cap on what the regions can charge for tuition now the regions are showing us tuition will not go up too much um and maybe they will abide by that but a scan on our country is the degree to which young people are so hugely in debt and what do you do if you're a 23-year-old kid who's got a degree in communication arts or something and they're sitting there 50,000 in debt which is not uncommon or you're a young couple who are both 27 years old and you have a hundred grand in debt uh i know it's something that the well-paid administrators of the u w system want i think it is not right that we should be raising tuition again and uh i would not and i will tell you as we speak unless there was a huge upset this morning the u w regions hired a new chancellor for madison and that new chancellor that the regions hired i was looking up on stuff she said she's a former economics professor specializing in poverty first of all she said that we ought to be charging more tuition for parents who make more money that's what we're just getting in madison that's what these genius regions are hiring for us the second thing she's saying is we've got to charge more tuition if you're getting a business degree and i think business degree is right now overrated but i think what she meant is we should be charging more tuition if you're majoring in something practical okay so when i say look out for a little guy i think we got to be looking out for the students more and the administrators not so much and the other thing there's a thing in the budget i hate and i i try to be kind of less government but right now in the state we're one of a few states that don't have what they call a robust rent-to-own industry uh rent-to-own is where maybe you go to a store and you you rent a tv for 30 bucks a week and after 70 weeks you've got it after renting it for 30 bucks a week and maybe that tv is worth 500 bucks and you pay 2100 bucks for it now it's yours in other words they take advantage of not too mathematically bright overly materialistic people we've kept them out of wisconsin so far and uh i don't see any reason when governor doile was here we didn't like when he put policy in the budget and i don't like putting policy in the budget either uh and particularly policy to help people like that and i don't like the governor walker put that in the budget i want to get it out stuff like that where everybody was throwing darts at governor doile in the past and it's like you know here we we elected this guy and i voted for him it's like yeah all right and then he does the same crap that we have you know we've chastised others for in the past so senator growthman as long as you have the microphones well uh i think uh next week uh the director of the fiscal bureau that joe mentioned will will put out items that are not fiscally related and uh i hope the legislature takes those things out because you're absolutely right we made fun of governor doile for putting things in the budget that didn't belong in the budget and usually when those things are in the budget that don't belong in the budget it's there for a reason on the joint finance committee as joe said you know this thing is so long there's no way you can familiarize yourself with it and you put another smiley little article on there you're not getting any testimony above that you have no idea what you're voting on if you have a separate committee they can focus on that bill they can look at the nuances and make sure it's done right and i hope uh we stick with uh where we were under governor doil and say keep that stuff out of the budget yeah and that'll play out next week as the senator mentioned the fiscal bureau develops a paper that says from our fiscal evaluation we think these items are more policy than fiscal oriented and typically the legislature kicks those things out but every once in a while you know if you like the policy it stays in if you don't like the policy it's kicked out that games played a little bit as well so we'll see where things go next week yes right just eliminating whole sections along writing back in the things that are needed because should we have all should they have all these books should there just be a a shorter thing or should we be writing for today's everybody hear the question the question is is on the right the rules project which which i mentioned before you have a not a new table uh the question is are we just uh tweaking it a little bit but not really going after the stuff that needs to be taken out basically okay we we've looked at at approximately 90 chapters of the 1,168 some of those chapters will be suspended in their entirety some would be modified um we have started the process to be real honest with you with some cats and dogs as we call them the low hanging fruit whatever stuff that's obsolete stuff that's that's um hasn't been used anyway so just get it out of the code okay that's the easy stuff that's not going to help the business people around in this room around these tables we do have intentions what we wanted to do was establish some credibility to the process because as soon as we start saying we're going to go look at the administrative code everybody says dirty air dirty water consumer protection out the door that's not our intent our intent is to make it business friendly and user friendly we have we have an accountants a cpa caucus in the assembly they actually have their own caucus and that sometimes is what takes us longer to do business right randy okay but they intend to take the administrative code dealing with cpas and dealing with the whole code that deals with the work they do for businesses and rewriting it it'll always be there but they're going to rewrite it cpa cpas are going to rewrite it and and it's going to be much friendlier to businesses so we have sections like that the builders wmc they've got some some serious changes that they want to make and in environmental regulations that that you're burdened with and things like that we didn't if we would have started with one of those right out to shoot we would have been criticized by every media in the state of wisconsin all the tree huggers all the environmentalists they would have killed the whole project we'll get there 1768 chapters we're not going to get there in two years it's going to take a while sometimes the chapter takes 10 years to rewrite one chapter or one part of a chapter so it's going to take time that's but that's why we need your input and that's why when we get to the get rid of the cats and dogs and get to the meat and potatoes then then you'll see some change but but we we have to establish some credibility first and when they start coming after us we say hey we looked at all these and 60 of those chapters they're good to go they're working they're doing what they're supposed to do but we want to we want to create some credibility first let me let me just let me just reiterate the whole rules issue and that that is an awesome undertaking that the legislature is participating in right now there are so many aspects of your life as business people as citizens that are controlled by rules that were enacted by an unelected bureaucracy and the legislature of today is trying to you know restore as the representative said earlier some of that accountability and have the legislature actually look through these things i mean rules that impact your private property rights how you can use your property adjoining a state highway down to you know how many pesticide signs adam and guy have to put out here on the golf course to let you know that they spray their lawn and all those things are in state rules and code and we want to look at all those and make those more common sense and more friendly for just living in the state of Wisconsin highway 23 highway 23 is fully funded in the budget the expansion of 23 from Plymouth to final like fully funded in the budget the department is moving forward with the acquisition of land with the development of easements and things like that but there is a lawsuit pending in federal court a group of anti-road development people that have one property owner that lives along or has property along highway 23 but lives in milwaukee they have filed suit against the project and it's pending in federal court and so the department of transportation while the money is in place the department of transportation is saying you know what until that federal lawsuit is resolved we can't start anything it was supposed to start in the fall of 2012 and be completed by 15 now they're saying it might be someone just got an update yesterday i don't know who got the update but uh they're saying it should be 14 15 in the 16 right it's fluid yeah we're pushing it as best we can but we can't stop or intervene the federal lawsuit now and to be honest this group does this across the nation they don't like road expansions so they go in state by state they find one sympathetic property owner and then they do basically class action lawsuits against road development across the united states of america let me just give you two quick things on the budget two kind of unknowns out there that we'll have to contemplate over the next couple of weeks and months is we get new revenue estimates as i mentioned the budget's built off of estimates of revenue over the next two years in may early may we should get an updated revenue estimate and that will tell us hey either the governor's budgets on track with revenue estimates or maybe there's a positive or a negative that we have to deal with so that will change things out potentially dramatically i think in the last budget we had a 400 million dollar upper estimate right before the legislature finalized their work on the budget but then the other big unknown is the federal dollars that we received the current state budget has about 29 percent of all our revenue comes from the federal government and if you haven't noticed the federal government's kind of a mess you know they haven't passed the budget in over four years now and so there's no certainty as to whether or not you know the billions of dollars of medicaid money that we rely on in this budget are going to come from the federal government the transportation funding that we get from the federal government if that's going to materialize there's a lot of uncertainty in regard to federal funds and that's 29 percent of our revenue stream and that will go up and down over the next couple of weeks as they continue to play around in washington with sequesters and you know budget ongoing resolutions and things like that so a little bit of unknown in regard to that that will have to struggle and deal with over the next couple of months thanks well i once again i want to thank we want to thank our representatives senators for participating in this session today we've said it in the past but it should be said again because it's true i think we have we think we have the best set of representatives of any county in in wisconsin thank you okay with that if anybody has any other questions we'll adjourn for today and we look forward to seeing you on may third