 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. We're delighted you could join us for a fast-paced half-hour of political and otherwise scintillating conversation Joining me first of all Former state representative Cal Potter Here's the before I'm trying to hold that up so that he doesn't look like he has six eyes there we go pretty sweet look in 1980 and Supporting property tax relief and here. He is a mere 28 years later. It looks just like 28 days Tom Panesky Tom Panesky professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Shabuigan in black a member of the Mafia to my to my right Ken Risto bon vivant Has some sort of job with the Shabuigan area school district. I can't remember exactly what it is Excuse me, I have a tiny cold and I hope you don't mind either the Lauren Bacall voice or the near death property acquisition for the district Right everyone just settle down. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue trying to maintain order here for the Donahue group We're talking about local issues right now, and there are some it's been cold Very cold and snowy so things are a little calmer than they had been but in any event Expensive well, it's gone. Well, I don't have your complaints any complaints. I think it's great Yeah, not my neck of the woods. Yeah, but although I was driving down a poor neighborhood street And the plowing wasn't quite as nice as it was on the not so poor neighborhood street, but I think the Problem you have is in some of the neighborhoods the old working-class neighborhoods There's so many cars in the streets because they don't have off-street parking and Getting people to move those vehicles. Yeah, and it gets very very difficult And I think sometimes they just plow down the center and really kind of hope for the best Yeah, but I would agree and as what now what former Chicago mayor lost an election because Jane Byrne Jane Byrne And That's so we all take that seriously at the municipal level Let's take seriously true or false a proposal by the great The great sheboygan the greater sheboygan committee The group of business men have proposed to the city council and to the county board that human resources I beg your pardon. I hear that doesn't sound too good in the microphone That human resources job responsibilities should be shared equally between the city and the county Committee has been put together. Of course always a committee. What do you think? I? Don't know. I will just I'm thinking of it as a temporary arrangement until they go back to Search and screen looking for a new Human resources director not a good faith effort. Is that what you're saying? You know this the human resources director of the county could help out While we're going to this process and we don't have a human resources director in the city, but I don't think Having one human resource director for both entities permanently I I I find that Unworkable, but I can't pinpoint I mean they got so many different contracts you were talking about contracts early so many different entities So many sometimes conflicts and the human resource director is supposed to be How do you settle conflicts between the county and the city while the human resources director might somehow get in the middle But if it's one head it may not work out too well I think if we incorporated all the school districts in the county as well and then you human resources director The human resources are Zarina that idea was being the idea was being floated around About ten years ago or so. I know that Superintendent Hitman when he was here had some aspirations to become the Zahar of education for the show sheboygan County I'm not quite sure how sheboygan your school district would feel about you to have to ask my boss, but I'm sure he'd like it But I think the lot of school districts are just you know people like their local school districts They really like feeling that they can go down there and have some control I can't imagine People in sheboygan Falls or people in Kohler would want to run in the sheboygan and have to elect a board member And face seven or eight or not talking about unifying all the school districts in the county I'm just if we're going to I guess what we need to address is what are the economies of scale? by combining Municipal entities to do the same services you might talk about Hiring you know an outside contractor for cleaning City Hall But for the county maybe they didn't want an outside contract because they have a union So you got one human resource director having to Figure out how to negotiate two of those entities and it would be easier just to go out and bid Bid it once but now it's got to bid it for the city He's got to go through the union for the county. I mean either they may have an outside contractor I don't know for the county for cleaning of County courthouse. I like I guess I'd like the idea to be explored I mean not so long ago. We were talking about combining possibly police services And if we can think about that if that's worth study It seemed to me that we should be able to at least look at this and see if in fact This is a manageable or unmanageable situation. I mean that whole issue is kind of this kind of floated away over the last year So it used to be what everybody it was the maybe the flavor of the month But everybody wanted to talk about that and look at that as a way of possibly reducing costs of the city and in the county so Would this be the usual group of Characters that normally study this issue or would this be an ad hoc committee that the county in the city would bring participants to the table I think that's a I think that's still an issue. I know that the as I read the city Council minutes they have appointed the salary and grievance committee as the committee to meet with county folks. I beg your pardon Now whether or not The county folks. I mean there's a shared services committee between the city and the and the county, but it is more abundant I don't think it's met since last June if I'm correct It got off on kind of a bad foot. I think on both sides and there's some hurt feelings here and there And so I think it's been a hard bridge to to to build again But um, so I don't know what the county is going to do But I guess I would second the the thought Give credit to the greater Sheboygan guys about at least bringing it to the table. I Think the greater question is do we have too many units of government? The conclusion is yes We look at a number of school districts We have in the towns and the villages and cities and counties that we ought to be merging and that's probably something that ought To be looked at more seriously on a state level and how we could combine and facilitate The combining of units of government Kind of like the Kettle Commission. Yeah. Yeah, I mean they try to but I think you know as was mentioned before It's difficult to get people to give up their own local community But if you really want to see substantial Result in serving services, you've got to do less in a way of organization structure I mean every school district has got their business manager and their personnel person and you know You replicate this 426 times in the state and you do that in towns and villages and cities You can see why there's additional cost that really the organization is sometimes the problem And I think addressing that the human resources person is a step that you know We should look at it, but I'm not so sure that that's going to be the great saving grace for the taxpayer out there and as Tom has mentioned not only do you have all these government is highly unionized and it's the bastion of unionization in this country today not the private sector and You've got the county highly unionized the city It's not only do you have contracts to negotiate but you got grievances that are spelled out in these contracts And it drives you crazy, you know I was in management in the state government and I had to deal with grievances because that's what you have to do one of employees got some Grievance or there's some disciplinary problem You have to deal with and it's a very time-consuming and it's a very complex situation And I could see where it's going to be very difficult to have one person Be over to very highly union unionized entities, but yeah, we should look at sharing of services When I was in legislature, I did share a large console study committee on school district reorganization And we thought well, you know we could there are probably 50 districts You could name right off the bat that probably could combine and so what we did in our final package and it did pass We put in that if you combined with another school district, you could get a bump in state aides In your district with the incentive that this was a carrot to have them seriously look at it I think we had two districts in the whole state in that the period of time that even looked at it Everybody wants their own basketball team and their football team and so on so we're kind of our were old and worst enemies Sometimes we want efficiency in government, but we don't bite the bullet and take the difficult steps in Merging government as we should exactly exactly well We'll have to stay tuned and see if it's just a passing fancy or something a little bit more serious The non-motorized transportation committee and the county made some decisions about projects the first And I don't remember quite how many millions of dollars, but quite a few million Not included in the package of approved projects was the pedestrian bridge As you know something that I am somewhat intrigued by although I do like the boats being pulled back Barge traffic, I think it would be even more interesting, but It appears the city of Sheboygan Falls did very well in terms of having projects approved and It seems like it's really starting to move and getting getting pushed forward. So I think that's exciting stuff. I Have to tell you on the Sheboygan Press website today, and I don't know for how long it's been on But there's a poll which I normally do not participate in But the vote was yes or no will Sheboygan ever have a pedestrian bridge across the river. Yes. No unsure Yes 23% And I voted yes several times And no 76% and then the rest were we already have a pedestrian bridge the 8th Street Bridge You walk right across it then you go for one side of the river you do the next so We don't need a second pedestrian bridge No, and I and I think there is there's something to be said for that And I think it'll just mean you know less pedestrian travel and that's just the way it is but You know Americans are not going to round the round the bend as it were and But in any event it'll be interesting when we had our visiting group from Essling and in Germany they loved walking you know from Blue Harbor cross bridge to downtown and they walk back in night Key phrase yes Germans from Germany We wanted to give them a ride, you know, we had a little busted it. No because Americans are only gonna walk. Yeah Our EFS students, too. It's amazing how many of our EFS students will I see them walking around all the time and bicycling and They're just they are constantly amazed at how Americans just don't do those kinds of things at least Shaboiganites and people from small towns and now they won't between the Riverfront and South Pier, but there you go Well, we need a sugar daddy who's got a lot of bucks who'll come up with about four million of the five million And then it'll probably go but when you consider what's the total non motorized Grant 25 million and this is five one one out of five dollars supposed to go to that bridge You can see why it's just not yeah, you know the marsh The shabuigan marsh folks who want to build the tower are struggling with it's just costs so much to build things Why in the world would it cost five million? dollars to build this little bridge, you know across the I Beg your pardon to cross the river I mean that just boggles my mind and I suppose it's gonna cost more than you know one or two thousand dollars But five million dollars and then we had talked about in a previous show, you know There'd be maintenance costs for sure and so I just like that a little barge idea, you know Yeah, we could you're near barge, you know one of those pontoon boats gone dolas like Venice Yeah, I can't do it in the wintertime, but not too many people are walking in the winter But certainly summertime little pontoon boat back and forth. Yeah, I'm thinking the three of us should buy her a kayak With people on my back I have just an interesting Kind of policy question for you guys The city has denied Or a claim has been filed alleging intimidating an unlawful conduct by officials of the city With respect to Jennifer Riesinger who is seeking money for being receiving a cease and desist letter to take the link from the off of her website to the shawagon police department and I I have no idea what the committee is going to do But I'm going to certainly assume that that claim will be denied I think it's an interesting question And it's not as easy as people seem to think it is which of course is that the city has absolutely no control over its websites and Cannot begin to ask that its website be removed for example from the Playboy website or You know, I don't know whatever distasteful and unpleasant to a group that has a website I Mean none of us is an intellectual property expert here, but I think You know, the First Amendment is certainly not a completely free kind of There are restrictions on the First Amendment and I'm interested. What do you guys think? I always wondered what lawyers talked about at lunch. No, I know Well, I think Property issues are real. I mean that's some of the fun stuff you could be doing in law right now I mean if I were starting over I'd probably want to do something like that because they're great policy issues as well as Practical issues and well, it's irritating if nothing else When I was at DPI we started our database project for schools and libraries and so on it's called badger link And it's badger link org right some guy in Illinois started something badger link calm and he was selling He was getting a lot of people who were hitting that site simply because they were looking for the state databases Or we had I think another domain name of edu and but he was calm and you know it was irritating to us because People were going there being frustrated not being will find these databases and getting this advertising site Basically that this guy was selling ads on saying look at the hits I get you know and but we couldn't do anything about it But the fact of the matter is it can be irritating when you're the your product or your site is probably being used in a manner That maybe you don't quite like but you're right the freedom of speech today is such that unless they're doing something slander survival There's not much you can really do well And I think it I mean it's interesting too because even if you could argue that a private entities can say You know copyright infringement or trademark infringement you can't use you can't link to my product I'm not gonna let you do that Which I think is a decent argument What do you do with a public entity where there's a presumption of open records and open meetings and so forth? And yet you could have a very nice city website You know link to a scurrilous Website and to say to the city you have zero control Over that I mean I am I was when you were talking Cal it reminded me that I have an address You know on my house in my home and I get all sorts of mail that I just really really abhor and I wish there was some way I could control what comes into my house in terms of even the printed material of course I can toss it out and I I don't know it is it is kind of an odd thing that And if any individual they want to can link their website to any website like a government website I'm kind of surprised about the suit I mean it's interesting that that it doesn't maybe because you're a public official when when the city sort of responded You know that there was all this you know concern that government was trying to intimidate citizens I can't imagine in what way you know people are actually intimidated by a letter that says take your website off It's kind of it's kind of a silly silly argument. It's just seems as sticks and stones and Great sure it is an interesting question because the internet You know it's just going to create all sorts of interesting new law that's going to have to be made I Suspect the Supreme Court when it actually gets down to it almost always bends over in the side of the First Amendment Especially when it comes to public institutions and you're just gonna have to live with it Yeah, the way things are and I think that's probably the answer, but I don't think it's the gimme a response that Various people who are quoted of course, there's a First Amendment right of course that she can link to the way I don't think it's that Straightforward I think it's a little bit more complex than that But I I suspect you're right in terms of how it's all going to pan out unless the city or any other government Institution can really show that there's some you know some tremendous burden that's been placed upon them by the practice And I don't think it's going to be going anywhere It's one of those things you're just going to have to live with just like when I open up my mailbox and I get all sorts of Meals that I don't really want need or desire But well, and I'm not sure that's you know an exact comparison, but But in any event it's interesting. We'll see what happens and if the notice of claim is that if the claim is denied then and it's explicitly denied then the filing party the claimant has six months to file a lawsuit and I think it'll be fascinating and one of those No lawsuit is fun, but some have more interesting issues than others and so I for one will look forward to that so well from a public relations standpoint, you know make the paper if it's there's a lawsuit filed it'll wind its way into the Milwaukee Sentinel that the city's trying to blah blah blah its citizens and I think all of a sudden the radio shows Will do that and boy, you know get a black eye You know We're just a very interesting place to live. What can I say? We reported Ken gave us I think a nice summary last show about the Court of Appeals decision that really pulled the plug on virtual charter schools in the state and our legislature and it's infinite wisdom as we always say Is moving forward to address some of the issues that were brought up in the Court of Appeals decision Ken you want to just bring us up to date on Well the virtual schools excuse me there should be a bill on the governor's desk by March 1st That's what they're shooting for from what we're reading what I'm reading here Well put in front of me to read And it looks like it's going to try to resolve some of the issues the court just to review was had some issues about whether teachers in fact were teaching kids on these virtual Online charter schools or whether it was just simply parents doing it And if that's the case and you've got homeschooling funded by taxpayers, which the court thought was in violation of state law among other issues The legislation that seems to be winding its way through the through the legislature right now is going to address some of those things It'll be interesting, you know the devil's always in the details and then there's what's in the law and actually how it plays out I mean now the legislation requires some sort of definition of truancy for kids who are online I mean, what are they gonna have? I don't know how you do that I mean conceptually I suppose what do you do? They have to log in a certain number of times a week. Otherwise they're considered true And our look quite frankly the truancy laws that we have in the books are rarely Especially at least in the high school level really ever enforced For lots of reasons, you know that they Then there's the you know, they the teachers who are on the other side of the screen need to be licensed I think most school districts already are doing that in fact And so and they are they and only they are allowed to grade the papers and grade the assignments and those types of things Most of the school districts that have online charter schools that I know of are already are doing those kinds of things There's some long-distance learning advanced placement course college work stuff that high schools up in northern, Wisconsin Can't afford to hire teachers to teach AP courses. That's called online virtual learning. They they already have those kind of qualifications, so It look the lot the lot doesn't look like it's it's restored the funding at six thousand dollars a student Which is about what we get already for every student I don't quite understand we X argument that it takes funds away from public schools because The districts who are running those are getting money Is diverting money from safe from one particular public school to the district coffers to run different schools But we set up our virtual school or online so we don't call it a virtual school We are online learning school the two programs precisely to bring money into the district Either to grab homeschool kids from within the district or outside the district and raise some revenues It really hasn't done too much of that in the shabuigan area school district, but it's just up and going now I think we X point is that there are three thousand kids out there in virtual education. I chaired a work group to develop some standards for virtual education at the request of Libby Burmester and Senator Decker and Senator layman were both on my work group and She is now putting forth some guidelines that will be written in law as well but I think we X point is that there are a few districts Appleton one Kettle marine Another that are running very large operations and of those three thousand kids that are in virtual education They are tending to come from other districts who now are not being paid the six thousand dollars Kettle marine is being paid six thousand or Appleton is being paid six thousand for educating a kid who resides in another district and They follow this case rather closely because the case They said it was unconstitutional for several reasons it violated teacher licensure Which meant that you didn't have to you may not have had a licensed teacher involved It might have been just a parent involved with the papers and truck-connecting papers and teaching on charter school statutes which have certain Regulations that you need even though it's a non-regulated school There are some things in the statutes relating to that and it also a third statute that was violated by the existing virtual schools was The open enrollment. There's a certain time period under which kids can leave their district and go to another district So if you're at any time you could leave your district virtually and go to Appleton or Kettle marine or something like that At what point are you violating the statutes? And I think rightly so the court simply said this is a too wide open Frontier out here. We need to have some types of rules and regulations And so I'm hopeful that when the dust settles will have virtual education But we'll have it with a little more structure than we do right now. Yeah, see I think that's the real interesting issue I think if you're it's just simply what you were addressing Cal is More or less the logical extension with technology of school choice, you know Now I can literally choose anywhere within the state of the time really at any time The real issue though is the quality control issues that that concern me Because when students turn in work online I if I were a teacher, I don't know if mom wrote that essay or Dad or whether there's you know, who's writing that essay because it's being handed And there's no supervision of the assessment or the test like you have in a classroom where students are writing in in front of you They take that risk as a regular teacher with take-home exams and things too, but You know how much time your kid is even spending sure called in the virtual school And I noticed that one of the provisions of the bill was that you need to replicate the time and yes you have in Structural school setting and that's going to be interesting too because you can regulate how long the student is online You know, it's kind of interesting as in one hand the virtual school is touting Different kids learn in different ways in different circumstances So the they all rally really need to log in 180 school days, which is the current provisions for public school kids And typically seven or is it six hour day minimum? I mean so they I mean you're gonna actually somebody's actually going to monitor all that You can do it technologically how long they're online how long they're learning well I imagine the providers apple to the kettle marine whoever shaboy and whoever's offering the program I'm gonna have to have some way of saying here's proof that this kid is not just spending one month out of the year At the computer and getting their right equivalency for Whatever leads into another interest of these maybe these kids are very Smart kids yep, and they don't need to sit have classroom time To sit there and be bored they could finish a program you know Regularly schedule program in half the time It'll be interesting because they're there they're good those you know study who enrolls and such But hey, we only have one minute left and we're just gonna take just a second to talk about election time February 19th Primary not too many local races as far as I can tell a couple but not very many But we have a presidential primary Yes, which may mean a great deal of February 5th the 26 states that have their primary don't come up with a clear winner We may be very much in the limelight because there won't be many many primaries at on February 19 We'll be back in touch. Thanks for joining us