 Welcome to another session of the Donahue Group. We're delighted that you could join us. We're talking today about all sorts of interesting issues, mostly at the state level, but I think we'll branch out here and there. Joining me is Ken Risto from the Sheboygan Area School District, Social Studies Instructor and Director of Curriculum. Tom Paneski, Professor of Math at the University of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Cal Potter, former state senator, former assistant superintendent, public, excuse me, former assistant superintendent for public education. That's not quite right. Close enough. But close enough. My title is close enough, too. I'm just a humble lawyer, so my name is Mary Lynn Donahue. Talking about the state issues that are of interest to us, but the state came to Sheboygan a couple of weeks ago when Governor Doyle visited. Cal, you were in the audience at End Park, I think, my own neighborhood. And did his visit that day at End Park. I don't know how it was chosen, but it's a historic park. And he had a crowd of maybe about 75 people. And the mayor was there, the county administrator was there, a number of local officials and labor people, as well as just general citizens, some of whom were just walking by and said, what was this crowd about? And came in and met the governor. So it was a good session. He had a number of charts where he listed his vetoes and the impact of the vetoes. And I think the roadshow that he took around the state was to show that his vetoes were to accomplish a goal. It wasn't vetoes for veto's sake, is that he wanted to put in several millions more in education. Because he said the only way that he can stabilize property taxes, which was his goal in another direction, other than what the Republicans were saying, as far as a freeze, was to put more money into local school district aid. And he said he accomplished that particularly by transferring some of the transportation fund into schools. And of course, right after that, the Republican legislators came out and said they wanted to freeze what, or knock off 15 cents on the gas tax, which then forced the governor to come out and say that you can't do that. I'm committed to schools. And then they said, well, he shouldn't be diverting the money. So the politics of sniping continues between the Republican legislature and the Democratic governor that we do have. But he basically outlined his vetoes and stated that his goal was to try to stabilize the property tax and support public education. And then he cited where the money went, trying to at least hold districts as harmless as he can, as well as put money into things such as student aid and so on, in light of the fact that tuition's have gone up due to the fact that the university received substantial cuts in the budget as well. Right, and it sounds like it was a pretty friendly crowd. I read anywhere between 60 and 100 people, depending on which newspaper account you read of the event and being an old organizer myself, I always count who's president and unfortunately I couldn't be there. Sounds like it was a pretty friendly crowd though. Yes it was, and he did have an opportunity for people to ask questions. And some did ask about the county nursing home situation, several did, matter of fact. What was his answer? Well basically he says you're faced with a very difficult situation, it's a local decision. We don't have any more money for medical assistance. We try to provide more money, but we just don't have it. And then he commended Sheboygan County as being one of a few counties that has nursing homes. And as a result you have an additional expenditure here in Sheboygan County that you need to contend with and budget for that other counties do not have. And he said I wouldn't, I'm not gonna venture into that debate because I know it's a difficult one and that in other words he's saying providing nursing home care for people from a public sector point of view is something that he'd be sympathetic to but he realizes the budget crunch that the county is under and how to balance the budget at the time you're trying to fund deficits in the nursing home area is a difficult. And he says I don't know how I can help you other than he said I am going to very strongly lobby the federal government. He said most of what I'm facing in the area of medical assistance is a cut in federal monies. And he said if I can, and he did talk about how he is a part of, he didn't mention the number but it's a coalition of both Democratic and Republican governors who are lobbying the president and Congress to provide more medical assistance dollars. Because they're all faced with oftentimes very high cost patients and high cost people because these are people of course who don't have money to pay their own medical bills and pay their own way and as a result they could use additional help from the feds. Well and I think and I'm sure in future programs we'll be talking more about the county nursing home situation because that obviously is going to be a very hot button issue. I mean it is now but as budget time grows closer I think it's going to be even more problematic. There was a lot of hustle and bustle in the newspapers and on TV about the veto. Governor Doyle's veto and there's been a suggestion that the American historical memory is about 20 minutes and that would seem to account for the fact that Republicans now are terribly upset by the line item veto that Governor Tommy Thompson used with such a flourish and with such enthusiasm and the Democratic challenge back in I think 1992 if I'm not mistaken might have been a little later to the line item veto was put down by the Supreme Court which found it to be perfectly constitutional known as the Vanna White Veto. Pick a number, pick a letter. What have I got here? What are your thoughts? A good idea, bad idea? The line item veto. It's constitutional. You go first. Yeah you go first. It's constitutional so. Defend Tommy now please. I don't think Tommy used it. The Governor Thompson used it and Governor Earl used it and probably not Governor Earl but Governor Doyle and Governor Earl probably used it too. So leave it in. The thing that the Republicans need to do if they don't like it is get the governorship next year around and. And then they'll use it. Then they could use it. So that's the way it is. And I'm on the complete flip. I was appalled when the Republicans used it and I'm appalled when the Democrats used it. You know I'm an old political science guy and I just remember something vaguely about legislatures having the power of the person or constitutional scheme of things. And not letting the executive. Checks and balances wasn't that just a quaint old custom? I just really think it's time for a constitutional amendment to maintain a line item veto. Because there's been enough political studies that show that governors that have some line item veto authority really do hold down state spending. So I'm suggesting that we give the governor the predicament the presidents face where you get these huge authorization bills and you gotta swallow a lot of things that you hate. But when a governor can transfer money from a transportation to education, even though it's a good news for me as an educator, maybe I just have some real philosophical problems with that. And I think it's time for an amendment. And it means. And I know right now the Democrats may not be happy about that, but there's gonna be a governor that's gonna be Republican someday and we're gonna wish they'll be screaming for the amendment. It's time to stop this Salika Buki dance and get on with it. What kind of amendment are you looking for? Well, I think governor should be allowed to probably take out certain line items in such a way that they can reduce spending in certain programs, but it shouldn't be the van on white veto where governors can, with creativity, move monies around from project one or program one or department one to department two. It just doesn't seem to me to. And I understand that when the Constitution was framed, the large authorization bills with everything in them and grab bags was not what the founders envisioned. And I'm sure that the Wisconsin founders who put this line item veto together, whatever it was instituted, I don't know when. I don't think it was an error. I think it started with Tommy, didn't it? It's been around a long time. But constitutionally, I think the Wisconsin governors had line item veto for quite some time. The budget, when I first came in the legislature, Pat Lucy's budgets were about 360 pages long. Most common budgets today are maybe 3,000 pages. So there are just billions of dollars more and many, many more pages. So the verbiage that's available to play games with is tremendously more extensive. Cal, let me, if I could ask, is that because governments are spending more money in more areas at these pages? And we have to go from 300 to 3,000? Or is it because legislatures want to give departments less discretion on how they spend monies? Or is it a little more expensive? It's a combination of things. A lot of it is that the budget bill is the only bill that needs to pass in a legislative session because it keeps the whole ship going forward. Agencies know that. And so agencies that previously when they had a program they wanted to advance would put it in special legislation and have to do extensive lobbying, now throw it into the budget. The governor also knows that you need to set your mark as a governor as to what you stand for and so they, to the department administration, come in with everything from soup to nuts in their agenda and dump it into the budget bill. And then legislators know that all the bills that they introduce, and there are thousands of them each session, that the budget train is the only one that's gonna leave the station and get to a destination. So you throw your bags on it and so they throw a lot of their bills into the budget bill. So just through a period of, like I said, going from Pat Lucy in the 1970s to present time, a period of 30 years, it just has evolved and blossomed into really a mechanism that's, I think, overused for the passage of legislation. And a lot of it's justified because everything costs money. I mean, even if you have a piece of legislation that doesn't appear to spend money, the cost of assigning it to somebody and printing a document, explaining what it is, there's always some money associated with everything you do practically in government. So it is a germane document. People will say, well, there shouldn't be this in the budget bill because there's no fiscal impact, but there is a fiscal impact. And so you stretch that and you stretch it to the degree and as a result, the budget bill has become the major piece of legislation. And it's a shame because things in that budget bill don't get the scrutiny they need. Exactly, and that happens at the federal level, obviously. The only thing that saves us to some extent is a germane-ness rule. I mean, there is, in a budget bill, there is a relating clause. And you always refer back to the relating clause. In the federal government, there is no relating clause. You can dump everything into there. And so the state, there is something about the expenditure of monies and the raising of monies to finance a program. So you do have to creatively, even though you dump everything in, you do have to creatively put it into the relating clause. So we're not as broad, what I'm saying, as the federal government that dumps everything into fiscal policy budgets. Well, and somehow, in spite of all of our concerns and squacking on both sides of the fence about all of this, the democracy does continue. But it is kind of interesting that the Republicans are now putting forth a constitutional amendment to limit the veto power, which is something Democrats did when Tommy Thompson was in office. Well, just remember, Emerson always said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. And so, I just... You don't know what you're lobbying for. Exactly, because you might get it. Cal, how do you feel about, there's been some proposals also floating around to end legislative sessions at a certain hour so that this morning, these morning votes that really don't get public scrutiny, is that just, do you see that as being effective after all your years here? I don't think it makes much difference because the only time you do go overnight is usually on the budget session. Right. And it is a matter of you don't have the votes and you do have a deadline of July one to pass a budget so that things continue, although you do what you do in essence, is just continue under the old budget. But you do have everybody out there from social services to transportation and haids and school aides, everybody out there sitting with bated breath wanting to know what they're going to get because they're trying to formulate their own budgets on a local level and so on. So, it is a tactic where it does get people eventually to say, I guess I can't put all my pork into this budget. I can't hold out anymore. So, hindsight, yeah, there's no reasonable thing that occurs at two o'clock in the morning. No, it's not a good way to make sausage, but it is a way of finally getting finality to say, you do have a responsibility to pass this bill within a reasonable amount of time. If we tend to say that we're all gentlemen and ladies and we're all going to pack our tents up at seven in the evening and come back tomorrow morning at 10, you probably would extend the session for another month or two while people continue to throw things on the train. So, this is one of the public benefits of sleep deprivation. Yeah, exactly. Well, remember my first years on the school board, you know, we'd go until 12 or one in the morning and we tried, you know, meetings will not last beyond 9.30. I mean, it just didn't work. Those are kind of tough things. And again, the democracy goes on. Speaking of the democracy going on, voter fraud. Some interesting letters to the editor this week on voter fraud issues. Cal, what are your thoughts on it? Well, after the fall elections last year, we had a number of accusations, particularly emanating out of Milwaukee, that there was rampant voter fraud, people voting who weren't even alive and whatever. As a result, there was a federal investigation, federal attorney, Biskubic, who was appointed by a Republican, did take on an investigation and last week came forth with a decision that there is no rampant voter fraud, that indeed there had been some felons, I don't know how many, five, six or whatever the number was, who had voted, who by law shouldn't have voted, but he just said it was just a system that's bogged down in old records and maybe inefficiency and understaffing and that there needs to be a cleanup, but it wasn't rampant voter fraud where people were trying to steal elections. It was just the nature of the beast that we have created or don't create well enough or fund well enough that we need to fix. And I think that's something I said right after that because I've heard this for years, that Milwaukee's got people on the list that aren't alive anymore, but when you look at sometimes the little old ladies that are working there at these polls that are understaffed, that line is out the door, they're not about to be conspiratorial and trying to steal an election. That's the furthest thing from their mind. They're trying to get through the day in many cases. And I think that's true in Milwaukee and it's true in Sheboyga and it's true anywhere you go. And if a few felons voted, I guess that's wrong, it's against the law, but I guess we should chalk it up to say, well maybe they've rehabilitated themselves sufficiently that they're now participating in society and that's maybe a good thing. There are people who are saying we ought to have felons vote again because anybody who wants to vote and participate in an electoral system must have their head on straight and maybe they've reformed themselves. This is a number of people in Texas and Florida for whatever reasons that our ban for voting is a very, very large percentage. And they're having that discussion about at what point does a person pay their debts to society and can assume full citizenship rights? And in some states this felon thing has got to be a joke because in Florida they were going to websites and finding convicted felons. Well, Tom Smith, they're probably 5,000 Tom Smiths and many of them convicted felons not only just in Florida but they're in Texas. So people who showed up in Florida to vote with a certain common name were denied voting because their name was on the list but that was happened to be the Tom Smith in Texas, not the one in Florida. But and it's interesting as the user of the Wisconsin court access record system and the work that I do, I'm often typing people's names in to check convictions and so forth and I'm surprised even uncommon names. You type a name in thinking without a middle initial thinking who else could have the name of Hepsibar Schlierbeck? And by jinkies if there aren't... I've typed my name in and I've come up with several pages of people with my name, with my same middle initial. It's amazing how many people have your names. How many speeding tickets you've had, right? Thousands, absolutely thousands. I've been reading that in terms of states that are going to electronic voting machines that there is a stronger movement building to require paper ballots or a paper trail behind the machine and it's even got an acronym that I can't remember and I don't remember what it stands for but it sounds like maybe we're moving in the right track with getting more efficient machines but also having the paper backup that the Diebold company I think was which was getting a lot of this work was not interested in doing so. I think both sides can come up with voter system improvements and I think if they put aside their political sparring and bickering we can come up with a bill that says you indeed need some identification and maybe two types of identification but not necessarily do you need to have a picture ID which was something that some people said there are people who don't drive, there are poor people who don't have a car, there are elderly people who lose their license because they are old. Now why should they be forced to jump through certain hoops to get a certain type of ID card in order to vote? I mean they've probably lived in their home for 40 years, they've got... There's no causal relationship between if there is voter fraud and having a picture ID, there's no causal connection that one solves the other problem so I don't know, it's a big system and it has to be taken care of. But I think people ought to be comforted by the fact that most of this is political rhetoric, that there isn't rampant voter fraud, things aren't working as well as they should, we ought to focus in on the logistics of how things don't work very well sometimes at an election day. Exactly, Ken you were gonna say? So I mean on the letter to the editor, Senator Lyvin first of all didn't really respond to the issue that the Democratic chair posed to him as any good politician would, don't respond to the charge and move on to something else but he did give a, at least from an average person's point of view, a list of some real concerns about voting that went on in last fall and he's just off the mark? No, I think there are problems. I think Milwaukee, if you look at the list, there are probably a lot of people that don't live at certain places, there are probably addresses that are there that are no vacant lots, they just don't have the staff, the time or the system to have purged and updated and done probably what they had to do with their voter registration list and again there are felons who get on the list because there's probably maybe not a good enough communication between Department of Corrections and people, a little old lady who was working in a pole in Central City, Milwaukee. So there are kinds of logistical problems that ought to be addressed and I think that's why I said I think both sides ought to sit down and see what they can do to make the system accurate and work well and not start saying, well, there's all kinds of rampant illegitimate people out there voting and they're skewing the elections one way or another because that's not happening. It's just not a system that we can be really proud of. We ought to fix it and make it better. Well, let me- The Democrats yell that the system is set up to keep minorities and I would have put people who regularly don't vote off, keep them from voting. They always hear the arguments, all they've set up systems and they set up all kinds of roadblocks so people can't vote. They got long lines, people can't wait in long lines so the Democrats keep yelling, yelling, yelling, yelling and so now the Republicans now are yelling voter fraud so we got both sides. Yeah, at all because it's where the power is. Where the power is and I mean I have read that like people with multi-residences, some in one state and some in other states, there's documented evidence that's in New York and Florida, people have Florida homes. And I'm sure- And they vote absentee in one place and vote ballot in the other place in a general. And that's probably impossible. Let's get off elections just cause our time is running short. I wanted, I've got three educators past and present sitting here with me. What are your thoughts about the education budget? Did Governor Doyle make good on his promise to keep education a high priority in the state? Both at the college and university level and regular public education, is that what he said? I think he did the best he could. I mean he only could take the budget that he was given and not be able to write things in but by line and veto, shift some money around and I think he did the best he could. It wasn't sufficient to stave off I think some budget crisis that are going to occur. The revenue caps are gonna continue to hurt school districts particularly those with declining enrollments. The QEO is a 10 year old vendetta against the teachers union that ought to be thrown out but it's still there because there's still people who have a vendetta and wanna put the screws to teachers because 70% of the budget is salaries. So I think there's some bad public policies surrounding public schools that ought to be looked at but monetarily I think he did the best he could for public education. Tom, Ken? Well, I mean the university loses faculty to other institutions because they don't pay the salaries then you have the other part that faculty and administrators have backup jobs so you think well, how do you deal with that? Oh boy the university has just taken it on the chops here and you gotta ask yourself what are these people thinking? Is this another bureaucracy that's been under a rock for a while and nobody's looked or are we missing the point? I mean I read this stuff and it's like yikes. And every day you read one and I know they exist in the UW colleges too and I think it's just I guess it's across the country that there's backup jobs but I mean there's a real crunch on finding quality people to teach in the university and because of the reduction in funds and then staffing, they put caps on staffing and stuff like that and you can't hire the people. So we're funded, we'll make do and we'll move on. Intuitions are the way that the university is funding more and more of the rapper and it is indeed hurting the poor. It is, it really is, I think that on the public university level the gap between rich and poor is just is growing. And there are stereotypes out there that somehow those folks won't be able to garner the money but when you're trying to pay, you heat your light and just keep food on the table, coming up with thousands of dollars to go to school is a difficult task for a poor person. And I think a lot of people who have means don't really know what it is to be in that position. In Wisconsin still, I was looking at a study the other day, Wisconsin still is third in the country in making education affordable for average middle-class folks but you're absolutely right with the way Pell Grants with adjusted for inflation have really, really gotten smaller and smaller and those are, those monies are funded particularly for low income. And some of those statistics are antiquated and the last two budgets have really socked it to students. We were, had been traditionally about seventh in the big 10 in the cost of education and I think last figures I saw we were fifth and we may be moving about fourth. So we've moved up into the middle of the pack in the big 10. But the other trend that's more disturbing is more and more money is being moved toward giving scholarships to students based upon not financial need but as, but their academic performance. And I understand why you'd want to give, you want to give certainly recognized students have done well in school, the incentive when we're on our high school level saying there's money down the end of the road for those of you that play the game by the rules we set up and excel. But Wisconsin is in that nationwide study I was looking at way down below in granting, giving monies to kids because of the financial need. And we've shown academic promise as well. We're gonna wrap up just, it's come to our attention that we usually stay away from federal issues but there's some federal legislation that is pending that we just wanted to touch on a little bit that cuts at the very core, the very heart of the Donahue Group. And that is proposals which, and it's probably not targeted just at our humble little program. I was gonna say. But. Oh I'm sure, although we'd be that influential. Yeah, I don't think so but there has been legislation introduced in Congress. Anybody wanna speak to, and I have not had a chance to look at this in any great detail but that has the potential of really eliminating public funding for local cable programs like this. And my understanding that it's in committee and may not come out of committee but any comments or concerns on that front? Well our viewers ought to know that this doesn't come free, that this studio and these cameras, the whole providing of Channel 8 it comes from a franchise fee that the cable company pays to the city for example and the city then shares that money with the providing of local access cable channels. And what the bill is basically doing is eliminating that franchise fee responsibility or Albatross as a cable company would probably look at it and as a result the funding would then be a competitive with everything else that the municipality has to fund and I think you can all conclude that probably Channel 8 as you know it today would not exist if it weren't for these franchise fees being available. So it seems that public communication, public radio, public television is always up for well certainly substantial criticism, political controls. We enjoy our programming here quite a lot and it would be sad to see my senses Channel 6 or Channel 12 wouldn't be quite so interested but on that happy note we're gonna end and thank you we'll see you again.