 Hello welcome to the Donahue Group. We have every reason to expect with the passage of the cable bill that we'll need to sell naming rights for this show, so folks at home be thinking about how you would like to rename the show. We're thinking we don't want to call it the AT&T group necessarily, but we'll see what happens as time goes on. Joining me for the current Donahue Group show today, Cal Potter former state senator Tom Pineski, the University of Wisconsin Sheboygan math professor Joining him with a sweater vest Ken Risto who is the Curriculum and Assessment Coordinator for the social studies area of the Sheboygan area school district me. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue I'm a lawyer here in town, and we're here to talk about state issues Lots going on should we all just stand up and cheer for the fact that we finally have a budget We would if we were not hooked up to microphones What do you think? Man, what a process. Well, it's nice they got it done, but it was late and it was a cost I mean if you look at the news media every day there's various units of government trying to figure out what they got and what they didn't get and they shouldn't be in that position and A lot of them are scrambling now to try to find money So to make up for what they thought they were gonna get and not gonna get and it's really sad for those folks because Some politicians in Madison didn't get their act together I mean they should have played politics for a month or two and then did their job But they screwed around until well till the governor signed it at the end of October before we go into any of the particulars about the budget Which I think is probably not all that remarkable given the amount of time it took to pass The process was interesting Governor Doyle had promised to call the legislature into special session to talk about campaign Finance reform and and so forth and that promise has apparently been withdrawn There was great discussion much discussion during the budget process of this being used as really a primary fundraiser Or fundraising time for members of the legislature, so they were in no rush To pass a budget I've asked this question. I know more than once on on our program here, but what will it take? if anything for legislators Well, let me rephrase that what will it take for the people of Wisconsin to get so Mad about this. You remember I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore All of us leaning out of our windows and yelling that What's it going to take? I mean this is This is just crazy. We have to pay 50 or 60 percent out of our pocket in taxes Then we'll get mad until then. I don't think we'll get mad. We'll just say that's the cost of doing business Either that or we have a replication of maybe what happened on the federal level When you look at what Congress, you know people say well Democrats haven't done a heck of a lot in Congress But in the area of Lobby reform and ethics reform. They've done some very substantial Changes and they've done it because of the number of people who were caught In with their indiscretions and I think what has happened on the state level the koala and the Jensen in the 40 And ladwig were just sort of poster children of two years ago And people have sort of with a passage of time probably can't even recall those names All the names and so I think you need a resurrection of corruption And then people I think people's attention span due to the complexity of society and the number of things that they have to Deal with in their lives or family jobs and so on have a very short attention span to politics and unless there's something of a major Fiasco where the news media comes out and says throw the bums out The people are not being led in that that direction and I think politicians generally I see that and they very very Stealthfully have raised all kinds of money during this budget their coffers are full ready for 19 or 2008 And people think what hell we want to change the finance system It's this call is giving good milk now a lot of cream We got a fresh one here, let's go and there's no there's no urgency to do the people's will and I think that's what it's gonna take Yeah, I hate to say the thing has to break before people fix it But it seems that that's what happens in our society, but even when it's broken. I mean the koala Jensen Fodee I mean that was a scandal I Know it could get worse, but I'm not sure how much worse I think the governor you know governor is being chastised by common cause and I'm a member of common cause and G heck is the name of governor really going at it about having a special session I have not spoken to the governor as to why he has not But I would I'd be willing to think that some of his aides are saying you're not going to get this thing's past because there isn't a Motivation in the in particularly in a conservative assembly Why do you want to throw a bill out there that goes down in flames? And you're the governor who then has lost all her chips all his chips I think I can't help but think of Hillary Clinton in there and her efforts in initial days of the Clinton administration To get health care I mean all kinds of studies and volumes of documents put together about the need and the cost and how it should be structured and what happened is that The stage was not set for primetime the past a dog on thing She went down in flames and the damn thing now has been Inactive for what ten years at least and that's sad and I think the same thing could happen here You know it goes down and defeat and then people say well, why should we? Revisit this a year ago it went down You know two-thirds to let such a didn't vote for it or some scenario of that nature. Yeah Or just take an incremental an incremental step and look at Supreme Court the Supreme Court race Justices you know having to to raise insane amounts of money in order to get elected to a non-partisan Office that should be that should be Exempt from from political influence Silly me to think that you know we should have you know our justices Actually deciding things on the law and and not on you know who's that paying them and truly I think they do decide things on the law, but You know the pressure the pressure when you're running in these barely hotly contested races And I I can't help but think that the next Supreme Court race court race Justice Butler is going to be up and what's that coming up in November next November. It's it's an April 2008 great. Okay. Okay. Is there a Republican who's already declared there was a Republic? I've lost track of this because I'm not seeing anything about it for the last month and a half There was a Republican kind of I I can't tell you his name Who has sort of a perennial who runs a great deal for a variety of things? describes himself as being very very conservative, but Perceived as being rather unelectable to the point where the Chamber of Commerce and other Groups that would typically support a conservative Republican judges was really pretty much running fleeing from him Okay, and they were trying to find someone else to To step up and declare their nomination so they could support that individual rather than you know hug this This is a very bearer that they don't want to do it Let's get back to the Harry bearer of the of the budget What happened to the I know your boy on budget, but what happened to the Senate majority leader? Why did she get canned? Oh, how interesting Just at the stage State Senator Judy Robison from Beloit was elected Senate majority leader ten months ago not so long ago and Now it's shepherded the budget and now it's about a week after she was Russ Decker from I'm trying to walk off from wasa. All right It was no surprise because I think if you look at the winners and losers in the budget battle It was the conservatives in the assembly who got the most and the ones who lost the most were the liberal Democrats and the liberals in in the the Senate were the ones who wanted things such as financing for Healthcare plan a healthcare plan the hospital tax a number of things were put in which were Revenue razors to do creative things and do good things those were the things that were Compromised out and who was sitting at the table during the negotiations, but Judy Robson And so there's always an axe that falls on somebody when it doesn't come out to be at the liking of the caucus But Cal I think he would point it out on a previous show that the Senate Democrats really put together a very very liberal budget. I mean they knew they were going to lose stuff There I mean it was a it was a budget that was pretty far to one side and so you set The Senate liberals up against the assembly conservatives. I mean I It was not a middle of the road proposal from the Senate No, but I think it was good, but it did it did involve raising additional money and and so forth So but I think people on the left and right always think a little middle of the road is a little bit over the center Anyhow and so I think they're there and the caucus analysis of what they gave up was more substantial than they think and of Course, who do you take it out on you people who were at the table and that's what I think happened I wasn't there. I haven't talked to any senator about that but that was my gut reaction when I when I read it because I've been through some similar situations where when there is Have been a compromise on the conference committee and people do go back in the caucus and say what the hell Do you give that up for what's the matter with you aren't you defending your caucus members? You know you go into a situation where you find blame and I think some of that was was here It only takes just a switch of two or three unhappy people to make that have the caucus switch around I mean the Senate's not it was a close vote. Yeah, it was a very close. So I would think imagine maybe three people swing and You're you find yourself no longer they could have been the author of the health care plan or the hospital tax or a number of things that were Would drop? Yeah, well it's it was interesting in the the article that I read just basically indicated that there was the thought that She just was not aggressive enough Well, it seems to me there was plenty of aggression in this budget process and I mean aggression to the point of stalemate that was Not what legislators do maybe what politicians do but legislators should be about the people's business of putting together a budget and Understanding not everybody gets what he or she wants, but well, I'll climb off my soapbox and Talk a little bit about what? Winners and losers in the budget process Substantively, I mean we know that We're going to be paying more for to register cars And Driver's licenses and so forth. Tom's got a list. No, I don't have a list Yeah, I heard on the radio Cause I just gave birth to a child and I send in my money and I get a note from the state Oops, you owe more for birth certificates and everything else. So as you give birth Expect to pay more. Well, if that's I assume this is true of dying Yeah, somebody's got to pay right my checks in the coffin and I don't smoke but You know a dollar or a dollar increase on the tax I mean, I'm interesting though is that I think that still puts that as number 17 or whatever. I know double digit So other states have really passed us up on this I thought that was a very high increase and I thought we'd be three or four But when I saw what we really were I thought well, God, they had there's more wiggle room here I thought exactly that's on a pack of cigarettes, right? Yes, right. So how many packs are as 24? You know, so that's about $48 by a carton. It's $48 in tax just about that's why I hear a talk like there's gonna be Groups traveling to Illinois buying cigarettes and coming back to you Make no mistake when we talk about drug abuse As far as I can tell in the vast panoply of Drugs that are abused in this country that caused the greatest amount of personal pain and Fiscal strain it is tobacco. Why don't we outlaw far we don't far Well, yeah Well, and you'd be as successful at outlining cigarettes as you were as getting rid of alcohol and so forth But yeah, I think that Anyone who thinks that you know tobacco addiction is some benign I always I always supported Increases in the gas and in the cigarette tax and smokers would come back. Well, this is victimless I was my choice. I said you realize that just in their medical assistance alone It costs the state something like 500 million dollars a year to take care of people who are dying of cancer or emphysema or heart disease or Whatever malady they got from their smoking habit. I said so the taxpayer is Helping you with your medical bills because you choose to do something stupid like smoke, right? So I have no sympathy for people who think this is a sort of targeting them You're right. They shouldn't we shouldn't have cigarettes, but how far does government go and telling people to prohibit things? We went through this with prohibition that didn't work I think the same thing would happen with this So the best thing to do is just a tax it keep taxing until nobody buys it and then then we have a revenue source Exactly wiped out. Well, the the budget did include money for an expansion of our Beloved Highway 23 From Plymouth to Fond du Lac, which is only 19 miles according to the newspaper As Plymouth that is true and it often that's good It often I never actually mind the drive even when I'm behind a semi because it's so beautiful, but it is a trick it can be it can be a tricky drive and Of course you in the legislature must have driven that millions of times and According to the DOT there is no need for this four-lane highway from Plymouth to Fond du Lac until about 2020 Cal you were talking about the first rumblings of the expansion of highway 23 Back in the 80s. Well, it goes back further than that The road was built to Plymouth under Pat Lucy's administration and Pat Lucy was in the 1970s and when Pat Lucy left to become the ambassador to Mexico Then it was Martin tribe or is lieutenant governor who became the governor Served the body year then ran against Lee Dreyfus and Lee Dreyfus with his red vest in school bus and his charisma Just threw the bomb out or literally just wiped them off off out of the Executive mansion and that was the end of the Termination of the project the project was to continue after that Carl Adi and I were both in the assembly at that time and we had talked to Martin Shriver and said it's logical We're at Plymouth Let's go all the way the last was more than 19 miles at that time But it was okay He said he agreed to it and we were going ahead going ahead and so politics intervened different administration Different legislators and were involved and as a result the pie and the money went elsewhere there's always been interesting enough and I get a kick out of the Local politicians here to who who cry about the fact that there's No money there. There's not there's not enough money for all the projects that are promised throughout this state It's always been that way the legislature has got every district has got a four-lane road someplace practically and That's one of the reasons the legislature put in that indexing of the gas tax Is because it was the only way that you could somewhat keep up with the maintenance and the construction costs is if Periodically due to construction cost increases in inflation. You would tweak the gas tax every few months Well last session the legislature and her holiness said all its tax Tax without representation and they they put it down the toilet and as a result You had no way of ever keeping up with highway 23 or any other road Well in this budget, we have as we're seeing an increase what the 75 dollars for the registration of a car But I've been willing to bet that is going to be far short of what the need is and so this politics Continues whose district is going to get their project funded before others. There is a project's Review Commission that does prioritize and highway 23 was Somewhat lower and the local legislators moved it up on the list and now it's back down on the list It went from oh nine. I guess it's from the legislative action to two to 13 2013 backward was under the project's commission. So it's going to be built It's just a matter of when but I can tell you there's there's a lack of revenue To fund these type of project. They're extremely expensive They're insanely expensive and you know and it's getting worse because not only with the cost of oil blacktop If you want to even use blacktop is becoming very closely close to cement in cost and cement has gone through the roof Because a lot is going over to China and other developing nations So it's big. It's just becoming almost more difficult to try to even keep up with this list or no into the list projects that are out there and and Those of us who drove a lot to Madison back and forth Of course I remember in the old days where you'd go through shboygan Falls and you'd go through Plymouth and you went through Glen Greenbush, and you know it really did take some amount of time because we Mean it really is you know and 151 bypass will be opened completed this fall That's there you go takes a lot of time off the trip. It really does but it takes an Ordinary length of time to do one mile. I remember the from Fond du Lac to to Madison to complete that four-lane or when did the The the basic the new construction it was years and years So about 10 miles a year or so and when you oh and I think that's actually fairly quick and Because I remember driving to Madison two three years Through construction and and it really is amazingly expensive amazingly time-consuming and it's nice when it's done, but it really is a It's a it's and it's difficult for a state You know one of the things that some European countries and some Germans have come over here and it's common It's how sometimes our roads are kind of bumpy and so on well We have a state that's about the size of Germany, but what did I have 80 million people and we have 5.2 million so you're trying to finance a system of roads in this big massive geography With about five million people that's very it's very difficult over in Europe where they even rely on on Trains and other means of transportation even more they build roads to last the Germans You hear stories of how much gravel and stone they put under the concrete and how thick the concrete is on the the Autobahn, but it's a it's a large populated country in a rather small geographic area So we really do have to not only because a number of projects and the maintenance there of all these roads But you it's a it's a difficult thing to finance is what it is a point well taken and that leads to the fact that Highway 23 is dead because of Governor Doyle's veto In my day we called it the van a white veto when you take a letter and Tommy Thompson was in there. We're kind of You're the kind of because van a white and now of course poor Governor Doyle is guilty of the Frankenstein I Have always thought the Democrats did challenge in court to all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court the van a white veto that expression coined by one of my colleagues in legal services Bobby Anderson who is a lobbyist at that time and Chief Justice Nathan Heffernan from Sheboygan upheld the the veto as constitutional and Of course Tommy Thompson was a master at the van a white veto. It has been changed to some extent In the early 90s the There was a I think a constitutional amendment as I remember to but there are now some new creative ways of doing this I think it stinks just in general. I think it's a usurpation of the of the legislative Function by the executive I don't have problems with vetoes But to be able to go through line by line and reverse intent and reverse intent and effect And even increased dollars in some cases, right? They you know cross out no more than or but they could that goes and then Add some zero somewhere later on down the and I know that Republicans I just read with one of our state senators who just Live it about this, but I just you know want to remind him and and readers that and listeners that this was What Tommy Thompson honed it to a fine art. Oh, he was well You look back at the budgets that that I served I began serving under Pat Lucy and Marty Schreiber and even Lee Dreyfus And eventually Tony Earl none of them used the veto pen to this extent That's now being used today under the Doyle and Thompson Thompson broke ground it went to the court and the court said well let's say if you don't like a change to Well, they don't want to change it because if their governor was in power They want them to they want their governor to be able to use this tool So that's the court really simply said you don't like it don't come to us screaming good do it fix it yourself fix it legislate I think there was a good constitutional argument that essentially the executive branch Was was taking over legislative function by these tiny tiny little vetoes and I know they talk about it at the national leveling Goodness gracious. No. Hi. I don't know Professorista, what do you think in terms of? Constitutional issues or just a separation of powers you're our social studies guy Well, yeah, I the state of Wisconsin like some governors Well, like a lot like a lot of states give governors that kind of discretion and I'm very uncomfortable with having governors have that kind of that Kind of authority. I think one of the hallmarks as we all learn in civics class was the power of the person And it belongs in the hands of elected legislators and and this really makes it Two things first of all, it's a user like you said a usurpation of legislative power that in America is always blowing the legislators But also it makes I would think as I look at legislation I would think it makes legislation just awfully wordy because you have to as you craft legislation Think about how the governor is going to be creative in the way He moves words and letters or phrases around so I would think would make laws even more obscure difficult to understand I know as I read Wisconsin statutes compared to some other states it sure seems a awful wordy and awfully awfully obscure So I don't think it serves anybody Now that being said it looks like There is some body of evidence and it's really tough because comparing states as apples and oranges There seems to be a pattern that states that have this sort of power for governors Tends to reduce state expenditures the size of government So there that's why there are people who want to give the president that sort of authority because it's a way of really honing in on reducing government spending The problem of course you could yeah Well the problem of course is when the Framers nationally wrote the Constitution they envisioned that the president would get separate appropriations bills sure and so now of course Congress is Taken in both parties have taken that to a new level and they've created these omnibus You know expenditure bills where everything and anything is in there and then the president stuck with you know Signing the whole thing or vetoing the whole thing and so it's it's moved beyond the intention of the Framers There's no question about that It'll be interesting to see The word is that it's it's the veto is on rocky ground and The Frankenstein veto so we'll just have to we'll just have to see how it goes But I think I think it is an interesting You know balance between them and both Democrats and Republicans need to remember that if they enact something that helps them when they're out of power, it's gonna help the other party as well and and They should just be more philosophical Purely legislated I mean the governor doesn't have a veto in this they is that correct if the legislature says we want to Make a constitutional amendment. We propose it. We pass it and the governor can't veto it It goes to the electorate and has to be passed again or at least twice two sessions So that choice is out of the governor's veto Now there seems to be at least in certain areas of dialogue during the budgetary process where the governor at least Makes promises that he isn't going to monkey around with certain sections So there is sort of a Discussion of what areas are our inbounds and what areas out of bounds for the governor to play this game Because I know that was going on this last time around was that going on with with you as well when you were there It sometimes occurs, but we did not have the stalemate like we had here most of the years that I was in we were able to Resolve our budget differences earlier. Well, just think about how little your campaigns cost. Yeah, my first campaign was $3,000 Wow 276 dollars to get elected to the school board. What are we? No? That yeah, I mean that's that really is pretty remarkable We have a lot to talk about in just a couple of minutes left The human tiff plan in fact we only have one minute left so there are other There are lots of things that we'll just have to tune into including ways of Prospering the state through interesting funding for universities the Wisconsin Covenant, but this human tiff district Concept that we were talking about I continue to be very interested in in Lake Michigan water levels and intergovernment Cooperation to address just this catastrophic in my view event and so forth, but we've got 15 seconds So I just want to say thanks to Brett farve Michigan water What a class act that guy is you know It's good PR, but this is a man who in spite of being attacked and revered and Really seems to happen, you know just on depending on what the score is is Unfailingly polite in his public discourse, and I think he is a wonderful example of just a plain old class act We're wrapping it up for number four go pack go badgers And we'll see you all again sometime soon