 Welcome to the Donahue Group, glad that you can join us for another fun-filled half hour of discussion. We're going to focus mostly on state issues in this episode, and joining me in that happy exercise, former State Senator Cal Potter. Professor Tom Paneski, looking good in that nice blue summer leisure, yes, there you go, very good. The King of Braces, the King of Suspenders, Mr. Sartorial Splendor himself, the Gentleman's Quarterly, or maybe we could call him the Gentleman's Eighth, I don't know, but here just looking as good as can be, me? Show it up next time in Burlap. It'll be summery, Ken. Summer. I think I mentioned your name, Henrystow, yes. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue, a lawyer in town, and leading this really kind of feisty group of participants today, talking a little bit about state issues. With the Government Accountability Board, that has kind of a 1984 sort of feeling to it, but it is the elimination of the State Ethics Board and the State Election Board, and replaced with a board comprised basically of retired judges. Senator Doyle today suggested 12 potential candidates for the six positions, and a good group. Mike Brennan from Marshfield, who's a fabulous guy, Victor Mannion, who's just one of the great judges of Milwaukee County. Tom Barlin from Eau Claire, again just kind of like the Alex Hoppe of judges. Bob Hase from Oshkosh, Jerry Nicol from Madison, Bill Ike, who was, of course, on the Court of Appeals for a number of years, and who's a pretty wise guy in my opinion. And so the... She's very familiar with judges because that's her profession. See, there you go. There you go. And then there's some on the list that I'm just not going to talk about, but in any event I would... Usually you're on a jihad about these things. Moira Creer from Madison. There's a lot of males that you seem to know a lot about. I'm going to wake up at about three this morning and say, this is how I could have responded to that really rude comment, but I shan't. I shan't. I'm just going to shut you down. Yes. Thank you. She's thinking of a new law firm. She's using a lot of restraint there, don't you think? That's right. Too legit to face. The Milwaukee look. In any event, I think it's a good idea. We talked a lot last fall about the weakness of our elections process in so many ways, and this is at least... It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. It's one small way of trying to build accountability into those who are running for office and so forth. The governor selects appointees and then the Senate or somebody approves them. You said six out of 12, so he presented 12. What happens is the board doil forwards the names of three nominees to the State Assembly and three others to the State Senate. Majority vote of both parties is required to confirm the first six board members and then in the future it's just going to be the Senate who's going to confirm nominees. They'll start out with a balance from both the Republican Assembly and the... Although I will say looking at these names as it should be, these are not political people. They never run on a political ticket because we try to divest partisan politics from our judiciary. We do, don't we? We try. We try. If you go to Illinois, judges run as Democrats or Republicans. Exactly. That's not unusual. Really around the United States but in fact Judge Ziegler or Justice Ziegler had apparently decided it was not a good idea to speak before the GOP convention and has withdrawn her name as a speaker so I think that's interesting. I think it's a good thing. It's just a further step of objectivity that we interject in our legal system and I think putting in a panel that's now going to judge Republicans and Democrats hopefully alike keeping them away from the partisan label is going to be a good start. It's huge. It's huge. That's exactly right. That's what's going to be the real test. This is going to be the same old, same old and folks are going to again just say well meet the new boss, same as the old boss. This is a real independent panel that actually plays a role of referee or umpire. That'll be a real positive step. And of course judges are used to doing that and these are good folks so I think it'll be interesting. But Lisa said Justice, to be Justice Ziggler who will be sworn in on August 1st has settled with the ethics board, the state board of ethics, $5,000 fine and $12,000 in cost for the investigation relating to the issues that came up during her campaign. However, she still has a pending complaint with the judicial commission and they are on no timetable so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. That must feel pretty lousy to take office and really have that hanging over your head. Interestingly enough Justice Butler who is going to be in town for the law day, the bar honors trial students and so forth dinner tomorrow night has already, he's up for re-election in April of 2000. Tell me what year you're in. Eight. Eight, thank you very much. Even numbers. Thank you. He has put together a campaign committee already and hired a campaign director, kind of breaks your heart. I mean there's. Sure he's not happy about it, he's thrilled about having to do that, but no interest. His reputation is generally pretty progressive although these folks, if you're a good judge in my opinion you find different ways of, again the judiciary can make strange bedfellows. The people who will agree on certain issues in certain areas and not in other issues so it's interesting. Will the judicial board that's looking at Ziegler's case make a ruling or determination prior to her taking, I know they're on a no timetable but is there any sense of when they're going to rule prior to her taking the bench? That's a pretty quiet little group there, the Judicial Commission. You don't hear much from them and they are constituted solely for dealing with complaints against judges. I would hope what comes out of this is a strong message to judges to start taking very seriously whether they or their family members have ties to someone in the case. I think while she didn't do anything illegal I think it was a very poor judgment to have a spouse sit on a bank board and then take a case that's involved. I mean there's going to be that type of inhibition I think in the back of somebody's mind and how you're going to rule on this. I mean even in a legislature we'd have people who were maybe on a bank board and we would have a bill about banking. There were legislators who would say I'm not going to vote on this issue. I mean they sometimes stretched it but they were thinking about it. Well how does this appear? How is my judgment going to be infected by the fact that I play this role or I'm a member of this board? And from my perspective I think what Justice Siggler did was probably purely accidental. I mean just not thinking about it. I can't imagine that she did that for any financial gain. I mean I'm pretty sure there was no financial gain. There was no evidence of that. But it's just these high standards that we like to hold all of our elected officials to, whether they're at the local or school board level and all the way up to the Supreme Court. Except in Milwaukee. Yeah. In Milwaukee is the exception. Wow. At least getting maybe rid of the guy for a change. Just was elected under the clock. Isn't there a bill pending, at least a proposal, I don't know where it is in the legislature to try to move judicial elections to a purely public financed basis. I thought there was some proposal about a month ago. I don't know where it ended up. Is there a legislative proposal? I remember hearing that as well. I think it's sort of the one quarter of the loaf, the whole loaf is to go to public financing of all elections as part of the whole campaign finance issue. But as a result of the most recent expensive and special interest dominated Supreme Court race, people are saying at least let's take this section and put it under the public tent. I think it's a good first step. Oh, it's a huge first step. Particularly with Supreme Court races, Court of Appeal judges races, I mean, they're almost never contested as far as I can tell and the profile is quite low. Same with most circuit court judge races. But these Supreme Court races in the last 15 years or so have been, they've been devils. They make some, I guess, some rulings that affected the business and industry. So they're very concerned about the kind of rulings. And you can have cases that come up that have happened where it's not clear, where you have three out of seven justices recusing themselves because they've gotten campaign contributions of, and that's of course what they have to do, but will we get to the point where we will have a minority of judges ruling in a majority position because of this. Clearly, from my perspective, the very first place to start would be with Supreme Court races. And I think we can all agree we want an independent judiciary. It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned. But let's talk about that next month because I'm not sure where that, you know, I know Justice, former Justice Janine Gueski is involved in this group that has come together to talk about these issues. And so, and I think the Butler race potentially could be pretty, pretty ugly. So you never know. Talking about ugly, Governor Doyle has proposed, he's not ugly, there has been an ugly battle. Boy, is that like a pinata. Oh, well, that was just sort of, oh, I just had a dangling participle there and I just wanted to just, you know, get that snatched up real quick. There's an ugly battle brewing about Governor Doyle's proposed oil tax. 2.5% on gross receipts of oil gasoline sales within the state. Wisconsin Manufacturers in Commerce has gone, I'm not going to say they've gone ballistic, but certainly their response has been aggressive. They're not happy. They aren't happy. It's a good idea, good idea, bad idea. It's a tax on business, but I don't think it's a bad business to pick on because I think the oil industry has been totally irresponsible. They're making record profits, billions of dollars and they're laughing about it. I have no qualms about saying business needs to make a profit. That's what they're in business for, but when they start making billions and it's not tied to some type of crisis or shortage or whatever, I think maybe they owe the public a little bit back because they're taking money from poor people. They're taking people, money, cost of doing business has gone up for every business person who has shipped things or delivers things or whatever reliance you have on transportation, and I think the oil industry has been getting a free ride here. I think they ought to clean up their own act. And I don't see why Doyle should be criticized overly for this. All the oil industry has to do is say, we don't need billions in profit, we're going to cut back a bit here and be settled with their satisfaction, which is so much profit. But they've stepped over the line, I think, and Doyle has simply to say, well, if you're going to take us to the cleaners, the way you have, I'm going to say at least you ought to return a little bit to the public good through this tax. And it's a shrewd public policy movement. Nobody is going to be sending valentines to the oil companies at this particular point when they're standing there putting three dollars and fifty cents. Well, yeah, interestingly, the WMC has been running ads. Apparently, I have not seen them about Doyle's budget and really targeting this oil tax. They're radio ads that are run frequently. Okay. And it's not necessarily oil. I mean, that's one issue, but they talk about all the taxes that he is proposed about. They mentioned about seven or eight. And the first ad is when they're, I mean, it's one single radio spot. So you hear everybody cheer and Doyle says, I promise not to raise taxes and everybody cheers. And of course, now then they say, and so after he's elected, this tax, this tax, this tax, this tax, they're going to affect the poor here. And then they play that again. I promise not to raise taxes and everybody starts heckling and laughing and giggling and they do it two or three times. If we knew now what we know, you know, so it's their, their testing is credulity, I guess. Yeah. It made me fun of it. The construction industry, on the other hand, who will be the recipient of these of the oil tax dollars is not happy with WMC because they of course stand to profit very directly because as I understand the money from the oil tax will be targeted specifically to transportation. To fill the hole that was made by the elimination of the index gas tax, there you go, which the Republicans in the legislature last session said, we needed to do away with because you didn't the legislators did not vote on the increase that was based on construction cost index. It was put in the 1980s, I believe under Tony Earl, I was in the legislature at that time was put in well, it was put in because no one would vote for a gas tax increase. And we had roads in this state that were in disrepair. And we also have a very well, lucrative to some extent, to some municipalities road aid program when it comes back to towns and villages and cities to help them with their costs of road maintenance. And this fund was constantly short of what it ought to be. And when legislators didn't vote on a gas tax increase, of course, there wasn't enough money to do all the projects that were promised to be made and project projects like Highway 23 and so on were constantly delayed and delayed and more promises made than ever could be constructed. So the indexing was put in to indexed tax to the cost of construction and so on inflation and that type of factors. And it was put in an operated well for maybe 20 years almost and conservatives finally had their way. And now they've killed the goose and there's no, I don't think, interest in the legislature to vote for some type of tax increase on the gas on gasoline when prices are as high. So the governor is saying, what's the alternative? We got Highway 23. People are saying we should build that before 2013 or whatever the date is for completion. And this is happening all over the state. And so he's simply saying, well, I'll put in a certain percentage gross receipts tax on oil companies and that will get it out of the profit end of it rather than on the retail end. And so this is the alternative. Is this the same transportation fund that he used rated, if you will, to pay for me? Say for you, yeah, he took somehow he managed his governor to take money out of that fund to help meet the state obligation to fund the state had the budget deficit several billion. Okay. Yeah, so it sounds a little bit like we I actually voted for the wheel tax in Sheboygan because road maintenance and so on. And then now it's been repealed and obviously they're not going to put it back and they're looking for revenues out here. Well, the similar, similar issue, you know, in the irony of all this, liberals and conservatives constantly lobby for four lane roads. And we've built Highway 29, we've built Highway 10, you go right around the state people are lobbying for Highway 20. They're safe. But not only do the cost money to build your increased maintenance costs is tremendous. Yes, not only plowing, but filling the potholes and doing all the other things cutting the grass. And so you're building in an increased cost as you build more and more of these roads. And so if you continue to cut the gas tax or at least take away the indexing, what are you going to do to fund this increase the expenditure? The governor is trying to face it. Right. And I, one of the, one of the ways that you might look at it, is there any number of fairly large corporations in Wisconsin that pay zero income tax? There's a fairly neutral site, well, it's not neutral, but the Wisconsin Institute for Wisconsin, future Wisconsin's future, I think, I just looking at their pie chart, and it's fairly extraordinary. Corporate income tax used to be about, it used to be a fairly significant part of the state sources of revenue. It's now 3%. Whereas property tax, income tax, use use tax and so forth, or, you know, make up the balance of that. So there really has been a not very subtle shift in the tax burden from corporations to to individuals. And this is this is tough, because people want more services. I love being able to drive to Minneapolis or to Annie go. Well, Minneapolis, I can drive completely on a four lane highway and drive to Annie go and most of it is on a four lane road. And it is safer. Also with the University of Wisconsin education system, it used to be two thirds state, one third individual are and now it's reversed. It's one third state and two thirds tuition costs go to the individual. And of course, Doyle is concerned now about the drop in UW salaries, which has caused a fairly significant drain of very talented people from the university system will also take their grant money with them, and the revenues that they produce with them. And so I mean, these are interesting issues. And the gas tax makes a whole lot of sense to me. I would just soon have them pay. The only thing is, we got to figure out a way that it doesn't get shifted back to the consumer. And I'm not sure quite how you do that. Well, they were saying that there's some provisions in the proposal to make sure that oil companies can't turn around. I don't know how in the world you enforce it. And the second thing, the second thing was that there was some talk today that Doyle acknowledged that you may be a while before the tax actually gets collected because there'd be legal challenges. And I don't know what the what is the basis of the legal challenge of states because of interstate commerce, that's Congress's call in the states of no business stepping in. And where the where the corporation is headquartered. In other words, mobile or shell shells, a Dutch company mobiles, a British company at what point then they probably have in corporation in this country in Delaware. At what point do you interject the tax when they only have filling stations here? Yeah. Yeah. Although I think I think I think Ken's issue is is is more significant, which is the regulation of interstate commerce is, you know, because certainly there'd be jurisdiction here. But well, I think it's interesting. The I wanted to just talk a little bit about we had had a program with our our producer and our, our God, Scott Miliff. The there he is. You can't see him, but he's up there working hard along with our wonderful camera people. The video competition bill that we had talked about last time is still pending. Scott and Kerry tell us that it has passed the assembly. There's another version in the Senate. Looks like it's going to take a back seat to to the to the budget bill unless it is folded into the budget bill. Wasn't there an effort though on the state level Cal to not allow substantive issues to be brought into the budget? And that's it's debated every year. Okay. But that's a matter of interpretation of what substantive is. And it's usually not so much substantive as it is financial. At what point is it sufficiently financial of a bill to being included in the budget package? Yeah. And justification is that anytime you pass anything, there is a cost somewhere. Therefore, that's why it's the only bill that's probably has everything is germane in it because something costs money someplace in the whole scenario. And just to remind our viewers that if this bill does pass, and depending, of course, on what final formulation, it may mean the end of the excise tax that is paid to the municipality, which allows channel eight and other public access TV stations to stay in business. So it certainly our fan club with the massive numbers of members that we have in our fan club are going to want to write to their legislators and let them know what they think of, think of at least the elimination of the excise tax. So interesting stuff. But it will also mean the local, unless I misunderstand, it would also mean the local communities would lose the source of revenue as they negotiate with whatever, whatever, whatever internet, not internet, I'm sorry, video services they contract with. Complaints also would leave the local community. Is that what I understand? So they go to the state and get lost. Yeah. So this will be one more example again where we're very gradually the source of revenues for local local government is going to be shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. The city right now gets, as I understand, and I know that Scott and Kerry both want to jump out and come down here and fill us in and get the straight information out. But the city makes about 400,000 or so, about 400,000 or so thousand a year, a good chunk of which maintains this wonderful TV studio, but also a good chunk of which goes into the city coffers to fill potholes and things like that. So we'll keep you posted on that. A recent study shows that in the last election, business interests outspent labor unions 12 to 1 in terms of political contributions. The gap has widened. The disparity was worth $30 from business interests for every $1 from unions in the 2006 race for governor. Although please understand that business people are contributing to Doyle as well as to Green. Well, this is most, a lot of this is independent expenditures which were not around years ago. In the heyday of unions when about 40% of the workforce was unionized in 1965, they had their political action committees and so on a lot of, and you didn't have this entity called these independent expenditures. Today WMC and the realtors and new name the business group do their own little TV ads and so on. And so as you add up all of those independence, you find out labor unions which now constitute about 12% of the workforce are not a big player in the whole scheme of things. And I note and I'm trying to find my information. A bill did pass the state senate which would require our independent committees to actually disclose if an ad is run within 60 days in an election, disclose the source of their contribution, their contributors and so forth which pass the senate. Its future in the assembly is unknown but I thought that that was pretty interesting. Also the federal election commission ruled recently that Mark Green's transfer of his congressional money to his state committee was okay. And I didn't either so just in my my laborious research to make sure that I have at least 10 or 15% of what I'm saying is correct. Yes, yeah so the 1.2 million dollars that he did transfer in and of course you remember there was a lawsuit and the lawsuit settled prior to the Supreme Court ruling because the the Dane County Court and I think the Court of Appeals had ruled that Green could not use that money and so typically federal law and federal decision makers will will overrule state decision makers so so I thought that was I thought that was pretty interesting. We only have a couple minutes left let's make a pitch for and I'd be interested in your thoughts Wisconsin I finally after all of these years has gotten itself together this is the sort of the c-span of of state legislatures I know when I was on the school board and all of a sudden those school board meetings were televised certainly changed the tone I'm interested in your thoughts on Wisconsin I and which I think is a great group and what that will mean if anything for the legislature when its proceedings are televised. I think it's a good thing right now the only television that people get out of the legislature is when it's a big issue that local commercial stations go down to Madison to cover or during the budget you will occasionally see maybe after ten o'clock at night there will be public television coverage of the debate but this will provide ongoing coverage of committee meetings and other types of goings on I hope they succeed I don't know how much interest there is see Spanish surely succeeded but I don't know how much there is on the state basis to support it but I hope it does yeah any other thoughts yeah I agree with Cal you don't get any kind of real insight or level of discussion anymore a five ten second sound bite on some piece of legislation but you don't have any sense of what state government's doing and local television your 10 o'clock news or whatever doesn't give you what you need to know anymore body bag journalism well and we'll end on that happy note thanks for joining us and we'll see you again