 and welcome to the Donahue group. We're happy that you've joined us again for a half an hour of conversation, which we hope is both scintillating and informing. And if nothing else, just vaguely interesting. My name is Mary Lynn Donahue. That was funny. And if I get that right, I'm gonna go on and introduce Cal Potter, former state senator and assistant superintendent at the Department of Public Instruction. Professor Tom Pineski, a mathematics professor at the University of Wisconsin, Sheboygan. Thank you. And I'm, whatever else you'd care to add to that is just fine. And Ken Risto, a social studies teacher and yet someone with a higher position in the Sheboygan area school district, which is? I am a curriculum and assessment specialist. In the social studies area. In the area of social studies, yes. Well, very nice. C-A-S. They should make you wear ties. Not C-S-I. I think, It was 84 degrees in my classroom today and I have a rule, once it gets past 82 the tie comes off. Well, very good. Fair enough. I'm a human. Isn't it something about teachers though that you just find them constantly complaining about? I'm merely reporting conditions. We're talking a little bit about life in the state of Wisconsin. It's been, in some respects, a little quiet. I have not seen the ads attacking Governor Doyle. Cal, you indicated that you have is the political season starting, obviously it is starting early because we know of at least two challengers to him in 2006. So it is a long political season. What are the ads? Well, the premise on both of them is that the website at the end is sick of high taxes or something like that.com and both of them are using issues which are hot button one, there's illegal aliens going to university and the other is gay benefits, medical benefits for gay couples and they throw those in there as distasteful issues that they want to affiliate Governor Doyle with at the same time saying while he's raising taxes to do this or fees to do this and so on. So I think there are two agendas here. One is the budget bill is going to come out of the finance committee and be voted on by both houses of a budget sector sometime in about two weeks at the most and they're setting that stage for fighting any fees or tax increases that might be proposed or be in that document and the other is of course tarnished the governor's reputation for next year he's up for reelection and so the sooner you start to do that the greater chance somebody's going to hear about that negative aspersion that you're putting forth and the better chances for defeating them next. So it's a conservative movement at anti-tax, anti-Doyle type of movement and I think both ads are very despicable because of the fact that they really do associate issues which are quite dissimilar and really are insulting. If I were Hispanic person I would have been highly insulted by the ad that they had this Hispanic lady talking about how she was a legal immigrant and so on. It's just completely distasteful in my opinion. It's interesting to me I had read that Doyle's approval rating is very high, well above 60, well I shouldn't say well above but at least 60% which I guess surprised me just because it's a fairly rugged row to hold on the state level these days and whether you're talking about property tax freezes or saving $3 for a homeowner or $10, there's still the perception that the government is too big, taxes are too high and so forth but Doyle does seem to be doing a lot of things right at least if this poll would be a fair reflection. I think he's created a very moderate Democrat image. I think very much like Bill Clinton did, middle of the road. If you talk to liberal folks I think they thought that Jim Doyle would be a more liberal governor and I think there are people who think that he has been as friendly to state employees for example following to cut 10,000 positions in his first term. Those folks are not happy. So I think he's made some traditional sort of liberal constituencies more unhappy and I think there are some people majority of whom are in the middle I think politically see him as a governor who's trying to do a difficult task at a difficult time with a difficult legislative situation. He's got both houses Republican and really that state Senate is really a conservative group while assembly is much different but it's not just Republican, it's a conservative Republican majority in both houses. Tom, you're our token Republican. It's all right. What's your sense of how Doyle is doing and how he's playing around the state? I, with a proposed, from one thing for Doyle, I hope he vetoes the UW Waukesha, UW Milwaukee kind of study. I think he said he would. So I would be for that. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about this is the merger of the systems. Well the joint finance committee and there was a resolution that they adopted to have a study of combining the UW Waukesha making UW Waukesha more like a satellite campus of UW Milwaukee. UW Milwaukee chancellor is kind of going away from the previous chancellor's emphasis on making Milwaukee an urban city. Once and now make Milwaukee competitive with UW Madison and somebody proposed that we disband the UW colleges and then that got narrowed down to maybe just Milwaukee and UW Waukesha, that the UW College at Waukesha become merged with Milwaukee. So if Governor Doyle vetoes that study, that would be crucial to the UW colleges keeping their two year mission of educating people at the home, at home alive. Because the UW Waukesha is the UW College's biggest campus, the largest campus. So I would support that. As far as other issues, I didn't like Doyle's idea of rating the transportation tax for a lot of funds, the transportation budget for a lot of funds to support programs. But McCallum did that much more blatantly to the tobacco summit. It's a constant argument, you raise the gasoline tax automatically every year and then it's supposed to go for streets and roads and everything else and then you get used for something else. So it's not like being out front with what you're actually doing. So, and I haven't seen the ads. So I have no. You haven't missed much. I haven't missed much. Okay, I haven't seen the ads. I think it's gonna be a long political season. I think so too. I mean, Peg Lautenschlager is out campaigning actively for her position as attorney general, which I think is gonna be. A difficult race for her. It's gonna be a difficult race for her. She has a difficult trial up north, presuming that it stays up north. I would assume maybe with the different jurors pulled from a different part of the state would seem to be a reasonable compromise. But she's gonna have some fairly tough competition. Is there a sense that there's gonna be a primary on the democratic side? I heard Fox name being mentioned. Yeah, I did too. Yeah, I've heard that too. But I think a lot will depend on probably polling data. Maybe we'll be started soon. And then people will, prospective candidates will probably pay for a poll. And if the numbers look promising, then we can jump in. Yeah, and the Republican side, we have Paul Bucher from DA and Waukesha. Any other Republicans? But Walker and Green are for the governor. For attorney general. Oh, for attorney general. I think there's another one that can't, name escapes me. Yeah, so that's gonna be an interesting race too. According back to the governor, I think his vetoing the ID bill is getting a lot of negative, getting him a lot of negative press, I think. The photo ID bill for voting. Well, I think the Democrats have to be just much more explicit about even being willing to acknowledge that there may be some problems and just saying if there are these problems, it's just real clear the photo ID bill does not solve those problems in any way, shape or form. Doyle actually has a fairly comprehensive plan, I think, for voter reform. We've talked about this before when you've got people waiting three hours to vote, whether they have a photo on their ID or not, doesn't solve the problem logistically. There's just, most of these polling places are undermanned. They can't even get the people through the booths, let alone check authenticity of who's there. One of Doyle's, one of the pieces of Doyle's legislation to reform election fraud issues is when people are registering at the polls, which would seem to be the place where felons might get in and vote and they shouldn't be that as you register, you would check a box that says that yes, you are a convicted felon or whatever so that you go in at your peril knowing that if you check the box and vote, you're violating the law and so it seemed to be an interesting piece of it but in just way off topic, but yesterday, I think yesterday the Washington Supreme Court upheld the Gregoire victory as governor of Washington and she actually went from having lost by 242 votes to winning by 129 and then I think they found another five in her favor so these issues do become important and we haven't had anything quite that tight except maybe for the live ham bomb guard race and I don't think there were any allegations of fraud in that race but so it is interesting stuff. The minimum wage, new minimum wage bill has gone into effect. We had started talking on a different show about BadgerCare, the medical assistance program that the state has at this point being having grown enormously and people are being used by people who have jobs at places like Walmart and McDonald's and other big employers that are not providing benefits. I think that's really interesting stuff. There was a group in Sheboygan that for a while was examining not only an increase in the minimum wage which I think is just up to it's going up to 570 an hour, the first of two increases it'll go up to 650 an hour as of June 1st, 2006 so in a year from now it'll be 650 an hour. The living wage group here in Sheboygan estimated and this is three, four years ago that a living wage, in other words a wage that would allow you to support your family in a very modest way but without being on any government benefits would be about $11 an hour if you don't have health insurance about 9.50 an hour or so if you did have health insurance. Well, 650 an hour is not getting you there or even $7 or $8. Why such a struggle to have a minimum wage that's a little higher? Really, I mean it hadn't increased in 10 years? Yes, I don't equate minimum wage with a living wage. So if you make that equation, well I can't argue with you but I don't equate it. I equate it with just a wage to give people an opportunity to learn some job skills and it's minimal work. I think it's just a philosophical debate. There are those who say the free market system works that people will not work for something that's too low. You don't have to legislate that. However, I come from a different school, I believe that when there is a shortage of workers, you will see wages go up but when there happens to be lean economic times and there's a surplus of workers, there will be exploitation. One of the things that has produced this country, the way it is today is the growth of a middle class that for most of this history was and Ken knows this as a history teacher is that we've always had labor shortages and when you have labor shortages, you can join unions and you can make demands and you can get benefits that you wouldn't get and if there's a surplus. Country third world countries today, you try to form a union, you'll be booted out and you'll have 3,000 people outside the door looking for that same job tomorrow at whatever subsistence wage of less than subsistence wage is being paid. So I do think that there should be a statement by government that there is an absurd level of exploitation that you can wreak out of your workers and you shouldn't be doing that even though it isn't a living wage, you ought not to be paying less than six bucks an hour because that's outrageously low. And I don't equate living wage with minimum wage, I'm just saying that as we look, a minimum wage is clearly not enough to support a family by any stretch of the imagination but what we're seeing I think with workers who get more than a minimum wage but work in a place with no benefits that actually does qualify them for something like badger care or food stamps or energy assistance, again depending on all these programs have different eligibility qualifications and so forth but I think it's just been an interesting point to me particularly since relatively few workers to be honest are paid so little that it has been such a struggle for such a long time that you actually have city councils where I think politically it's a whole lot more dangerous wouldn't you agree to institute a city wide minimum wage? That's why I was gonna ask, you know what the compromise was to make it a state minimum wage and therefore all the preemptions. Yes, the city of Madison, well Milwaukee. La Crosse, Eau Claire. All those have become, they get wiped off the books if that kind of will turn some of Doyle's supporters off for him agreeing to that sort of thing. I don't think, my sense is no, just because a minimum wage to me is a state issue. That's not something that individual city councils and county boards ought to be legislating. They were doing so primarily because the state wasn't taking any kind of action whatsoever, the kind of action they thought the state government ought to be taking. And yeah, you otherwise you end up with pockets of higher labor costs and then how do these areas, these cities become economically competitive or stay competitive when just across the county line it's tough enough, having states, having a race down to the bottom, trying to maintain businesses and giving companies tax breaks to keep them here and providing jobs. County differences would be just horrendous, it seems to me. I think that uniformity is pretty important. So, speaking of the legislature, an interesting legislative proposal floated, and I'm not sure I have all the details correct by, and I forget the gentleman's name, to ban stem cell research. Senator Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald and Irishman of all things. Introduced a measure in... He's chairman, co-chairman of the finance committee. And to go into the budget bill? I believe so, because he has backed off on that amendment and said he's gonna pursue it as individual legislation. And the governor in his budget bill, and I believe $360 million for the development of stem cell research sort of facility at the University of Wisconsin, which is one of the places where this whole issue began. And he feels very strongly, we ought to use the university as a stellar research facility institution that it is, and play on our strong points, which I agree with him wholeheartedly. And I think this one senator just shows that people who are in an elective office doesn't really know a lot about what they're talking about. Sometimes, and as a result, I think he was off base in his prohibition. Well, we started to have a lively discussion before we went on the air, as a matter of fact, about whether the University of Wisconsin should even be an economic center, a recipient of research monies instead of private sector entities to do things like stem cell research. One of the founders or one of the inventors or discoverers of stem cell research, being a professor at the University of Wisconsin, and quite prestigious, it makes sense to me that if we're talking about a brain drain in Wisconsin, as we seem to be, that our college-educated kids leave, is that if we can create a research environment that really pays pretty well, brings in business to the state, it seems to be a win-win. Well, I think you play off your strengths, and we're not a warm-weathered destination. We're not mineral-rich or oil-rich, but what are we rich in? We're rich in... Stem cells. We're rich in the technical college system, the university system, K-12 education. Those are our strong points. Kids do well. Kids who come out of these higher institutions do well. They're in demand all over the country. When you look at that, it stares you in the face, saying, well, maybe that's where we ought to be putting our support. And the governor asked for $40 million more for the university, the finance committee cut it back to nine. And they called this university a greedy bunch of whatever, eating at the public trough. I think, again, somebody's empty-headed senators and representatives who are saying that are all rages, because that university is the third largest public university recipient of private dollars for research. Well, if you've got that type of confidence in the private sector, that they'll come and give your faculty, your university money to do research, which then builds labs and provides our students with state-of-the-art, not only tutors, because they're working with these people, but job opportunities after they get out of school. I mean, this is a totally a win-win situation. The moral issue is the embryonic stem cell research. I don't think stem cell research is an issue. But the university budget is becoming an issue. It is always with these conservatives that somehow the governor asking for $40 million more. Well, if you wanna keep good professors and you wanna replace these folks, you gotta come up with more money. It's gonna cost you more money this two years than it did the last two years, just by pay raises and cost of medical benefits, cost of meeting 26 campuses. I mean, I can just envision that $40 million probably is a stretching the budget compared to what they need. I recall four or five years ago when I was at a regents meeting, they talked about a business professor who retired. He was making like $100,000, $90,000. Oh, you got this professor retiring. Now you're gonna be able to have a little savings to hire a new business professor, brand new, would have been about 130,000 plus perks at the university. So it wasn't like you were saving money because your $100,000 professor retired and you're gonna have to pay more plus perks because other institutions and other states will do that. I don't know how the cuts have played out here at the center, but I've had a couple of opportunities to talk to some folks at UW Oshkosh and over at UW Eau Claire. And in the case of one of the Oshkosh economics professors a good friend of mine was saying they don't have the funding right now to offer the courses to get students to the degrees that they want. So they take some five or six years, which in essence costs the taxpayers more money because they have to now put more money. So here you have a large, I mean their economics department is growing out at Oshkosh and they've got these students who are chomping at the bit that want degrees in economics and they don't have the staffing of capability to get these kids through in four years. I do need to correct something. I did say $100,000 and I don't want the public to think that all professors could pay $100,000. I was going to say, I was going to say $100,000. That's just the nicest quote. I was going to talk to you. I'm just wondering, you know. I am in the UW colleges, which we've got a solid bunch of professors with PhDs in a variety of areas. I bet we are median salary is about $55,000, I mean. Absolutely. Maybe even, so we're not making $100,000. And I do read letters to the editor and all those professors making those big bucks. It isn't the case. We are part of the pension system, which I have to agree is a good system. So the benefits that go with teaching are good. Although we're paying our way now, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield, et cetera. But I think that Cal's point about a good university system being a prime economic driver is completely correct. And it's, you know, paying money to generate money. It really is fairly astonishing just in terms of the kind of economic impact that the university system does have on the state. So. And quality of life. I mean, if you take university hospital and clinics, if you look at some of the noted oncologists and cardiologists and dermatologists, leading in the nation are people who are employed there. And there are people who retire to Florida, get sick and come back to Wisconsin because they want better medical care than they can get somewhere else. So those are, you know, they're all spinoffs of a university investment in the university. Investment, my kids graduated from the University of Wisconsin. They go to another state. Where did you graduate from? They tell them that Madison and people are impressed because the University of Wisconsin has a name in the nation. Just spinning off, getting back to the budget. It certainly is a difficult process. And pastures, we have gone weeks and weeks and months and months past the time that we need to pass a budget. Is that gonna happen this year? Do you think that is the- No, I don't think so. Because the houses are- I think there's more of a homogeneity in that conservative legislature than in the past. And for a number of years, we had a Republican assembly and a Senate controlled kind of by Democrats. It was Battlegrounds. Right, and then, of course, you had, in one case, you had a Democratic Senate Republican House and a Republican governor. And so when the documents would get bandered back and forth, of course, they'd sort of rip them apart and start over and eventually it took to September or October. I don't think that's gonna happen. I think you're seeing already a lot of strong support for just cutting and then throwing it on the governor's desk. Including money for childcare, which is an issue near and dear to my heart, having been on the board of a local- And smart growth and a number of other popular programs. Well, in the smart- cutting smart growth now when so many municipalities have spent a fair chunk of change actually doing this and building the relationships that they need, it just doesn't seem to be a real- What's the issue for cutting? I mean, the debt, right? The state lack of dollars, isn't that the issue? The revenues that are coming in. That's how we spend our money. We don't have the money to spend for these programs. Well, we used to incarcerate 7,000 people. We now incarcerate 22,000 people. I mean, we spend money in certain areas and merit it. Well, isn't that the constant issue? A good state's person will sit down and look what your bottom line is. What level of services do we want to provide? K-12, university and so on. And then you go out and you say, well, now how can we, through our revenue stream, raise the resources we need? And in many cases, Wisconsin has been very much out of tune as far as fees, for example. There was a good article, I don't know if it was a local paper, but what it cost you as a non-resident to hunt in Iowa and Illinois and Michigan and Minnesota was much higher than it is for an out-of-state person to hunt in Wisconsin. So while we look at some of our fee structures and we think they're not as low as they should be, in many cases, there are fees that other states have gone to to support their infrastructure and their service level that we do not even look at. And so I'm saying that taxes and fees, there are reasonable levels and that's where a good statesman and a good politician will start looking at what can the traffic bear, what's fair and so on, and then try to raise their revenues. Now there are some segments that say that while personal income taxes risen fairly dramatically as a percentage of income for Wisconsin residents, tax levels have dropped just that dramatically for corporate interests. And that really the state has one of the lowest corporate income tax rates in the country. And my sense, however, is that because the mantra, the holy grail is not only, you just simply cannot talk about increasing taxes. You can't do that. And so if you, in a thoughtful way, look at who's paying what and saying is there a different way to do that, my sense is that that becomes so politically unpopular and so difficult that we just don't look at those kinds of things. And so we talk about rating the transportation budget. Play games with a budget that gets you in deeper trouble than it does. I mean, like rating the tobacco settlement. I mean, we just wholesale just took that away and people seem to forget about that. And so those are all tough issues. And again, probably glad that we're not in the seat of power trying to resolve all those issues. And it's been a pleasure and the time always seems to go so fast. Thanks and we'll meet and talk some more.