 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. It's 2008 and we could not be happier. We're here for a fast-paced half-hour of conversation about state issues. Joining me, Cal Potter, former state senator. Tom Pineski, UW Math professor, who is channeling Lee Sherman-Dreyfus for us today. Very nice. I don't have a vest, but it's sweater. There you go. Close enough. Ken Risto is wearing a Frank Lloyd right tie. And me, I'm just a simple country lawyer, Mary Lynn Donahue. Lots and lots of things to talk about at the state level, I think. I want to start with a special session, actually. Started December 11th, one of the main pieces of it was alleged campaign finance reform. Doesn't seem to have gone very far, although there seems to be some interest in public funding, real public funding, for Supreme Court justices with fairly high amounts. I think I read $400,000 per candidate. Cal, what's the status of the session? Well, the bills, when the session begins, it's nothing more than an introduction of the two bills that the governor wants the legislature to consider. Then it's up to the pace of the legislature to fulfill some disposition of those. And it can take weeks, many weeks. What usually happens is the bills go to committee. They have the public hearing, and they work their way just like any other bill through the process. And like I said, that could take weeks. Right now, of course, the speculation is that those who prevented any bill coming up through the legislative process are those who are going to handle the same bill that the governor has given them. And so there are some prognosticators who are saying it's going to have a tough time, particularly in the assembly, of getting public financing passed that would cover all elections. But there is some hope for the Supreme Court and the court system because of the fact that we've had a censor of one of the court sitting judges. And there is probably general agreement that a nonpartisan body, such as the court, is not only nonpartisan, but should be somewhat totally free, even if you can, of special interest before things are litigated. And I think the court has come out very strongly. Members of the court, in favor of that, that they apparently have felt enough heat for having to go out and get big chunks of cash from private sources. And they would like to see a change as well. And I noticed that a number of interest groups, common cause, ARP, I think, has come on board. A number of very notable, respected organizations have said, at least legislature, give public financing to the courts. And let's get that problem solved. And we'll see where we go with the other bill. I suspect it'll pass in the Senate without a lot of trouble. They'll up the limits. They'll up the contribution that people make on their income tax level and put in strict spending limits or some type of spending limits, which you can do if there is public financing. And then it will go to the assembly, and then you'll have a lot of pontificating about whether tax dollars ought to be going to fund those dirty politicians and their campaigns, trying to put a spin on it that somehow they're not deserving of your tax dollars when in actuality, to me, the system is so corrupt and stinks so much now that the only salvation is some type of public financing. But I don't think that's been internalized with the public. And so the assembly may indeed get their way and kill the bill. And of course, that will set the stage for common cause and others to try to resurrect the bill next session again. And if the governor is willing, he'll try again. And sometimes it does take several special sessions and several introductions of a bill before something is ultimately passed. You mentioned something very interesting. The public financing, you could set spending limits. Well, the Supreme Court has basically ruled that if public financing is not involved, there is no way that you can set spending limits for politicians because it's an abridgment of their freedom of expression. And so that's why we'll always come back to the spending limit. And public financing is melded into one. And if the candidate chooses not to do public financing. Well, the unique thing about the bill, the Doyle proposed. They can do it if they can blow it. They can raise as much money as they want. But Doyle's bill, if I remember correctly, provides that if the opposing candidate does not accept public financing, then the candidate that does take financing gets three times the amount of money that he or she would normally get. So, and that to me was a brilliant way to structure the carrot and stick kind of thing because public financing levels, if they're not, I mean, typically they're so low that unless you're a terrible candidate, you're not, I mean, you'd be foolish to accept public financing. So this is putting real money in the pockets of people who take public financing and also making it a little harder for candidates who decide not to. The word is that, and I think we mentioned this in another show, that Annette Ziegler spent of her own money, it will take her eight out of her 10 years on the Supreme Court to reimburse herself for the money she spent getting elected. I was gonna ask about how much was that? Do you recall what the, well, either candidate won't have spent. It was well over two million dollars. Two million dollars, okay. I said the combined amounts. You're right. And I mean, it was obscene. It was obscene. And the Butler, and I forget the judge, I'm sorry, from Burnett County, Gableman, who's running against Louis Butler for Supreme Court, Burnett County judge. And they're only the two of them. That will be a hugely expensive election because the Wisconsin Manufacturers in Commerce has really targeted Butler to get rid of him. And so, again, it's, you know. And you can be assured that we, Appleby, my teacher's union will be right there. If Butler wishes to have that sort of support, that will be the interesting question. He may be put in a position where he really doesn't have any option. What about public financing? Public financing. He has to. Exactly. Exactly. That's what you're gonna be looking at in a large amount of money. Uh-huh. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see how that all plays out. And then how does Justice Butler, for example, let's play that scenario up. Let's say he's put in a position where he needs to raise funds and Wiatt comes along with their bag of money like they do, and he accepts it. How does he rule on the charter school case that we talked about in the last episode? Well, that's the issue is that you have judges who need to recuse themselves. And there was a recent, very important case that was the 3-3 vote that had been certified from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court. In other words, the Court of Appeals saying, we can't deal with this. This is so important, Supreme Court, you do it. What was the 3-3 vote? Because one of the judges had to recuse himself because he had taken substantial financial contributions from one of the parties that was involved. And so this brings us to Justice Ziegler in what must be one of the more protracted, embarrassing positions for a Supreme Court justice or any judge to be involved in. The three-panel judge, three-judge panel that was set up by the Supreme Court to recommend any disposition on the ethical violations that Justice Ziegler admitted to, has come up with a reprimand, which in the big scheme of things is not so important. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign points out that lawyers get suspended from the practice of law for months at a time or are required to pay fines or whatever. For the same, it should be pointed out for the same conditions. I mean, the three-judge panel acknowledged that she didn't financially benefit, but lawyers who unwittingly or unknowingly and did not. I mean, she was somewhat aware, at least the record is, that she was aware of this sort of conflict, didn't think it affected her, so she moved on. Lawyers who unwittingly made a mistake got a higher punishment. We should point out, this is a recommendation. To the Supreme Court. To the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court, the other remaining six justices are gonna have to decide whether they accept that recommendation. No, I don't know this part of the process. Could they up the punishment? Absolutely. Because what she got was the bare bones minimum. In fact, she and her lawyer proposed this punishment. Right, right. Yeah, no, I mean, she could be suspended for any amount of time. So, it's interesting to see how that plays out, but this must be an agony for her, because this has been going on and on. I mean, it's a year now, and that was a terrible, bloody, awful race. Oh, and the Butler Gableman. I'm pretty sure the judge's name is Gableman. Watch, I'll have a Supreme Court case. Someone will tell him about this taping. She didn't remember my name, but I think... That's a November election, isn't it? No, it's April. Oh, this is in April. I had a call, man, this is right. Nonpartisan race, and so those are always in April, and so it will be interesting to see how that all plays out. So pretty soon, man. Yeah. We'll be hearing ads. I haven't heard any ads. No, I think it's a little early, but my memory is that you can run, you probably know this much better than I, the world's best campaign, but that final month is when the wheels come off the car, and no matter how well you've planned, something goes wrong, or you're going so fast, and you're in so many different places, you have so many people working for you, or these negative ads come up, and at the last minute, you're in a defensive posture, so it'll be interesting to see how those ads play out, and I don't know what this judge is like, I think the timing is good, having this bill before the legislature at a time when you can have a court race that's gonna be very expensive, and you have a censure of one of the judges, and they have basically come out and said, we support this bill, so I think they're looking to sort of help us out of this mess that we've created, and I think it's just a good opportunity for the legislature to do good for society, as well as help the judiciary out of their mess. Right, so it'll be interesting to see. I just don't see how we can continue to look the public in the eye and say, we want judges, at least in theory, to approach cases with an open mind and give at least the appearance of being objective and impartial and interpreting the law, and allow, and put them in a situation where they have to raise that kind of money, because to raise that kind of money, they're going to end up going to business interests and unions and other large institutions, which they have to rule on regularly. Well, of course, they don't do that themselves. No, they don't. I mean, that's strictly prohibited, but. But, again, it just raises all sorts. And then how long does that, I mean, how long do you recuse yourself from cases the year after the election, two years after the election, three years after the election? You'll get to the point where the court will be in a very difficult situation in deciding any important, really a very, very important cases. It's always nice to have a Supreme Court that's chock-full of different political persuasions, but it can't be the best justice that money can buy. And I'm afraid that's kind of what it comes down to. Let's talk about a little bit more innocent time and more in the passing of Lee Sherman Dreyfus, certainly one of the more colorful and interesting political figures. Cal, you were in the Senate with Governor Dreyfus. Well, I remember him bowing the assembly when Marty Schreiber was acting governor, because Pat Losey had been appointed the Ambassador to Mexico by Jimmy Carter. And we had a surplus in the state in 1970, 1978. And Lee Dreyfus went around the state with his red vest and his red bus. And the band on top of the bus, and probably our friend Mr. Pineski was probably in the bus with him at times. And beating up on Mr. Schreiber for having this money that was created by a hot economy with rapid inflation. That's what basically brought it about is people's salaries went up and prices went up, the state generated a lot more revenue because of sales tax and income tax and so on. So unbeknownst to Marty Schreiber, it wasn't because he was raising taxes, it was just he was coming in at a very rapid rate and he had a surplus and somehow Lee Dreyfus through the golden tongue that he had was able to spin that Marty Schreiber just wasn't running the ship right. Interesting enough is that we went from extreme inflation to a depression, let it almost a recession near the end of Dreyfus' term, he chose not to run again. Then we had Tony Earl come in and Tony Earl was saddled with a multimillion, hundred million dollar deficit due to the fact that we went in a recession. He had to raise taxes, became Tony the taxer and then we found our friend Tommy Thompson won on that issue. I know, isn't that... So economic conditions really do saddle a candidate or reward a candidate with rhetoric or situations that can bode well or not so well for them and Lee Dreyfus just wrote a very high good situation on wanting to return the money to the people. When was he governor? I don't remember the year. 78, well, 78. To January 83, but 83, too. 78 to 82, well, that's the time when the nation was going through high inflation. It wasn't just the state of Wisconsin. No, but the issue that Lee Dreyfus finessed was the fact that we had a surplus and that somehow the sitting governor stole that money from the people and should return it. Never want to have a savings account, huh? This was a time prior to the tax brackets being indexed and that happens later on under President Reagan. So you're absolutely right, Cal, as people got salary increases just automatically to keep pace with inflation, the state coffers were filling up. I was reading that it was almost a billion dollar surplus. I mean, Dreyfus gave away, well, actually, the number I'm reading here is $942 billion. It was like $10 million, excuse me, $942, almost a billion. Yeah, I said that's when a billion was almost a billion. That was real folding money at that point. But yeah, and then giving it all back, made a lot of, it was very politically popular. And I forgot the solution. It wasn't a tax rebate, it was just simply not taking money off of people's checks. It was a holiday, I think, a month or something of that nature, yeah. And of course, the legislature was gonna go along with it. Here's the guy that ran eloquent campaign against the surplus and the legislature just rolled over and gave the money back and, like I said, in four years we were in a deficit. Well, he came through Sheboygan and campaigned at the campus here and we were also raising money for cancer where you were doing a basketballathon for cancer. Jack Snyder, who was the coach regularly and held a basketballathon for cancer, but Dreyfus came through, spoke to the kids. I was participating in the basketballathon and I said, would you sign my sheet to, because I'm gonna be playing this weekend and he signed it and I played, got so many hours, copied the sheet, sent it to his office and he sent me a check for it. The cancer, I thought that was great. And I also campaigned, I helped around the county. I was getting interested in politics at that time and it was a lot of fun. But look how the Republican Party has changed. I mean, that part of the pre-Reagan, give the money back to the people, certainly part of the Republican platform even today. But when the two somewhat of his credit when the economy did go south and Wisconsin's looking at deficits, Dreyfus actually went along with, I'm sure he wasn't excited about a 1% increase in the sales tax to sort of help. But he was the first, you know, the governor that signed the anti-discrimination laws for gays in this state. Yeah, that was probably the last of the, what I like to think of the fiscal issue, Republicans. Because today it's sort of gay bashing and guns and abortion and a lot of other issues. Lee Dreyfus was out there very honestly on the gay issue and it wasn't the campaign issue with him. It was just, he thought it was right and he signed the bill. He did it from a libertarian point of view. He said it's just simply government, it's not government's business to be asking people their sexual orientation. We became the first in the country to have that law. Yeah, Wisconsin was the first. And he just before, you know, his death last year or two years ago, he was with other former governors talking about we shouldn't be amending the state constitution to define what marriage may or may not be constitutionally. So it's consistent all the way through his career about certain areas of government activity. You ought not, you know, human activity, citizen activity isn't any business of government. Well, he was an interesting man and we are the richer for his having been in office and Cal would say probably just for four years. But to move on, we have lots of other things to talk about. The passage of the new cable bill presents the Donahue Group and other users of public television with a wonderful opportunity. Governor Doyle, as I understand it, introduced or one of the vetoes allows public, the cable bill was signed, all right? So no more local cable franchising. What we've been talking about over the years or over the months feels like years was signed into law. But Governor Doyle is saying that public access stations which after three years are not gonna have any more money from cable franchises can make that up by doing commercial advertising and infomercials. So I think that we should have a challenge to our listeners and our viewers and listeners to come up with ideas for the ways that we can raise money for channel eight with commercial advertising. What products, we might demonstrate on this program. What product demonstration? I would be. A veg-o-matic cooking show, yeah. I'm sure that there are things. Little exercise equipment. I'm happy to wear any kind of corporate logos on the show that we can get acuity to underwrite the Donahue Group. Yeah, maybe we could have just. The Acuity Group. The Acuity Group. Sorry, your name's gonna be bummed. That's okay, that's all right. I can handle that. We could start smoking cigarettes if anyone can hold up our camera. I'm drawing a line there, I'm sorry. We'll turn the color of the wall. Yeah, AT&T spent a whole lot of money to get this bill passed. Doyle at least made some amendments to the bill that made it a little bit more palatable, a little more consumer friendly. But I do think there's still a requirement that franchisees pay 5% of their revenues to local governments, but there's no provision for public access programming as I understand it. So one of the best laws that money can buy, I think, is really one of the ways that we can take a look at that. So any comments on that? Well, I would hope that there would be a trailer bill. Trailer bills are oftentimes, when there's a bill that's so well financed and so greased that the thing's gonna go through the system and be signed without amendment because all the proponents have just lined up the ducks so well that the only hope to do something of remediation or improvement is another bill, and that's the trailer bill that comes right behind it in the next session. And in this case, I would hope that someone in the legislature who was opposed to the bill or tried to amend a bill will come in and try to do something for financing of these public access channels because I think, while the Donahue Group is a great show, I think it's very, very important that school boards and county boards and city councils be on the tube, that people see who their elected representatives are, how they operate, what the issues are because you know as well as I do, they're not gonna get off their Duff and Cudown and sit in the council chambers at a county board place. The only exposure they have really in many cases is what they see on public access television. And I'm hopeful that somebody will, and the governor did in signing the bill and at the time of partial vetoes, did say he hoped that there would be something worked out besides the selling of advertising to keep these channels online. And I think there's gotta be some way. And I would hope that the 18 T's of the world would also see that there's a benefit to their communities, that they're gonna be serving as a private corporation to have the school board or the city council or the county board on that tube for the benefit of everybody. Well, as part of public access, don't other, I mean, informational kinds of activities. I've seen the superintendent on channel eight. I've seen healthcare providers on channel eight. I've seen... Tony board. Other people and agencies appear or probably even the chamber. Everybody, that's part of public access, isn't it? It sure is. Yeah, yeah. Folks, anybody can have a TV show here, as I've always pointed out. Although, obviously. I agree with all the council and the county board and all, but there's just the general other agencies. Sure. Well, we'll keep on. And is there gonna be sufficient? Who's, what's interesting about it? You can say, well, let's have advertising and private support. But who is it that's gonna go out there and shake the bushes for that? I mean, you're gonna start saying there gotta be county employees that go out and try to shake down businesses to get money to put the county board on the tube. It starts to get to a point where that's not the logistical thing to do that it oughta be some type of, the people who send it over the wires oughta make access. It's gone to something people say even that television stations and radio stations oughta give politicians, you know, half an hour of free time or something because that's the best way to expose them to the people. And they shouldn't have to, candidates shouldn't have to go out there or in this case, the people who aren't community actors go out and raise money. Oh, it's ludicrous. I mean, one of the reasons people watch Channel 8 or Channel 20 is there aren't any commercials. You know, and you don't have to sit through a whole lot of silly selling to listen to things that are important to you. Well, we'll keep our viewers posted and listeners, I should say, on that, but truly one of the better bills that money could buy. I am delighted to report that Accenture, the Accenture contract that we have talked about over the past years because it's been going on so long, this is the, that contract has been canceled finally by the state elections board just before it turns into the government accountability board. This was a software contract to meet the Help America Vote Act requirements after 2001. I think Bill passed in 2002. The state has spent millions of dollars to get a voter registration list that's supposed to interface and be user friendly and find terrorists, I don't know, what else? Oreo cookies between the mattresses, I don't know. But it has been a joke and the state elections board I think has been stubborn about not canceling this contract and so finally the contract will be canceled. Accenture has agreed to give some of the money back. Half, it's half of the money. Yeah, but we've still paid out millions and millions of dollars. They also have the source code and I'm not a computer person so I don't understand. Accenture has agreed to turn over the source code which apparently will be of great assistance to whomever the contract is turned over to in terms of actually trying to produce the list. I think we're one of eight states in the United States that does not have, has not met the requirements of HAVA and now the elections board is saying that it still won't be in place for the April election but they're going into September and November so I think that's very interesting. I think by statute we have to drop dead be ready to go by the presidential election in November. Well, I think there were several drop dead dates. Right, I mean I know they're giving the national government who's provided some of the funding for this has been giving some extensions recognizing that this is complicated business but I mean Wisconsin will be one of the few states that doesn't have a reliable system up and going. Perhaps, hopefully not but perhaps by the presidential elections. But I think the company gets to keep more than seven million dollars and maybe they've provided some quality or some value to the state after all these months. You would hope so for seven million bucks. Isn't that amazing? How to be a D to be at least pretty well done. I don't know, I just, I'm online with Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Nonpartisan attacks everybody kind of group but I think does a fine job along with common cause pointing out some really stupid things that happen. And I think that the elections board hanging on to this Accenture contract was not that sensible. Is this like, I mean I've been reading about other states where they've been computerizing their roles and cleaning their roles and everything else and cities and states and some of the reports I've read in other communities saying that's been very helpful. We find 10,000 people who have passed away and now we can at least take them off the rolls and we find the X number of people who have moved we don't need to include them anymore. So it's- And right or wrongly they find felons on the lists. They find felons on the lists. I mean there's a discussion in this country about given the way we've been sentencing the sentencing guidelines, how many people we've disenfranchised. That's an issue maybe for another show. And so this group has been working with the state elections board for how long? Long time. Prior to Governor Doyle. Prior to Governor Doyle. That's more than six years ago. That's like the plumber who just can't quite get the bathtub in your house and you just keep giving him time after time opportunity and pay him millions of dollars to do that. We have just no time left at all. Next time we'll talk about Scott Jensen and where is he gonna be tried? I think it's an interesting issue. Thanks for listening, we're glad to have you with us.