Eau Claire Residents Talk Education at Rep. Phelps Town Hall

State Representative Christian Phelps hosted a town hall for Eau Claire area residents at Chippewa Valley Technical College over the weekend.

Questions from residents at the town hall largely focused on public school funding after Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu introduced a significant piece of legislation last week. Education funding has become a common issue in Wisconsin over the last decade, as school districts are constantly forced to propose operational referendums to meet their budget needs.

Districts often face staffing and programming cuts if those referendums fail. Even school districts like Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls that had previous operational referendums approved are now cutting staff as that referendum funding expires and other costs like employee health insurance increase.

State Representative Phelps, who sits on the Assembly’s education committee, explained his decision to vote against that legislation and highlighted a previously introduced education bill as a better option.

“The rebate checks I think have not gotten enough coverage as far as how much money they were and what they were do,” he said. “That was the biggest dealbreaker in this proposal. So you know AB 1176, to be clear, would spend a lot less money than the proposal we got this year, but it would spend twice as much on public education as the bill we got. So this really was not a school funding bill, it was mostly a tax rebate bill.”

State Representative Phelps also highlighted that the rebate checks in the bill proposed last week would not have sent $300 to each individual in the state, but up to $300 based on income.

He noted that while higher income Wisconsin residents would receive that $300, those living in poverty and seniors on a fixed incomes would likely not have received anything in the rebates. State Representative Phelps also says residents making between $15,000 and $100,000 per year would almost certainly get less than the full $300.

“To blow a $3 billion hole in our state budget for that sort of one time impact where middle and upper class people are getting a one time check for $300 that they need less than people in poverty, that was not sound fiscal policy for me,” he said. “And it would not have rebursed the immediate problems in education because it didn’t offer enough money.”

The State Legislature voted on that bill last week, where it passed in the State Assembly but failed in the State Senate with an 18-15 vote.