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This is Where Wisconsin Wakes Up.
It's Daybreak with Brian Noonan and Jamie Martinson.
Here are your hosts, Brian and Jamie.
I'm Brian Noonan.
Glad you're with us.
If at any point in the program you think, I got to get involved in this thing, 8-5-5-7-5, Civic 8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2.
Everybody survive another night of crazy storms.
Reports are, and Jamie, were you hit with any
tennis ball size hail golf ball that was that was what was dropping in madison all last night golf ball size then tennis ball size and other parts of the state craziness
the
clouds would roll back in and then they'd kind of part for a little bit so you'd get a little bit more sun and then all of a sudden it would start sprinkling on you and then
And then all of a sudden it was just storms across Madison.
And we had golf ball size hail at our house, very strong winds.
It did a really weird thing though where the severe thunderstorm warning was issued.
Almost immediately after that there was a tornado warning that was issued.
And then it was like a little bit like an eye of a hurricane where it just got quiet for a few minutes and then all of a sudden it.
it revved right back up.
It was a very, very strange day.
Parker, is that on your side of, because you and I are relatively on the same side of town.
Yeah, we haven't looked at our two vehicles that sat outside because they were in the front and it rained because it continued to rain pretty much most of the evening relatively hard.
It wasn't a light shower by any means.
So hopefully that doesn't mean that people are flooding this morning because there has been a lot of rain as was expected with this particular system.
So hopefully basements are dry.
Nobody's having any issues that way.
The sheriff is saying that the Wisconsin River is expected to reach flood stage by tomorrow.
Today there are more thunderstorms possible from mid afternoon into tonight.
Damaging winds hail up to an inch and lightning is expected and.
Additional heavy rain will continue the flood risk so not out of yikes not out of the woods yet Yesterday was the second day in a row that Madison was under that stage three warning, which is Not good.
I didn't know Parker.
I saw some footage from the Brewers game Did they ever stop it because I know the tornado warning came?
basically right over the top of Anfax.
I was watching the maps and I'm like, hey, that's kind of a direct path over the field right to downtown Milwaukee.
That doesn't look good at all.
For the first time, I think that I can remember, they played the video of like, if there's a tornado, this is how you seek shelter.
But they did it before the game.
But they didn't stop the game?
They didn't stop the game at all.
I think the warning was probably like right at the start.
They were just like, meh.
I take no joy in a brewer's loss.
If they were, if they lost to the Cubs, I'd have been miserable.
Now I'm happy.
I listen, both teams are struggling.
They are struggling.
There's no joy in Mudville today and literally everywhere across Wisconsin.
Oh, it's, it's
And
Oh, yeah, it's April.
Well, and I found out yesterday this was good news because it got so humid yesterday.
I found out my air conditioner in the car doesn't work.
Oh, that was nice.
It was working at the end of the season because it was fine.
I figured it up yesterday because I was like, man, it was one of those days where it was warm, but it was it was too sticky.
Yeah.
drive with the windows down or just like, eh.
Well, they ended up driving with the windows down because it was much better than hot air blowing on me.
was
But it did dip down into the city.
And yeah, one of the dogs
I had to be sedated again.
Poor girl.
As I woke up this morning, I found her, she had dragged her pillow out of the one room, but was not laying on it, was laying on the floor next to her pillow.
Um, and just look like she finally passed out of out of fear.
It was, I was like,
Thank goodness though, because it was yeah, it's been the this whole I there's a bigger discussion to have about climate change and the severity of storms.
And of course, now I always start to get into as we get closer to the the summer and hurricane season starts and you're like, what's it gonna what's that gonna look like for the southeast and the Gulf Coast and all of that.
And, you know, El Niñas and El Nios.
And I think that's just it too.
I mean, I don't want to do the whole back in my day, but essentially the weather patterns have changed.
They are not the same as they were 10, 15 years ago and even beyond.
And when you're talking about the potential for even tornado alley shifting, tornado season extending into further into the year and
then
monitoring things everywhere last night.
And repeatedly, it's like, yeah, we don't see these kinds of storms usually this early, this severe of a storm, we don't see tornadoes like this, this early, it's like, okay, well, yeah, something's going on.
And our poor producer, Frank did not sleep his air conditioner in his house was broke.
Now I haven't turned it.
I didn't turn the air on then in the house.
I know ours has been on
So he does not deal with warm weather well at all.
And in fact, it was on our honeymoon.
We went up to the UP, saw family, did a little touring around of the UP on our own.
The day we left, it was May 1st.
And this is not a joke.
Back in South Dakota, where we were living at the time, it was already going to be 95 degrees.
Very normal for South Dakota in early May.
That's not out of the ordinary.
In
They had to get the fans out of storage and it was going to be over 65 degrees on May 1st.
And it was a complete panic to the point where nobody even said goodbye to us.
They were like, we've got to go get the fans out of the shed.
And we were like, OK, we'll see you in like six months, I guess.
And we took off because that's that's very, very much how it is for several people in the UP because they're just not used to this weather.
So as soon as it gets about 65
degrees.
My husband is in also a complete panic, checking thermostats, making sure that things are going to run.
And the first sign that it gets 70 degrees, our air conditioner goes on, just stays on then for the season.
That's, that's when I'll turn it on unless it's super humid, because I like, I like the breeze.
I still, I open all the windows, not, not because our air doesn't work, I just like getting that
that breeze that fresh air through, air out the house, especially after the winter, you know, all that dog smell out of there.
But
He did his taxes earlier this week.
Come to find out that because of the Affordable Care Act and changes and hours and not being a student anymore,
He now owes $900 to the federal government.
So in the middle of the storms yesterday, he calls me and he's like,
I really hate to bother you and I'm so sorry because I know I screwed this up.
And I said, what did you screw up?
And he, and he says, well, I owe the IRS money.
I said, well, that's not on you.
But I said, could we maybe talk about it when there's not golf balls hitting my picture window?
Is that maybe the appropriate
So that's when he calls.
I'm very.
to it with him.
Again, kind of like the air conditioning saga of our house.
I pick my battles.
I don't fight everything.
And I said, let me call you back after the storms go through.
Well, by the time the storms went through Madison, then he had storms in Milwaukee.
So I don't know if anybody ever connected because I eventually went to
You're listening to Civic Media.
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Does it?
concern you what companies donate to what candidates.
This comes up all the time.
Oh, Wendy's donates a lot of money to Trump or Target does this or does it does it change your mind at all?
Does it make you question?
Well, in some cases, it wouldn't matter anyway, because if you need power, we energies as we energies.
And so there was there was a question about have has Tom Tiffany been accepting a lot of money?
from WeE Energies.
And so the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Watch got together and they did a little investigation and they came up.
The short answer is yes.
Tom Tiffany has received about $11,500 from the Political Action Committee linked to WeE Energies.
Now, we were talking about this yesterday when a former candidate for Supreme Court, Shimmel, said, yeah, I don't think these are good rules.
I don't think they should be able to just put money into the party committee and have that money passed out.
And now this is a pack.
It's a little bit different, but there's still all this money.
And again, it comes up.
State and Federal Records show the WEC energy group pack shares an address with WEC energy group, which houses we energy the state's largest utility provider.
Boy, this sounds like something that you would see
in a
All right, we've got the Shell Corporation.
We've got this.
We've got this.
Yeah.
So Tom Tiffany has they've made four donations to him totaling $2,000, which
in the whole scheme of things is nothing.
It's really, it's nothing.
So they did that in 2010, 2012, 2016, 2019, when he was a state lawmaker.
I don't know, does this bother you at all, Jamie, or is it just, this is business as usual?
And it's not.
There's records of it.
Nobody was trying to hide it.
It just came out.
not
Right now, we energies, they are not the ones building any of the data centers in the state of Wisconsin.
However, they are the company that is going to those data centers are going to need a ton of power.
who do you think is going to give that power and be part of that infrastructure?
Well, it turns
It happens to be we energies, along with other electric companies.
We energies happens to be one of the bigger ones, though.
So I think we shouldn't, and we can't question the legality of it.
And we probably, I don't want to pick on Tom Tiffany too much simply because the Democrats also benefit from this.
Sure.
But I think having a bigger
conversation about what that lobbying money does and what it means and how it basically continues to shape our politics.
Because this PAC money is essentially being given to both parties because these companies need some sort of favor down the road, right?
That's how this works.
And I think that's the bigger question that people should be asking, are we okay with this type of lobbying taking effect, especially when it's something
maybe like the data centers that are contributing to higher energy prices, again, which your money goes to, we energies for, right?
And I think the focus is on Tiffany now because the Democrats don't have one candidate yet.
So it's like, okay, once we get it, once we get the final, the final battle from after August, we get the final candidates, then it's like, okay,
Who's been who's been benefiting more from these lobbying groups from these packs and what do those packs stand to gain?
Then you're gonna see I hope at least you're gonna see these kind of Just kind of findings for both right sides.
Yeah, you know Yeah, I'm always searching for a bigger word than the easy word.
I just go with the easy word I like to use words that impress and then I forget them It's early in the
But I think the political influence is what voters need to be most concerned about because, and let's be realistic, any politician
that is receiving PAC money is going to make decisions, even if they're also considering people, they're also gonna make decisions that benefit that PAC money, right?
Because that's
And I did want to go back to a point you made and also say that you mentioned Brad Schimmel and the fact that this weekend he was talking about that law where money shouldn't be trickling into these campaigns.
I just want to remind everybody once again, because it's important to remember that that was actually a law passed by Scott Walker, former governor.
but we know that Brad Schimels was also coming from PACs endorsed by Elon Musk or associated with Elon Musk.
And I think that's the other thing too.
When you look at this PAC money, again,
No party is is not willing and participating in this system But at the same time you also have to wonder where some of the PAC money is actually coming from you know And and I think
that's a
bigger question too and when we can't pinpoint it I think that raises doubts about maybe what some of the true intentions are not only from the PACs, but maybe from those candidates
the other day you brought up the electoral college and I said oh here we go again the electoral college and then I'm perusing the press yesterday and I come across a story that we may be getting closer to the popular vote deciding a winner in the presidential election than we were before and Wisconsin is involved in this
not chicanery, but this little plan that might actually finally do what people have been calling for for a long, long time.
We'll get into that.
And I want to know from you, after the last presidential elections, is it time to adopt the popular vote as the final word?
This is Daybreak on The
Civic Media.
Want to join in on the conversation?
Call or text 855-75-CIVIC.
Now back to Brian and Jamie.
Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Hopefully you are dry.
Hopefully the storms have been kind to your area.
But if you're in Madison listening on WMDX, Appleton or Oshkosh listening on WISS, WASA on WXCO, or in Eau Claire on 93.5 the tap, we're glad that you decided to join us this morning.
My name is Jamie Martinson.
We're not out of the woods yet.
More storms coming in this afternoon into this evening.
Possibility of them being severe again.
So just keep an eye to the sky and keep listening to the radio and we'll tell you what's happening.
Should.
We finally go to the popular vote as the final word for electing a president, 85575 Civic, 8557524842.
We could be one step closer.
This
is
A national majority vote for president is one step closer because Virginia's governor Abigail Spanberger signed a national popular vote bill into law.
She joined an interstate compact with 17 other states in the District of Columbia.
And you may be saying, why are you telling us this?
Because Wisconsin is one of those states in the 17 state compact.
So under this compact, states would assign their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state.
It don't matter.
You win the vote.
You get it.
It takes effect with when states representing a majority of electoral vote past the legislation and thus would determine the winner of the presidential contest.
Right now we've got
200, they have 270 of the 538 votes.
They
of course, you're
Also part of that, including, there's other swing states involved already as well, including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania too.
I find this, here's the thing.
The Electoral College was created in 1787, right?
This was a compromise because the forefathers were essentially trying to figure out who should pick the president, who should pick Congress, who should pick the people.
They weren't really fully trusting either option, so they landed somewhere in the middle, which was the Electoral College, right?
Because they allowed the states to choose the electors, and those electors then picked the president.
And they had their reasons behind it.
One of them is because they wanted to protect the smaller populated.
states because if everything was based purely on population, then those larger states were going to dominate elections.
It also forced candidates to build support across different regions, not just the big cities.
And it was also, this is also the part that people don't really want to talk about, but it's part of our history.
The Electoral College was also tied to how political power was structured at the time, including the compromises around slavery.
So we don't like to talk about those things.
Hello.
Well, and two of our elections in the 21st century, the person who got elected did not win the popular vote.
That's George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016.
They did not win the popular vote.
And according to Pew Research, another poll, take it how you want.
But from 2024, this poll came out.
63% of Americans said they would replace the electoral college with a national popular vote.
35% opposed the change.
We got the majority of people behind this.
It doesn't make sense.
We heard non-stop after, you know, that Hillary won the popular vote, but Donald Trump is still president.
And it doesn't... I understand all the past rationales.
If I lived in a less populated state, I would probably feel different.
But there's...
That's how it goes right.
I understand you live in a less populated state your vote still counts
Right,
That's
I know
It's never been a perfect system.
It's always been a negotiated system.
I mean, the electoral college is a negotiated system.
A popular vote system would be a negotiated system.
It doesn't necessarily make it wrong.
And if a candidate is winning the popular vote, that to me feels more like the will of the people than
the
We have several texts rolling in this morning.
Tom says, yes to the national vote issue.
It makes sense as long as the states have two senators, he's all for the
idea.
Thank you so much for the text.
Frank from Poignette says, uh, listening on WMDX, get rid of Citizens United.
Yes.
On popular vote and rank choice voting and see rank choice voting, I think is, is a bigger discussion and I'm a rank choice voting proponent.
Um, and, and that's, uh, for discussion for another day.
But Len also says, yes, seems the electoral college system is another form of a weasel clause.
If you want to chime in on the conversation this morning,
The question we're asking you this time around, after the last few presidential elections, is it time to adopt the popular vote as the final word?
So we'd love to hear from you this morning.
Yes.
I feel like the answer is simpler than a lot of people make it.
Here's the thing that I think why there's consternation, especially from the Republicans.
They don't win the popular vote very often.
And if you go to a popular vote system, that means they are going to lose more elections.
No, no, I was just gonna say, I mean, if you move to the straight popular vote, it's going to definitely change the math for Republican candidates.
And that's actually looking at numbers over time.
That's not just opinion, by the way.
In recent election, Democrats have consistently won the national popular vote, even in races that they lost.
As you rightly pointed out, Brian, right?
2016, 2000,
out for sure.
So if you flip the system to purely that popular vote, you're gonna talk about, you're talking about a system where turnout is big population centers like New York City, California, maybe even in Milwaukee.
Major metro areas are gonna carry more weight and that's going to obviously favor the Democrats.
I think a popular vote system though also engages more voters.
I was
And I think the electoral vote system alienates people because you know that if you're in a very rural area and maybe you're a blip in your rural area, right, voting for a candidate that not everybody in your area supports, it's probably not going to matter.
And I think that dissuades a lot of people from actually getting to the polls and casting a vote.
I think that's gonna get everybody's vote then feels a lot more A lot weightier.
It's like this is this is actually going to work and I go back to it some the time it texted about two senators from each state Again, I don't know if this is if that's the best way for representation either I would love to live in a state with very small population But I also know
Look at the size of Wisconsin and
the
Now granted, there's a lot of rural areas where there's a smaller population, but Wisconsin has a lot of people.
Then you go to Wyoming.
Wyoming doesn't have that many people.
Do we need the same amount of representation from a piece of land basically that's not populated as opposed to a bigger piece of land or a smaller piece of land that has a lot more people in it?
I think two is the minimum.
But then, you know, yes, it would grow the size of the Congress and it would make bipartisanship probably, I don't even know if it would make it more difficult, probably not.
It'd just be more people screaming and yelling, a lot more strongly worded letters being fired off, but I don't know if...
everything can't always be equal and shouldn't always be equal when it comes to representation.
Now when it comes to rights and things like
But at the same time, I agree with you because I think in a state like Wisconsin too,
Not all areas are created equal, right?
You have some hubs that are very progressive, very blue voting, very liberal.
You have other hubs of this state that are very right-leaning voters.
It's very conservative.
So the politics doesn't play from one corner of the state to the other.
And I think people are entitled to having fair representation based on their values and their views.
understand that there's also population that goes into it.
I grew up in South Dakota, right?
I
And you have one senator representing the entire state.
And what's interesting about that is you have two polar opposite things happening in South Dakota.
It's book ended by more liberal cities on both ends where all your population is.
Everything else in the middle is very small, rural or farmland.
So it's not a fair representation when you look at it like that.
But I do like I'm going to and they're all they're all worth talking about and they're all worth considering.
I am a fan of the popular vote.
I think that's just then there's no debate.
Well, there's still be debate about all the votes not being counted and male and all the all the usual garbage that goes along with somebody who loses.
but it's much easier.
And it also, you know what, it's also going to stop the predictions coming out two minutes after the polls close on the East Coast.
People declaring winners when people are still voting in most of the country because we can see, oh, we're at this number.
And, you know, maybe the whiteboard will have to change because now instead of just we're not just doing states, we're doing actual numbers.
and it might take another day or two to get the results.
And you know what?
That's okay.
The president doesn't get sworn in the day after the election, so we got time.
If it takes a week, let's just...
Who cares?
That's
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Thank
While the saying goes that the only things certain in life are death and taxes, and if you're listening today, you escape the first.
But since today is April 15th, you cannot escape the second yes.
Today is tax day.
To answer some questions about your taxes, we're joined by David Casey, Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
Mr. Casey has nearly 30 years of professional experience working with state tax agencies to help improve taxpayer service and compliance.
He was appointed by...
He was appointed Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Revenue by Governor Evers in April 24.
He had been the Deputy Secretary of the DLR from 2019 to 2022.
David, thank you for being here this morning.
We appreciate your time and your expertise.
The big question that I'm hearing from a lot of people and I just read a piece about it in Forbes, they're saying hundreds of thousands of taxpayers are seeing delays tied to how the IRS is handling refunds this year.
So what's causing these new delays?
Well, first of all, thank you for having me today.
An exciting day for the Department of Revenue.
We are actually, we're on track this year.
We've processed about 2.4 million tax returns so far this year, and we are expecting another half million or so to come in today alone to hit our target of about 3.1 million or more.
So we're on schedule.
We haven't had any delays on our end.
The IRS, I do work on an IRS committee and work with them.
They did have cuts of about 25% of their staff.
So we've heard some delays, but it's not impacting our state tax processing as of yet.
It's
Well, some of theirs is just around their staff.
So with their staff cuts, they've had some issues with their customer service availability to help people.
Their call wait times are about two hours.
I'll tell you, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue Average wait time is about two minutes right now.
So when we're staffed properly and with the right technology, we can provide the results that taxpayers expect.
right now the irs is just struggling with some of the cuts they've had and some of the delays in the technology improvements
well first of all that it the biggest mistake and it's not really a mistake it's finally by paper right now we have ninety seven percent of our taxpayers are filing electronically that means three percent or well filed by paper
about a day and a half to process our electronic tax forms.
If it's by paper, it can take up to a week or two to process.
So while a mistake, it just delays it, delays getting your refund.
He is the secretary of Wisconsin's Department of Revenue.
So when we're talking about some of these mistakes and some of these delays and some people who are counting on these refunds each and every year, what kind of impacts do we see when the IRS at the federal level is experiencing some of these setbacks?
Well, sometimes it can be a delay in some of the data getting to us, but
Right now, we're not seeing that.
One of the things to avoid making mistakes, I would suggest, is that you have all your documentation put together and use the electronic filing methods that are available.
So for documentation, you should have all your social security numbers and information.
You should have your income documents, your W-2s, your 1099s, your deduction records, so any credits that you're taking.
And make sure that you have your bank information, so your adding number and your account.
If you have all of that,
everything should go through smoothly.
It's when some of that's not provided in a timely manner that causes delays, both on the federal side and on the state side.
Absolutely.
If you go to revenue.wi.gov, right on our front page is a refund lookup.
and refund check.
So you can just hit the link there and I believe you'll type in what the refund amount you're expecting and some other identifying information and you can check on the status.
Typically though, like I said, if you're filing electronically, our refunds are getting out in about a day and a half.
I'll also note that right now our refunds are averaging just over $1,000.
So people are starting to see the effect of the tax cut that Governor Evers signed into law last year.
You know, it's what you mentioned that we put a big emphasis and reaching out to young filers.
We went on to UW campuses and interviewed and really did a big social media push to get new filers to file electronically.
One of the areas that we offer this year, we've actually offered it for five years is our whiz tax.
So you can file online at the Department of Revenue's website for free.
It's secure.
It's fast.
Last year, we teamed that with the direct file of the IRS, but because of some of the cuts they made this year, the IRS dropped that ability for taxpayers to file online, but we kept ours.
So a new taxpayer, they can do it on their phone.
They can go onto their phone and use whiz tax to file their tax return.
And before we let you go, David Casey is our guest.
He's the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
There are people who today are like, I owe both the state.
I owe the feds.
I don't have the money.
What do I do?
Maybe I'll just skip filing and file later when I have some money.
Not a good move, correct?
That is not a good move.
File.
File, return, tell us what you owe.
We can arrange payment agreements, both the state of Wisconsin can and the IRS can, so it's important that you file.
If you don't file, there are associated penalties with filing late and then you accrue penalties and interests.
So do the right step, file as soon as you can, get that done today, and then we can work out payment arrangements if you need after that.
Exactly and it's a it's a lot more painful if you don't file than if you file and we just arrange for a payment agreement.
We're pretty good with that.
Thank you my pleasure.
it done, even if you don't money and you don't have it.
You'll be fine.
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