Who Is Bill Berrien (Hour 1)

Live, across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.

Now, for my Lake Basota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.

Well, hey there, Wisconsin.

Good morning.

It is 606 on this Wednesday morning, July 23rd, 2025.

And it's a beautiful morning to have you here in Madison from wherever you're spending your mornings listening across the Civic Media Radio Network or listening or watching us on all the other platforms that we have for you.

Thanks for starting your day right here.

I've got a question for you about Madison traffic.

The belt line that runs, you know,

around the bottom of the metro area here.

Is that kind of like the Golden Gate Bridge in the sense that the construction just kind of works its way down and by the time you think it's all done they just go back then they start over again because I gotta say

I haven't, I haven't missed that.

I haven't missed you, Madison Road Construction.

Uh, we're here in Madison Studio A2 and that's Parker Olson, who produces this fine shindig and, uh, has guided me into the opposite end of the broom closet over here.

If you folks watching on social media go, Pat, you appear to be in solitary confinement.

Why?

Yes.

Is there, is there nothing they could hang on a wall?

A picture of Luke?

No.

I, I moved my head to show you.

There's the clock.

We do have the... That's the cheat sheet.

to know when to go to commercial break.

Mr. Olson, how are you?

Nice to see you.

Nice to see

you, too.

In person.

I didn't know how tall you were.

I didn't know you had glasses.

I thought you were a dwarf.

I thought you were

small.

I thought you were bald.

I mean, just...

It's been a two-pay the whole time.

Exactly.

I'd take it off and put it

back out in the morning.

Yeah, so here we are at the Civic Media Global HQ.

A lot of the hosts and folks are going to be getting together today.

So,

fact, a lot of your, your favorite hosts will be, um, uh, gone.

Uh, after, after this show ends, we're, we're all going out for coffee and talking about the state of the world and radio and you, how we make you happy with things that we discuss on local radio all across Wisconsin.

So we'll talk a bit first about a candidate for governor.

Bill Barion who's already running some ads in the state.

And yet one investigative reporter has tried to, you know, flush out more of his story and there's still some gaps in there.

So we'll, we'll ask who is Bill Barion coming up in the program.

Now this show happens to be hosted as well by a former legislator who has seen pretty much all the tricks.

And so I'm going to talk to you a bit about Congressman Tom Tiffany continuing to tease a potential run for governor.

despite a lack of statewide appeal.

And I'll tell you what the trick is behind it, which is not to say he's definitely not running for governor, but there's a reason why I suspect that he might not be because of something that we see all the time here.

If you missed it in our eight o'clock hour yesterday, we talked to Dan Schaefer and we'll play some of that back this hour about the new push for permanent nonpartisan redistricting after the 2030 census here in Wisconsin.

We'll talk about how the Speaker of the House chose to send members of Congress home early in order to cover up any release of the Epstein files, but won't that just put more heat on President Trump?

We'll talk about the potential hazards and the newest one that we've learned about.

A member of his administration going to the President Tallahassee to meet with Epstein associate Colleen Maxwell.

There's nothing that, nothing good could happen, could come from that.

In our homeroom segment, we're going to be talking about declining enrollment.

And when enrollment goes down, there's this reduction in state aid.

And at first blush, you might think, well, that makes sense.

You know, fewer kids, fewer state dollars.

However, there are certain fixed expenses for schools that stay the same.

By and large, if you only lose a handful of kids, but you've already lost that handful of state dollars.

So we'll talk to the business manager and a school board member.

Up and ship will falls.

We'll join us as I'm down here in Madison State.

What else?

It's been five years since the passing of civil rights leader and former Congressman John Lewis.

His spirit still calls us to get into what he called good trouble in the fight for voting rights, dignity and justice for all.

Earl Ingram's new Civic Media podcast asks how we carry that legacy forward from civic engagement to mobilizing for change, all to ensure that Wisconsin stands on the right side of history.

Along the way, feel free to join us in the comment sections here.

If you're on Facebook or YouTube, we'd love to get your questions, your comments.

You can also use the Civic Media app to send us a text as well, because I'm not at the Palatial Lake Wasota Studios, where I have, you know, four computer screens at once.

I may not see the text messages right away, but we'll get to them.

Parker, you see them over there too, though.

Do you

see the text messages?

I do see them.

I see a message from...

Jim from Brookfield.

Okay.

Oh, hi Jim.

Yeah, he says there was a collective sigh of disappointment over the mall area last night There may have been a sigh of relief from George Webb franchise owners

I Don't think they minded the publicity and Roger puts on Facebook.

Well, it was fun while it lasted a 1-0 game is great if you win but a 1-0 game stings if you lose it And says the show is sounding great at his end as we wanted to for technical

Uh, setup was all working

fine.

Thanks

to

be fine.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Um, yeah, that, that gets us to the brewers.

Yeah, they lost one to nothing.

You know what sucks is

what,

what is it?

Parker had they lost last night?

Yeah, I wouldn't have cared at all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

It is literally, it is literally the prospect of free hamburgers that I wasn't going to get.

Yeah,

that makes

me sad.

I was going to say, there's no George Webb around here in Madison, any place for folks who might have missed it because they were out West.

Look, the thing is, the Brewer's Bats, sometimes, you know, they come and they go and recall that I mentioned, you know, two days ago or I mentioned yesterday that the game two days ago, the Seattle pitcher, you know, took a no hitter into the sixth inning, I believe it was.

Well, again, last night.

You had Seattle's pitcher.

Um, what's his name?

Gilbert's Logan Gilbert.

Uh, he carried a perfect game into the fifth inning and ended up yielding only two Brewer singles.

And so the Brewer's 11 game winning streak was snapped one to nothing.

And the other thing that makes it really sad Parker is that, I mean, Jacob Mizorowski, he was great.

Struck

out

seven.

Across three and two thirds innings, gave up three hits, walked only one batter.

So, I mean, we, we had the right guy on the mound.

Yeah.

Here's what we didn't have.

We didn't have a Cal Raleigh, who is the leader in the home runs this season as a catcher, as a catcher.

I mean, we haven't seen anything like that since Johnny Bench.

And Johnny Bench did not have the same kind of nickname that Cal Raleigh has.

The big dumper.

Big dumper.

Only because again, some teammates said that, uh, boy, that, that's a big can.

He's got on his backside there, which I suppose if you're a catcher, you know, those, those glutes can get to be in good shape.

So the big dumper hit his major league leading 39th home run of the season.

So that was it.

The guy that won the home run derby hit a home run and ended the Brewers 11 game winning streak.

So the, uh, the Brewers just.

Take, you know, they get right back at it.

They're now tied for first place with the Chicago Cubs and get a chance to once again try to take a first place on their own by playing the Mariners.

Wrapping up that series this afternoon, 205 will be the start of the pregame on Civic Media Stations and Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha, Park Falls and Hayward.

And then they'll have tomorrow off home for a series against the Florida Marlins starting Friday and then the Cubs come to town next Monday for a Monday Tuesday Wednesday setup, including a Wednesday day game.

Uh, and interestingly enough, as we were setting up for, uh, you know, this, this get together here, Parker, you know, the civic media folks have great.

tickets for the Brewers, club level seats.

We'll give away some more this Friday as part of Free Ticket Friday.

And somebody that I know really well, that'd be me, is going to be using those tickets real soon in a few days here.

And did you catch

yesterday how they put out the word like, hey, these tickets are really starting to get popular.

So, you know, you

might

not get the ones you want for the games you want.

And if you want them, you got to make sure that you're able to use them.

So

it's still a hot ticket.

We've been giving tickets away for that Cubs, you know, Brewer's Cubs series.

And I am very encouraged to think that that American Family Field is going to have many more Brewer's fans than it normally does when the Cubs come to town, because a lot of times people are like,

They're coming.

Let's skip

it.

I've voiced my concerns about that.

Go to the game, Brewer fans.

Go to the game.

Otherwise, you're given the Cubs of Seat.

Don't do it.

You don't

have to engage.

You can

just be there

to, as they say, root, root, root for the home team.

Uh, which by the way, that is also when I, when I mentioned rooting for the home team, uh, we have a, an article on ways that you can enjoy baseball on a budget across Wisconsin.

Uh, there are many teams, uh, beyond, of course, the Brewers in the major leagues, uh, there is, well, there, there's, there's what in Madison, there's the.

the mallards.

There's the mallards.

And

then what's the other one, the nightmares?

Nightmares is the softball team.

The

softball team.

And we're counting that for these purposes.

By

the

way, nightmares, M-A-R-E-S.

Yes.

Like the fillies.

Although last night, I believe was nightmares night and they had like clowns and snakes and stuff.

They have a great

time over there.

It's one of my one of my favorite t-shirts is one that just all the all the writing is in a spiral and it spirals inward and the whole time it says can't sleep clowns will eat eat me can't sleep clowns will eat me can't sleep anyway on the website baseball for a bargain so whether it's the the mallards or a host of other teams around Wisconsin there are all kinds of different specials and deals that enable you to save a few bucks while taking in the old ballgame.

at one of many locations around Wisconsin.

So look for that over at UpNorthNewsWI.com.

So, but you didn't have to work that game last night.

I did not know.

I had the fortune of seeing a picture of an intern with their eyes popping out of her head while a snake was around her neck.

That's how I found out.

So good job.

Yeah.

You missed that one.

Oh man.

Hey, a little note about Civic Media.

Now that I've told you some nice things about UpNorth News here.

but here at the Civic Media World Headquarters.

Besides Up North News having a newsroom with statewide reach, our friends here at Civic Media also have you covered, including local news updates that you can get from each individual station.

What you do is you go to civicmedia.us and then call up your local Civic Media station and that'll bring up that station's homepage.

And up near the top, you'll see a daily news roundup that you can listen to right there.

You can sign up for email versions of the daily update as well.

And by the way, while you're at the civic media website, uh, there's, there's merchandise out there too.

So again, civicmedia.us is where you, uh, uh, learn much more about the programs and where you can get merch and where you can listen to podcasts like Matt Rothschild's podcast.

And I believe Matt Rothschild is a guest hosting.

Yes.

Matt and Aaron air.

coming up at nine o'clock right after this fine program right here.

And then of course we've got, like I said, an assortment of either guest hosts or other best of programming while we have a little summer fun here.

It's summer vacation season.

So for summer vacation, the hosts here, we're going to lock ourselves in a room.

And talk it's gonna be it's gonna be great.

That's

awesome.

Yes, so an entire new lineup is coming your way tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.

Across the civic meet.

No, it'll it'll be fine.

It'll be great Parker's not believing this for a minute over here What I'm the thing I'm curious about is the is the icebreaker everything

All right guys join hands in the middle and see if you can untie the human

Maybe if

you got any great ideas for icebreakers or incredibly bad ideas, we'll take them, really.

From the heart of America's Up North, which of course is all of Wisconsin.

Thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.

I'm Pat Krightlo.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Thank you.

Don't forget you can get everything we do at UpNorth News in terms of Wisconsin news coverage through our daily newsletter and our Sunday morning newsletter as well.

Sign up at UpNorthNewsWI.com.

In today's edition we've got a feature on Arrowhead High School star pitcher Peter Cusso who just signed with the New York Mets.

The only Wisconsin high schooler invited to this year's NFL Draft Combine.

Also

some cases of true crime history in Wisconsin, 11 of the biggest true crime stories that have come out of our state, and also a new study that ties the state's weaker than usual state gun laws to the number of child deaths in Wisconsin.

Again, these are all things, these are gun deaths that are entirely preventable.

If we

would take the situation more seriously if our elected officials would take the situation more seriously.

And again, for that and more of our coverage, sign up for that newsletter, UpNorthNewsWI.com.

So this is what stuck out at Urban Milwaukee, the site UrbanMilwaukee.com and investigative reporter Bruce Murphy, who has been doing the due diligence of, well, any

good reporter who has to cover things like, you know, unknowns who want to be governor and already have more than a million dollars applied toward that.

Now, granted in Bill Barion's case, the CEO of this manufacturing firm raised $1.2 million in the last reporting period, but one million of that 1.2 million came from the Winklevoss twins and their cryptocurrency.

endeavors.

We're going to talk more about cryptocurrency tomorrow, by the way, with State Senator Keldoroyce and State Representative Ryan Spouty, more about that coming up.

But anyway, so there's Bill Barion, this businessman who's running for governor, and Bruce Murphy notes that he does describe himself as a Navy SEAL, that he owns a new Berlin-based manufacturing company, that he's an outsider who would shake up Madison.

He calls himself a Wisconsin Convert

who moved to the state and shows to raise his family and the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay.

But Bruce Murphy writes precisely when Barry had moved here, how he acquired his wealth and how much business acumen he, how much business acumen he has is unclear.

The candidate has not said anything about his family or his upbringing.

And that's when Bruce Murphy got to digging here.

And so he found out more about.

Bill Barion's parents, including Willard Berry.

Actually, Bill Barion's full name is Willard Barion III, son of Willard Hewitt Barion Jr., also known as Bill, who passed away in March after a long career in finance.

He was an avid stock investor.

The Berrien family had a home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Bruce Murphy writes, one of the most affluent areas of New York City, a summer home on Long Island.

And one realtor says, the pace of life in that neighborhood is quieter and more measured than in other parts of the Hamptons.

I know exactly what you're thinking here.

Wait a minute.

Didn't we just go through this with Tim Michaels?

wasn't Tim Michaels essentially living, uh, you know, around New York city and growing up around, uh, wealth and privilege and sending his kids to school there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's what we know about the Barry and family being raised on the Upper East side of Manhattan.

Let's see, he was Bill Berry, an active member of several clubs in the area.

He went, according to Murphy's story, to the best private schools.

He attended St.

David's on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The current tuition is $64,000 a year.

He went to high school at Trinity School on the Upper West Side, where tuition is about $69,000 a year.

In today's dollars,

That would be $788,000.

From there it was on to the Ivy League.

Bill attended Princeton University just 80 minutes away by train where he got a degree in politics and added to his resume by serving as captain of the Princeton University water polo team.

So you might in the future hear us describe Bill Berrien, not business owner Bill Berrien, but Princeton University water polo captain.

Bill Barion, who's running for Wisconsin governor.

Barion did then join the Navy SEALs.

He served as a team officer and platoon commander, graduating from the Naval Officer Candidate School as a distinguished naval graduate.

So again, he has served his country and we thank him for that.

He went back to school getting a master's in international economics at John Hopkins University.

He got an MBA at Harvard.

It's funny for all the Republicans who are looking to attack Harvard and want to diminish the Ivy League.

A lot of them sure seem to have Ivy League degrees of some sort or another.

Bruce Murphy notes that by his mid-30s, he still did not have a clear career path.

His LinkedIn profile shows no job or schooling for two years after that Harvard degree.

Barry and told WIS said he moved to Wisconsin 23 years ago, but that would have been while he was still attending Harvard.

The first LinkedIn item that could place him in Wisconsin is a global product manager at GE Healthcare, which has offices in Chicago and Milwaukee in 2004, 2005.

He finally then has an address listed.

after purchasing a home in Whitefish Bay in 2009 for $625,000.

He calls himself a Southeast Wisconsin community leader, including 12 years of volunteer parent coaching his two sons in youth and high school lacrosse and serving on the boards of numerous charities.

But then as Bruce Murphy goes on and talks about his professional career,

Uh, he's having a tough time finding out where, where Barry and got the money to actually acquire the business that he has now.

And Bruce Murphy wraps up simply by saying, uh, all of this suggests that the life story and candidacy of Bill Barry and is not quite the simple tale.

He has been telling voters.

And again, none of that may be untoward, but as somebody who's run for office, I mean, the advice is always clear and that is.

Have your story.

Have your story.

Tell your story.

Tell people who you are.

And for the love of all things holy and politics, don't leave gaps that you can't explain.

So Bill Bering will be asked a little bit more about the path that led him to believing that he should be the next governor of Wisconsin.

We'll hear from Dan Schaefer about independent redistricting after the Midwest Farm Report here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

What did you find for us over here now?

This is

intriguing new

bumper

music.

Yeah, it is a breath of fresh air.

Well, that's the name.

Oh, that's the cut.

That's the name.

Yeah.

Can't believe

that.

A little bit of like a little L hurt vibe in there.

Probably

trumpets for you or whatever it is.

I

don't know.

All right.

Not a kazoo that much.

We know.

Very limited musical knowledge that we have here.

The whole

The topic of Bill Berry and was brought up running for governor because of him saying that he was going to drop $400,000 in advertising and it's what led to our question of the week in our Sunday morning newsletter that you can sign up for at UpNorthNewsWI.com saying that if somebody spends that much money more than a year ahead of the primary election.

Does that make you really not like them and less likely to vote for them?

Or does it really not matter because you understand they need to build their name ID and it's, it's neither here nor there.

Do you actually like it because it shows some initiative, some gumption on the part of the candidate?

The answer has overwhelmingly been A at this point.

Although again, keep in mind that while people are not happy that Bill Barian is running ads right now,

you know, could be later on that they may really like what they're hearing, uh, if he, if his candidacy, you know, lasts into next year.

But Mel writes, when someone runs ads this early in the election cycle, I think they must have lots of money or the backing of some money donors to be able to afford it.

And that alone makes me wary.

which is completely understandable.

But again, if you'd like to answer as well, you should be a subscriber to our Sunday morning newsletter.

And of course, you can also send us your thoughts by email, send that email to radio at up North news, w I dot com.

All right.

Well, yesterday late in the show, we talked to our friend Dan Schaefer, the political editor at civic media and founder of the recombobulation area.

And his most recent newsletter is about nonpartisan redistricting.

to which you think well wait we we got fair maps everything's all good right no far from it and the elections next year in 2026 will perhaps decide whether wisconsin comes even closer to fair maps or gets gerrymandered all over again and so

Dan Schaffer has talked to folks who are looking to make a push for nonpartisan redistricting.

Take the legislature out of it once and for all.

To do that, they'll need a permanent legislative solution and legislators willing to abide by it.

So I started by asking Dan just a bit more about what he wrote about in his newsletter that you can get at therecombobulationarea.news.

Yeah, so I was writing this piece over the last couple weeks here and got a chance to talk to a number of folks who have long been involved in the Fair Maps movement in Wisconsin and are kind of beginning the latest effort anew.

And last year, when Tony Aver signed new maps into law in February of 2024, I think that was a momentous achievement for the state of being out from under a decade of the most egregious partisan gerrymander for any state legislature.

the country and moving towards a better, newer, fairer maps that were initiated by this remedial maps process that came through the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

huge achievement, but not a long-term one.

It's a short-term fix to the problem of unconstitutional maps.

And 2030 is just a few years away, and we're going to be back at square one without an actual legislative change to reform the way the state operates its redistricting process.

And so I talked to people with Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and the Fair Maps Coalition and the League of Women's Voters and a number of volunteers who

been meeting for hours every week to talk about and hone this plan to try to get a quote-unquote Wisconsin model for

independent redistricting in the state and I think the the plan that they have come up with is a pretty compelling one and right now it is what is happening it is kind of coming from the behind the scenes you know crafting the crafting the proposal crafting the process stage to really bringing it to the public so they've held a number of public events about this proposal over the past few weeks I believe they had ones in wasa and Green Bay and Dodgeville and Whitefish Bay just north of Milwaukee and so I

think they're they're eyeing to have more of these in the coming months and eventually have a proposal that will bring legislation creating an independent redistricting commission for the state of Wisconsin that would oversee the redistricting process every 10 years and then it would also include a push for a constitutional amendment to change the to amend the state constitution to say that it is not the

legislators themselves who are drawing the maps who have oversight over the redistricting process, you know, kind of the old adage of the voters should pick their leaders, not the other way around.

Again, I'm glad they're starting as early as they are because we don't know the results of the 2026 election, but they need to be ready come January of 2027.

Try to put together, you know, enough of a bipartisan coalition where the party leaders from one or both parties don't go

Well, blank that we're going to win and we're going to draw the maps.

Yeah.

And the goal for this is to have bipartisan support and it is very purposefully not being crafted in partnership with any lawmakers from either major political party in Wisconsin.

I think some of the people that I talked to for this are a little bit more skeptical of Democrats motivations in the fair maps movement after some wanted to wait.

and have the courts draw the maps during the remedial maps process last year instead of having the governor sign the maps that he himself proposed.

So I think some are waiting for a slightly more advantageous map for Democrats.

And I think some people, some of these pro-democracy advocates and fair maps activists are saying, wait a minute there.

That's not really what we're here about.

That's not what we.

what our priorities and principles are.

And so I think there are some people in that space who are wanting to say, you know, we don't want either party to have the opportunity to gerrymander maps ever in Wisconsin.

Again, we saw how it decimated the state's politics in so many ways.

And so regardless of which party would be in power in 2030, the effort here is to get that power out of the power to draw the maps out of the politicians hands.

We're talking to Dan Schaefer from the Reconbobulation Area.

You can sign up for his newsletter, TheReconbobulationArea.News.

And of course, he's the political editor here at Civic Media as well.

We talked about it being it's quiet here while we wait for the governor to make his announcement.

Maybe you have the list right next to you, that if the governor announces he's not running and the list of potential candidates.

Can you imagine how many phone calls are going to be made within like the first five minutes of that announcement?

And I really am concerned that some of these folks, their phones might actually catch fire because so many calls are going to be coming into them going, do you have something to say?

And we really, we should know better.

There's nobody that's going to announce within five minutes of the governor's announcement that they're running, even though we all want to be the first one to get somebody saying that they're running.

So

I guess

we're just tempering expectations.

I guess is what I'm doing here.

Yeah, it's going to be there are a lot of careers riding on what the decision the governor makes, right?

I think there we've gone through the list.

I think on this show or others a couple different times about who the group of candidates might be to run for governor, but it's certainly going to be a busy time as soon as as soon as evers makes that decision and that's not to say like

what the other implications of that might be what you know races for attorney general or secretary of state depending on who might be running uh and and i think there are um you know the domino effect of this is going to be pretty profound um regardless of of what way this goes for the governor especially if he obviously if he decides uh not to seek a third term there are going to be a lot of changes in democratic politics in wisconsin and once again i will reiterate i think that's a good thing

Once again, that's Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation Area.news to learn more as he, along with all the rest of us, continues to follow what it is that Tony Evers is going to do or not do when it comes to running for a third term and potentially opening up a wide-open Democratic primary and even wider Republican primary for Governor next year.

Alright, it is my unfortunate duty to shift gears to the Epstein files here for a moment only because again of conduct so outrageous and egregious, it can't just be ignored as much as we'd like to ignore and not have to think about parts of the Epstein case.

The fact of the matter is that

Justice continues to be delayed for many of the victims in that case, and the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is in essence now part of that cover-up.

He chose yesterday to send Congress home early.

The summer recess, he started it more than a day early.

rather than have to deal with the push by some members to pass legislation or a resolution that would call for the release of more of the files about the sexual predator.

Why?

I mean, these are Republicans who along with Democrats now have been clamoring for transparency for the longest time.

And so when President Trump did his about face recently and said, you know, it's all a hoax.

There's really nothing there.

Understandably, folks were suspicious on both sides of the island said, how about if we just get it all out there?

And look, there are folks who are still allies of President Trump who are attacking Democrats for piling on at this point going, oh, we haven't heard from you for, you know, over a year, a couple of years on this case, and now suddenly you're vocal about it.

Well, yeah, here's why.

There was no need to.

The people who were clamoring for the past two, three years or more about this were people who were trying to make political hay out of this whole issue.

And.

Now that it's become clear that those same people are being disappointed by a potential cover-up by the president and the Speaker of the House, it's worth calling out.

Even those of us who weren't using the case for political hay can now look at this in case and say, can we all not agree that everything should be out there?

And most people would tell you everything should be out there.

And yet every Republican from Wisconsin and Congress and most

Republicans in the House voted against a measure last week that would have called for that.

So here's what the White House is doing instead.

We talked about some of the potential distractions that are out there yesterday.

Here's the newest distraction where a deputy attorney general of the United States is going to be meeting with Epstein's girlfriend and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in prison in Florida.

saying that, you know, he wants to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell to see if there's anything that she wants to say and that if she's got accusations to make, she should be able to make them.

Well, this is not what it appears to be.

She's been convicted.

She's serving a 20 year sentence.

She has seen Donald Trump give out pardons like candy to convicted criminals.

The fact that a deputy attorney general at this level has never gone to a prison to meet with a convicted felon.

I mean, prosecutors do, but not political members of a presidential administration.

It just reeks of the potential to dangle some kind of deal for leniency or a pardon if she'll say what Trump wants her to say.

She's had a chance to talk in court.

She's decided not to.

Prosecutors in the past have said that she has lied to them.

So anything that she says is a little shall we say untrustworthy.

So a deputy attorney general saying that he wants to go visit with her and see if there's anything she wants to say is a big red flag compared to simply, you know, releasing the files that are already there and already collected and

the number of Republicans recognizing this is only growing.

And while Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has sent Congress home, wishing it would go away, it's probably only going to increase the pressure on them to come back to D.C.

after the recess and say, let's release all this and get it behind us no matter what's in it.

Which, by the way, is the right answer because it's about justice for the victims, not diversions, not distractions.

but justice.

Today's history lesson is next.

You're up north.

You have my permission to turn your radio up to 11 right about now Everybody's got a song or two where they're just like I just I just need to blast something for me That would be synchronicity to by the police their final album synchronicity hit number one this day in 1983

And I'm gonna leave this music up just long enough because the first line to the first verse is just, it's wonderful.

Here we go.

And what do you have to do?

You have to shout above the din of our Rice Krispies.

as grandmother is screaming at the wall.

Another suburban family morning.

Just another day in Wisconsin Rapids where we bring along our friend Melissa K from 97.5 WFHR and 105.5 WIRI.

Melissa, how are you?

Good morning.

I am doing good.

All right.

It's in

the dark because we want the heat out.

Oh, yeah, it is going to be a hot one today.

Yikes.

Is it hot enough for a pigeon to need air conditioning?

How's Lelu doing?

Well, you know, Lelu's doing good.

Until 104, they are OK.

OK.

And that's what we're supposed to hit today with the heat indexes.

I'm

not OK at 104.

That's impressive.

Nobody should be OK.

No, certainly should be.

So Lelou still no tricks to show off?

Yeah, I don't see a flaming hoop that she's jumping through or anything like that.

They did manage to muddle through the bath I put in the cage for them.

OK.

You know, we're making progress.

Hey, bathing is important, you

know.

It is.

It's true.

Yeah, as Brittany Merlot now knows after camping at DAA for a couple of days.

I think we're going to hear from her one more time in about 15, 20 minutes here.

And I'm hoping the days and days of camping at Air Venture have been kind to her and that she does not look like she's surviving some kind of a reality show out in the jungle.

Did you, Melissa, did you have a, you know, a song or a group like that, like, like there's just some song you want to just turn up to 11 and blast it?

Oh, yeah, probably.

Um, but it's-

Is it a Broadway show tune or is it like, there's nothing?

Do you rock out?

Cycles and right now Rainbow Kitten Surprise is my band.

I like to turn up really loud, but they're not radio safe.

rainbow kitten surprise.

Yeah.

Parker knows this.

I do.

He's going to get me a clip so that I understand.

Oh, am I?

Because I am now intrigued.

Oh, boy.

On this day in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sold its very first car.

On this day in 2018, the National Transportation Safety Board warned against the trend of jumping out of moving cars and dancing to drakes in my feelings.

Melissa, please tell me you never did that to make a viral video.

Never did that.

Okay.

This next one, look, I'm not taking joy in this, but nobody has given us the sound of irony quite like Amy Winehouse, who died on this day in 2011.

Amy Winehouse, dead of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, this day in 2011.

On this day in 1996, then 18-year-old Fiona Apple released her debut album, and it would sell over 3 million copies.

Happy birthday to Slash, the Guns N' Roses guitarist who is 60 years old today.

Happy 54th birthday to Allison Krauss.

Now again in true testimony that we all like all different kinds of music at one moment I might blast synchronicity and Yet there's not an Alice and Kraus song that I wouldn't also turn up and listen to with that voice Daniel Radcliffe Harry Potter.

I'll take a guess how old he is today the actor

Oh, man, um, maybe

29 36

Oh, 36 today.

Yes.

I know.

Yes.

Uh, next happy 77th birthday to John Hall, not Daryl Hall, not John Oates, John Hall, totally different guy.

He was the founder of the seventies musical group Orleans.

He later became a community activist and a congressman from 2006 to 2010.

On this day in 1962, Jackie Robinson became the first black American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

And on this day in 1977, the number one hit was by Barry Mantlow.

Wait till you hear what's coming next in terms of musical whiplash, okay?

So just stick around for that.

Here's Barry Manilow from 1977.

Looks like we made it, yes.

Now of course we're also Melissa noting the passing of a musical legend and that of course would be Ozzy Osbourne who passed away at the age of 76.

So as we bring up one of his seminal hits.

I ask you this, Melissa.

Where are you on the musical scale of Barry Manilow to Ozzy Osbourne?

I couldn't tell you one Ozzy Osbourne song.

I think that's our answer.

Oh, come on.

I

know.

I've probably heard them, but

yes.

We've all heard them.

But true.

Do I know them?

No, absolutely.

There's a reason why you hear Yacht Rock on this program and all kinds of schmaltz from the 50s and 60s.

This is the demographic that we're dealing with on this particular show, but we know that John Michael Ozzie Osborn was a leading figure in music.

He was, you know, basically the founding father of heavy metal.

And then later turned out to be quite the doting father on the TV show, the Osboards.

So, and I just know him from the times that he would like mock himself in TV commercials.

And anybody that can do that, that gets an extra check mark in my book.

So, happy trails to Ozzy Osbourne.

And who knows, maybe Lelu will grow up to become, you know, you can't, you can't force your kids to like the same thing that you like.

So for all you know, Lelu may respond best to heavy metal down the road as Lelu gets more accustomed to things here.

We always appreciate the update, Melissa, and you can catch much, much more of what she's doing over at WFHR and WIRI in Wisconsin Rapids.

Have a great day, Melissa.

Good to see you guys.

Much more after the 7 o'clock news here live on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Cross Wisconsin on Civic Media.

You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglo powered by Up North News.

Now, for my Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglo.

Good morning.

Welcome back.

706.

Nice to have you here broadcasting today and tomorrow from Civic Media HQ in Madison along with Parker Olson and right here in Madison Studio A2.

Here's visual proof for folks watching on social media.

This room really is big enough for the two of us.

Not by much.

But not by much at all.

In fact, we could not possibly fit meteorologist Brittany Merleau in here, which is fine because she is in Oshkosh.

She is roughing it in the elements.

Brittany, I've looked at the radar long enough to know the elements are headed your way.

How are you?

Yes they are.

Good morning everyone.

I am fantastic so far.

I woke up to a text alert here at Oshkosh EAA Air Avenger saying, hey, listen up.

We've got rain headed here.

It's going to be starting around 7 AM, lasting for about three hours or so.

So that's what we've got here.

We're still under the heat advisory as well, but a good chunk of the state from Eau Claire to Green Bay and everyone South is under that heat advisory today.

We are climbing to the mid 80s to mid.

90s and it's going to be feeling like 100 to 105 degrees today.

So we've got a lot of things going on.

We've already got the warm front moving in rain rolling through a good chunk of the southern half of the state.

Nothing severe, but a few power outages caused from it.

I'm not seeing any high wind reports just yet, but a lot of lightning strikes with this rain that rolls through and it's kind of got a cool front.

as it moves in.

It's like that shelf cloud, that spaceship look as it comes into the area.

So that's what I woke up to this morning.

Little bit of light drizzle and now it's just cloudy and starting to get a little bit humid.

So we've got chances of rain this morning.

A little break in the afternoon, but I do think these strong to severe storms are going to start to spark up around 2 o'clock far northwest Wisconsin.

Some of those horse could be strong too severe and then the line builds around 6pm and works its way through the northern part of the state.

Kind of fizzles out as it moves south.

So the tornado threat is going to be just north of Wausau and to Hayward, O'Plair, Rhinelander area this afternoon.

And I win threat kind of stretches a little bit further south and towards La Crosse and just north of Green Bay.

But of course areas throughout the entire state down in Milwaukee and Madison, you could still see some high winds and some heavy downpours with this system moving in.

It's going to be a pretty big line later on this evening.

So round one isn't too bad, but round two is going to get much worse.

Well, and round one, I mean, it's nothing to shake a stick at watching it go through the Madison area.

I.

I was not aware that it was coming when it was getting ready in my spacious palatial hotel room in the Madison suburbs today.

And then just as I opened up the curtains to get set to walk out for the day, I see it's just starting to pour and thinking if only I had looked at Brittany's notes a little earlier, I would have known to get out of the hotel earlier.

But anyway, I stole this towel from the hotel room.

I'm good.

I'm covered.

I got to cover your head.

Yep.

Got to remember to, got to remember to bring that back and you take care out there as well.

You got all kinds of people.

You got gear.

You got weather coming your way.

So, and then by the way, you're, you're going to be, uh, taking tomorrow and Friday, just as, as personal days to continue to enjoy all that, aren't you?

Yes, I am.

I know it's going to be pretty crazy weather.

So I'm going to have to be staying dry myself and I want to get in there and have some fun.

So I will be back on Monday.

Oh, no, that is just fine.

Robin Tigerton asks, did you do any flying at the EAA yet?

Not yet.

See, this is why I needed some PTO.

I'm going to get out there and social media.

That's where I'll have all those videos for you guys.

Oh, that's fabulous.

He says, uh, good morning from Tigerton, partly cloudy and 70 degrees yesterday.

Mowed five yards on Tigerton.

No mowing today because he has a doctor's appointment.

Uh, he said, when I was a kid, I remember some of the hottest days of the year.

We'd be bailing hay or in high school at the beginning of football practice.

We played Alice and Krause in our last segment and said his favorite song is when you say nothing at all.

And of course notes the.

heat advisories, basically the highway 29 quarter and south.

I mean, it is a big old chunk of the state that's going to be both hot and stormy today.

So we can no longer say you haven't been warned.

Brittany was here to tell you, right?

Yeah.

All right.

You guys stay cool, stay hydrated and stay safe

tonight.

Exactly.

You as well.

We'll talk to you a little later.

Thanks, Brittany.

Thank you.

All right.

As always, we'd love to have you as a subscriber to our Up North News daily newsletter.

Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com and we have a Sunday morning newsletter that focuses more on the political news of the day, including a question of the week about early advertising.

And if you see early advertising from somebody trying to build their name ID, does that

make you respect their initiative, or does it turn you off to have such early political ads running this far in advance of a campaign?

Again, you can only send us a note radio at upnorthnewswi.com to send an email.

You can also, of course, text us through the Civic Media app, or you can send us a voice note.

Just use that voice note feature when you call up one of the stations on the Civic Media app, put a little recording on there, and we may play it here on air.

Well, the Brewers 11 game win streak came to an end.

It did not go to 12 games.

There will not be free hamburgers unless you head over to Parker's place.

He likes to grill.

He'll make you up a little something as you, you know, cry in your beer about the Brewers not being able to reach that 12 game plateau.

They lost one to nothing to the Seattle Mariners on a Cal Raleigh home run.

It was

You know it it ended not with a bang, but a whimper I guess you could say the 11 game winning streak

Yeah, not as bad of a whimper as the Phillies won the other day.

Did you see this they won on a

catchers interference?

Yeah, that is the saddest win I think I've

ever seen it is but I mean

It is what it is.

I mean, catchers can't can't put your mitt there where they can swing the bat.

So don't do it with the bases loaded.

It'll it'll it'll bite you as it did.

But the Brewers lose, but they will wrap up that series in Seattle this afternoon.

Pregame starts at two o'clock on several civic media stations, 205 to be specific for that game.

And then the Brewers are off tomorrow and then they start a three game series Friday at home against the Marlins and then the Cubs come to town next Monday.

So when I mentioned, uh, Bill Barion, the candidate for governor running ads early, it's because he's got to build up his name ID.

He's not an elected official.

Other elected officials don't have to worry about that.

They don't have to spend money yet.

In fact, they can raise more money right now as a result.

And that takes us to Tom Tiffany and, uh, headlines, including one in the Milwaukee Journal.

that read Congressman Tom Tiffany teases a run for Wisconsin governor but says he hasn't made up his mind.

Okay, that's fine, but he put signs out there when we talk about teasing, like he recently tweeted out a photo of himself, you know, holding a crappie and saying that all future Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates must prove they know how to hold a fish.

And he of course says,

purchase the website domain name Tom Tiffany for governor.com, which leads directly to his congressional campaign site.

The homepage labels Tiffany, quote, a proven conservative for Wisconsin, you know, not Northern Wisconsin.

He's, he's got the whole state lumped in there.

And when asked by the journal Sentinel, Tiffany told the newspaper he'd make his decision, quote, after July.

Now, of course, he's not the only candidate who might yet run still.

There is state Senate president, Mary Falskowski.

There's former Senate candidate, Eric Hovde.

There's former Senate candidate.

Uh, I'm sorry, governor candidate, Tim Michaels and Tiffany as well.

In putting those signs out there, what is it that we're supposed to read into this?

Well, as somebody who's been involved in, in this little game, let me explain the game.

Fundraising is no fun.

There's nobody that puts the fun in fundraising, despite the old joke.

It is a long hard slog of asking people to support your campaign because you're the candidate that best reflects their values and who wants to get things done.

And so you sit there hour after hour after hour, either making phone calls or attending fundraisers or planning fundraisers because this is the system that we have right now.

to raise funds to be a viable candidate.

So how could you gin up that fundraising?

What could juice up the donors a little bit?

Well, one of those ways would be to get people excited that you are looking at bigger and better things coming up ahead.

And as much as I love to tell people that you should not lump both parties together, you know, the both sides do it, both parties do it about a lot of things, this ain't one of them.

This is one of our both parties very much look for anything that provides a fundraising edge.

And if that includes teasing a potential run that you're probably not going to make, but it gets some people excited, well, chances are you're going to put that out there.

And I have seen people from both parties do this over the years and I would not call it wrong.

I would not call it even unethical.

I would call it an unfortunate part of the fundraising landscape that's out there.

We have had members of Congress from both parties who have multiple times teased a potential run for governor or a potential run for US Senate and, or they just don't deny the rumors that are out there that they're thinking about running.

And then when you look at their next campaign finance report, well, gosh, do they ever get a nice boost from people who thought, you know,

that person might make a nice governor or that person might make a nice senator.

And it's just one of, you know, many tactics that are out there that Tony on YouTube best describes with the words money, money, money, money.

Yes, that's exactly what it is.

It's not easy.

It's, uh, uh, something where you're looking for whatever will give you just that little bit of extra bounce.

And in Tom Tiffany's case, it's that now.

He may actually want to run for governor.

He may be serious about it.

All I'm saying is that he has absolutely no reason right now to tell you, no, I don't want to be governor.

I'm perfectly happy where I am right now.

He's in a district that he can get elected in over and over again.

He can, he can lob all the spitballs and verbal grenades that he wants at Democrats knowing that he is safe.

But if he had to run for governor, well, then he would have to defend some of the things about his record as a member of Congress, as a member of the state Senate.

He would have to face questions beyond Northern Wisconsin about why he wants to, you know, dig up or bulldoze Northern Wisconsin.

This is the person who led the charge to get rid of the mining moratorium.

The rules that said, if you want to open a mine in Wisconsin, here's what you have to do.

You have to prove that you have operated a mine somewhere else and closed it.

And for years afterwards, you did not pollute the groundwater.

If you've done those things, then you are welcome to apply to open a mine in northern Wisconsin.

But if you can't do that, all evidence shows you're likely to pollute and harm the environment in northern Wisconsin.

So no, thank you.

But that law is not on the books anymore because of, as he's nicknamed up there, Toxic Tom Tiffany.

He has consistently been on the side of development and extraction and anything that would make the Northwoods a little bit less than what it is.

Mary Felskowski, if she runs for governor, will be in that same vein of trying to tell people, you know, why it is that they want to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

But until that happens...

Senate President Falskowski, Congressman Tiffany, and others can continue to let their voters know that they're intrigued by the idea.

They're exploring the idea of running for governor.

Then once they announce, well, the fundraising starts all over again and they will have lost, you know, the edge that they're building right now while they're continuing to let the rumor mill do its thing.

And it is really doing its thing right now until Governor Tony Evers makes an announcement one way or another.

A local update is coming up next for some of you.

And then when we're all back together in about 15 minutes, we are going to talk about declining enrollment and the reduction in state funding.

Live here on the Civic Media Radio Network, I'm Pac Rightlow.

722 now on this Wednesday morning, July 23rd, 2025 live from Madison Studio A2.

Producer Parker Olson joining me here.

Well, actually I'm joining him.

This is his room.

Welcome to my world.

Welcome to your, I'm just taking a look around here at, what do you think that this used to be once upon a time?

This is an office building in downtown Madison that I'm sure has been several different things over the years.

And you just wonder what kind of decisions were made

in this room by whatever business was in here, perhaps weighty decisions like, do we, do we get legal pads that are narrow lined or legal lined?

I've always been a big fan of the college rule papers.

College rule might be the way to go.

Yes.

So it's just where, you know, it's where we, where we make radio happen.

It's not Madison studio A1.

Let me explain the difference here.

Okay.

Madison studio A1 where like,

Todd Alba will broadcast from there.

Looks out over State Street.

State Street is this wonderful area with very limited traffic, buses only and pedestrians that connects the state capital to the UW Madison campus.

And it's a it's a it's a wonderful place to be.

And we're right here at the top of State Street, just one block off of the Capitol Square.

So you can see the Capitol clearly when you walk out the door.

If you're at the studio, you get to see all the people and the traffic coming by.

And it's it's wonderful.

And here, a little deeper inside the office, we've got a view of.

Well, cubicles.

Yeah, lots and lots of cubicles.

Yeah, we do have a window, though.

That's true.

A window that looks out into the main office area.

Yeah.

Whenever Dom needs to print something for John and Gordy, I know.

Because that printer is right there.

It's just, it kind of has the, you know, from the office, kind of has a Michael Scott vibe to it.

Yeah.

And you're looking out there.

Yeah, kind of.

And I'm sure a lot of magic happens out there, but.

I'm sure.

Here it's just us creating, you know, using the theater of the mind on radio here.

Tony puts on YouTube, very kind of the handsome and capable Luke to let you into his closet.

You know, if I'd have been thinking, I would have brought a nice big photo of Luke for you to hang on the wall right there behind you.

I think I might have lost

it.

I

think I don't think I'd make it through the show

with that.

Oh, I think it would be great.

And we love Luke.

He's always watching.

We did speak earlier with Melissa Kaye in our history segment about the passing of Ozzy Osbourne.

and I'm going to read off a lot of the obituary material from the Associated Press, mainly because I was not in Ozzie's wheelhouse, shall we say.

I was not the target audience, having been raised on Glenn Campbell, Captain Antoneal, Neil Diamond.

Other people did, and for them, Ozzie was kind of the antidote.

John Michael Osborn.

Nicknamed Ozzie, the gloomy demon invoking lead singer of the pioneering band Black Sabbath, who became the throaty, growling voice and drug and alcohol ravaged id of heavy metal, died Tuesday just weeks after his farewell show.

He was 76.

If you haven't heard me say this before, if there's one group of writers I admire so much, it's music writers.

They have just a way with words to describe music and musicians.

It's wonderful.

Black Sabbath's 1969 self-titled debut LP has been likened to the big bang of heavy metal, the AP writes.

It came during the height of the Vietnam War and crashed the hippie party, dripping menace and foreboding.

Osborne, a five-time Grammy winner, I'm surprised to say, was twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once with Sabbath in 2006, and again in 2024 as a solo artist having been booted from Black Sabbath back in 1979.

The Guardian newspaper wrote in 2009 that the band, quote, introduced working class anger, stoner sludge grooves, and witchy horror rock to flower power.

Black Sabbath confronted the empty platitudes of the 1960s and helped kill off the hippie counterculture.

I love that writing.

Later, he would reveal himself to be a doddering but sweet father on the reality TV show, The Osborns.

The original Black Sabbath lineup reunited for the first time in July for the first time in 20 years for what Osborne said would be his final concert.

Let the madness begin.

He told 42,000 fans in Birmingham.

And again, as somebody who was not, you know,

I obviously knew who he was.

He's a big cultural figure.

I don't think you can't.

Yeah, you really can't at some point.

And for me, it dates way back to when he, you know, bit the head off a bat that somebody had thrown up on stage.

And I made sure not to mention that to Melissa.

Yeah, yeah, we weren't going to do that because for all we know, it could have been a pigeon.

And he says he thought it was just like a, you know, a rubber play thing that he grabbed.

And I'm sure he got a nasty surprise.

And he went right for rabies shots after that.

But.

it helped instill an image.

And look, in show business, image is everything.

And he found that image, he cultivated it.

Even if it was, you know, all quite genuine in its darkness and its angst in the early days, you have to know how to maintain that.

You have to know how to make it your own.

And that is something that Black Sabbath did and that Ozzy Osbourne did.

And, you know, it appealed to so many people.

that people who weren't fans could not help but notice, especially when you then take it to the next level.

And that's being able to have a little fun with yourself.

And famously, there was this diet Pepsi commercial.

where he thinks he's talking to, you know, two of his kids and, you know, they unzip the diet Pepsi can.

Oh, it's not regular Pepsi.

It's diet Pepsi.

And those aren't his kids.

Those are Donnie and Marie and upcoming Donnie and Marie and Ozzy Osbourne and Ozzy wakes up cause it's a nightmare that his kids are Donnie and Marie, but instead of Sharon Osbourne consoling him in bed, it's Florence Henderson, Mrs. Brady from the Brady Bunch.

I mean, that's just, that's great.

That's a great commercial right there on all accounts to be able to spoof yourself and still maintain your credibility, your connection to the music and the image that puts you where you are.

Ozzy Osbourne managed to do all those things.

I'm not going to tell you he was a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a true showman and deserved all the accolades that he received this summer before his passing.

We'll have this week's homeroom segment coming up in just a bit.

You're up north.

We must have done something right there in that last having Tony puts up on YouTube I might have to listen to more black Sabbath from that description.

Well, that wasn't me.

That was the Associated Press, but

You put it so eloquently.

I

read it in a convincing fashion.

Like a true radio man.

You know how to read.

That's right.

Left to right, top to bottom.

I've got this all figured out.

In today's homeroom segment, let's start with a report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a nonpartisan think tank and their newest addition, their newest study, says Wisconsin education spending falls further behind the national average, noting that Wisconsin spent

just shy of $15,000 per pupil on public elementary and secondary education in the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

The most recent year for which the US Census Bureau data is available

That was about 10% less than the national average of $16,500.

When adjusted for inflation, Wisconsin pre-K to 12 education spending per pupil has increased very slightly since 2002, just 2.5%.

In 2002, Wisconsin spent about 14,000 per pupil in inflation adjusted numbers, whereas the national average

has gone up a little bit more than two and a half percent since 2002.

It's gone up 21 percent since then, as other states recognize the importance of educating our children rather than declaring war on education in our state.

The Wisconsin Policy Forum report goes on to say, this continues a long running decline in our state's rank for per pupil education spending, which back in 2002 was 11th.

in the nation.

Wisconsin ranked seventh out of 12 states in the Midwest in 2023 compared to first among Midwestern Spates back in 2002.

When statewide education spending is measured as a share of all residents combined personal incomes

Wisconsin also has been on a long-term decline in the 2000s and early 2010s.

Wisconsin spent a significantly larger share of personal income on education compared to the national average.

This share declined to roughly match the nation for a period prior to the pandemic in 2023.

However, that share increased nationally, but continued to decline in Wisconsin.

and the intro ends with saying, these figures are the latest example of a decades-long shift in our state's investment in public education and state and local tax burden relative to its peers.

Observing them is particularly timely as state policymakers recently enacted the state's next two-year budget, of which K-12 education is the largest spending priority for the state.

And that's as it should be.

K-12 spending should be a high priority for the state.

It still takes up a significant chunk of the budget, but much less so compared to the part of investment that was being made by other states.

And when you get to the part about education spending as a percentage of combined personal income, that's what's called the tax burden.

And the tax burden has gone down.

and down and down and in the beginning when it first started to decline you could clearly hear politicians saying that that was a good thing in their book and it has continued to fall to the point where if I were to say to you that funding education is no longer a significant tax burden

People, of course, would rightly say, well, that's crazy.

Of course, it's a tax burden.

It's still the biggest part of the state budget.

But in terms of it being a percentage of the taxes that you pay and as a percentage of the income that you get, the tax burden for our schools has gone down and down and down.

And it has come with a price with declining enrollment.

as students move into other schools and in the loss of our best and brightest as our young people leave the state and go to raise their kids elsewhere and as some of our educators leave the state in the wake of Act 10 in order to again pursue their career elsewhere.

So the Wisconsin Policy Forum takes a very dispassionate look at the numbers and shows

the degree to which since Republicans took control of the legislature, we have made the education of our children less and less of a priority.

That is eating your seed corn in a state like Wisconsin.

And our original hope this segment was to talk to a business manager and a school board member about the impact of declining enrollment on state aid.

And that's because

It's very tempting to think, well, if enrollment goes down, well, then yeah, state aid should go down as well, right?

I mean, that only makes sense.

It would seem on its face.

But there are all kinds of fixed costs that stay fixed, even if there's a decline in enrollment.

If you've got 30 kids in the classroom and then it drops to 20 kids in the classroom, the electric bill for the lights in that classroom are still gonna be the same.

If the buses still have to take the same bus route, even if they're stopping at fewer houses along the way, the cost of gas to fill up that tank is going to stay the same.

And so declining enrollment should not be accompanied by a one-to-one decline in state aid.

And there are ways in the state budget where there are other little pools of money besides general state aid that help school districts with that, but none of this...

in total has kept up with inflation for 16 years.

And it's why you see this parade of referendums around Wisconsin and why you're going to see them even after this new state budget.

Because although it makes a significant increase in state aid to special education, which did take up a big chunk of all local school districts budgets, but the zero

increase in general aids means that in terms of inflation school districts are going to continue to fall behind and are going to continue to have to go to referendum.

Jimmy Koska is familiar with this particular phenomena being a school board member himself and knows a thing or two about how many school districts have passed referendum over the past four years.

Jimmy, good morning.

How are you?

Good morning.

I know that I come on and I usually come here to talk sports.

But yes, I do.

I'm in my fourth year as a school board member in my district in southwestern Wisconsin.

So I spent a lot of time looking at referendums.

Our district passed one two years ago, which is actually just wrapping up work this summer.

So we're one of 245 districts in the state.

out of the 421 that have passed a referendum in the past four years.

And since they put in the revenue limits, you know, three decades ago, over 90% of districts in Wisconsin have gone to referendum, have passed a referendum.

And you think about that, and that's, you know, not out of every 10, there's a lot of districts of Wisconsin, 421 of them, of course.

And then you think about schools that go to operational referendum, which are literally there to help pay the bills, pay expenses, keep the lights on as you were talking about, the fixed costs, the things you can't.

that can't go away.

And when schools pass those, what they're saying is we have a perpetual hole in our budget that we can't fill with what we can bring in right now in our tax levies.

So there are a lot of school districts that are working off of an operational referendum, which is, again, a perpetual hole in the budget.

really do in part just to the fact that the funding system in Wisconsin for education has gotten so weird.

So it is it is a very large number of districts in Wisconsin that have done referendum.

I like weird.

Weird seems to be a good way to describe it.

Could you describe as a when you were a new school board member what it was like having to learn the way that

education is paid for in the state that it's not just a matter of, well, here, here go the property tax bills and here's how much we're going to get.

And that it's, it's a little bit more than that.

You know, it felt kind of like sitting in like, you know, you ever see the, you know, any crime show where they have the big board and they got, you know, the suspects all tacked up on the board and you got lines and yarn drawn from one point.

That's what it felt like for me anyway.

There's a lot.

I spent time myself diving into it with Wasby, which is the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, and then going to the State Education Convention to really take a deep dive into it and learn as much as I could about it, especially knowing that we were going to referendum.

I wanted to understand it.

Why is this a need?

Why is this happening even where I live?

And it's really complicated.

There's a lot of things that go into it.

I think one thing that you started talking about here in this segment, Pat, you were talking about kind of the tax burden, right?

The tax burden in the Wisconsin policy form analysis has dropped.

One thing that has also dropped and that has changed is just in general, Wisconsin public support for

you know, whether they would fund education or would they rather see tax breaks?

That flipped about three years ago in the Marquette University Law School pool.

So there's also a public perception that people feel like they're being taxed too much, you know, property taxes, and it's not just schools.

I mean, there's municipal, there's county, there's all the extra fees and things associated.

So in a vacuum, yes, school funding, a lower tax burden, but, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things going on beyond that.

And we've seen our state legislature try to address

not only education, but also municipal funding in the last state budget two years ago.

There's so many moving parts to it.

And then you have to figure out how it all comes out on your tax bill.

And that's what we sit in a school board meeting and try to determine every year at an annual meeting.

What is our impact on our local tax base?

What's the mill rate?

What happens if we do this?

What if the referendum passes?

What's the impact?

How much of the referendum?

is part of what we're levying from local taxpayers.

There's so many moving pieces.

I can't even say I figured it out in four years, but I learned a lot about it and what actually goes all into it.

And that's really helped me understand kind of why we're at and why I've also had a lot of these shows talked about it as, hey, there's a lot of work that needs to be done in regards to how we fund education at Wisconsin.

And the thing is,

This is something that has been discussed for, again, for decades, quite literally, and that some years back, I forget exactly how many years now, but during the Walker administration, there was a blue ribbon commission that was formed, a bipartisan group to come up with, you know, a better mousetrap.

And

The Blue Ribbon Commission made up of Democrats and Republicans, you know, did their best, put forward some proposals, and if you really want to see educators who work on this issue get steamed, it's that there's this notion that after all was said and done with this Blue Ribbon Commission, so very little of it has been put into place.

And the other thing that happened, and this is what I think has really been the greatest impact to education funding in Wisconsin, is

It also, in that span, decoupling the rise in per-people aid from inflation has really made a big impact.

If you look at any school referendum graphic, the invariably will show you just the gap, the widening gap of what, you know, if we hadn't decoupled from inflation, what school funding would be now?

compared to, you know, how it is because it was decoupled from that.

So now, you know, state aid might not go up for a couple of years, like it won't now, like the general aid doesn't change, right?

So there's a graph that shows just the widening gap of where school funding would have been had.

you know, the old system stayed in place during the Walker administration, right?

So now that's the gap schools are trying to make up.

And that's also kind of the gap you're seeing where in Wisconsin, where you see that that the per pupil funding had it stayed on the on the old system, coupled with, you know, to inflate tied to the inflationary measure where

We would still be where we were in the rankings 15 years ago with what it said because it's been decoupled.

Now that per pupil education funding has really dropped

off.

And by the way, that decoupling was done when Democrats were in control.

I was one of those people that voted for it.

And there was a reason why.

The Great Recession had just started and we were facing a $3 billion hole and said, you know, the money just isn't there to keep up with inflation this year.

So let's take a pause this cycle.

Republicans took control of the next year.

and never hooked the train back up, and we have been falling behind inflation ever since.

A local update is next for some of you, others will stick around, and Jimmy and I will continue our conversation here, and then we'll have much more in our eight o'clock hour.

Live from Madison today, I'm Pat Krightlow, this is the Civic Media Radio Network.

All right, well, let's keep things rolling here with Jimmy Koska, although coming back to our school discussion and, you know, the education funding indexing to inflation that was ended back in 2009, Tony puts up on YouTube.

So I'm hearing the problems with education funding are all Pat's fault then.

Sure.

In much the same way, the Brewers 11 game win streak has come to an end and it's Jimmy's fault for being so involved and devoted as a Brewers fan.

Tony, it's, it's that kind of a connection.

I knew

I should be posted about my kid taken into his first game seven years to the day, trying to manifest positive energy for the George Webb burgers.

I knew it.

It's all my fault.

It is.

It's, it's totally that, uh, people saying that, oh, the, the George Webb folks must be, you know, breathing a sigh of relief.

I don't think they mind.

I think they got pretty good publicity.

either way.

And, you know, I don't know that it would have led to that much more in sales.

People just were gonna come get their free burger, basically.

Yeah, and I think now more people are aware of what George Webb is I guess it's in in at least outside of the Milwaukee area of course because you know for for people that didn't grow up in the Milwaukee area George Webb is a relative unknown when you hear the commercials on the radio broadcasts I'm like, oh, that's cool cool burger joint But there's like there were not an Eau Claire, you know, so I don't have any

context for it No, you really don't and the thing is I mean look everybody's got like a local burger joint or something like that, but then there are these places

Like I think chips was one of them in central Wisconsin that you know again There's multiple locations, but only in a certain area, you know like a George Webb or maybe a white castle or something like that and For those folks, it's it's you know, they're devoted think about the first couple of culvers for example They're like, oh, that's a cute little place.

I mean now they're a national behemoth But at the time, you know, it was it was it was more innocent when that first quick trip had opened in Eau Claire and wasn't any place else yet

It's the sub sandwich wars in Wisconsin.

You got Herbert Gerberts and Eau Claire

in Western

Wisconsin.

He got cousin subs in southern and eastern Wisconsin.

I mean, it's like anything.

I mean, there's definitely some regional local favorites for things.

And I think again, just for just for the sake of fun, it was just fun to talk.

It's like when they have the free throw shooter, and if they make the free throw or they miss three or all they get like free tacos or whatever,

it's

just fun.

It's fun.

It really is.

We'll get we'll get back to the burrs in a second here, but with the the high heat that we're expecting today, the stormy weather.

I would imagine that whether it's football or other activities either have to use a lot of extra caution or maybe just not even be held today depending on the location.

Yeah, so here in Westwood, Wisconsin, there's a lot of cooling centers open, obviously.

Wisconsin's, you know, utility commission has already said that, you know, there's ways to reconnect during these heat waves and things like that.

And we've got these heat advisories and heat warnings and things that are going on.

I know activity wise this week, you know, it's the middle of July, you sort of have it in the back of your mind that in Wisconsin, things can get pretty warm pretty quickly.

So yeah, a lot, I've seen a lot of activity like our community, our community calendars that we have on our civic media website.

We've seen a lot of people post like, hey, by the way, this event is moving to next week or hey, this event that was outdoors is now indoors.

Just me speaking as a football coach, we moved all of our practices this week to five in the morning.

We don't want to deal with the heat.

And today, because of the rain, we actually had to do it inside.

So there's a lot of things with heat.

As always, stay hydrated.

Follow all your safety tips.

Find shade if you need to.

Today is going to be, I think Brittany said it earlier, it's going to be the warmest day that we've got in this heat

wave.

And adding insult to injury is having to do all this and again, not get our George Webb burgers because the burgers lost in Seattle yesterday.

One to nothing.

Logan Gilbert, the pitcher for the Mariners went six and a third shutout innings, including bringing a perfect game into the fifth inning before giving up just a couple of singles.

And yet there was Jacob Mizorovsky who also.

you know, was, was wonderful.

Struck out seven and three and two thirds innings and yet, you know, the, the Brewer's hitters just could not provide any run support for him.

And so we waste that pitching opportunity and we waste a win streak.

Yeah, and you know the Brewers started slow the night before too they didn't get a hit until the sixth inning the night before so it's just baseball You mean you have streaks like this the win streak was great Actually, you know probably the little bit of pressure that you have on having a streak like that is off You're right now with that though.

You're you're writing contention at the top of the division Where you were trailing by multiple games even just a month ago now you're right in the thick of things So it came at a really good time and with the Brewers going into now the trade deadline and into August

I mean, this is where it really cranks, excuse me, the hiccups for a second.

You know, with the Cubs series coming up, I think that's going to be a playoff atmosphere.

You've got so many chances here down the stretch where you look at some of these series and you're just like, wow, there's some great baseball coming up for the Brewers.

So I look at this one, yeah, they're going to lose eventually.

Can't win them all at baseball.

But it was nice while it lasted.

But the trade deadline, I think, is next Thursday, the 31st, if I'm not mistaken.

And so for the next week, we get to go through the very

Janus-like discussions of whether the brewers should be making moves at the trade deadline.

And, you know, one of them that I saw lately that I lump in as ridiculous, maybe you think it makes sense, is that the brewers should trade Freddie Peralta for one more big bat.

And they were, you know, putting names around of who are some of the big hitters that the brewers need to add to their lineup.

To which I can only say, no, no, no, no.

No.

Yeah, you don't want to get rid of fastball Friday.

Come on.

No, but you see the brewers tied to a lot of bats.

I mean, I think just yesterday, I think there was some report about you hating Oswaras.

So like there's there's all these big anybody who's available as a free agent bat is being tied to the brewers just be just for that sake.

But you look at their payroll, you look at what they've done historically, they've built this, you know, with the third of the payroll, the Dodgers.

I don't I don't know that you shift from that model.

The brewers have developed.

Well, I know that there's this big

urgency as fans.

Go out and span.

Go buy it back.

Go trade for whatever.

But I don't know.

You're shaking up the core of a team then right now that is just rolling.

And in the minor leagues, you see some of the pitching guys that are coming up there, too.

My goodness.

Brewers are in really good shape.

It's just good to see top to bottom the organization doing so well.

I got two words.

Josh, hater.

when he, when he was, you know, traded away to San Diego and people said, well, it's very strategic.

It's very, no, it took all the wind out of people's sails.