Welcome, everyone, to Midday Magazine for this Friday, February 7, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here at 430 today.
We're going to talk to our good friend, Darla Allen from the Charles and Joanne Lester
Library in Nacusa.
Looking forward to that.
Been looking forward to this one all week.
Our friend, State Representative Scott Krug in with us right now in studio even, Scott
good to see you, Matt.
I like being in studio.
It just reminds me of the old days sitting in studio WFHR.
So I was, I was telling Pam on the way in as I finally turned on the FM side today, just
to listen.
I am so AM 1320, right?
Yeah, I heard it.
I heard it.
I had to try it today.
It right up.
And it sounds good.
Yeah.
I might stick on that side.
It does come in really clear.
That is, that is a nice part of it.
I do miss the little, the scratchy, staticy side of AM though, like I am, I'm super nostalgic
on that stuff.
You're not alone.
I 100% with you on that.
Yeah.
100% with, it's, it's a little bit like listening to a record and opposed to a CD.
Right.
There's something to it with that static.
The reality of the one.
Yeah, right.
But I, I mean, I could go on for about an hour and a half on top of you, and the stuff
you guys talked about this morning, only child, middle child, oh, I mean, I, we got
to do another show.
But yeah, I, it was a great conversation you guys had this morning.
Well, if we ever get you to leave politics, I got a job for you.
I got work for you.
For now though, you've been, you've had a pretty busy beginning of the year here in
the first couple of months.
And one of those things that have kept you busy is some of the office visits and capital
events going, I don't want to start there with you.
Who's been, uh, visiting you guys at, um, in Madison?
It's, it's amazing, right?
So it's a twofold increase, right?
Now that I'm in leadership, you get all these other folks to want to come see you now
because they think you've got more influence, but I don't, but keep coming, you know,
it's good to see you.
That's good.
Yeah.
But yesterday was a great day.
We had a hundred middle school kids from Adams Friendship came to the Capitol.
Third, fourth and fifth grad should say, you know, elementary mid school, uh, you know,
we've seen folks from our new credit unions on the other side of the lake.
I call it from a Juno County side and getting to meet more of the people from Juno County.
Uh, but yeah, we've got visitors constantly from wood, Adams and Juno County coming to
the Capitol on a regular basis, which is, is what I've waited for forever, right?
Just see, and especially kids, when kids come to the Capitol, walk into the Rotunda and
the first thing they do, their neck goes straight up right up at the Rotunda, right?
And some of them just lay in the floor and look straight up at it.
Like, and I tell them every time I talk to them, like, I was here for my fourth grade field
trip.
I wanted to be here.
Like, so I hammer that into them and that you can see them finally grasping that pay
attention to it.
So that's the stuff I love as people coming down and seeing us.
Uh, I'd love to get to the point where we get them to come and testify in some bills
once in a while.
So I've all just, instead of just all the Madison Milwaukee types who just show up.
So we'll get there.
We'll get there though.
Uh, just like you, I, I think it was fifth grade, maybe sixth grade, um, we, I, one of
my first, uh, field trips here in Wisconsin was to Madison for the, to the, to the Capitol.
And a huge impact on me.
Yeah.
It really does.
I, I think that it's just cool for kids.
They have fun.
There's, there's a lot of excitement to it and everything.
But there's also the side stories of one, we never know what that might spark like for
you.
Right.
Um, that we need more, we need more kids to want to get involved in politics from a young
age.
Um, but also the idea of humanizing our politicians and doing that more and more.
I, I, I hear people all the time talk about how do we get our country to stopping so divided?
How do we get ourselves from stoppickering like little children or something like that?
A lot of that starts young, a lot of that starts with parents and how you treat politicians
when you're sitting back and watching the evening news and you're talking about so-and-so
on the TV, those little sponges right there are taking all that in.
Uh, and they're, I'm not saying that you can't have your two cents.
Uh, that's the best way I can put it on the air here.
Um, but everybody's entitled to that.
That's part of the beauty of being in the American.
Yeah.
I mean, it's great because when, when the kids are at the Capitol, like I had a kid from
from the group yesterday, he walked up to me and he goes, do you work here?
Hmm.
So yeah, I'm lucky.
I get to work here.
He goes, do you clean it every day?
I'm like, no.
Like, no.
I like, I didn't finally gave my speech about what I do, you know, but it's just trying
it.
I'm like, he's not like kids aren't the only ones that don't get it.
Like if I'm walking around and I'm down at county marketing and his friendship and I'm
wearing one I'm wearing today with my Navy sweatshirt and my red underarmor hat, you
know, people don't really realize that you're in the community sometimes.
Yeah.
I'm kind of a suit and coat, and then I'll send you're important.
I'm like, well, not really.
So I try to take the John Fetterman approach sometimes to, yeah, just, if we're just regular
people, right?
And it's an everyday thing.
I kind of, I kind of think when you more of that, I actually agree with you.
I also, I think this is a perfect example of what makes you a very good politician and
why I would be a horrible politician, because I would have totally leaned into that.
Man, it takes forever to clean this place.
Right.
I do it all by myself.
Yeah.
You want to help?
Just stick around.
And I agree in the innocence and those questions and just them learning a little bit.
So it's fun.
It's a great time to see them there.
Encourage all of our local schools to reach out and plan these visits.
Yeah.
To the capital and everything.
I also wanted to take some time to talk a little bit, Scott, with you, was the Department
of Ag Trade and Consumer Products has released its 2223 Impact Report for the produce-led
watershed protection grant program.
Yeah.
It's a mouthful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What is that specifically?
I was fortunate to help create the producer-led watershed program, which basically said,
don't rely on the government to come through and fix your body of water.
Why don't we work together in our communities, producers, and growers, and folks are in the
watershed making a living off of the water in the land, and environmentalists who have
concerns about their action of it.
So that's what this bill did in 2013 is create this program to allow these groups to partner
together and get some state dollars to do some funding to get the more setbacks off
of land for cattle to get off of the water so they're not polluting the water or creating
land trading opportunities for people to give the headwaters of a body of water back to
somebody else for land somewhere else, cover crop type stuff, just to make sure you're
not having soil erosion and all that type of stuff.
And this program, in 11 years, has become the most popular watershed protection program
we have in the state of Wisconsin.
So every year, we try to make sure we've got more of these programs locally.
And this year, finally, with the 14-mile watershed group starting up their producer-led
program.
Two years ago, the Rocha Cree group started up their program, so I mean, those are things
have been after for a dozen years just to make sure that growers and folks in those
communities are working together to come up with solutions because government is not the
only way to fix it.
Like if we can do it in our communities with the tax dollars you sent us, that we can give
back to you to fix your problem is a win-win-win program.
So every year, we put that out there as far as we can so more groups can get interested.
The funding for this program has exploded over the last 10 years.
It's super popular and I think it's the wave of the future.
When it comes to also the part of this of being able to really, there is no, I wouldn't
say there is no middleman, but there is less of that.
So there's less, you know, non-information for people.
So they're collecting most of this data themselves, they're finding out most of this
and there's something too, I think, to be said for the feeling of putting in the work
yourself and how good that can feel when you're talking about your own life.
And people have to understand that there's not a one-size-fits-all solution for every
water problem in state of Wisconsin, like every watershed is different.
So one size banded from the state, saying you can do this or you can do that, it's not
going to work for the 14 mile watershed where it would for the Rocha Cree watershed.
So that's the other aspect of it is just individualizing the problems here instead of just saying
okay, there's one silver bullet that the state can give you to fix it.
So it's a great program, we're excited to be originators of it and to be the curators
of it every budget to make sure it keeps getting funded.
When it comes to that grant, if you want to find out more and call it, encourage you
to go to debtcap.org, you can find out more of information over there.
Also you might want to keep that website handy because the debt cap also invited Wisconsin
meat processors to apply for the meat processor infrastructure grant.
You have until the end of February for this grant and this is, what is this design for
specifically, Scott?
Yeah, you wouldn't believe in, if I told you, you may not still believe, but we have
a lot of meat processing companies in the Central Sands area call it because I have had
a lot of a share of county, portage county, they're gone, but now Juneau County is back
on board.
And with all the meat producers we have in our district were one of the most local meat
producers that you can think of in the state of Wisconsin.
When you think of Jacqueline, Steve Jerky, when you think of other brands like that, they
may have a label that say they're created somewhere else, but they're processed in package
in Wautoma.
When you think of, you know, the charcuterie boards for your Super Bowl party this weekend,
every little link or every sausage on there, probably packaged in general county, Wisconsin
ever meat.
So we've got so many processors here between Stevens Point all the way down to Nacita
and between that we also want to try to make sure that we encourage them to stay as
local as they can.
And those grants really help them localize their business a little better, set a consolidated
up in some big city where you see like the problems with Smithfield out in South Dakota.
One little germ outbreak in Smithfield in South Dakota costs the price of meat to go up
at 60% a week.
We can localize these plants and let them all do their individual jobs of some state funding.
It keeps the option for contagions to be a lot less impactful to the consumer in the
end.
So trying to keep everybody as local as possible is another reason why that grant exists.
And not only just to piggyback off of that, also hopefully maybe in creating new processing
plants.
If you bring some businesses from out of state to this state.
There are so many guys that are involved in our local recreational hunting category that
would love to turn into processing of meat and other ideas that this economy is set
up for when you've got a small shop that can find a grant opportunity or get somebody
to be a stay at home type work job, but it's a great job.
In that grant, you have until February 24th through fill out that grant again.
You can find out more about that and other information at deckcapped.org.
Be sure to do that everybody and spread the word about those as well.
When it comes to, and this kind of leans into where we're going to go next, and we're
speaking with state representative Scott Krug right now, every state in the union has
similar issues than the state next to it.
Everybody's trying to have more people become to their state, trying to keep businesses
in their state, trying to create new businesses in their state.
So there is a kind of unifying theme and problem for them pretty much every state in the union.
One of the bigger issues for people from what we're being told is this or that there's
a lot of topics coming out of an election season.
But I want to go that to that next, not only election coverage, but immigration and legal
immigrants and talk about some of this, because there's been some recent news about that.
Let's talk about one more.
It is an amazingly sensitive topic in central Wisconsin, right, because the district that
I've represented for the last 12 years was more so impacted than here, where Plainfield,
Hancock, Kaloma, Wautoma, everywhere in between have a huge migrant population who come
up to work every summer.
I could tell you every farm and how many folks are brought up to work, right?
And having conversations with folks in those communities, we want to make sure we protect
their workforce.
And the conversations I've had with them over the last dozen years is that when we bring
people up, we know who they are and that they're documented and that causing problems.
We take a lot of pride in that.
Every farmer tells me we want to make sure we protect our workforce and protect the
public.
Well, federally elections change policy from time to time.
And this one is a big policy change where you see the Trump administration say, hey,
if you're not supposed to be here, it's time to go home.
Oh, so the states have to react to federal policy and say, all right, what are we going
to do with this?
So this week, there was a bill that came out in Madison that says, if you were here illegally
and you create a felony situation where you're causing mischievous problems for the public,
we're going to make sure that your county sheriff can verify whether you're a citizen
or not upon your detainment.
And if you are not a citizen, report that situation to ICE for ICE to put a detainer in for
ICE to follow through now with federal policy to say, hey, it's time to go somewhere else.
And I think there's some misunderstanding of what this does.
You see some in the media politicizing it a lot more saying that if you're here from
another country, you should hide, Chicago is a great example where they're literally
telling people to stay at your homes and stay away, but this isn't just about anybody
who's here illegally.
This is about people who are committing felonies who are here illegally.
And that's a big difference.
So say, for example, Wisconsin doesn't go this route.
And the governor's already said before the bill came out, he's going to veto it without
even seeing it.
Like the Lincoln Riley bill that Congress passed.
This is about the same type of thing where Democrats and Republicans agree, like, yes,
if you're here committing felonies and you're already here illegally, you've got to get
you back to El Salvador or Mexico or Guatemala or wherever it might be, Colombia, it was another
great example.
So if Wisconsin doesn't go this route that other states are likely to go, we become a magnet.
We become a safe haven for bad actors because they're going to say, hey, if I can't be
an Illinois because they're going to come get me here, well, I should go to Wisconsin.
And the public safety nightmare that this can cause, I think, is the biggest thing that
I hear about from parents on the doors is they don't care about our arguments in Madison.
They want to know that their kids are safe and that their schools are working.
So this is one of those safety issues that I think bipartisan support will show up on
this bill to say, hey, I get it.
If you're a felon and you're committing felonies and you're incarcerated, let's not pay 35
to 40,000 a year to keep you at the Wood County jail.
Let's send you back where you came from.
And I get the sensitivity to it, like I said, on the workforce side and the humanitarian
side.
But this is not us just picking on anybody who came across the border illegally or a
DACA kid who was brought here by his parents when he was younger.
Those are other policies of federal governments dealing with.
That's not what Wisconsin's after right now.
This is, and there's a couple of layers to this to me for one.
I think that the miscommunication of it is cleared up once you read an article or two,
I think.
But unfortunately, we don't have a lot of that.
In part, because we have a mouthpiece that just rambles and says whatever's on his mind.
And we're going to buy Panama and Greenland and all that.
Yeah.
And what's happening with that?
We've already moved on from that.
And yet, and yet, and I don't, I don't, I mean, you can't blame a dog for being a dog.
I don't blame him for being what he is.
What I blame is the media and some politicians covering this as much as they do.
And just using his talking points when they could be doing this, taking those talking
points and being like, well, this is what he meant.
Or, well, this is what we're actually doing.
That part I, I hold accountable, I, and I am part of the media.
So I, I hold myself accountable with this too as much as you and some of your brethren
for this because that there's, they're just picking that up and running with it as well.
So that miscommunication is understandable when you've got the majority of Americans that
are busy lives and are trying to do a number of different things along with keeping up
under this.
Right.
Yeah.
And it creates issues for even folks like me, you know, I, you know, where I've got to answer
all these questions.
Yeah.
I was just going to say makes your guys' jobs that much harder.
And I tell that to my friends all the time, I'm like, you know, where they're a hundred
percent on board with everything that somebody says and like, just hold on.
This is the reality over this is why this part's a problem.
So I'm kind of glad that you see some in Congress just say, okay, I get that we're on the
team.
Mm-hmm.
But let's work on the details.
Right.
I mean, because everything like this bill that we introduced where the governor had said
you're going to veto it before it came out, it's like, wait a minute, just take a day
and say you're going to veto it after you maybe read it or something.
Yeah.
Just like slow down and just think a little bit.
Well, and we, I think part of the other issue with this is too is, you know, one, nobody
wants bad people in their state, whether they're here legally or not.
And I don't, you're not going to get a lot of people arguing about that, I would think.
But what the fear is, and we had Matt lippered in our ag agent yesterday and talking to him
about this and the fear for our ag industry of losing workers.
We've seen this in Alabama.
Alabama still has not recovered from this.
Alabama in 2011 had the idea, we're going to get rid of all legal immigrants.
Alabama for the longest time was the watermelon capital of the world.
They're barely surviving now.
They got nobody because their idea was, well, we'll have Americans pick the crops.
Americans ain't doing those jobs.
And that's what I said to some folks over, you know, in, in Plainfield, Colombo, Tomah
having conversations last few weeks here just because I know them and they still call
me, even though I'm not there rep anymore, technically.
But I mean, that was the point I was making, too, is like, it's not as if you can go to
a tri-county high school tomorrow and tell the kids in the high school, like, hey, we've
got all these jobs open.
Come on out.
Yeah.
I don't think the average 16 or 17 year old junior or senior at tri-county high school
is willing and able or wanting to spend the day in the bean field to make sure the
crop gets into the truck.
All right.
I mean, and I hate having to say those things out loud sometimes.
Yeah.
But this is where we are.
It's reality.
Yeah.
We have to talk about this stuff out loud.
Yeah.
I hear what you're saying.
I think the other part of this, too, that I hear a lot of pushback on is, this isn't
the main issue to me that you guys just got back.
We've got new people here.
We got old people here.
We got a lot of work to do.
Why are we not, why is not the first thing we're doing child care?
Why are we not talking about school shootings?
Why are we not doing something about this, this, this, or this?
Does anybody have the percentages of how many of illegal immigrants are committing violent
crimes in this state?
I got 0.2% from Sheriff Becker.
Yeah.
I mean, I've got.
This is not the biggest problem we have in the world today.
We got bigger fish to fry.
That is an issue.
Now, again, going back to what we were just saying, I don't believe that this is something
you and your representatives felt like, we got to come out the gate with this.
But when we have somebody at the top of the order saying that you guys have to do this,
what are you going to do?
Yeah, we could put our heads in the sand and pretend that federal policy hasn't changed
significantly or we can deal with it.
And I think it's actually a decent time for us to deal with it as we're crafting the
state budget to deal with child care and water quality and all these other things.
The state budget process is underway.
That goes between now and June when we finally do vote on this new state budget and where
we're talking school funding and school safety and there's more bills out this week
on school safety.
It just happens that we started in this spot.
And I think one of the bigger reasons it came up is whether people politically agree
with the Doge concept or not, finding out this USAID stuff this week has just been mind
blowing.
And it's a game changer sometimes to say, okay, the reason we haven't been able to make
these investments is maybe because we're spending, you know, $14 billion overseas for things
like $20 million for our Iraqi Sesame Street.
So people back home are like, hey, we've got problems in our community.
We can't afford.
But this is what we're doing.
So that's the other side of the coin is I, you know, you'll see them rip off that band
date a little bit more.
It's just this one is a lot easier to deal with, I think, a lot easier for them to sell
to the public instead of saying, hey, we're trying to recapture all this money that nobody
in Congress knew that we were spending for the last 20 years.
Scott, I know that you were on a lot of committees in our last minutes here.
Is there any headlines, any committee news you wanted to touch on?
Yeah, still vice chair of campaigns and elections.
It's still, you know, the number one issue.
And every time we have a big idea for campaigns and elections, everybody says, well, let's
not do that to upset the next election coming up, right?
So there's a nice little law in Wisconsin for like the first time in six years after the
spring election.
We don't have a fall election in 2025.
Yeah, that's right.
So we finally have time after the spring election to get past that sound barrier of, there's
the election coming up.
Don't make a change now.
So we're going to make some big changes between April and next April when the next statewide
election will happen to see more things like the early processing of absentee ballots.
So we can actually know who won an election before we went to bed, right?
We've got new rules out on the photo ID that we just passed constitutionally that, you
know, I always say the three pillars are knowing who won before you went to bed, knowing
who voted is who they are and that where they live is within that jurisdiction.
Like, if I'm going to explain elections to people in 15 seconds, that's it.
Those are the three things I want done this session and we're probably going to get there
with the governor signing them all until all.
It's going to be a busy beginning of the year here and it is and that kind of eats into
the real estate side of things, but that's okay.
Can imagine, can imagine.
It's also going to cut in the pictures and catchers reporting.
Oh my God.
I'm not even thinking about the Super Bowl.
Like, it doesn't even exist in my mind, is it?
You are not alone, my father.
I heard Seth.
Yeah, it's morning.
It was dark night.
Seth, my dad, same thing.
Like, I was going to ask my dad because I realized this morning, I'm like, oh, I haven't
asked him who he thinks going to win.
All he wants to talk about is pictures and catchers reporting.
That's it, that's all, thank you.
Yeah, I'm over it.
So it's time to bring it on.
So Scott, if people have questions, want to talk with you more about some things, how can
they reach you?
Yeah, this works really well, actually.
The cell phone 715-323-3293.
So usually about 435 o'clockish on Fridays, the phone actually rings.
So I'm glad people are listening and paying attention and responding to those situations.
So just give me a call.
Appreciate the time.
As always, always appreciate the conversation.
Safe travels out there.
We're talking next week.
Thank you.
We'll be back with more midday magazine for you right here at 975 FM 1320 AM WFHR.
We are locally grown radio.
