You're listening to Perspective on WFHR, 1320 AM, 975 FM WFHR.
I'm Melissa Kay bringing you news in our community.
During this interview, I'm talking with Representative Scott Krug on Friday, April 3rd.
Thank you for joining me, Scott, to bring the community an update from the 72nd Assembly District.
Yeah, always happy to do it.
Well, we just had this big ice storm over here all over in Central Wisconsin.
How are you holding up over there in Rome?
You know, the interesting thing about being out in Rome is that all the power lines out here are buried.
So it is one of our side benefits is we don't have to worry about the branch taking out a power line and all those types of things.
So kind of sitting here and unfortunately having to see what everybody else is going through instead of us.
Yeah, there are a few trees that were down here in Wisconsin Rapids on Thursday.
I know Walmart was out of power for a while and so pickup orders couldn't be picked up and.
little bit of a struggle with that.
Yeah we're so used to in Rome like anytime the wind blows in Rome we lose a tree anyways so it's just been you know that's the way it goes insane country down here is we lose trees left and right so I was I was actually out back yesterday trying to clear some ice off of something hurt some trees in the in the back of our house cracking and ready to tumble so just had to come back inside for a bit.
Probably wise I watched some trees fall too I was actually at the station yesterday
and watch some trees fall over there by the DMV.
Kind of scary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the time of year for it, I suppose, in spring in Wisconsin.
So let's dive into your recent session updates.
There were two bills that were signed into law last month, both dealing with PFAS contamination.
Could you start off, Scott, with a brief description of what PFAS are and why they're a problem?
Yeah, so PFAS are...
You know, one of the emerging issues on groundwater over the last, I'd say, five, six, seven years where products that were used in the 1970s, mostly in firefighting foams and Teflon for cooking pans and other products were unbeknownst to us to be problematic.
So as widespread as they were, they started hitting landfills and seeping into groundwater and these forever chemicals, they call them.
are really hard to get out of water once they're in the system.
So the state of Wisconsin has been tackling this issue for the last few years, allocated $125 million towards a reduction of PFAS contamination through wastewater treatment facilities, new regulations on spreading, all these types of things.
Unfortunately, in the last session, I got vetoed.
So the money's been kind of sitting there for a couple of years until we come together and make an agreement on who should be held responsible and when.
So this session, Senator Wimberger from the Green Bay Area and Representative Mercer from the Crivets area really sat down and worked it out really well with the DNR and the governor's office to the point where we had a really good bipartisan bill.
that the governor recently signed that'll get the $125 million out of Madison and into wastewater treatment facilities and into other groundwater contamination containment systems to make sure that more forever chemicals don't get into our bodies as we digest our water and our municipalities.
Okay, and are there any considerations included in those bills to address this on the level of the producers like 3M who produced
the PFAS that are in these products that studies have shown they knew this was dangerous.
And that's the thing that we wanted to make sure in the legislation is that we held harmless individuals who were not aware, but did hold accountable people who are aware.
So for example, Wausau papers before it sold to Alstrom was quite a big contaminant producing company.
who use some of their effluent to land spread in certain areas of the state.
Of course, Wausau papers is long gone.
So now you've got these companies that still exist but are operating differently.
So we're trying to figure out and in the bill, we did figure out if you're, you know, if you are not the direct.
you know contaminants we're not going to hold you responsible so if you are a landowner who had this spread on your land without you knowing we can't hold you landowner responsible for contamination that's where the state comes in and does some of the remediation costs then otherwise we are holding you know the direct contaminants responsible for their own cleanup
okay so was this why some of the changes were needed
and 80 130.
That was
that was the biggest challenges figuring out the you know what we called it was the the innocent landowner provisions that we had a hard time figuring out the DNR was not wanting to be as flexible on innocent landowners as the legislature wanted to be.
But in the end, I think they came to a decent agreement just saying, hey, if you are aware that it had been spreading your property, you're not responsible now.
But if you maintain that property for a certain period of time, you're going to have to be responsible at some point.
So kind of giving a grandfather option for people who own contaminated properties to be able to apply for grants to fix the issues on their property or if they.
Decided to sit still and not do anything, then they're going to become the responsible party down the road.
So they'll know ahead of time that either deal with it now or be responsible for it later.
And is that what AB 131 deals with?
Um, ways to address the PFAS contamination statewide.
Is this where the funding comes from?
That is.
So one of the bills was the funding bill in particular in the way that we've been working through legislation and the split legislature with the Republicans and the legislature and the governor and the Democrats or the Democrat.
Governor is we would pass a bill that has policy in it separately from a bill that has dollars in it because if we pass a bill that has dollars directly within the four corners of the bill, the governor could line item veto anything.
So that's why there's two separate bills, especially on the most important items, one for funding and one for the policy items.
So that's why we
Work really hard to get agreement on the policy items ahead of time and get veto assurances before Bill crosses his desk.
But just in case, because we have had this happen before, where a bill would get to him with a veto assurance and they would change somehow in their mind and a veto would come and cause some havoc.
So the two separate bills do the same thing.
One just funds it, one's the policy.
Okay.
And then another program that you touched on in your update is the Local Small Structure Improvement Program.
This program is intended to provide financial assistance to repair or replace aging culverts and smaller bridges throughout the state.
What can people do to help with this program?
I think the biggest thing that we need to do in our communities to help with these funding issues for transportation is be eyes and ears for our municipal governments and for the state government to know where problems are and when problems are occurring.
Especially in a program like this where these are very small covered structures or culverts that are not usually seen by the public.
that if they're not being regularly inspected, because it's really hard for them as families to regularly inspect everything.
But if there's not more eyes on these and they're not inspected and problems aren't caught to begin with, for example, this time of year, especially when everything's melting and unfreezing, problems can be small and turn into big problems really quickly.
So the best thing people can do is just keep your eyes open and report to municipal governments when you see issues with small bridges, culverts, cracks in the road and other types of things because there is no shortage of transportation grant programs from the state of Wisconsin back during municipal governments to take care of problems before they become major issues.
And just looking at the department, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation website, there's
lists more than 14,000 bridges in the state.
And that's a lot of bridges, as you said, difficult for municipalities to look and inspect all of them.
But as you said, if there's a bridge you drive over every single day and you know, man, this is really looking bad, looking worse than last year.
So who would call about that?
So especially in the very rural areas, you contact your town government first because the towns are responsible for town roads.
If you're looking at a county road, obviously it's getting all of your county board supervisor, but if you're on a state highway, you know, you reach out to the state of Wisconsin and that's, that's the confusion sometimes on transportation issues.
So I usually try to filter everybody to your county highway office and then they can kind of tell you where the issues are and who to talk to next.
You know, and I think.
something that gets unset a lot is as much as Minnesota claims to be the land of 10,000 lakes, Wisconsin has water everywhere.
And that's why we have tens of thousands of these small bridges.
We call them 800 feet or under, and there's even a separate program for just those bridges by themselves as well.
So we're trying to make sure that as infrastructures aging across the board, whether it's
the interstate system, the county highway system or your local roads, uh, state of Wisconsin is trying to fund it as much as we humanly possibly can, knowing that there is no singular session that we're going to be able to fix everything all at the same time.
Well, and it's really nice to know that, that we as the general public here in Wisconsin, that there is a way we can help with that.
Yeah, I mean and that's that that is exactly how government works and you know we try to do these tutorials for the last 15 years on this station and Adams and now over in Juneau County just trying to help people understand That none of this works whether it's in Madison or whether it's in DC Without your input like I you know, we're not experts on everything by far like if I if I didn't have people calling me and telling me about a certain issue that you know, it's happening with a road here or happening in our
prison system or happening at the UW system, there are so many things that I could never know unless people are reaching out to kind of describe what issues are.
So all the more reason to reach out and contact your local representatives.
Absolutely.
Well let's take a pause for a short moment here to hear from our sponsors.
I'm Alyssa Kay talking with Representative Scott Krug and you're listening to Perspective on 13 20 a.m.
97 5 fm WFHR.
Welcome, you're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM 975 FM WFHR.
I'm Melissa Kaye bringing you news in our community.
I'm speaking with Representative Scott Krug and where we left off we were talking about how people can be involved in helping with the infrastructure and fixing roads in the area by contacting your local representatives and another way that people can get involved obviously is elections.
And as you're listening to this on Tuesday, April 7th, it is spring election day, or if you're listening on Thursday, it already happened.
Residents in Wisconsin Rapids are voting for mayor, city attorney, school board, county judge, and everywhere people are voting for a new Supreme Court justice.
Now, Scott, you're the vice chair of the committee on campaigns and elections.
How are you feeling about this spring election this year?
Yeah, it's really interesting because over the last four years, as I got involved in elections, just trying to help people understand how the process works, why it actually still works, and how Wisconsin elections are safe, secure, and fair has really started to show, even in polling, when we talk about it with the public, how
perception is changing and people are actually understanding better and better that elections are free, free, fair, safe and secure in the state of Wisconsin.
So I'm, I'm confident we're not going to see any widespread problems of any kind.
It is going to be a much lower turnout election from what we're seeing as well in the Marquette poll and other places that people are just not as motivated as they've been because to be fair in Wisconsin, we seemingly always have an election and there
are going to be some here and there where people are just seeing election fatigue.
So hopefully that's not the case, but it's just shaping up to be a lower turnout election.
So if you are listening on Tuesday, make sure you get out and vote.
Hopefully that the weather is great if you wait until election day to get out and vote, but Wisconsin also has a very robust early voting system for a lot of people to use as well.
So, you know, we keep watching those numbers come in and it does seem to be a little bit lower turnout this time
around.
And as far as watching numbers come in just to clarify for our listeners, that doesn't mean those votes are counted because in Wisconsin there is no early counting, correct?
Correct.
Yeah.
So every day at this point during the absentee voting period, the Wisconsin Elections Commission puts out a report on how many absentee ballots have been collected, how many absentee ballots were sent, how many were requested.
So we can kind of gauge on how many absentee ballots have been returned at this point.
But of course, we don't know the results of those until the end of election
day.
We're aware that there is a lot of talk about elections and some commentary about them not being secure or safe.
And in fact, there was a recent trial here on the gentleman, the Rescenarian man, Harry Waite.
Oh,
yeah, Harry
Waite, yeah.
Who would like to have safety ballots that were not his.
Right, yeah.
To prove that it was not safe and secure.
However, he was charged with...
breaking the law.
Yeah, well, you know, and that's one of the things that I said too is like you can't just break into somebody's car and take it out of their driveway just to show that you can actually steal somebody's car.
It just doesn't make sense to go in and request an absentee ballot in somebody else's name and expect to get off of this and not have an election fraud issue be triggered.
So the Harry Waite case exactly proves that there is accountability for people who are breaking the law in elections.
And as much spin as he wants to put on himself,
for his supporters want to put on it, just to prove that there's a problem that you could make this request in somebody else's name.
That's true.
But in the end, you're not getting away with it.
It is an absolute felony to perform a task like he did.
So I guess if he's trying to prove vulnerability, maybe point taken somehow that we can figure out how to tighten up the system a bit.
But in the end, it's a really stupid thing to do to try to get a ballot in somebody else's name.
Well, and the jury convicted weight of one felony and two misdemeanors.
Yeah, and it's just, it's something I'll never go away for, for him to deal with the rest of his life.
So it's just, it's not worth it.
Similarly, when people talk about non-citizen voting, I would love to see a way that we can verify citizenship upon registration.
That'd be great.
The fact that we can't though, doesn't mean that people who do try to vote that shouldn't be able to vote aren't caught.
And the penalties for getting caught for election fraud, whether it's voting as a felon or trying to vote as in somebody's deceased name or requesting absentee ballots under somebody else's name, those are all felonies that are all actually all prosecuted every election cycle in the state of Wisconsin.
So yes, I mean, there is attempts at fraud, both sides of the equation, and I think that's the way elections are always going to be, no matter how many laws we pass on, unfortunately.
But correct me if I'm wrong, the percentage of fraud that actually happens in our Wisconsin elections is very minuscule.
It is, yeah, absolutely minuscule.
And I have said from day one that I'm going to work to make sure it's as close to zero as humanly possible.
So the fact that it is minuscule does not minimize the need to tighten up systems along the way as well.
Because for example, even in the 2024 presidential election here in Adams County, there were six individuals who resided in Illinois who decided they wanted to vote in Illinois and in Wisconsin.
and all six of them were identified as you know being fraudulent voters.
I mean it's not it's not this widespread conspiracy type fraud but there is always fraud in any election unfortunately because either some people don't realize what they're doing or they do realize it and don't expect to get caught.
So as small as it is it still exists and it's it gets blown way out of proportion.
Well, one thing that doesn't get blown out of proportion is the spring fire danger.
I know we just recently got coated in ice, but that doesn't mean we don't need to worry about fire danger.
I know Rome just put out recently here a notice about that.
Are you seeing or hearing anything in your area?
Yeah, I mean, living where we do in Rome, you know, throughout the central sands area, you know, off the lakes a little bit, there's always, like I said, there's always trees falling.
The winds just knocked down trees randomly here.
And when you have all that dry tinder throughout all of these neighborhoods and the winds blowing anytime during the summer and spring when it's dry, people know here usually.
not to go out and start a fire in the backyard and, you know, even are more careful about where they're cooking with their grills and things like that.
So we just saw, for example, a little south of here a couple of days ago in the town of Quincy, pretty significant wildfire going on as well.
And last, you know, obviously the last couple of years, we saw those massive wildfires in the Sita.
And there's always things like that that happened in late spring, early summer, when all the snow is melted off and
things are drying windy.
So people really have to be careful.
And I have to remind everybody that you do need to have burning permits.
Even if you got a little fire pit in your yard, you got to go and get a state DNR fire permit and make sure that it's a good time to actually burn.
So it's something we all got to be careful of.
And there is a way that you can check for that.
I believe it's a DNR has a...
to see burning restrictions for the day.
They do recommend moving your firewood 30 feet away from your home, getting rid of the fall leaves around your home's foundation, cleaning out your gutters.
All of those things help protect your home, but then also just shredding of wildfires.
Yeah, I mean it's the same thing as like I said earlier dealing with you know transportation issues if everybody's vigilant on their own that we don't have to worry about the the idiots who aren't So if you keep the keep the fuel away from your own home even if the neighbor is doing something stupid You can protect yourself even with the even if he's being weird about what he's
doing
And then briefly here in our last couple of minutes, Scott, if you touch on, we recently had a legislative breakfast here at Midstate in Wisconsin Rapids, and we had a really good turnout for that.
In fact, I think they had to turn people away.
There were too many that wanted to attend.
Yeah, and that's nice.
I mean, that's exactly the point is that when the opportunities present themselves, you know, we as legislators should be able to come in front of people and tell them what's going on.
And on the flip side, people hopefully are interested to hear in what we have to say.
So the spring and fall legislative breakfasts that we do with the chambers has been a great outlet here to do business leaders together, community leaders, school leaders, all different types of groups in the same room and just kind of talk about what we.
have done what we want to do, what it actually means now that the legislature's out of session doesn't mean we're not doing anything anymore.
In fact, even WRPS, the superintendent Rasmussen even brought up a really good point that we've been working on my office this week, just because he was at the legislative breakfast and had a question that kind of resonated with us.
So it's really nice to be able to get those ideas from people in our communities to be able to go back and work on and see if we can make some positive impacts for them.
And I appreciated you pointing out, and not just you, but other legislators up there, that just because you're not in session right now doesn't mean you're not working, like you said, and that this is the time for people to come to you with issues, with questions, with concerns.
It is.
If you look right now at the calendar, it's April of 2026.
We get sworn in again in January, 2027.
So that means literally between April and January, we've got about nine months to go through all of the background, all of the research, all of the heavy lifting.
I'm trying to put together bills for next session and let alone trying to get ready for the next state budget process, which kicks off next February.
It doesn't just materialize out of thin air.
All of those things that end up in the state budget, $115 billion document,
all come from all of our local municipalities, all come from our counties, all come from our school boards, all come from employers in our district, all come from regular constituent needs across the board, whether it's health, whether it's community corrections, whether it's roads.
I mean, all of these things are, are thousands of conversations each that end up becoming a one document in February that we've parsed through again until June.
So if we're not spending April to January getting ready, then we're behind the
and we're not doing a good job representing our constituents needs.
So now is the time to come forward with those issues?
Yeah, absolutely.
Like if something you feel is underfunded or something you feel is overfunded or your tax too much or your roads cracking or whatever it might be.
Now is literally the time to go to your legislators and say, okay, now you're done voting on the old stuff.
Now we got you ready for the next wave.
This is what I think you should do, Mr. and Mrs. Legislator, because this is what's happening in our county.
Excellent.
Well, I very much appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today, Scott.
Yeah, anytime.
Happy to do it.
I'm Melissa K talking with Representative Scott Krug of the 72nd Assembly District, and I want to thank you listeners for joining us for news in our community on Perspective 1320 AM, 975 FM WFHR.
