You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM 975 FM.
I'm Melissa Kay bringing you news in our community.
During this interview, I'm talking with Representative Scott Krug on Friday, May 1st.
Thank you for joining me, Scott, to bring the community an update from the 72nd Assembly District.
Yeah, I'm happy to do it.
And it's been a heck of a month.
So there's a lot to get updated on.
So happy to jump in.
Yes, my goodness, there is so much to dive.
So let's just dive right in.
So the one of the biggest things on everybody's mind in especially Wisconsin Rapids but also the surrounding area and honestly the entire state right now is data centers.
So just in the last week of April here there was a big informational meeting.
More than 400 people showed up at the Rams Middle School to hear about data centers.
Charlie Barron's was one of the special guests.
I'm sorry you couldn't be there because you were you were kind of sick this last week.
Yeah, a little under the weather and then Jack had soccer practice the same night So we decided to put out the statement the same day just so everybody knew where we stood with it and honestly it's In the same boat everybody's in right anything new that comes to our community You're gonna have concerns about and I get those concerns and I think The other side of the coin we have to understand is it's also private land private venture Sale between two entities that the city gets some say in
And
I think
that's the sticking point that a lot of people aren't fully understanding right now is that that property that's being talked about right now is not owned by the city.
Right.
Yeah.
It's totally in private hands right now.
And it's changed a few times since the middle of close.
And I can't remember the folks that own part of it, but Billarood still owns the main part of it.
You know, and there's other pieces that are owned by other entities, but it is still a private business looking for what's best for their bottom line too.
And that doesn't always mesh with what's
best for our community, so that's why we rely on our city leaders on zoning requirements, conditional use permits, and all those types of things that are going to be the thing that come into play on what a data center proposal should look like.
And I've been advocating for the city like, hey, it should probably structure it a lot like we tried to do in state legislation saying, hey, right payers should definitely not be on the hook.
If somebody's coming,
It's got to be their own dime entirely.
You cannot leave this on rate payers to pick up the cost of.
We want to make sure the water is protected.
We want to make sure that noise is dealt with.
All the concerns I've heard from people about this since it's been first discussed are all the things that statewide stakeholders have been looking at for the better part of the last year and a half to try to figure out if there's some legislation that can be done to deal with these issues, to not leave communities feel so stranded.
Honestly, in split government, that's a hard road to hoe in the first place, but on something this big, it's still pending.
So we've got some work to do on all sides yet.
Well, and the city had planned to have a public hearing during the Planning Commission meeting on Monday, May 4th.
Now they've deferred that meeting.
Do you have any thoughts onto why you think that happened?
Yeah, you know, I did reach out to a few of the city leaders here and just said, Hey, I think, you know, before you get too far too fast here and, you know, feeling like your ducks are in a role, let's take some time and make sure the public's inputs fully weighed here.
And I think the Charlie Barron's presentation did a great job on educating people more to ask some more questions.
And to the mayor's credit, he's more than willing to hear everybody's concerns about the issues to not fast track anything.
So I thought.
It was a great move by the city just to push the pause button here for a while and just let people understand exactly what's coming out.
Again, another credit to the city is fully releasing the entire application from the company that wants to do this so people can get some details on what it actually is because until this week, I didn't really know what was coming either.
Yesterday, everybody got a good chance to download the plan, read through it to see
visually what it'll look like, what protections might be in place for water, the system they're going to use.
I mean, all that type of stuff, everybody's still digesting today on Friday, May 1st, but to be having to hear it how May 4th was a little premature.
Yeah.
Well, and in the city's maybe defense, they have been having meetings about this at the Planning Commission met, I want to say, early in the month, and then it was approved at the.
common council meeting, but not everybody attends those meeting or watches them.
What does that say about
our involvement in our local government?
I don't like criticizing voters, but that's the whole way this entire system works is for people to be involved and at meetings and learning about issues along the way.
Again, like you said, to the city's credit, they did give everybody a chance to get a second chance to come to
an informational meeting before there's a public hearing on an actual proposal.
Again, I know everybody's busy and I know that things don't always get publicized or across the same avenue that everybody can consume at the easiest, but there has been some work going on in this for quite a bit at the city
level.
these meetings aren't happening.
Well, obviously, I don't know if there's more than the ones that I know about, but that's not like they're happening behind closed doors.
These are public meetings.
I saw a lot of that in Facebook this week, too, is people are going to be skeptical no matter what the city does.
Some people say, well, the fact that they pulled the meeting on the 4th means they're going to do this behind closed doors.
None of that's possible.
Everybody knows that it is just absolutely impossible.
to pass any permitting decisions behind closed doors.
So just, I think the biggest thing this next month, two months, whatever it may be, until there's an actual hearing is just kind of helping everybody understand what the playing field actually is and getting rid of some of the conjecture.
And that's, it's been a space I've been great in on election stuff the last four years.
So I'm happy to lend a hand here and help people learn what this is, what this isn't, and what the city can do and what the city may not be able to
do.
And if you haven't already signed up for Wisconsin Rapids meeting notifications, or you didn't get this, the press release that was sent out on April 30th, you can go to wirrapids.gov and sign up for those notifications and find this press release there.
And as far as your statement on Facebook about it, Scott, you mentioned a lot of the questions that I was hearing at these meetings.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's it's those like I said those are the questions that You know from the day that that mill actually stopped producing paper Those are the questions.
I knew the next user was going to have right because over the course of the history of that paper mill It used a heck of a lot of water.
It made a lot of noise.
It used a lot of electricity, you know all those things that a
next big manufacturer or next big entity, whatever it might be, was also going to do no matter what.
So I mean, these questions are going to be built in no matter who went there.
And now the fact that it's a data center kind of amplifies it in people's minds about what does this mean?
So I, you know, those questions have been sitting there for five years on whoever might assume such a gigantic industrial site and what that impact is going to be on neighborhoods that are close enough to it.
Well, in our last
Few minutes here in the first part of this interview.
Let's dive into roads now and then we'll talk about the Voting Rights Act in our second segment.
So you said that there's going to in your recent update that there's going to be more for roads in Wisconsin and what that means for roads and infrastructure.
I'm guessing that means I'm going to do an old Bob and Tom throwback, but.
Orange barrels, orange barrels, everywhere I see.
Is that what
we're looking for too?
Yeah, you are.
You already see in the orange barrels everywhere you look right now, right?
So, I mean, Highway 54 from Rampus to Plover is one way the entire way, right?
You're going to start seeing that on South of Wisconsin Rampus on Highway 13 again.
You're going to start seeing it into the next year on A Street itself.
I mean,
for the next five years, folks, get used to orange barrels everywhere for a long time to come.
It's a good thing, though, right?
Because it's been overlooked here for way too long.
We've been arguing with the State Department of Transportation ever since Governor Walker was governor of the state of Wisconsin saying, hey, we got to start paying attention to some of these rural state highways.
And we made huge investments in that realm this year.
And even going down another level to town roads where we've
Re-institute our A-Rip program and the L-Rip program to do cost matching for even fixing town roads.
I think it's fair to say that we're finally really getting the grasp of what we're supposed to be doing for roads and transportation at Wisconsin.
And the extra money that is in the 25-27 biennial budget, it's 11.6 million in 25-26 and then 6.8 million in 26-27.
Yeah, and unfortunately those dollars don't stretch as far as they sound like they should right so it is It takes a quite a chunk of those just to do one state highway So every bit that we can add helps fix a a highway for a few miles at a time It doesn't it is not the silver bullet to fixing all the problems we have with highways and transportation costs in the state We are at some point going to have to figure out a new revenue source
besides relying on the gas tax, because the gas tax is just not covering the fund.
We're not able to keep up with it.
Roads are deteriorating.
It's time for new revenues and a new way to approach transportation funding in Wisconsin, period.
Well, and the other thing is that you listed out here that in our district specifically, I'll just mention Wood County, it's a 4.7% increase, but everything else is increasing too.
So is it really an increase?
Right, yeah, if inflation is as we saw this last calendar year of 3.8%, we're given a 4.7% increase, we're keeping up, we're not getting ahead.
And that's the challenge we have right now is keeping up is okay, but getting ahead is the name of the game.
And I think in the next day budget, you're going to have to see legislators looking at ways that we can get ahead of these problems instead of trying just to patch them up along the way.
So a boost is great, but as inflation and other pressures
eat up those increases.
It's almost just a zero-sum game if inflation is eating up too much of the money.
Well, let's pause right here for a short moment to hear from our sponsors.
I'm Alyssa Kay talking with Representative Scott Krug and you're listening to Perspective on 1320 a.m.
975 FM WFHR.
Welcome, you're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.
I'm Alyssa Kay bringing you news in our community.
I'm speaking with Representative Scott Krug and where we left off Scott, we were talking about the increased money for roads, though with increased inflation, does that really mean an increase?
And was there anything else you wanted to mention about roads before we move on?
No, I think we're going to follow that up in our update this week with some of the application materials for some of the local projects so local governments can keep their eyes open for funding opportunities on their way.
Okay, and is that also there's programs where if people have roads that they know are needing updates, especially some of these very rural roads or agricultural roads that are being used, that they can contact their local municipalities to say, hey, look at this pothole.
Yeah, that's a great actual way of getting some of this money into these communities.
I mean, the ARIP program does an 80-20 match to make sure that we can fix some of those issues.
So if people are identifying them to their town government, town government has an application process to the state to get the funds and get the repairs done.
Excellent.
So now let's dive into some of the very recent changes here to our Voting Rights Act in the country as a whole.
How is that going to affect?
what the Supreme Court decision was, how's that going to affect us here in Wisconsin?
Yeah, right now the changes that the Supreme Court stated are necessary under the Voting Rights Act are not really going to impact congressional districts or assembly districts or Senate districts in Wisconsin.
It could locally impact some of the districts that were made up in, say for example, City of Milwaukee.
who like to use those abilities they had under the VRA to create majority minority districts.
I don't think anybody in the Milwaukee government would challenge those districts because it still takes a majority vote of a board to change any map.
On the state level though, it's going to be pretty much zero sum game for us here in the state of Wisconsin.
I think some people could argue
that the fourth congressional district is one of those districts that could fall under the new classification that Gwen Moore currently represents in the state of Wisconsin.
I know we've been in the 2011 process in the 2023 district team maps.
We did make a point to make sure that we were constitutionally under the VRA protecting a majority minority district in that area.
I still don't think the legislature, the governor, especially under current makeup, are going to
trigger another map redraw because of that, so I really don't think it's going to impact us as much as it's going to the entire southern part of the United States, where you see states already looking to redraw maps again this week, like there hasn't been enough map redrawing for the last four months for heaven's sakes, but some of those states are triggering that decision at the Supreme Court to say, hey, that's a kind, especially in Louisiana, where the actual
district was unconstitutional by the court.
Now other states are asking the court to say, hey, ours are the same, declare us able to redraw our map.
Melissa, I cannot wait till this day that we're done redrawing these stupid maps.
It seems like that's all we do in the state now.
Hopefully by the end of this next budget session or by the next budget discussions we're having that we can create a nonpartisan map drawing process in Wisconsin just
be done with this for the next 10 years would be great.
That would be really nice.
Oh, I mean, I have to make a goalposts.
Right.
I had to I had to make a joke to people the other day like this is the second time I'm running on my fourth map.
Like, I don't even know where my maps are anymore half the time.
So yeah, I just as long as they stop changing, I think everybody will be happy.
Well, one thing that we can't change is the storm damage that
already happened.
And Governor Tony Evers has submitted a request to get some of these funds released so that they can get help with this.
Let's talk about this a little bit, Scott.
Yeah, it's really an interesting situation we've got going on with our emergency management heroes in our counties being able to report on some of these areas, especially in Ringle, a little north of here.
It's just a devastation, like just complete devastation.
Yeah, what was it?
More
than 70 homes were damaged.
Yeah, like 75 homes, like, and it's just, it's a war zone in some of those areas.
So our problem is.
is we had that catastrophic flooding in Southeast Wisconsin a few months ago as well, right?
So the state put in a request to the federal government to release some emergency funds from the feds to help flooding.
And the federal government turned it down.
It's like, wait a minute, right?
We're sending our tax dollars to DC.
You should be able to be able to come back to us when we need it.
And we were told no.
So I'm worried now that we've applied for storm damage assistance again to the federal government.
I'm worried that Washington may not be there for places like Ringle.
So we are working with our congressional delegation just to make sure that they can keep making the case to the administration that these funds are from the states and need to go back to the states and to help my Republican colleagues in Congress understand that government is best closest to the people and that the folks higher up need to make sure that
the folks closest to the people can get them the things that they need.
A decentralized government is after all a Republican concept, so hopefully Washington starts decentralizing a bit and sending some tax dollars back to our states for relief funds.
Do you know why they refuse to release those funds?
Well, in the best political answer I can give you, Melissa, is that the...
The inner workings of the the Trump administration are a puzzle to everybody in the state of Wisconsin.
So I don't know if anybody can get a good beat on why those were rejected.
Well, let's hope that they do it this time, because yes, all of those people who lost their homes and all of their belongings were scattered across who knows how.
I mean, we can't control mother nature.
Right and it was amazing is even that same storm that produced those tornadoes north all the way down to the Illinois border like even here in Adams County we're under a tornado warning for a few minutes so my wife and I were here with my son and our granddaughter and we headed to the basement for the first time that we've lived in this house like we had to have that conversation where do we go what do we do
We didn't think about it, right?
And I really brought to mind that I wanted to help people understand, like, hey, just start making plans, have a plan.
You know, if there's a fire or if there is a tornado, like, what are you going to do?
Like, we didn't even think about it until it happened to us.
So those are the things that I always like to take the Madison is like, holy crap, I didn't think of this either.
Maybe we should start, you know, being a little bit
louder about making sure that everybody has a plan in case of an emergency.
Well, and especially since we are getting more and more tornado warnings last year, we had exceeded the number.
I think I want to say it was, I don't quote me on this, but it was like for the entire summer in previous years, we had more in just a month of spring than
in
entire seasons in the past.
So if we're going to be having more of these weather incidents or occurrences, we need to be ready to handle them.
Yeah, it's just it really helps you realize that in the flash of a moment everything could be gone, right?
Whereas the Midwest let's stand out on the porch and watch the storm go by Hey,
you know I'm not gonna knock those people too much because you know that kind of was the thought in my head like hey Let's go in the garage and my wife's like no get in the basement you idiot.
I'm like
Well, you had
your
granddaughter with you to help help you keep your your head
exactly.
Yeah, the kids kept me grounded.
Otherwise, you know, I don't know if I was here by myself if I was going outside or downstairs, but you know, it is what
it is.
Also understand that.
Well, in our last couple of minutes here, Scott, we never have enough time, but let's quickly dive into Wisconsin Act 69.
And this legislation has to do with transparency and real estate.
What do you mean by transparency and home listings?
What
do you mean?
Yeah, so it's great to actually be a professional in the real estate industry and take some of the challenges we see to Madison to say, hey, there's a problem here.
One of the things that's happened a lot in real estate the last few years are something called private listing networks, where a company will approach somebody who wants to sell their home and say, hey, I can get this sold for you.
You pay me to sell it.
I've already got a buyer.
We'll keep it quiet.
We'll get it done quick, and it'll work out great for you, right?
But on the flip side, I've got so many people looking to buy a home who are overly frustrated that the market's not working because
this home popped up and I never got to see it.
Like how am I supposed to buy a home or how am I supposed to secure my financial future with a home purchase if I don't know what's even going on?
So we worked with the Wisconsin Realtor Association to say, hey, sellers, you have every right to sell your house however you want, but at least there has to be a conversation with your realtor if you're using one to disclose whether you've been told or not that it's probably not in your best interest.
to put your house on the open market where it can benefit you and the buyer more.
And we know that any house that goes on the open market right now is going to draw a buyer's eye from any corner of any street in the country right now.
The buyers are clamoring for opportunities.
So any company that promises a seller a quick sale is probably also gipping that seller of the opportunity to get the best price for their house.
So in fairness to the seller and to the buyers,
finally says, hey, if you are working with a realtor, these houses need to be publicly marketed, or you have to at least have that conversation and sign off on the fact that you're okay with not getting the best opportunity or the best representation that you could possibly get.
I
think this transparency, it's the first in the country.
I'm sure that the big brokerages across the country are probably going to look to sue us over it because we're impeding on their business model.
But I think in Wisconsin we've proven that we are the laboratory of democracy and to be the first in the country on something else.
It's been a long time coming and I think it's in the best interest of everybody who's looking to buy or sell a home to be as open and transparent with everybody as possible.
Because there's nothing more frustrating than having empty buildings, empty houses that
are
owned for what purpose, not
to
house people.
Right, yeah, and I think just knowing how tight the market is all around it's just it's better for everybody to know where they stand what opportunities exist if they're gonna be able to you know be a part of this process or not because The fact is if this market isn't as open and transparent as it can be people are just going to quit even trying to buy a house.
It's hard enough already It's almost impossible already To buy a home and to get into that process
without knowing that there is an actual opportunity for you.
So if we want to end up with an entire world of 10% home ownership like we had in the 60s and 70s, that's not a good thing for the long-term health of the market.
So we had to step in and say, hey, we've got to make sure everybody sees as much as the humanly possibly can.
Well, as always, I appreciate you looking out for your constituents, Representative Scott Krug of the 72nd District.
I'm Melissa Kay.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today, Scott.
Anytime.
We'll talk to you again soon.
All right.
And thank you to listeners joining us for news in our community on Perspective 1320 AM, 975 FM WFHR.
