Welcome, everybody, to Midday Magazine for this Friday, January 3, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Maylough here in Part 2 today.
We're going to talk with Mr. Northern Lights, a replay of our interview from the other week.
Right now in studio with us, we have our good friend, Wisconsin State Representative,
Scott Krug with us.
Scott, good to see you.
Good to see you too.
How you been?
Always been.
Oh, don't good.
How you been?
You're good.
It's 2025 already.
Yeah.
2025.
How many times have you written 2024 already?
I know.
I'm never going to get out of that habit.
I just wait until February to even write the year on things I do.
So New Year's Eve night, you'll like this story.
So New Year's Eve, about 1030, I thought back to 1999, this 25 years ago, that I was standing
looking out my window wondering when the world's going to end, because Y2K was going to wipe
us all out, right?
Right, right.
That's 25 years ago already.
I'm glad that this is coming up more.
There was a recent movie that was called Y2K, that this has been brought up more, and a
lot of it has been brought up in just, but I actually think that whether, I hope people
are reading between the lines on that, because there was so much hype and so much hoopla
about that, and it really didn't involve a lot of fact.
Just a lot of hyperbole.
It was the first social media buzz that consumed everybody's life for nothing, right?
I don't know how much we've learned from that.
Right.
I think it's a good one to bring up for those examples as well, that it's so important
to do your homework whenever it comes to almost any topic hit in the media.
Everybody's my space was blowing up over.
Oh, that was good.
I'm reminding a little bit with you.
I wanted to hear how you had a great Christmas video out, and I encourage people to check
out even after the holidays here.
I'd like to touch on that message and the meaning behind it if you don't mind.
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that when we do our Christmas messages every
year, it can kind of get a little cliche, like, you know, state rap staying around the
Capitol Christmas tree, blah, blah, blah type of thing.
But you know, we also wanted to try to dial it down a little bit, because everybody's
had such a tough time financially the last few years with everything is going on, whether
it's politically from inflation, whatever, you know, whatever the case may be, and just
helping people remind themselves what the reason for the season really is, right?
It's family, it's getting together, it's understanding each other, it's having arguments
and moving past them and remembering the people who you can't be with during the holiday
season, right?
It's just, so I think that I really, besides that Christmas message, I really took that
on as just a personal thing over the holidays is just to try to reconnect with people, try
to understand who we are, you know, and just because we lost so many relationships during
COVID, yeah, you know, some people just kind of dropped out and dropped away and just, you
know, never came back, and you pushed them out of your lives because they're not there
every day.
They're not present because we're so busy all the time.
You don't think about them anymore and just trying to go back and remembering why, yeah,
why we had those relationships and who those people are.
Something else that stood out to me about it, and maybe this is in part because of your
profession and everything, but it also came up with family over the past holidays and
everything is, whether it was COVID or some people not talking to family members or friends
for political reasons, and getting away from that a little bit, you know, understanding
that politics are important, it's important to keep up the date on things, but it's
not life or death.
It's not something that I feel like should change the course of your friendships or your
relationships with your friends or family or anything like that, just personally saying
that.
I know.
You see that all over the place people would say, well, if you don't agree with, you don't
come to dinner.
Yeah.
I'm not going to Thanksgiving because I can't agree with my uncle Larry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just come on.
Move on.
It's not reality.
And I tell people it's all the time.
This is one of the, you know, political guys that I always looked up to, you know, former
governor Wisconsin, former UWSB chancellor, and he's always said that Madison is 66 square
miles surrounded by reality.
Yeah.
I tell people it all the time.
Like, people come down to the Capitol and say, hey, I want to go here.
I want to go there.
How do I get there?
Like, dude, I don't know.
Like I come down east to watch.
I mean, I've here to work.
I go home because that's where I do my shopping.
That's where I hang out.
That's where I meet my friends.
You know, I don't, you know, you got to get your head out of this bubble that, you know,
politics is everything.
And you're going to hear a lot of it between now and the end of January, Congress starting
today with the speaker's election and that type of stuff.
Us, we get sworn in on Monday, you know, President Trump getting inaugurated January 20th.
They're going to hear all kinds of politics again, like we did from September, October
and end of November.
It's a blip.
It's not reality.
It's part of life, but it's not all your life.
And part of the danger of this to me is two of, of the people as dangerous as it might
be to make this your life and make it your number one thing or whatever in your person.
And it's not your job.
It is just as dangerous to people that they get just enchanted, that they get turned
off from politics.
And then it's too much.
They're getting bombarded and everything and they're like, all right, I'm done.
I need a break.
Well, that, that, that break can oftentimes be like that break right out of high school.
You're going to take that year off and go to Europe and travel and then you never go
back to school.
That's the danger in this of people getting that turned away from politics to where they
just, they tune out.
Yeah.
When you're knocking on doors during a campaign season, like the, the very first door knock
on and usually the very last door knock on like the first door people like, oh God, here
we go.
Then for a while, they get used to people coming around and talking to them and you can
have conversations with people for a few months.
But by the time you get to the day before the election, and you're not going to somebody's
door and Adam's friendship, and they're looking out the door like, oh my God, I have to
answer this again.
You know, it's nice to have this break that we've had, right?
I mean, we're gearing up again.
We've been a pretty, been pretty big and important Supreme Court election coming up in
April.
But this, this law is nice for people to actually understand that we have reality, we have
other things to do.
We have other things to talk about.
I ran into a lady at Walmart of, you know, Christmas season shopping type of thing, you
know, 10,000 people at Walmart every second of every day trying to fight through it.
And she had asked me if I could help her reach something.
Like, that's great.
Yeah.
I could reach for it.
And she recognized who I was.
And then she went on to describe why she was reaching for this product versus the other
product.
And it's because of somebody's political affiliation with the other product.
I'm like, hmm.
I'm like, I've been in politics almost my own, most of my adult life, I've never really
gone to that level.
Yeah.
Or hear people all the time say, why am I going to watch that guy's movie because of his
political beliefs?
Right.
Right.
Like, I like Harrison Ford.
Right.
Cool actor, right?
I didn't ask him what he thought politically.
And I'm like, I, you know, Kevin Costner on Yellowstone, one of the best characters that you
could probably emulate politically, just no nonsense.
I'm just going to do what I want kind of guy politically.
Kevin Costner and I will never agree on anything.
Does that mean I'm not going to watch the shows anymore?
Right.
So I mean, there's, there's levels whether you're totally engaged or you're totally not engaged.
Just try to remember it's not a zero or 100% up, you know, proposition here that you
can have some middle ground and live your life outside of those decisions sometimes.
We mentioned getting back into the swing of things that are, everybody is going to be
coming up here and everything.
What does that entail?
What are, what are some of the early plans for, for here in Wisconsin?
Yeah.
I'm in inauguration and I took on a new role this session as the Assistant Majority Leader.
So that means the little less committee work, a little bit more work behind the scenes,
functionality.
Like if you relate the Assistant Majority Leader to what Congress does, maybe you know or
not, but Congress has somebody called the whip, right?
And the majority part of your other whip, you're the guy that makes sure the votes are there
for the things that need to get done.
You're the one that's trying to help figure out how to get the vote there.
If it's not quite there.
So I took the role on as Assistant Majority Leader this session in a tight majority because
of the changes in maps, where we come back 53 to 45.
My job is to figure out how to get us to 50 on every vote.
That's what I'm going to do, the entire session.
That's what I did.
That's what I've done every session without even knowing it was going to say this is something
you've done before.
Yeah.
I mean, this is, this is my lane.
This is what I operate in.
So I'm no longer a chair of a committee per se, but I'm more behind the scenes trying
to make sure that we can actually get things accomplished to come back home and talk about.
Like, hey, we got this done because of this.
I'm still on campaigns and elections.
I'm the vice chair now, so it'll be a little different role, but I'm still involved
in that committee because those issues are still every day on my mind constantly, right?
Because I'm always looking at trying to figure out what is conjecture and what is reality.
How much is perception, how much is real problem?
And once you get elections into your system, it never goes away for some reason.
Yeah.
And I'm an election junkie.
I love data.
I love information.
And I'm staying on that committee and we're gearing that up already next week after inauguration
will be in, will be in committee next Wednesday already in campaigns, the elections to have
our constitutional amendment hearing on photo ID.
This is the second session.
So once we pass this through committee and often on the floor early January, let it be
on your ballot in April for the citizens of Wisconsin to decide if we want to enshrine
photo ID into our constitution.
And I think the reason that's important is because you see so much politicizing of the
courts in recent years, Republican Democrat, they both do it, so no blame.
But for a court to look at something one session and then look at it again in the next session,
say it was constitutional two years ago now, it's not for so many other different things.
We wanted to make sure we put photo ID as a constitutional issue because you can't just
change the constitution.
It specifically says in the constitution, you'd have an ID to vote, it's going to be really
hard for a court to interpret that you don't need an ID to vote.
Right.
And I think 90% of the people are there in photo IDs.
So as we're going to start with this session, it's just really codifying, solidify these
things that are conjecture and perception, make it a reality that is just an easier thing
to figure out the concrete answer to.
I feel like in this political climate as well as being from Chicago, I need to note that
I want only Americans to vote.
I'm not good with, you know, I got to mention it because of the Chicago tie after.
But all seriousness, I think that it's an important bill, is it along with that, is it something
and I'm not saying it's necessarily difficult to get an ID, but for those that it is, is
there something in there as well to try to give information or anything like that?
And hey, this is how you get an ID.
This is how you're able to vote.
Yeah, when we created our photo ID law, one of my first sessions in 2013, when we created
that law, we put in every caveat that you could possibly think of for outreach and how
to get an ID, for access to be able to afford an ID, it's free.
If you don't have one and you need one to vote, all you need to do is go to the DMV and
tell them you need an ID to vote and you don't even have to pay for it.
Whereas if I went into the DMV tomorrow and said I need to replace my driver's license
because I have to go drive my car, I've got to pay $33.
But if I was smart enough, it said I lost it, I need to go and get one second vote.
It's free.
And then it goes both ways, right?
It's interesting.
Yeah, but when it comes to being the assistant majority leader on this, what do they mean
to you to be tasked with this?
Yeah, I mean, to be in the leadership meetings and be in the leadership room when we're
making decisions, it's been an entirely different animal than I've faced for 14 years, right?
Where people think when we go to Madison that some dark back room has decided everything
before we go anywhere.
My first leadership meeting was a great example of how not true that is, right?
So Robin Voss, the current speaker, likely to be elected speaker again next week.
When we sit in the leadership room, his first thing is not pounding his fist on the table,
saying this is what we're going to do.
First thing Robin Voss says is speaker is okay, what are we going to do first?
And kind of looked around the table and everybody's kind of quiet and like, oh, how about
this?
How about that?
So yeah, let's do that.
Let's do this and let's do that.
Like, oh, this is easy, right?
I mean, so to have those ideas and be able to bring them to the leadership discussion and
say, hey, we shouldn't let Milwaukee count ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning anymore.
Let's figure that out, right?
We've tried a couple of sessions and we're all, let's get it done.
And for the rest of the leadership team to say, yeah, okay, sounds like a great idea.
Perfect.
I mean, that's exactly what I'm in leadership for is bring those ideas to the table that
maybe haven't gotten that far before.
And this is new to you with speaker Voss.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm from speaker Voss, but just this in general.
Yeah.
I mean, anytime I've ever needed to talk with Robin or have discussions about ideas, you
know, he's open to having conversations, but now that I'm part of the decision-making
team, it's an equal conversation, not a, I'm subordinate, quote unquote, I'm not really
because I don't work for him, but when you've got to get a bill across the floor, you've
got to get the majority leader in the speaker to do it.
And now that you're to number three in the assembly as the system majority leader makes
a heck of a lot easier for your bills to get done too.
Let's help.
That's a lot helpful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry, Scott.
No, we're speaking with Representative Scott Krueb right now.
And you serve on the Wisconsin Transportation Project Commission.
What does that mean to you and what is some of the work that you're doing with that?
Yeah.
That's a great story, too, is way back in 2013 again, the first budget, I actually knew
what I was doing.
The first budget was 2011.
And you sit down and you're required for the first two years ago, because you don't
know anything, right?
Right, right, right.
The first budget that I actually knew what I was doing, I proposed the Highway 54 bypass
project from Port Edwards back to the backside of Walmart.
Got it through the assembly.
Got it through the Senate.
Got it through the Joint Finance Committee.
Got it into the budget.
Got it onto Governor Walker's desk who vetoed it.
Okay.
So I went to the speaker at the time, Jeff Fitzgerald, and I said, you know, I saw this
veto come through.
I don't understand exactly why.
I see there's this committee out there called the Transportation Projects Commission.
Put me on the committee.
Let me learn a little bit more about transportation.
So from 2013 till 2019, the TPC, they call it, it's supposed to mean annually to decide
how to enumerate projects for the state budgets.
We have discussions with DOT, stakeholders, all that type of stuff.
So on 13 to 19, Governor Walker never convened the committee, because the governor is the chair
of the committee.
So Governor Walker had no interest in this committee being part of the discussion.
To Tony Evers credit in 2019, he revived the TPC yearly meeting.
So from 2019 out to 2024, we just met in December.
Our job is to take information from the DOT and from stakeholders, enumerate or create
the necessity for projects across the state.
So we just enumerated the expansion of I-39, 90, 94 between Madison, Wisconsin, Dells
and December, massive project for the Central Wisconsin area.
To get rid of that bottleneck of people trying to get up into Wisconsin Dells and through
the Wisconsin Dells in the summer, it is a massive, multi-hundred million dollar project
that the 15 of us at the TPC had to say, yeah, let's go ahead and do it.
The only way the TPC is ever able to get that done is if the Department of Transportation
and their report to us tells us we actually have the money that we can pay for it.
Otherwise, legally, we can't even enumerate a project.
Interesting.
When people worry about the cost of projects coming through, it's already built into our
budget.
We have a two billion dollar transportation budget annually.
Now we're still going to be able to work on surface roads, assuming we still be able to
get money back to locals to repair their roads.
But over the course of a hundred years, that's what our typical plant TPC is, is to make
sure that every state highway over the course of a hundred years has some attention.
That's a massive undertaking, trying to understand how many miles of roads we have in Wisconsin,
and most other states don't.
We have a road that goes everywhere in Wisconsin.
Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah.
You wouldn't believe it, even if I tried to describe it.
And that is our goal is to make sure that we give them all as much equal attention as
we possibly can.
We are, you know, especially in recent, I'd say the recent decade or two, this has been
a conversation infrastructure.
Unfortunately, it's not apparently sexy enough to get big headlines or anything like
that, but whether it's the good that has been done on it or the work that needs to be
done on it.
I don't talk nearly enough on it.
It's good to hear not only the behind the scenes a little bit of your personal journey
with this and this committee, but what others probably would have.
And as you and I always like to touch on, we're looking for more good people to get into
politics.
And for those out there that are curious of how these things work, I think it's even
that much more interesting.
Not only hopefully on an empathy level of understanding how hard our good working politicians do work
on these things, but the idea of, this is one of the things that I back with you all
the time.
I agree politically or not, I appreciate some of your work ethic.
I appreciate the, oh, this didn't get through the first time.
This is important.
I'm going to do what I need to do to learn more about this, to get this done.
That's right.
That is something we need more of, not just in politics, but in society of, oh, I didn't
get this done.
The first try.
Well, I'm moving on.
Yeah.
I'm moving on, or I could just keep throwing it at the wall and hoping that it sticks
at some point.
Or I could learn what the problem is and how to figure out how to solve it.
I mean, that's, that's the job and I'm, I'm super excited about Monday, right?
Getting going again.
The first couple of weeks of session is just, it's almost magical, right?
Because everything in that building is about relationships.
Whether I knew a thing or anything about the transportation projects, submission or
these projects or those areas of those projects, the fact doesn't matter as much as having
that seat at the table with the director of the, with the director of DOT, sitting with
the governor, sitting with those colleagues on that committee, having that relationship,
and then understanding each other.
So when the time comes, but I do really need something, an A street, I really need A
street done.
And we've, we've been trying to push DOT to move that project forever.
It's finally on the docket for 2026, right?
The main portion of, of A street.
That's a huge story.
Should have been done six years ago.
Yeah.
And we couldn't get there, right?
We're finally getting there because we have those relationships built, not because I was
able to take numbers or data or, you know, quantifiable things to anybody, just going to
the department to say, hey, I worked with you on this.
Can you work with me on this?
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
We may have missed that.
Yeah.
We'll go back and we'll take care of it.
So it's not even, it's not even the learning about it.
It is, it's crucial to learn about it, but it's even more crucial to have understanding who
people are, what their motivations are.
Now, that's what a politician is, is knowing who the people are and how to persuade them
to do the things they need to get done.
Yeah.
Before we wrap up, I did also want to touch on this because it's, I would say this is
probably the oldest topic you and I have talked about is water quality.
Yeah.
And the DNR has a grant to support water quality out right now we want to let everybody
know about it.
Yeah.
I mean, it's amazing just to see how far we've come on this issue in 12 years, you know,
from the first time the, the Saratoga dairy popped up in my district and my, my first
re-election to now to see all the leaps and strides we've made without really getting
legislation done, but putting funding into the DNR to put out grants to local communities
to now having been on the Lakes Association down in Rome for the last three years and
getting a new farmer led water quality groups started again, right?
I mean, so there, there's all kinds of money, there's all kinds of attention, there's
all kinds of effort going into watershed grants, making sure the community is like Wood
County and, and, and, and, and, and Portish County and Habs County, Juno County can collaborate
together to take a part of these initiatives and their watersheds, not just because they're
a local unit of government, but because they share a certain body of water or a certain
watershed.
Those are the things they take a lot of pride in, especially, you know, we created the
the farmer law, the farmer watershed act in, in 2013 to make sure that those grants
could become available and then putting money into the budget every year to make sure
they can come in reality.
So I mean, it's just, it is, it's night and day from where we were 12 years ago.
It's really good to see, there is work to be done, but it's important to appreciate
and be thankful for the progress we've made on this as well.
I can do both.
And you can find out more about that, what Scott's telling you about there, the DNR dot
Wisconsin dot gov, DNR dot Wisconsin dot gov, Scott as we're wrapping up here, I imagine
that you feel pretty confident about the packers going into this weekend.
No, no, no, I would have thought for sure, but how about about the playoffs?
How about that?
Yeah.
No, this weekend, I guess, is all right.
I don't think they're going to have much problem.
Kayla Williams doesn't seem to know how to play football.
So he's getting there.
I think we'll be fine.
He's getting the game.
We're just so fast for the guy yet.
So it's all right.
We'll be good this weekend.
But after last weekend, it just playoffs look iffy, right?
Which I or Alexander just quitting on the team, basically, yeah, just saying, I don't
want to surgery.
I don't want to do anything.
I don't want to get it fixed and just dropping off the team, it's not, it's not as
serious as this.
I'm using it loosely, but it's like theft.
It really is.
It reminds me a lot of Ben Sheets back in the playoffs for the Brewers, where you couldn't
pitch because they got to hang now.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Biggest game of the franchise history and you just, you don't have the chops to get
in into the game.
So that's where we're at with the packers secondary.
The nice thing, you got as you got the youngest team in the NFL, you got a good
nucleus.
You know, if the receivers could catch a ball, it'd be great.
It might be dangerous.
It might be dangerous.
Always good to talk with you.
Scott, if people have follow-up questions, one of the more, how can they reach you?
Yeah, cell phone is always on.
It's 715-323-3293, or we've got three folks in the office now as a system majority
leader.
So there's no reason that you should not be able to get us hold some of my capital office
either.
608-237-9172.
So either one of those is fine.
Man, Facebook, just shoot me a text, whatever it is, I'm always around.
We appreciate you, Scott.
We'll talk more next month.
Sounds good, man.
Take care.
You too.
And we'll have more Midday Magazine coming up for you, everybody.
And a big thank you to Pam Hilke, the scheduler in the heart of this station, the great
work she does week in and week out here at 97-5 FM 1320 AM, WFHR, locally grown radio.
