Welcome, everybody, to Midday magazine for this Friday, March 7th, 2025.
Have your host, James J. mail off here in part two.
Today, we're going to talk to Todd from a four-year fishing guide services.
We're going to talk a little about wall ideas and fishing guide services with him.
Looking forward to it.
Right now, speaking with Wisconsin State Representative Scott Krug, Scott, how are you?
I'm good. How are you today?
Doing good, man.
It sounds a little bit like your, your mobile, you're, you're out, bopping around.
Yeah, up in Ross Child today touring the Dom-Tar mill up here.
It's just kind of working on some paper makers set for the state budget,
but it's just getting around and seeing what people do.
You know, perfectly done, Scott.
You set me up because a couple of things we want to talk about today is the budget process
and certainly listening sessions that you have been involved with, along with some of your colleagues.
Can you tell us a little bit about those listening sessions and what you have learned from them?
Yeah, so we've done, well, let's see, I've got four listening sessions in the last couple of weeks here,
so we did Wisconsin Rapids, Rome, Adams, and the CEDA.
And kind of a common thing that we've heard from each of those so far has been the angst about the stuff that's going on with Doz and, you know, what, what they're all doing.
And DC more so what then what's going on in Wisconsin.
So we're trying to help people understand what could be going on in DC versus what we're actually doing in Wisconsin,
especially when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid and when it comes to funding education.
All those things that you hear in DC are kind of eating up all the action in the room.
So we just kind of have been distinguishing the people what it is we actually do here versus what they're trying to do out there.
Scott, could I ask you something real quick?
It will come right back to the listening sessions, but I can't help myself.
This is, I cannot stress this enough. This is not a R or D thing or anything like that, but with what, with everything you just said,
how much more difficult does that make you and your colleagues job, Senator Teston, the other representatives we have in the state?
When you, just quite bluntly, don't know if, well, what is said today in three, four days, if that's still going to be the case,
is that gone and in the ether?
Yeah, no, it makes it extremely difficult to put together a state budget, knowing how much money we do bring in from the federal government.
But one of the things that's been a common theme so far this last week and this last month as Doge and Elon and all those efforts are going on,
we have our own Badger Care system in the state of Wisconsin, and we have our own senior care system here in the state of Wisconsin.
We know out of our $4 billion projected surplus that's going to cost us about $1.6 billion to continue every aspect of all those programs in the state of Wisconsin exactly as they are.
So we've already made a commitment saying, hey, we're going to make that the first draw off the surplus.
We're going to make sure that all these programs are covered, whatever you have right now is not at risk.
So that's one of the things we've been trying to help people understand is that if you hear something might be happening in Washington,
it's a heck of a lot different than what I can tell you is going to be happening in Wisconsin.
But at the same time, yeah, it does make it really hard to put together a finalized document between now and June not knowing what the future of federal funding for anything might be at this point.
So I've got friends that vote on both sides of the aisle and all of them around the same page with that and kind of like the empathy for you and your colleagues in this situation along with certainly the American people.
And just putting the microscope zooming in a little bit on just Wisconsin.
What were some of the things that you're hearing about Wisconsin issues or Wisconsin things that they're happy about?
Yeah, I think, like I said, I think the biggest concern right now is healthcare and what may be in the news about DC is how it's going to affect the bottom line for average citizens in central Wisconsin.
On the flip side, once you get past all that stuff, when we start talking individual things we've been hearing at listening sessions, obviously it's making sure that we're still properly funding our education system,
making sure that roads are being fixed and maintained as much as we possibly can.
So there's not a lot of surprises once you get past the federal government stuff on priorities that we have to keep funding in the state of Wisconsin that we've done the last few state budgets.
But I think the bigger thing that we've been trying to relate to people is how difficult the situation is especially with our Supreme Court election coming up.
And the balance of power between how the executive branch and the legislative branch and the judicial branch should work and how they're not necessarily working perfectly right now.
So we've got some court cases that are really trying to pull away some legislative roles that have been traditional for a century and a half in Wisconsin that we're trying to navigate.
So that's why this session has been a lot slower.
It's not knowing what the court's authority or idea of what the role of the legislature should be in oversight of committees on spending priorities, you name it.
There's all kinds of court cases out there right now that are getting a little too political in the courtroom.
Well, and I have to say and not to get us on another side tangent here, but I do believe something needs to be done about attack ads.
People are getting more and more and more confused by these things to the point where they're getting disenchanted and they're not going to vote for anybody.
And you don't have to take me from that. That's not an opinion that surveying communities and that's looking at the WPR article that was out just recently that they put out about this.
The stats are showing more and more people are getting just just made with all this and they're just pulling out the worst thing that can happen getting an angry citizen is one thing getting a citizen that doesn't care.
That's that's dangerous and we're seeing more and more of that and everybody's pointing to attack ads.
Everybody's pointing to the same thing.
You look at the Marquette poll that just came out this week from Marquette University when they were pulling opinions on where things lie in the Supreme Court race.
They could not even get to an overall 51 49 type thing.
They couldn't. There was not enough information because there were so many people that did not have an opinion either way because exactly what you're talking about.
Like they've just been bombarded. They've gotten all this different information that the Marquette poll, the third best rated poll in the country could not even put a split on what's going on in the Supreme Court race because there is.
I think it was over 40% of the people surveyed in that poll had no opinion on either candidate or the opinions on both candidates were negative.
It's like, okay, so that's not good, right?
And I've talked about all the time. If I tried to go as negative as some of these races do, my wife would not let me run anymore.
Yes, I said that. She let me run.
And that has been the rule from day one.
Just talk about yourself. Talk about what you're going to do. Talk about what you believe in.
But at the same time, I do. I get people that mess with me on Facebook all the time similar to your point here is, how do you limit that?
And the challenge is, it is. It's a free speech situation, right?
I mean, how do I, and I equate that back to some other policy stuff or dealing with like when people tell me so and so about that land across the street from me, tell them they can't use it for that.
Like, well, they bought it. You know, you always balance the people's freedoms with what is the better society.
And it usually is not a great answer on what what what somebody should do about it.
I will say I do think this does have an answer. I don't know what it is. I'm not going to lie to the audience. I don't know what it is.
But I will say I think that this does have an answer and the way we solve it is together.
And it's bipartisan and it's together as a society, not just representatives and politicians, but you know, everyday citizens coming together on this one and coming up with a unified way of doing this going forward.
I don't know what it is and I don't know when that's going to happen, but I do believe it will.
Yeah, and I think so. We've done a little bit of that in the last session and campaigns and elections is trying to bring back conversation at least before we even get to solutions.
You got to rebuild that trust in between each other at the Capitol and in the communities.
And I think we've done a good job of that in that committee and especially here locally with listening sessions and being available and just being here more than being down at the Capitol. It helps a lot.
Let's talk budget and budget process. Scott, can you, can you tell us about that?
Yeah, so, you know, the whole budget process is a, you know, they call it like our Super Bowl, right? 75% of what the state legislature does comes from the state budget.
So February is when it really kicks off the governor gave his budget address to the legislature, then delivered his 2000 page document of all the things that are in there.
And similar to what we did under Governor Walker and Governor Evers is we have a policy of the Joint Finance Committee that we don't do policy in the budget as much as humanly possible. I'm not saying there's never.
So what we do then is the Joint Finance Committee, a committee made up of state reps and senators travels the states that will be happening in April, traveling the four corners of the state in between to try to do five to six hearings everywhere.
So people can voice their opinions on what they've heard from the governor's budget as opposed to, you know, what joint finance can tell them can stay because frankly, we just can't afford everything of the governor proposed anyways.
So we've got to figure out a way to balance all those things and that's what the Joint Finance Committee process does. They call it the road show.
Go all across state of Wisconsin, gather all the input, bring it back. Then they have the agencies coming and brief them on agency need versus agency wants.
Put together a document that is probably right now from 2000 pages of state budget, usually ends up be about six to 700 pages.
That document comes in front of the legislature, usually in June, where usually, you know, like to be done by July 1st because that's when the state's fiscal year begins.
The challenges, like I mentioned, is last budget, the governor had a small little veto that's caused quite a hiccup in some court cases that he basically crossed out a hyphen and some numbers to create a 400 year veto for education spending.
Now, the legislature's got to go back and really look at how we're putting together the document to say, hey, we're trying to avoid these crazy type vetoes. How do we do that without giving the governor the ability to change the full intent of the state budget for the rest of human history?
So there's that that mistrust created by that veto in the court case surrounding that on what the power of the governor is versus what the role of the legislature is could throw the state budget process off entirely to the point where we may not have a budget done by July 1st.
So what happens then is like in DC, if we didn't have a budget or a continuing resolution, then government shuts down. People hear about that all the time while they're trying to avoid a government shutdown by doing this and doing that doesn't happen in Wisconsin.
If we don't pass a new state budget any biennium, then when July 1st hits the previous budget reenacts itself. So we never have a government shutdown of state of Wisconsin funding for roads, funding for prisons, funding for schools and all those things don't stop.
They just stayed the same level that they were last approved. And I think honestly, that's a decent answer for education.
It was the highest increase we've had in K-12 spending in any state budget, so that'll repeat itself.
I think until there's some agreement between the legislature and the governor on the authority of the governor to use that Frankenstein type veto, we're going to see a lot less bills a session wondering what the answer should be for that.
So it's really unfortunate that we're stuck in this little spot trying to figure out, hey, can we trust each other that you're not going to change the year 2024 to 2042?
It's a really technical small thing, but in the end when you look at the overall impact of that last veto that we saw last session for 400 years and understanding we've only been a state for about 175.
It only been a country for about 250, but we have a 400 year spending requirement in our current state budget.
It's creating a hiccup that we've got to figure out how to overcome.
And I think looking at this from both sides, you can see some positives negative certainly to it, but more maybe to the point, what are you seeing and what are you hearing from your colleagues and behind the scenes of the likelihood of something getting done before July, before the need to?
Yeah, we're still working exactly how we would to put together a budget on its own and its entirety, any like the seven others that I've been involved with.
So the process hasn't changed like today being up in Rothschild to tour downtown to figure out how their operations work to try to help paper makers and Wisconsin and touring, you know, cranberry farms and all these other things just so I can get a glimpse on everybody's operations and understand what their needs are.
So none of that is changing whatsoever. It's just by the time we get to June, are we are green on what the role of the legislature is versus what the power of the governor is?
And I think even legislative colleagues on both sides of the aisle are saying, hey, I don't know if we want to give one person in the executive branch all the power here, but I think we'll actually see some Democrats come back and say, hey, at some point we are going to be the legislative majority.
We'd rather not have to deal with it if you have the governorship and where the legislative majority is, Democrats, we don't want your governor to do this.
We're probably going to have to find a way to get our governor to back off of, you know, trying to take this much of a power role in the budget process.
So hopefully as we're all doing our listening sessions and all doing our tours and all understanding the impacts of all the things that we're doing that the powers that be in leadership in the assembly and the Senate can find a way with the governor to move beyond the distrust of actually putting the document on his desk ever again.
Imagine we'll be talking about this next month and going forward quite a bit and we'll be following along with it.
Recently, you've had some committee news and you recently were a part of passing an education reform to improve the standards and ensure students are getting the education they deserve.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, so another obscure thing is we've got this state superintendent race for, you know, DPI coming up here in April as well and the current DPI secretary basically lower the standards to a what she's called a consensus standard between stakeholders that in the end kind of upset people by lowering standards and accountability on student success.
To the point where even governor Evers said I don't think we should be doing this like we should always be holding everybody to the highest standards possible.
So we did a bill this last week or so that would take the standards that Jill underlie has set the current DPI secretary and roll them back to what Tony Evers himself set when he was DPI secretary and say hey, if the standard had worked for our now governor when he was had a DPI.
This is the standard we should probably stay with just to make sure that yes, students may not look as good as they possibly could on paper, but at least we know where deficiencies lie where schools fit where the truth and education results and accountability are.
And the craziest thing about it is I try not to be political when we do stuff like this, but taking the idea that we want to go back to the standards of Tony Evers created a DPI.
Getting that bill through the assembly and the senate and now the governor said while he's probably going to veto that bill.
Those are the standards you set.
Why are we talking a veto to go back to something that you had set.
So those are the things that you're frustrated sometimes it's like if the other party had written the bill and passed it through saying hey Tony Evers, we really loved your standards. Let's go back to him.
I'm guessing he probably wouldn't say I'm going to veto the bill.
So it's like can we just try to be honest here and just get some accountability back in the system like if you want more funding, we want more accountability.
Let's just agree that both are important.
And these head games that are played in politics when there's too much at stake.
There's too much on the line no matter what topic we're talking about.
You'll get your do or whatever if you will.
You don't have to do it this way.
There's going to be opportunity.
My mom used to tell me all the time you don't have to wait or just wait.
You'll have a chance to play this card or that card.
You don't have to look for them.
This isn't going back to kind of people pulling away from politics.
This is part of the reason of we all we all see read between the lines.
We all understand what's happening here.
You're just not voting for it because it's got an R or a D in front of it.
And both sides do this and people just get more and more disenchanted with politics because of it.
When it's the last thing we can afford to do right now, we need to be more engaged.
We need to be caring even more than we've ever done before about this stuff.
To the point where we're informed.
That's to the point where it controls every aspect of our lives.
I don't mean necessarily, but just to the point where you're informed and come April,
you're going out there and you're an informed voter.
That's the weirdest thing about it.
It's just trying to say, okay, you want this.
We want that.
Why can't we just both?
You want more money for education?
Great.
I just want better standards in place.
I'll give you money if you can just prove to me that it's working.
That I spend more money.
So that is frustrating, even for some of us at the Capitol, let alone people back home.
So I take the point 100%.
Next month, you and I will wrap up talking a little more about pictures and catchers and brewers.
I did want to make a note of some office visits you had.
In particular, some youth that showed up for a superior day at the Capitol.
That seemed like it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, it's been really busy this session with people coming to the Capitol
and hanging out and talking about different issues.
I literally just yesterday had a constituent from Wisconsin Rampage just stopped
and just happened to be there.
We sat down and we talked for like 45 minutes.
It wasn't about anything in particular.
It was just like, oh, I didn't think you'd be in.
I'm like, yeah, come on in.
Have a seat.
Well, when people from back home come to the Capitol and actually talk to me about stuff
because I described to her that 75% of the visits I get are a lobbyist on one side of an issue
and then the lobbyist on the other side of the issue.
One comes in and says, that guy is full of this.
The other guy comes in and says, that guy is full of that.
It's just nice to be able to have real people come down to the office,
give a call, send an email.
It's not a form letter driven by some organization or a lobbyist.
It's like just having a chance to really talk to actual people down there
is just, it was so refreshing.
So yeah, when those kids from superior come down or groups from other parts of the state
just pop in and just say, hey, we're here.
We just want to talk to you about this, whether it's realtor days coming up
April 17th, so looking forward to every single one of my colleagues come down to the Capitol
where I can do both jobs on the same day.
But that's the stuff that really makes you look forward to it.
Like you and I have touched on many times, these kids come down there
and they see how politics really can be, how human we can be to each other
and hopefully instill some of that in them.
Maybe light a spark in them and they want to run for something someday
and put back into their communities and do some really good work.
Like so many have in the past.
So it has so much.
Like Andrea, yesterday was a great example.
Andrea, when we sat down, we talked.
We probably don't agree on 90% of the issues that are facing the state of the country.
But we just talked because we're people and we just compared what our experiences are
and just got to know each other as human beings so that it's something ever does come up.
She knows that she can feel comfortable enough to give me a call
or she may message on Facebook and just say, hey, I got a problem.
Like that's what really matters.
Like all this top end argument type stuff, bills getting done, budgets getting done.
I hate saying it, but that's really secondary to deal with an individual constituents' issues
that they're dealing with with government and then be able to trust that they can call me
to help them fix it.
Whether it's Andrea or anybody else, Scott, if they do want to reach you, how can they do that?
Yeah.
Phone is almost always on it.
715-323-3293.
Most everybody else just sends a message on Messenger and Facebook.
I mean, the bulk of it is not even a text anymore.
It's just social media grabs.
So just go find me on social media and give me up on Facebook or X or Instagram or right?
I think if you have a Snapchat now, I'm not sure.
It's got to be something out there.
And I do want to encourage you to sign up for Scott's newsletter, his e-letter,
that go show up right in your email box for you and give you all the information
and so much of what we've talked about today.
Scott, safe travels out there.
Always appreciate the conversation.
We'll hang out again next month.
Sounds good, man, take care.
You too.
And we'll have more Midday Magazine coming up for you right here at 97-5 FM, 13-20 AM, WFHR.
