Welcome all to WFHR's Rapids Report for this June 6, 2025 show is proudly brought
to you by Crockett Septick. Big shout out to our new sponsors. We appreciate the
gang at Crockett Septick and we have appreciate our guests today joining us
right now as he has every month for so long now. Representative Scott Krug on
the phone with us. Scott how are you doing? I'm good you know I'm glad you
mentioned it's been a while now because I'm trying to think back to the very first
conversation that I had in the old studio with Carl and it had to be right
before election in 2010 so was it 15 years ago already? That's crazy that is
crazy I went I you know I first off I loved the conversations you and Carl had
they were fantastic I always you guys always had good conversations and and we
appreciate that you have always made the time to do these things know that we
weren't able to hang out last month but we both get busy and schedules and all
those things and honestly this is something I say to you and Senator test and
even Sheriff Becker when you're not able to be here that the day job comes
first and you know that's all right that's that we we encourage that of
course we understand that around here but with yeah I know but but I mean this
is the day job part two is all I mean you know honestly it sucks when I can't
make it work but you know this is this is the stuff that's more important than
sitting in the capital though so I want people to know that like if something
comes up and it just doesn't work that month it's not like it was meant to be
it was really a struggle to try to fit it in and make it work and sometimes it
just doesn't but this is probably more important than sitting in the capital
actually appreciate that and and Scott has proven that over and over again to the
point where we've done many interviews with you sitting in like a quick trick
parking lot just so you can get the call later that way yeah exactly I wanted
to take some time to focus on a couple of big things that you've been up to in
the last couple of months one of them being the Wisconsin Fast Forward Grant
can you tell the listeners about this I really find this encouraging yeah so
fast forward is something that we created way back in like the the 2013 2015
state budget and it's just something that we've been really working on right
sizing the whole time to just trying to get more more involvement of youth in
various different workforce opportunities throughout the state of Wisconsin
so it's a you know a skills development program at worker training group
program and there's a little bit of retention for current employees some
training for new people so it's just I think it's been our best answer to the
struggles we've got with our changing demographics of the state levels just
trying to make sure that a we're able to retain people b they were able to
you know develop skills for people who want to move up to a new job see that
we create internship opportunities across the state and it's been really highly
successful and pretty bipartisan every time we've gone back to the to the pool
here to try to beef it up a little bit more so we're we're spending some some
decent amount of money trying to make sure that the workforce is trained and ready
for 21st century jobs knowing that as fast as we go AI is passing this up left
and right and it kind kind of causes us some struggling grief when we focus so
much on computer science and engineering jobs and fast forward in our
university programs and all sudden AI starts cobbling those jobs up quicker
than we can respond it does get up so I mean that's that's the point of fast
forward is trying to keep up with technology and keep the workforce as
trained and ready as possible some of it also some of the intention does feel like
also doing a little bit of catching up I I don't think the Wisconsin is
behind on uncertain things or anything but there are some areas that we
haven't necessarily gotten on you know like a lot of the surrounding states
heaven everything so there's a little bit of that to it that I find encouraging
as well yeah I think the the main reason we actually created fast forward way
back in the day like I get to say as an old-timer now is you know we saw the
challenges and struggles with the paper industry coming a long ways away
right we knew the aging demographics were changing the workforce capabilities
and availability we saw all the closures happening at the end of the you know
0809 10 11 years anticipated some future ones that happened of course to us
here at Rapids and other areas and try to make sure that we understood that
those people who were in that workforce at that time whose skills were not
diminishing but their jobs were going away because of technology and different
opportunities and different innovations that we wanted to make sure that people
who are dependable and reliable have every skills that they would ever need to
achieve success in any workforce setting because any employer will tell you
this you know whether it's in the service industry or whether it's manufacturing
as long as they have employees who are dependable and reliable they can
teach them just about anything so we wanted to make sure that everybody in our
workforce who fits those two categories already could just get the skills
training they need wherever they might end up one other note on this that I
I thought was not worthy about it when we were kids I don't know about you but I
know the first time that I heard about like a coach Alvarez for UW and he had a
pipeline to in New York and he had a pipeline of course to Florida and to
here in Wisconsin how important that was recruiting wise and all of that I it
pops in mind when I was first reading about this years ago and even just
bringing it back up now about how important that is for states and Wisconsin
certainly one of those states that is important to keep our local talent and
I keep people in house in state here yeah I mean and that's exactly what
happened after the first iteration and fast forward as you started to see a
lot of chambers like here in Wisconsin Rapids where they went to the heavy
metal bus tours for the eighth graders to get out to manufacturers and start
introducing kids to different opportunities within their communities so when
government money is free for things like fast forward that these kids who
have an interest can match it up with availability of training and that pipeline
is built so I mean it it's turned into a very massive workforce development
project so we keep going back every state budget and looking at ways of making
it better or making or getting rid of different you know pathways that just you
know kind of physically because of technology or changes but you're never
going to see a shortage in nursing you're never going to see a shortage in
CNA training you're never going to see a shortage in trying to beef up
manufacturing so I mean those things that we know are going to be time proven
we try to invest a lot quicker in and at same time like I mentioned on the AI
side of it we're really trying to develop a training in a pathway that our
tech schools and our universities and fast forward can all work together to
capture this new growing change in our in our world.
He recently uh it was somewhat recently he had a public hearing on SB 156 this is the bill
requiring first responders to be trained to administer Epi delivery systems um this has a
a lot to it a lot of depth to it and everything I wanted to take a moment to talk about this got.
Yeah and this was something that again you know we go back in legislative history
and back in 2017 we had passed Dylan's Law which was kind of the first iteration of the
EpiPun stuff uh where we wanted to make sure that if somebody in the community was going to
administer an Epi to somebody in distress there would be no liability for them trying to be a
good Samaritan so that's kind of where this whole discussion started and now going through you
know different you know phases of this again we we come across cases and unfortunately the one
hearing Wisconsin Rapids was was another one of those where an individual was in distress
uh first responder on the scene didn't quite have exactly all the technology or gear that they
may need uh and it caused the catastrophic result in the end so this bill kind of evolved out of
the situation hearing Wisconsin Rapids area of a of a young man who had passed away at the scene
so the bill basically now as it's written as it sits right now says hey we want to make sure
every first responder whether it's EMT fire or police have the training and have the
you know actual product the EpiPens on them as they respond to scenes anywhere in the state of
Wisconsin it's a huge lift it's a huge financial burden uh until we can get
manufacturers and distributors of EpiPens to get on board to bring down the cost of these things
it's going to cost a lot of state money to get this done but center and test tonight thought
it was important enough because of what happened here locally to say hey there should never be a
situation where somebody's depending on emergency services to help save them and the first few
that arrive just don't have the capability to do so and it there is a lot of discussion about
the bill getting done because of the mandates for training uh trying to make sure the state
got money into into to make sure that all the equipment can be bought uh these these are not
cheap devices they're hard to store for a long period of time they have to be replaced every so
often it's super expensive but it's super worth it so it's gone through the state senate uh committee
already so now we're working on getting hearings in the state assembly this fall to try to get
this on the governor's desk before we adjourn next spring you know every once in a while uh as a
consumer you can get away with getting the generic version of something you know and it does a good
job it holds up and everything but even those things don't last nearly as long as usually the regular
products do uh there are some things you can't short change there are some things you got to spend
money on this to me just my opinion it's one of those things uh and I can even make an argument that
it'll cost the taxpayers less than the long run with the amount of lives we might have a possibility
of losing and even it was just one person I think that it's um it is a bill that needs to be pushed
through needs to happen uh I want to uh just piggyback on something you said in your e-letter too
and be uh since um respect and appreciation to the Mueller family and uh the the parents there
and what they did with this uh also yeah I mean I I I did meet with them we were here in Rome with
them again yesterday and it's just it's heartbreaking to watch them have to go through all of the media
to try to bring awareness to the issue that they're trying to get to the forefront you see this
the grief and the struggle and you hear it and their voices and you see it on their faces and
that's what you know that's what makes us want to get this thing done even quicker so uh Scott also
wanted to speak with you uh about you recently uh the Wisconsin legislature considered workforce
focused bills to improve program accountability uh re-employment outcomes unemployment insurance
and integrity uh what was discussed there how did that go well eight you know just again we're
kind of in this realm where the workforce is changing so darn quick and we're trying to figure
out ways to write size it where government isn't seen as the as the hammock in some situations but
we want to try to you know reiterate to people that there are plenty of opportunities in the community
to get out and go find other employment opportunities if they get you know downsized or or you know
I've done by a computer in their in their work fields so working on the unemployment stuff and
working on these other things just to try to make sure that everybody knows opportunities exist uh
that nobody's going to be left in the lurch but also that they uh that we that we are there
to have everybody's back to make sure they can get in the community to get re-employment opportunities
as quickly as possible it's all about rapid attachment and the quicker that we can get people
understand where the opportunities are there's no shortage of people that want those
opportunities it's just a lack of being able to know what resources are available that causes
gaps in the workforce it's not because people are lazy it's not because people don't want to work
because they just can't find where those resources are if we don't amplify that message a little
bit more and uh one other thing I wanted to touch on before we get into the a budget talk with
you um Scott last month you uh had that campaigns and elections meeting you of course are the
vice chair of the committee and on campaigns and elections uh you guys uh uh had some bills uh
that will you win over and tackled uh can you tell us a little bit about that
yeah uh campaign elections is still you know my my target area I know being in leadership now
I've got a little different role overarching on it but I still think you know not being the chair
of a committee lends me to be able to write bills that can actually go to that committee now so
I've taken on a a different role in that committee by just becoming a uh some of that brings the
bills to the committee and gets the argue and leadership that the Senate should take it up so I
think a lot of the things we're talking about still early on campaigns and elections are bipartisan
ways that we can just get rid of some of the perception problems we have on our election system
in the state of Wisconsin um you know the one we just heard this last week was I think probably the
most important one we've heard so far was the idea that uh right now when we go to change the
constitution I get so many phone calls from people saying hey this is not my ballot what does it
mean like you know we had to go back and actually you know put together a bill saying hey when we're
putting together these referendum questions I get that the lawyers have to write them because
that's just the legalese of the world today but there should also be a process when we put
together these uh memos or these ideas on a ballot that there should be some plain language definitions
on what it actually means to the voters so AB 207 is an example of what that does is it basically
says okay if you have a constitutional question on the ballot every polling place every publication
for you know the requirements to get it out to the public also have to have this disclosure
statement telling people in plain language exactly what it is and what we're doing uh it
it and you know we could argue all the details of it in committee as much as we want someone
wants to add a little more language to say it should be an eighth grade reading level or
or things like that but I think just having the legislators on a committee actually discussing
what the plain language summary should be to everybody in the public before they vote it's probably
a really good idea instead of all of us having to guess what those things mean on a ballot
making sure that there's not a double negative question on the ballot making sure that it's the
easiest to understand I mean three of the last four were relatively easy to understand but there
was one last August I believe it was it was just so confusing I didn't even understand it and I
and I you know after sitting on the committee you know what it's supposed to be but
when it gets written in legalese nobody could figure out what the hell it is I mean we're just
trying to write size and comment send some of these things that's what AB 207 will do and I think that
one that should get it's got really good bipartisan support in in our community is it just
doesn't seem to have it at the committee level right now and I I told the bill out there so when you
can get a bill not supported by the Republican legislature and it's also supported by the ACLU
I think you might be onto something so I think we can get home on this one
so Scott one of the things that I couldn't agree with you more about this one
one of the things about it that that I think stands out so when you say I can't imagine
why there'd be any pushback to this is the pushback not so much against the bill just more being more
wording about it and some of that it's not so much that they just want to kill this idea or
anything it's more so just want to make sure that it's right yeah I think so we had a lot of
conversations yesterday between Lee Snodgrass the ranking Democrat and I were talking through
it all day yesterday we'll talk through it again today that's what the N.I. have done the last
three years is it's not that she hates the idea it's just the the way that we're going about it
may be different in her opinion than our opinion but you know we've got the you know we kind of
go through and listen to all these groups that come in sometimes too so the the clerk's obviously
being the biggest one they're the ones that answer this question a thousand times more than I do
every time when somebody comes to the polling place that says I don't know what this means can you
tell me so I think when when you look at a bill and we have as much conversations as we do about
every single bill you know I always I always tell people is like you can't let perfect in the way
you know it can't let perfect in the way of the good you know yeah we're not going to get to
an exact perfect answer because there just never is one like I said if we can get the you know
disability rights groups their legal and voters are okay with it the all in the local voting
groups are all good with it and I think it's just trying to get the governor to say he's okay with
it is about the only challenges left now I know that I'd love to have everybody in the committee
vote for it but if I have a couple that don't vote for any committee that's not me that hear
or there I think the votes are there to pass it's just a matter getting the governor to be
comfortable with it at this point we're speaking with the representative Scott Kruegen
Scott it is budget season along with many other things let's get into that a little bit how is that
going I was going pretty good and I'd say for the last three or four weeks I mean we had a little
bit of a slow start to the process trying to make sure we had some negotiated agreements before
we go into it you know me you may remember last budget we get the documents with legislature
put on the governor's desk and he did put together that 400 year veto they kind of caught the
legislature off guard so it created some issues with trust and just giving the document over without
negotiating at a time so we did spend about the last I'd say last three or four weeks pretty solid
trying to negotiate an idea with the governor that says hey we we understand we've got some
surplus funds here we don't have as much as we thought because of inflation and other things we
still got a billion dollars that we want to figure out how to get back into our community as
best we can governor can we negotiate with you to say you know we want to get our tax cuts done
but we also understand you've got some spending priorities let's figure out how to get that done
so we did sit down the last few weeks and negotiated out saying hey the tax cut at 500
million dollars would be great and if we could spend an equivalent 500 million dollars in your
priorities we can make that work second step was figure out what those priorities were figure out
the tax plan is kind of figured those out and late this week things kind of fell apart because
the spending plan got a little priceier than it was negotiated to be so we were on the verge for
about a 500 million dollar tax cuts but the spend idea that came back from the governor was about
a billion and a half instead of 500 million so we're we're only a billion apart hey that's a
courage but we got a whole month to figure it out so I think it was just decided that hey we
we finally at least have conversations we haven't had that years between legislative leaders
and the governor so that was a really big plus to negotiating our finance process will kind of
take over from here just the same process we've gone through the last few budgets for the finance
committee Republicans Democrats get together on each individual area negotiate them vote them out
send it to the governor and he's going to have to do what he does with it again at this point which
it wasn't the worst situation we've ever had the governor signed the last three budgets we sent to him
to likely find this one it's just we wanted to see if we can get some negotiated settlement and
some guarantees from the vetoes before we sent it over so I mean in the end we'll have a budget
in the end it'll probably be on time in the end it'll fund K through 12 it'll fund roads it'll
fund the you know the important stuff that both sides find that are absolutely critical to get
money back into our communities I don't know that there'll be a tax cut though I mean that's
the one thing that I don't know that he signs and then I don't know again where we're going to land
on extra spending because we don't have a lot of ongoing revenue we just have a lot of one-time
money so I think in the end it's good that we'll have a budget because if we don't do a budget
that's the bad sign to our communities that we can't figure out how to do our DM jobs right
so we're going to get this document done we get on his desk he does what he does and he can
face the voters afterwards if he comes up with another 400-year veto or something like that
that's going to be on him to explain so we you know I don't want to tell people it's going to be
exactly how the legislature wants it but it should never be just the way one side wants it
so it's a thing at least it's at least it's a created document at this point and before we wrap
up I did want to mention that you got a spring survey that is out there we would encourage people
to sign up and fill that out yeah I think the easiest way to go about the spring survey if you
haven't got one in the mail where you are still going door-to-door in several communities hanging
them out yet too if you don't see one or don't get one you can always feel free to email my office
at www.rep.cruge.org at ledges.wisconsin.gov it's the easiest way to just let staff know
you'd like the link to fill it out we get the electronic results you can save a stamp
but it's absolutely critical that I get folks to fill these out as much as possible because I think
right now we've got I think there were 1800 returns on this so far out of the probably 20,000
some that go out into the community I mean I'd love to see a rate of return at least you know 20%
of my district and set a 10% just so I know exactly what people's priorities are in budgets and
you know other policies that come up whether it's marijuana or childcare or abortion or roads or
all this stuff is you know kind of put into these 10 questions on this survey I should take you
maybe two minutes to complete and it's a it is one more way for you to have your voice heard
and to help Scott do his job really to be blunt about it you know it's it's it's I don't think
it's asking a lot I don't know I don't know what you want and that's my job as a rep
representative is to represent what you want and if nobody tells me what you want I'm also my
own constituent I could tell myself what I wanted but I'd rather eat here whatever
that I want for Scott we did our job we get to wrap up talking a little brewers they're
nine and one in their last ten putting Chad Patrick on the mound today I know it is
record in the greatest but I like the way he's been pitching so far this season I think the
pitching staff is a really starting to come around man I tell you I was super excited about the
pitching staff coming around and tell what he made his last appearance and triple A and got
nailed in the arm by a comebacker as that were finally on the path to get him back here but I
still think you know as good as the brewers are the cups that just as great over that 10 game
stress so they didn't gain much ground but they're a lot easier to watch now than they were in
April and May that's for sure it's it's been fun to see some of these guys I really I'm a big
South relic fan I've loved his defense for you know it's since he's been in the league but did
that bad is starting to come around that's nice to see yeah right I mean you start getting some
of these guys who finally have some repetition pictures got used to you know facing them and now
these guys have to do their their sophomore approach right where everybody knows everybody and they
got to face these guys again they have to adjust and if you can't adjust like a Kessin hero
was a great example and a guy who just couldn't adjust after the first wave right yeah and now you
guys all these younger guys who are finally figuring out the end of the Jake Bowers and the
and the South relics and all these other guys who can make these adjustments and stay
stay active in the big leagues and it doesn't hurt that yelling figured out how to hit a home run
again yeah it doesn't hurt of course everybody we hope you keep in mind that many years from now
when Scott retires from politics he'll start up his sports show with me being a lookout for
that that'll be fun I'm telling you sport now that we're podcast based here like I think in
sports show I'm thinking I'm thinking immense of sports show like just you know just a man show
I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm for all of it I will I will co-host any one of those with
your bad that sounds great oh yeah I got tons of ideas we can keep the podcasters busy all day
absolutely appreciate you Scott if people have follow questions they'd like to get in touch with
you how can they do that yeah phones always on literally at this point always seven one five
three two three three two nine three great conversation thanks so much for the time you'd be safe
out there we'll talk again next month David Man ticker you too and a big thank you to of course
all of you for joining us our great friends at Crockett septic for being our sponsors here at WFHR's
Rapids Report
