Hello world, welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report, proudly brought to you by Cracket Sceptic
for this June 20th, 2025.
Have your host James J. Mailov here, welcoming you on the studio phone line, our good friend
Senator Patrick Teston, good afternoon sir, how you doing?
I'm doing great James yourself.
Doing good.
Got a busy weekend ahead, a lot of fun stuff going on, want to remind everybody to stay
hydrated out there, it's going to be extra warm this weekend, appreciate the time and
hopefully you got a good weekend lined up too, sir.
Have a couple of things I want to talk to you about, the Advanced Practice Register
Nurse Modernization Act, want to talk about the talent recruitment bill as well with you
and touch on the on the job series, but I'm the kind of person, I think we've talked
about this before, I think you're the same way.
I like to rip the bandaid off pad, I like to just get things out of the way right away.
And I want to ask, what do you believe is the possibility of a budget being passed here
in Wisconsin?
I think we'll get a budget done, it's just a matter of, you know, when, I mean the good
news is, while our fiscal year ends coming up here at the end of June, if we don't have
a budget signed into law, it's not as though state government is just down on like the federal
government, we continue to operate on the base budget, so I'm sure you're probably aware
based on some of the headlines that have come out in the last 24 hours that discussions
have sort of stalled, we were supposed to be in executive session yesterday afternoon,
and unfortunately we've hit the pause button, so I think by and large both the assembly
and the senate were on the same page on a lot of fronts, there's just still, you know,
a few areas that we have to kind of iron out to get everyone comfortable with, and, you
know, it's a balancing act between the both houses and also trying to get a budget done
that we think the governor can sign, and so, you know, while I'm a little frustrated
with the process right now, but at the same time, I think it's okay for us to sort of take
a step back, let everyone kind of take a breath, and hopefully, you know, reset, recalibrate
over the weekend, and hopefully we can get things back on track.
I want to get into it with you about this, but real quick, I hope the audience caught
that. What the senator just did was almost a master class in how to address that, how
to answer that question without pointing fingers or without pointing blame, or, or, you
know, some of this stuff that we're so getting too much of in politics, and this state in
particular is really tired of. I can't thank you enough for that answer, man. I really
do appreciate that about you, and I'll be honest with the audience, I kind of thought
that's where he'd go with it, because you are about accountability, and not necessarily
finger pointing, and I appreciate that about you and about our local politicians. I think
that it's noteworthy, so I just wanted to take a second to point that out. I do think
that there's a fear there, not only to us as citizens, but I can even hear it in your
voice, and fear is not the right word, but just a concern that we do want to get this done.
I think that what you said, you know, I see a lot of the same things too. I think a lot
of people do when you take a step back, but it's that taking a step back thing that could
be really difficult right now.
It is. You know, yesterday afternoon, I was on the phone pretty much all afternoon
talking to various members of the assembly who serve on the Joint Finance Committee as
well as some of their leadership team, including Assistant Majority Representative Scott
Crude, and I get the standpoint. I mean, they're looking out for a lot of their members,
and with slimmer majorities, it's tougher, but we've been in these situations before and
in the past. And so, you know, we just have to continue the dialogue and get people to
a point where they're comfortable with the overall spend. And in our house, too, we've
got some members who are concerned about the overall structural deficit and some other
things that, you know, they want to see you dressing this budget. And so, you know,
I think we have an opportunity here to sort of, again, like I said, pump the brakes and
take a breather. It's always tough, but especially given the fact that, you know, in the process
that we're in right now, this budget is sort of unique in the sense that, you know, we're
trying to condense two months of work into three weeks, which is really tough. And, you
know, everyone is under the gun right now. We're all stressed. We're all pulling our
hair out because, you know, we're, for those of us on finance committee, we're reading about,
you know, 600 pages of budget papers, 600 pages of budget papers, you know, every two days
in preparation for our executive sessions. And so, you know, it's, you know, everyone's
feeling it right now. But at the same time, you know, I think we will get a budget done.
And we're going to hammer these issues out in the differences that we have between the
two houses. And, you know, we'll see where the conversations go or continue to go with
the governor. But I'm optimistic that we will get a budget done. And it's going to be
a budget that I think by and large, we can be proud of. That is going to prioritize
the needs of the state, whether it's talking about issues like tax cuts, making investments
in the K-12 education, our universities, our technical colleges, and also our infrastructure.
And so, you know, this is, this is the process. And this is what I signed up for, which, you
know, I've often joked I'm a prisoner of Madison. I've been down here since Sunday, you know,
working with my colleagues and my staff and our friends over at the nonpartisan fiscal
bureau to kind of hammer things out. And that's going to be the process that continues
moving forward. And, you know, I'm going to continue to roll my sleeves until we have a
final document that's ready to be voted on out of both houses and sent to the governor.
Recently, or this past week, I should say, you had your bipartisan advance practice registered
nurse modernization act pass. Can you tell us about that?
I'm really excited about this. This is legislation that I've been very passionate about ever
since I first came into the legislature. And this is a bill that has been introduced in
some form or fashion for the last 13 and a half years. And I had the opportunity to author
this bill, the previous two legislative sessions. And it was the first time that this bill had ever
advanced out of committee had ever been voted on out of the out of the floor of both houses.
It got to the governor's desk the last two sessions and unfortunately got vetoed. But,
you know, the good news is I'm not here to litigate past battles and, you know, arguments,
you know, when this session kicked off and I got approached again to be the author of this bill,
I said, absolutely, I want to get this done. And we had very productive conversations with the
stakeholders and even the governor's office. And I think we got to a point where, you know, not
everyone was 100 percent happy with the final product. But, you know, this moves the needle
in the right direction. So our advance practice nurses, they play a critical role in delivering
health care, especially in our underserved areas. I think of our nurse anesthetists to serve as
in critical access hospitals and provide anesthesiology for patients where oftentimes you don't
have an anesthesiology sound call. And so this is a step in the right direction. We are going to
join 28 other states who have already enacted this legislation in some form or fashion. And these
states range from very blue states to very red states and purple states like Wisconsin. And so
I'm really excited about this. It's been a long time coming. It passed unanimously out of
the Senate Health Committee, the Assembly Health Committee. And just this week passed unanimously
out of both houses. And I am really looking forward to joining the governor when he signs
his bill into law because this is going to be a step in the right direction to empower our
advance practice nurses to do the job that they were trained to do, which is to take care of patients.
One of the other parts of this that I saw that could be an added bonus along with this is
the opportunity for jobs in the area and the state and bringing people in with that. And
kind of leads me into the talent recruitment bill. Can we talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, this is a legislation that's called Make My Move. And so I don't think it's any
secret. I've talked about this numerous times when you've interviewed me in the past that we do
have demographic challenges here in the state. Our populations lack it in any younger.
And we are in direct competition with 49 other states. And so
if we can have tools available for communities like Wisconsin Rapids or anywhere in the state
to go out and potentially receive grant dollars that this legislation becomes law,
communities could apply for upwards of $50,000 to go out and attract talent and professionals
that move into their communities. And I've often said one of the biggest challenges that we have
here in the state of Wisconsin is that we're too humble. And you know, we have to be able to
sell ourselves and go out there and promote what we have to offer. We have low cost to living. We
have great work life balance here in the state. Recreation opportunities are bound. We can't do
much about our winners, but all that aside, the good news is that if we can get this legislation
acted, I think it's going to provide an opportunity for communities, the state to partner together
to go out and make the case as to why Wisconsin is the best place to live, work, and raise family.
And so we're working on this legislation. You know, we've got a few hurdles that we have to
overcome trying to get some of our colleagues to get more buy-in and support the bill, but
we're going to continue to move the needle on this and then trying continue to build support.
Does that bipartisan support? Because I think buying large Republicans and Democrats, while we
may not always agree on things, I think we can all agree that we want to do everything that we
can, the best position with Wisconsin and our communities all across the state to be welcoming
and lay down the the welcome mat for individuals to come in from places like Minnesota, Illinois,
and elsewhere across the country. We're speaking with Senator Patrick Teston. And you recently began
circulating for the co-sponsorship of a bill that aims to reauthorize reform and improve the
Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program. For those that don't know what that program is, can tell us a
little about that and why you've been circulating this, why you've been going to your colleagues about
this one. So the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program, it's been widely popular, it was implemented back
in 1989. And basically it's a program that's administered through the Department of National
Resources to organizations and communities to purchase land for stewardship and conservation.
And this is a great program. A lot of our sportsmen groups are huge fans of this. Now what happened,
there was a court case last summer that basically kind of up ended the program and put it on its
deathbed where how this is operating the past is that we would enumerate a pot of money in the
Joint Finance Committee supplemental town. And as projects were going through the process,
the Department of National Resources would come before the Joint Finance Committee and we
would have what was called a passive review. Now the Supreme Court case ended that. And the
challenge there is is that, you know, by and large, there's a number of my colleagues and I
would throw myself in this boat as well that aren't going to feel comfortable just allocating a pot
of money for the DNR to basically do what they want Carp Watch. There needs to be some oversight,
there needs to be some checks and balances. So I, along with State Representative Tony Kurtz,
we came together, we put our heads together and said, you know what, we don't want to see this
program go away. We want to do what we can to try and find a way to move forward with this program,
still have some parameters to replace, make some changes in reforms because again, this is a
widely popular program. And so we've introduced a bill. It's going through the process right now.
It was heard in the Assembly, Sport and Heritage Committee just a week and a half ago. We're still
waiting for a public hearing here in the Senate. And while it's probably not going to be enumerated
into the state budget, well, maybe it will give them the fact that we're taking a little bit
of a pause right now. But regardless, we're still going to pursue every avenue that we can to get
this bill done. And I think by and large, many of the conversations I've had, even with some
of my Democratic colleagues, they've come up to me and expressed, thank you for doing this.
We don't want to see this program go away. We understand the implications of what that court
case did to the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program, and we want to do what we can to help you.
And so I think, you know, everyone's sort of on the same page here. We've got some things that
we have to work out. And again, sort of like the APRN bill, not everyone's happy with the framework
we've established, but at the same time, if we don't do anything, the program goes away. And I
don't think anyone wants to be in that in that situation. So we're going to continue to hammer
this home and hopefully get it to the governor and hopefully have it signed in the long
we can see the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program operate into future bienniums.
One of the congratulate you. You were recently named the 2025 Wisconsin Historical Society
Legislator of the Year. I imagine that's got to mean a lot to you.
Yeah, it's great. I mean, right now, the new Historical Museum is being built as we speak,
just off the capital square. And what's so great about this organization, they've done a phenomenal
job. And, you know, the share, the history of the state, and preserve all the artifacts. I mean,
it truly is remarkable. I can't wait to see this project get finished. In fact, when we took up the
Historical Society on a joint finance committee, we gave them basically everything they asked for
because I think we'll recognize that we've approved this project in the past. We want to see it
come to fruition. And I'm hoping here in the next year, I look forward to being at the
ribbon cutting and walking through and seeing all the new exhibits and probably going to learn
a thing or two about our state that I didn't know previously. And so I can't wait. I'm looking
forward to it. And, you know, when it's finally ready and open, I hope when folks come down to
Madison, it takes some time to check out the new museum and learn some things about our state
that you probably didn't know before you walked in. Yeah. And you had me in history. I love history
of the more local, the better and Wisconsin as some of the best history in the union.
Congratulations again, sir. Before we let you go, did want to check in on the on the job series,
how was that going along? Well, I was actually I was supposed to have one today. I was supposed to be
working up at the central Wisconsin airport. Given the dynamics that we're in in the middle of
state budget, we're we're going to postpone that until July. Hopefully fingers crossed will be done
by then. But yeah, we're taking a pause this month just so we can focus on the state budget and
get that hammered out. But next month, stay tuned. I'll be working at the central Wisconsin airport.
Hopefully nothing goes wrong, but keep the flights on time and keep everyone traveling and safe
and sound. Well, we appreciate that. Not only the look behind the curtain there, but you know,
it's certainly the day job coming first. But we love the on the job series. Look forward to hearing
more about it. And one of these days getting you into the studios here, you can work with Pam.
You can help her out. Some like that. Thanks so much for joining us, sir. If people have
follow questions, I'd like to reach out to you. What is the best way to do that? Yeah, if anyone
is going to touch my office, feel free to give us a call at 608-266-3123. Shoot us an email
at SEM, my last name, testing at legs.wi.gov. Follow us on social media. Sign up for my eNews
letter. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention. I am looking forward to seeing folks at the
cranberry blossom parade on Sunday. So stay tuned. I'll be handing out my packer magnet schedule. So
we got those stock. I'm ready to go and looking forward to it. Yeah. And we're looking forward to
having you back in town. It'll be fun. Thanks again for the time. You have a good weekend. We'll
talk again next month, sir. Looking forward to it, James. Thank you.
And a big thank you to you for joining us out there. We appreciate you. We'll be back with more
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