We're talking at this time with a state representative, Alex Dahlman, who represents the 39th, is it?
39th
State
Assembly District.
There's been a little bit of a shift in over the last couple of years, but anyway.
So he represents the area and we wanted to ask you a little bit about a Marquette Law School poll that came out about the budget surplus.
Now the Senate had voted down a package that would have returned some money to folks and it was negotiated between the state assembly, state Senate and the governor.
Your thoughts about 80% of people wanting to see some kind of budget surplus passed along to them.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty much common sense that we as government officials should not have to have a surplus.
We don't want to just continue to overtax.
And which could just go to create new programs and and all these different things when we could just give money back to our citizens that have been overtaxed and and partial partial part of this deal was also to go give some money to schools for special education funding.
which is still very popular amongst uh... people across our state as well so um... overall we i thought we put together a deal that uh... in my mind if we had a different governor if we were working with re in governor i would love to have even more tax cuts put into this ideal and i think we would have been able to get that but
Working with Governor Evers, I've been actually very surprised at how well his office has been wanting to work with us over the last several months.
As we put together this deal, we are very much in communication with our caucus, especially in the Assembly and the Governor's office about working together.
to not only fulfill some of his priorities of school funding, but overwhelmingly fulfill our priorities of giving money back to the people through rebates and tax cuts.
So I have no surprise that 80% of people across the state of Wisconsin would like to have a little bit more money in their pocket this summer.
Alex, the governor has been talking about maybe calling a special session to try and push this $1.8 billion surplus along.
A little of that, as you mentioned, to taxpayers and to fund the special education reimbursement.
Do you think it'll happen?
Well, I hope it happens.
Again, the governor called us in the first time.
We thought we had a deal.
Unfortunately, every single Democrat in the state Senate decided that they'd rather keep the money in Madison because they
They feel like they are confident enough that they're going to come back and control next year in the state senate, and they want to be able to build new programs with all the billions of dollars sitting in Madison.
unfortunately um... a couple of democrat couple republicans in the state senate as well i joined in with those democrats because they just didn't want to have a deal at all with the governor so that's totally unfortunate uh... i hope that the governor called us back in i hope i have the opportunity to uh... vote on this deal one more time hopefully give these uh... uh... these senators a chance to uh... change their minds and and come back and vote uh... come back and vote for this bill uh... we can return some money back to the taxpayers through rebates we can uh... eliminate some taxes
Um, for, for the income for income taxes and, um, across the board and, and also help our schools a little bit more with their special education reimbursement.
Okay.
So if there, unless there is a, another special session, uh, the current session is pretty much done.
Maybe there are some things you liked about it or didn't like about it.
Your thoughts.
Um,
so i i guess i just mentioned income taxes i i think they're actually property taxes that's what i like the most about this uh... this deal uh... our property taxes continue to go up through uh... throughout the state on the special across thirty-nine district schools are going from referendum to referendum that uh... our voters are definitely exhausted by i'm exhausted by it as a uh... tax-paying citizen myself uh... so i really want to keep the property tax relief for our citizens across the board
Unfortunately, what I didn't like about it is I wish the governor would have come to the table and tried to eliminate his 400-year veto.
That would have, that continues to raise our property taxes year over year for the next 400 years.
Unfortunately, he was unable to do that, so we wanted to be able to at least, if we were going to cut a deal at all, be able to give us some short-term relief for property taxes.
be able to hopefully get a new governor in there next time around and eliminate that 400-year veto for the remaining 398 years, I believe that's on that.
But again, there's things to like about this.
It's all as compromised as things you like, things you might not like all the way, but definitely love the property tax relief portion of that.
Okay.
Any of your bills that were passed along that you wanted to comment on?
We had a great session this year.
We put together about a dozen bills.
We had most of them.
Every single bill that I put forward, we're able to pass the state assembly and we're able to go somewhere along the process in order to become law.
So we had a successful year with things around transportation, things around the budget, being able to bring back some wins for the 39th district, especially getting more
assistant district attorneys for Fond du Lac County to be able to fight the crime that they're that they're seeing an uprise in.
Be able to get some bridges for Columbia counties, some funding for Big Green Lake so we can figure out its phosphorus problem.
And then we got we were able to pass the Memorial bridges over in Marquette County for some fallen firefighters over the last several years.
So we had we had a lot of a lot of victories here for the 39th district and for the state of the whole.
So I'm pretty proud of that.
All right, so we have to ask are you running for another term?
Yeah, so the deadline for get on the ballot this fall was June 1st, so
upon seeing that i do i do have an opponent but uh... i i will be running for reelection as uh... as a republican here for the third district very happy uh... to to announce that again and uh... i'm looking forward to getting on the uh... parade trail again this summer and and knocking some doors and being able to continue meeting people i'm at community events across the district of summer so if it has anything specific always feel free to send me it now i'll try to get there and if you have any groups that like to have me speak to him i'd be more happy to do that too
okay um...
Anything else while we got you?
No, thank you very much for having me on.
I know it's been a couple months, but the government's continuing to operate.
Hopefully we come back to that special session and I can get some money back into the pockets of our local taxpayers and citizens.
We've been talking with State Representative Alex Dahlman.
