Michael Skivington is joining us here in the studio this morning.
He is a candidate for the 39th State Assembly District seat and Democrat and from the area Green Lake, is it?
Yes, technically Markizan.
Markizan, okay.
Yeah, south
side of the lake.
Yeah.
All right.
So tell us a little bit about yourself.
You got a business, it's a family business from what you've been telling me.
Right, right.
Yeah.
So my wife and I, we own a real estate.
company, small business and we're expanding and our daughter and her husband are joining us as she's an attorney and he has a lot of sales experience and so we have such a demand now for our real estate business which is ironic because I'm also running for office so we're busy busy all the time now so but yeah so it's a family business now so small business.
Okay, well as busy as you are what made you decide that you wanted to run for the state assembly?
Well the glory and the Notoriety and no, I'm just kidding.
That's that's a joke I'm I decided to run for office because I'm a two-term County Greenland County Board supervisor and the things I was doing at the county level I needed a partner in the state level and so instead of counting on somebody else to work with me
or us on the county level, at the state level, I decided one day that that may be me, the partner I'm looking for was me.
And so, excuse me, I was talking to someone around Memorial Day weekend, considering the idea, and at that time that was about a week out from having the signatures all ready to go.
And so, I made a decision after sleeping on it and talking to my wife about it.
to go for it.
And in less than a week, I had almost 400 signatures in the district.
And so that was my first kind of glimpse of the momentum that I would have going into the election.
And so I'm here trying to serve the district as I am serving the county in Greenland County for the people that elected me.
So are you still serving on the county board?
I'm still serving on the county board.
I was reelected in April.
Okay.
I'm the chair of the Health and Human Services Committee.
which is busy these days because of all the SNAP benefits that are being cut and healthcare issues with Medicaid and so forth.
So that's a very busy committee.
And then the other committee I'm on, I'm vice chair of the Lakes Parks and Community Committee.
And that's land conservation and those types of committees.
So.
So you are not a stranger to politics then?
No, I'm not.
I've always.
Actually, I'm kind of a geek.
I used to watch C-SPAN where they have the House of Representatives and their one-minute speeches and so the that was fascinating to me and and I've always with the government also my undergraduate is in sociology and so seeing kind of how society Fits together and works together or not works together has always been kind of interesting to me, but I
I've always been someone who's wanted to serve and give back to the community so
So where do you think we're falling short when it comes to representing the 39th State Assembly district?
Well, I think one of the things is that I think there's a misappropriation of
I could say it could be like blame.
The biggest issue of the district is schools, public schools.
And so my opponent seems to blame lack of enrollment or falling enrollment for funding issues.
And I come in and I say that this was 20 years ago, I was getting my PhD in Wisconsin.
We were talking about the funding formula.
And so the funding formula needs to be totally dismantled and brought back together, created.
with the modern price index.
You know, we're, 1993 is the price index that we're going with
to
come up with inflation.
And so it doesn't make any sense.
No one, it's, it pits people against each other.
I think there are like seven referendums in our district alone.
And so fully funding public education would be an area where I think that the district is getting short shifted from the state.
Okay.
Real estate firm, housing, where are we at with housing, do you think?
Well, we don't have enough affordable housing and it seems like every new development is being priced out of like first-time home buyers.
We work with first-time home buyers and so we luckily have a lot of partners that are creative with mortgages and loans and things like that.
they know where all the programs are and so we partner with those folks but it's discouraging and you know with the interest rates at kind of an all-time high lately and not historically but lately I think that's an issue and so that's something that the state can definitely do with partnerships of local board supervisors and certainly the assembly representatives.
Okay.
Data centers do you think there should be more regulation of data center should they even be more accountable to local authorities?
I absolutely do and I've said that there should be a moratorium on data centers and there shouldn't there should not be any non disclosure agreements between companies and local governments and and so and if people don't want them there They should say that they don't want them there.
That's been an issue that I've been worried about actually for about a year and a half
at the county board level, because I think we're having discussions now about what would we do at the county board level if a data center comes in.
And I hope that we aren't too late with planning.
I think we have an excellent board at Greenlake County, but that's an issue that I heard about, I think it was a year and a half ago.
Wisconsin County Association has meetings in February in Madison every year, and they call it kind of a quote unquote lobby day.
But that's where we hear actually from the leaders in the legislature.
And then there's a law firm that works with the county association and they keep us abreast on upcoming trends and what can we do because it's pretty complicated, the data center stuff, because there's certain levels and thresholds.
If you go over, then it's automatically taken out of the local control and gone to the service commission for the state public service commission.
So it's complicated, but a lot of issues are.
Well, you know how it is.
Sometimes it takes a while for local government to catch up with technology.
You saw that when wind turbines were going up left and right.
Right.
And especially with artificial intelligence, especially with these issues.
I think sometimes what happens in Washington DC is that there are people there that don't even do email.
You know, they're working.
They've been there years and years and years and years and have no idea what artificial intelligence is, let alone emailing.
So I think some ways they lead us kind of down a path of like a detour more than anything else.
So they should be leading and by example.
But yeah, so.
In terms of data centers and technology, this is both new, rapidly evolving, and also scary.
Every
other day
we hear we're all going to be obliterated in five years.
So we need to tackle it.
Because getting back to real estate, we do a lot of...
We do a lot of searches and things like that on or help with some of our work with artificial intelligence and chatbots and that kind of stuff.
That keeps us kind of running.
So it's something we need to have eventually, but I don't think we're there where we know exactly what the process is to roll them out.
Living where you live.
How do you feel the state is doing when it comes to conservation?
Well, that's another one along with education the Knowles Nelson DNR stewardship grant Has brought in over six million dollars to Greenlake County alone and if people aren't familiar with the Knowles Nelson It's a 50-50 public-private partnership grant and it has land conservation as its core and it's in its heart and so Where I live specifically down the road there's Taikora Conservancy, which is right on used to be camp grow and so
That's been a total blessing to have that there because that keeps down traffic and activity as well as preserving the lake.
And with conservation, I've been fortunate enough to work pretty closely with the Green Lake Association, who is doing fantastic work, not just on the lake itself.
but in the watershed around it so everything flows into the lake and if we go upstream literally we can we can stop a lot of the bad stuff that goes into the lake and so there's and I'm really proud of that too because we work with farmers and we we our land conservation Todd Morris person Greenland County he he secures grants from the state to help
offset some of the cost for the farmers to do what they need to do to help us.
And so that's a really good, that's a really nice kind of shining positive example.
Okay.
Mike, why should people vote for you on November 3rd?
Well, I'm a husband, father advocate for people.
I have a lot of experience both nationally and internationally.
We probably don't have time to get into my bilingualism and my research dissertation in Mexico and Spanish that I conducted 20 years ago or my trip to Cuba and Spain and Chile and all those places.
But my experience
that I use every day is what's rooted in the local economy here through my small business, our small business, and also knowing what's happening with the county.
And so, like I said earlier, I'd like to extend the work, the good work we're doing at the county level to Madison.
And so that's, among other things, why people should vote for me.
And you know, I want to just say one thing.
Also, one of the reasons I ran as well is that I didn't think that
the current representative should run unopposed again.
I think competition is a really good thing, and that makes him a better candidate and representative, and that will make me one when I'm elected in November.
Okay.
If people want to know more about you, do you have a website?
I do have a website.
It's www.skivington, the number four, wi.com.
Mike, thank you for joining us this morning.
Appreciate your time.
Good luck in the election.
Thanks, Bob.
It was my pleasure.
We've been talking with Michael Skivington, who's a Democratic candidate for the 39th State Assembly District seat.