>> I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Tonight on "Here and Now," the latest on the state budget
from Joint Finance Committee Co-Chair Alberta Darling.
Then more "Capitol Insight" from WPR's Shawn Johnson.
Then a "Closer Look" at the Democratic proposals to help the
homeless in Wisconsin.
And an interview with a high school principal who has banned
the use of social media apps in his building.
It's "Here and Now" for May 12.
>> Funding for "Here and Now" is provided in part by Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.
>> A "First Look" tonight at the unfolding work of the
Legislature's Joint Finance Committee as it fashions a state
budget even in the midst of disagreement with the governor
over key aspects of it.
This week budget committee co-chairs said they will reject
Scott Walker's plan to go to self-insurance
for state employees.
But then they're left with making up the $60 million
the governor says doing so would save and that his budget puts
toward K-12 education.
We're joined now by Republican Senator and Joint Finance
Co-Chair Alberta Darling.
Before we go to the senator, we should mention that
employees at Wisconsin Public Television
are covered under state insurance plans.
Senator, thank you very much for being here.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Describe why you don't want to
switch to state self-insurance.
>> Well, in order to switch you have to say are we going to get
something that's better?
That's the key question.
Less expensive and good quality.
We can't assure ourselves that that's true.
If you look at the premiums they're projected our premiums
are going to be 1.6%.
And the self-insurance plan is supposed to save us 2%.
So we're already saving money in the current plan
and our plan is very robust.
It can be improved to have more incentives and disincentives for
better choices so we're healthier because that's an
issue in Wisconsin.
We could be a healthier population.
But in general, we'd be throwing out a plan that's very robust
and it really affects the free marketplace.
That's one of my biggest concerns that if we shift
thousands of public employees to a self-insurance plan that we're
not even sure about, we're going to really create a change in our
free market system of healthcare.
And if you talk to people nationwide,
they say Wisconsin has one of the best healthcare delivery
systems in the country.
So we have a lot to lose, a lot to gain perhaps in the end,
but right now we're not sure there's enough to gain
to offset what we could lose.
And you know what?
What we could do is work within the system to save the money
by having evidence-based approaches,
by having more emphasis on wellness and more incentives for
our employees to make better choices.
>> So you feel as though with those kinds of changes around
wellness, incentives, disincentives that you could
save the $60 million that the governor says going to
self-insurance would bring?
>> We think we can.
And our providers have said in support of our not shifting that
they can provide those changes and we can have the savings.
Now, I think with the federal government in disarray right now
over Obamacare and many insurance companies are leaving
states.
In fact, Iowa is going to have maybe one insurance company left
at that.
And we have a robust healthcare system with insurers being very
competitive and having very good packages,
albeit too expensive but again we're projecting a 1.7%
increase.
If you compare us over the past 10 years,
we were at about 3% increase
versus the 7% to 12% net nationwide.
I think we have a very good product and we're not convinced
we can get a better one with self-insurance especially at
this time of our history.
>> Representative Nygren talked about how ETF had about $60
million to $80 million in reserves.
Can you use that and where did it come from?
Have you determined that?
>> We're going to have a meeting with Secretary Neitzel and find
out where that came from with ETF.
Obviously they've been saving money in preparation of this
shift and if they can save money in this environment we can
continue to save money with
the evidence-based wellness incentives and disincentives
approach that I mentioned earlier.
But we could do it.
We have a very dynamic healthcare system and our
providers have said they could do even better.
>> I want to jump to transportation.
Where do you and other Republicans in the Senate stand
on the Republican Assembly transportation plan rolls a flat
tax in addition to a sales tax on gas among other changes?
>> Well I give Dale Kooyenga a lot of credit for putting an
alternative on the table.
But I think in the Senate there's not a lot of support for
it because they feel there are too many increases on fees and
taxes albeit he's shifting to a possible flat tax for income
tax, which would be highly desirable.
But people are feeling there are too many increases in fees and
it's not worth the effort to do that.
And I think that what we have to do is say look,
let's work together.
Let's work with the governor.
Let's work with the Assembly and come up with a short-term and
long-term solution.
We can't keep kicking the can down the road.
And my concern is the southeast has many projects that have been
started.
We've invested millions of dollars in these projects and
let's finish them.
In fact, the federal government has said finish your projects.
And if we don't -- if we stick with the current budget,
the north leg of the zoo will not be completed until maybe
four years down the road if that.
And that will be a disaster for all we've gone through.
And we won't have access to an on and off ramp to the Medical
Regional Center which is a huge attraction,
a huge workforce for us.
We cannot leave those people hanging out there.
I think it's not just for southeast Wisconsin.
It's for the whole economy of our state that we finish the
mega projects in the southeastern Wisconsin.
I talked to Frank Busalacchi about how did you do the
Marquette on time and under budget?
He said they made a lot of changes to the design and they
made some cuts but the project went really well and it is
serving our region very well.
We can make better decisions and we need to do that.
We can't just delay everything.
It's going to get more expensive and our economy will be affected.
>> We need to leave it there.
Senator Alberta Darling.
Thank you very much for joining us.
>> Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
>> It seems rare that majority of Republicans in Wisconsin are
at odds with each other over major budget items.
In tonight's "Capitol Insight" we're joined by Wisconsin Public
Radio's Capitol Bureau Chief Shawn Johnson
to unpack the discord.
And Shawn, thanks for being here.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> The majority in the Senate and Assembly are at odds as
we've said with each other over road funding and tax changing
proposals.
Where are we with all of this at week's end?
>> I would say the gulf between them has grown over the past
week at least it looks like that from a distance.
We should preface this by saying they're Republicans,
they're all Republicans, they've all done budgets together
before.
They'll get there eventually but right now they're
nowhere near each other when it comes to transportation.
There are a couple ideas that got floated this week that were
almost immediately objected to.
>> Like?
>> Like for example one was Senator Fitzgerald said,
"Here's one way that we can maybe solve the transportation
issue.
We borrow more only we don't do it and back it up with the
transportation fund.
We back it up with the general fund which pays for schools,
prisons, Medicaid.
Get its money from the income and sales taxes." He thought
that might be more palatable to legislators who have issues with
transportation borrowing.
It was not.
Assembly speaker or at least the Assembly co-chair of the budget
committee said almost immediately, "No,
that doesn't change anything.
We still don't want to borrow more for roads.
We're still borrowing too much."
>> Does it suggest this is a really,
really difficult problem?
>> I think when they start looking at these -- they're kind
of thinking outside the box a little bit on these.
You heard the co-chairs of the budget committee do another one
of those this week and say hey, "Let's take the transportation
budget and pass it as a stand-alone bill.
Get the rest of this budget done on its own.
And then we do the transportation budget on its own
and then maybe we get Democratic votes for that." That was
something they were open to.
Again, that one was shot down almost immediately by Governor
Walker's office and Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald's
office.
They don't want to go there.
>> Backing up a little bit from what's happening right now,
the legislature's budget committee rejected the
governor's transportation plan.
I mean that's why they're all here trying to figure out their
own.
What were the big sticking points with the governor's
transportation budget?
>> I think by and large they viewed it as another budget that
didn't come up with a long-term solution to transportation.
So the state has long-term issues when it comes to
transportation funding.
There are a lot of big projects that lawmakers want to move
forward with but over the last decade or so,
they haven't come up with new money, really,
to move forward with those projects.
They've continually borrowed.
That borrowing has added up to the point that, you know,
at the end of this budget, 22 cents of every dollar of
transportation revenue would be going to pay off old debts.
So think of that like paying off interest on a credit card.
That's a lot of money.
Those are their big issues with the problems.
It doesn't fund all the projects they want and it continues to
borrow.
>> Is this one of those budgets do you suppose that goes well
into the summer?
>> It could.
I mean the last time they split off the transportation budget I
think was 1995 or at least that was one of the times they did it
and just looking back in the legislature's records looked
like they wrapped that up around November.
Again, they had the biggest Republican majorities in decades
here.
They could reach a deal any day now.
But doesn't look like it.
>> On another of the governor's proposals,
this idea of going to self-insurance.
How surprising is it to you and other kind of capitol observers
that Republican budget writers are just outright rejecting
that?
>> Not surprising in the sense they've sent signs they didn't
like it for quite a while now.
They are not sure that the savings that the governor's
office has latched onto would be there.
And you're changing a pretty huge insurance market to try to
get that $60 million over the next couple years.
Not a huge payoff for disrupting the entire system.
>> Now, the Joint Finance Committee and the budget writers
haven't even gotten to the university budget and all those
things having to do with tuition cuts and performance metrics and
that kind of thing.
How gnarly is that going to be?
>> I think that the university and anyone else is going to be
watching the budget pretty closely because if you're
pulling out that money that was going to be there through this
projected savings on self-insurance, for example.
That money's not going to be there.
Where's it going to come from?
There's a lot of areas that could be targets to find that
extra money if the legislature still wants to spend more money
on K-12 public education.
>> We'll leave it there, Shawn, thanks.
>> You're welcome.
>> At this time last week we heard from Lieutenant Governor
Rebecca Kleefisch on her new role as the chair of a proposed
interagency council on homelessness.
That council is called for in one of four bills passed in the
Assembly.
Bills designed to help the homeless population in
Wisconsin.
In tonight's "Closer look," another package of bills to aid
the homeless is being introduced by a Democratic state lawmaker.
These bills would increase government vouchers to pay for
housing, fund a program to help prevent evictions in cases of a
temporary financial crisis and increase funding to "Housing
First" programs among other measure.
In all, according to the author her bills would triple spending
in Wisconsin for the homeless to $10 million.
Representative Lisa Subeck is here.
And thanks for being here.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> I know that you worked with the homeless population in your
role at the YWCA.
What is your response to the Republican bills?
>> The Republican package of bills that came before us sadly
just didn't really get at the problem of homelessness.
They create a council, we had a council.
It wrote a plan.
The plan sat on a shelf for the last almost 10 years now.
Now we have another council and my fear is this council will
write another plan that will simply sit on a shelf.
It's easy to do feel-good proposals like this but it's a
lot harder to actually say let's put the resources behind it.
Let's do what we know works.
And at this point, we have the advantage of knowing what works.
Much research has been done.
We know what the evidence-based best practices are.
And those are rooted in what's called "Housing First."
So the package of bills that I've brought forward really
follow that "Housing First" strategy of helping people get
into housing and then once they're in housing,
wrapping the services around them to ensure that they're able
to stay there.
>> Isn't that super expensive, though?
>> You know it's actually a remarkably cost effective
approach because of the amount that we are already spending on
the issue of homelessness when you consider that somebody
who is chronically homeless.
Somebody who is chronically homeless is living on the
streets, often upwards of 12 months,
sometimes over a period of years in various intervals.
The amount we pay in law enforcement and the amount that
we pay in emergency medical care to serve that population is so
much greater than what it would cost to get that individual in
housing, to wrap the services around them and move them toward
self-sufficiency.
>> Now one thing that Lieutenant Governor Kleefisch said was that
"Housing First" in her belief works best for dual diagnosis,
people with mental illness and some kind of an addiction
problem.
Is that true?
>> Certainly "Housing First" is a concept.
But there was a very specific "Housing First" program in
Milwaukee and we've seen similar programs here in Madison.
We have a building on the east side,
in other parts of state and other states.
When you look at that because you need an intense level of
services, the full "Housing First" model really works of
actually providing the housing.
My bills actually take a little bit of an expanded approach on
that.
We include some money for "Housing First" programs.
In fact, a substantial amount currently the state gives
$300,000 in housing grants and we would increase that
by $2 1/2 million in order to invest in "Housing First"
and "Rapid Rehousing."
"Rapid Rehousing" is often for people without quite
as high of needs but to get them out of shelters quickly and into
new housing, you infuse those "Housing First"-like services
during those first couple months after a period of homelessness.
>> It sounds like people like you,
people like the lieutenant governor,
many people really want to work on this issue and I know that of
the four bills that were passed in the Assembly,
you voted in favor of two of them.
So is there an effort or can there be an effort to work in a
bipartisan way on this?
>> Sure, I absolutely think there can be.
I mean I think the sad thing about the Republican bills was
that they didn't take this next step of actually putting
resources into solving the problem of homelessness.
We've spent enough years with pilot programs and councils
and things that certainly address the problem
but they address it out loud.
They address it by talking about it
and we need to start addressing it by doing something.
The bills that I've put forward would start to make that crucial
investment.
The Council To End Homelessness in Wisconsin,
which is the council that helped form -- the group that helped
form this government council, there's a couple council -- has
advised us Wisconsin needs to at a very start,
triple its investment in homelessness.
So that is what we're doing here.
We're saying we have to stop the bleeding.
We can't put Band-Aids on gaping wounds.
>> And yet I understand that even that amount of infusion of
resources pales in comparison to what neighboring states are
spending.
>> Absolutely.
The state of Minnesota spends $45 million on addressing
homelessness.
The state of Minnesota, between 2012 and 2015,
the latest data we have for them has reduced their homeless
population by almost 10%.
Here in Wisconsin, our homeless population increased by double
digits during that time.
>> What do you think the appetite is in the full
legislature and the administration for putting these
kinds of resources toward this issue when we're already dealing
with transportation funding problems and K-12 and the
university, etc.?
>> You know, it's about priorities.
I think that we need to make homelessness a priority.
It is costing us more right now.
It is costing us more to pay for law enforcement to deal with
homeless people on our streets.
It's costing us more to keep homeless children in our schools
and get them taxi cabs or other transportation day-to-day as
they move from night to night.
It is costing us so much more not to address the problem than
it would to actually address the problem so the appetite
certainly should be there.
>> Representative Lisa Subeck.
Thanks very much.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Four Madison schools this month turned off Wi-Fi to some
30 popular social media phone apps used by students during the
day trying to prevent what one high school principal calls the
zombie walk.
It's a Madison School District pilot effort to see whether
disconnecting from social media helps students' grades,
behavior and safety.
Madison East High School Principal Mike Hernandez
joins us with more.
And thanks for being here.
>> No problem.
>> You're the one who coined the "zombie walk."
What is that? What do you see?
>> When students are walking down the hall head down,
not acknowledging or interacting with anybody just staring at
their phone.
>> Are students using their phones and accessing these apps
during class?
>> I'm sure it happens, yes.
>> And it wasn't very long ago -- I'll say four years ago when
my kids were in high school, there was a thing that was "Tag
it and bag it." They were not allowed to have these cell
phones in the school during the day at all.
They were confiscated.
So I guess the schools lost that battle in a big way?
>> I wouldn't say it was a battle.
It's more along the lines of safety.
Unfortunately in today's time.
If something unfortunate happened,
parents would like the ability to get in touch with their kids.
So it's not a "tag it or bag it." It's students we have.
We want it off and put away.
>> And have you seen, since this went into effect,
a change in the students and their behavior and their
engagement?
>> It's been two weeks since we started the pilot.
We've been monitoring it.
Pulling in students and talking about it.
Yes, we've seen a marked change in both class as well as in the
hallways.
>> What about the students' reaction?
>> So before we did this, we prepped students.
We talked with advisory groups.
Spoke with different groups of students and they kind of talked
to their peers.
I think that students understood the rationale of why we wanted
to do this.
Why I pushed hard to have this done.
There are some that were upset.
But at the end of the day I think people understood why I
wanted to try this.
>> What about the parents?
>> I have had much support of the parents.
There's a few that ask some questions and ask us how are we
going to quantify the data that we're collecting.
But I think pretty supportive.
>> Other than the zombie walk and being kind of disengaged in
the school day, what are the harms of using these apps?
>> Well, what we were finding is sometimes when students would
make-- a few students would be making poor choices.
They would get onto certain apps or certain sites and they could
set up a time to hey, we're all going to meet at this point or this.
Facebook live, if students did get into an altercation
or an argument it was on social media and it was blown up.
There was just some poor choices made with it.
>> Already, though, I've read that students have kind of
defeated this and they're now able to get on these apps with a
different kind of private network or something?
>> So it's-- I look at it as this.
It's almost a game of chess, right?
Yes, immediately there was a-- we started it on Monday,
Tuesday afternoon some students figured out
what the password was.
So then we then set up a system
in which it changed the password.
A few students have then looked at different ways to mirror or
to be able to log in from home.
At the end of the day there's some energy being spent on this.
For the majority of the students right now
we have them a little bit more or more engaged in school.
>> Students could also, though, on the technology side of this,
they could -- couldn't they access these applications
using data as opposed to Wi-Fi?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> That has gotta be a concern as well for parents
in particular who probably pay for these plans?
>> Yes, that's why I sent a letter home a week before
just foreshadowing this was happening.
And then encouraged parents to have conversations with their
students or their children to talk about using data wisely.
Because what I don't want to happen is at the end of the
month have a $300 or $400 bill.
There's going to be anger there.
Might be at the child but it's also going to be at the school.
I just had to again foreshadow this with the parents and tell
them the reason why I wanted to go down this path.
>> How long will this pilot last for?
>> Till the end the school year June 9th.
And then from there, as I mentioned,
we've been talking with students.
Walking around asking staff as well.
I'll do some similar over the summer.
And then we'll make a decision will this continue for next
year?
>> Will you be looking at measuring the changes in
behavior and engagement as well?
>> We have been.
The behavior component is a little easier.
The engagement component, attendance, tardy,
being tardy or not.
Those are-- but it's really gonna be more of the
conversational.
My hope is and again a theory is,
as they now are more engaged in class, GPAs,
credit attainment will go up.
Now granted it's only six weeks.
Two-thirds of the fourth quarter.
It might not change everything now
because we started so late in.
But you had to start sometime.
My hope is that we again start it next year.
>> Great. Principal Hernandez, thanks very much.
>> No problem. Thank you for having me.
>> Now news from our partners at WisContext.
Journalists there continue their extensive reporting on the use
and tracking of synthetic opioids.
These are powerful heroin-like drugs including the large animal
tranquilizer Carfentanil.
Milwaukee saw its first confirmed deaths from it last
month.
Users can unknowingly ingest these synthetics and fatally
overdose.
As WisContext reporter Scott Gordon found out toxicology labs
like the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene are
working to keep up with the novel combination so law
enforcement and health officials can understand and prevent their
spread.
>> Wisconsin is seeing more overdose deaths that involve
Carfentanil and Fentanyl.
But also occasionally seeing more of these synthetic opioids
that have a chemical structure very similar to Fentanyl but are
just different enough that they might
circumvent the usual lab tests for Fentanyl.
When people are doing toxicology tests,
often they usually go in knowing they're looking for a specific
set of things.
The thing that's difficult about some of these synthetic opioids
they're being illicitly manufactured in a lot of cases.
There isn't really a good frame of reference for how much should
be in a person's system because they've never been used in
normal medical context.
And they can be really potent in trace elements.
All of which makes it hard for people to keep up when they are
doing toxicology testing and trying to track the impact of
different drugs around the state.
>> Now for election-related news at the state capitol.
An Assembly committee voted to send a GOP measure to the full
Assembly that would limit when presidential,
state and local recounts could take place.
Under the new bill only candidates who trail by 1% or
less would be able to request a recount.
Under the current law any candidate can request a recount
regardless of the margin of loss.
The bill would also limit the amount of time after a vote that
a candidate has to request a recount.
And finally tonight, Hollywood comes to UW-Madison this weekend
for its commencement ceremonies.
Steve Levitan, co-creator and producer of the hit television
show "Modern Family" is the keynote commencement speaker at
Camp Randall.
Levitan received his B.A.
in Communication Arts from UW-Madison in 1984.
That's our program for tonight.
I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Have a great weekend.
>> Funding for "Here and Now" is provided in part by Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.