Great, all right.
Well, again, thanks so much for
doing this. It's a pleasure.
So the $15 million that the
Commission unanimously approved is
meant to start the planning process.
And Governor Evers said, quote, it's
important for the state to know we
are serious about this project.
How serious are lawmakers taking
this prison?
Revamp project?
So the state and the lawmakers have
been very serious about this since,
I think it was 2018 when we
passed the closure of Lincoln Hills
and moving forward with
the SJOs.
And if you look at it, we've
had numerous leg council studies
around revamping corrections.
We've had legislators from the Green
Bay area trying to close the Green
bay correctional institute for
years.
And do other types of reforms.
So this has been a forefront for a
lot of us for a lotta years.
But what concerns do...
Do you have even ahead of
this planning process?
So I think.
Corrections has been in disarray
under many governors.
And Governor Evers, when he first
ran against Governor Walker, what is
that, eight years ago now,
ran on corrections reform and
has done really nothing.
He's pushed for the closure of
Lincoln Hills, but we've all been
working towards the closure of
Lincoln hills.
So that's not something special
that he's been doing.
And now, all of a sudden,
in 2025,
budgetary cycle, he comes
out with a proposal.
And he's kind of like shoving it
down our throats.
And he didn't include anybody in
this proposal.
Not his own legislative Democrats.
And he has people in the Democratic
caucus.
I'll use Representative Sheila
Stubbs, for example.
She sat on some of the alleged
council studies that I've had.
There's Andre Jock.
There's myself.
Senator Juan Gard.
Representative Born.
They've all been working on
corrections reform.
And prior to that, Representative
Mike Schrau was passionate on
corrections reform.
And he included no one in those
conversations.
And there was a plan that was done
like 10 or 12 years ago.
And it's like Governor Evers took
that plan, dusted it off,
called a consultant, and updated it.
And now that's his proposal.
And he's kind of given us a take it
or leave it proposal.
I don't think that's how this should
work.
Now he wants $15 million to
move forward with that plan.
There was a press release that
yesterday the governor didn't
even seem like he remembered putting
out two weeks ago that
said you have to release this money,
don't hold it up.
You took objection to that.
How is that a bipartisan move
forward?
And under his proposal, because
right now, we have over 1,100
medium security inmates
that are housed in a maximum
security institutions.
And because of that, they're not
receiving any programming
to help them.
They're not where they need to be.
So Governor Evers' proposal that he
has out there, I struggle to call it
a plan, because a plan is well
thought out. So I'm going to call
this a proposal.
Under this proposal, he's releasing
them into society in
order to move forward with the
building modifications that he wants
to do.
So you're gonna take 700 people that
have had no programming and
release them under a program earned
release that normally
they would go through programming,
mental health programming and other
things and just
release them into the society?
How is that good for the safety of
constituents to release people
out into society?
And if you look at some of the
crimes that have been committed by
these people, it's not safe.
It's not well thought out.
And the sad part about it, we don't
have to do that.
We gave them alternatives yesterday
where we could expand Jackson.
We could expand Tachita,
move people into those
programs.
Lincoln Hills can be converted.
We can take over 500 inmates there,
close Green Bay.
And expand on other areas,
it's just not, what he's doing is
not well thought out.
In the meantime though, he said to
you that you have my
promise, this is one step of many,
and the next step will include all
legislators that want to be
involved.
Confident in that promise?
I'm not going to use the term
confident, cautiously optimistic.
Cautiously optimistic
Is there danger of partisan
politics kind of derailing this
whole effort to redo
the correctional system?
In Wisconsin?
That's what's been happening so far.
I'm hoping that with the governor's
words yesterday, we get away from
partisan politics and move
towards doing what's right for the
citizens for once.
In terms of those 700
inmates and
their release.
Does that skirt in your mind
toward kind of prison reform
policy, or do you think it's
simply just to make the dominoes,
as they're called, work in this?
You know, there's, let me
just back up a minute and I'll
preface it with this.
There was things in the governor's
proposal that I think every one of
us could have gotten behind,
because I think a lot, some of his
ideas were positive.
That's why I think it would have
been nice to include everyone.
Because even on some of the alleged
council studies that we had,
Democrats and Republicans were in
very much in agreement.
So I think this was something that
we could work on.
And I'll even preface that where
there's conservative think tanks.
Liberal think tanks, and moderate
think tanks where they're
nonpartisan.
We all agree on the same types of
prison reform.
So this doesn't have to be
a Democrat or a Republican
idea.
Prison reform across the United
States has been very nonpartisant.
We can all work towards the same
ideas.
But when you give
somebody a proposal and say, take it
or leave it, here it is.
This is what we're moving forward
with.
And especially when it's not even a
good proposal.
How do you think the other sides are
going to react?
Reiterate for me what
the prongs of
a good proposal would be in your
mind.
I think we do need policy change,
where we need to look at the
programming as it's out there.
Former Assemblyman Mike Schra
had the idea around,
I'll use WAPAN for example, of
making that into more of an academy
where medium and minimum
security inmates could
get programming education
so that when they are entry
into society, they are ready
to go in there.
Educated and more into a work
environment, so they can become
productive members of society.
One of the things that we see around
prisoner re-entry,
if they can have
a home, have a job and
become productive, they are much
less likely to re-offend.
They can become productive,
self-esteem, can take care of
their families.
That's a winning message in the
corrections reform.
We've seen it work in other states.
So those are some the ideas we could
have brought back in.
So wapan, just as an example, I'm
just going to use wapan.
I'm not saying that has to be that
way. Wapan could have been made into
a campus.
Those are ideas that have worked in
other states. Those are some ideas
that could have been brought to the
table.
Nobody was included.
Meanwhile, Corrections Secretary Hoy
called this a moving target.
How difficult is it to plan
for a project like this
and so many years into the future,
especially when it will continue
under a new government?
So I think when you have a
legislature, it's always gonna be a
moving target and the numbers are
gonna go. But I do think you can
plan. But you can't plan on today's
numbers. And we can extrapolate
out. We see trends in
society and we can look at
that and then say here's where,
and you probably might wanna plan a
little high in some areas and maybe
a little lower in others.
We know what trends are.
And then you can say we're gonna
need X number beds here, we're going
to need X number of beds here.
And you plan for those numbers.
Just like we did around juvenile
corrections.
We know we need X number beds
for CERCIs, so that's what we
did. We have the CERCI
in Kenosha, or Racine, we
have the CSERCI Milwaukee, and we
needed to add a CSERC in Dane
County. Plus we had to do the
Mendona Youth Mental Health,
we had plan there also, in order
to be able to close Lincoln Hills.
So that's how you plan.
Just the discussion of it, it is
so complicated.
Everything's complicated.
But when you bring people together
and people that have backgrounds in
certain issues, I'm an
insurance agent.
That's what I do in real life,
right? But when bring people
and you can research and
you have knowledge
on certain issues and you bring
experts in, you can uncomplicate
very complicated issues.
Is there anything you wanna add on
this? No, but I think I
would just add that I hope we can
count on the governor being true to
his word and that he
brings all people together.
And that we can put a plan together
because our correction system is
in a world of hurt right now.
We need to move it forward.
Indeed, Senator. Thanks very much.
You bet.
Lost my voice just
there, sorry.
I'm sorry.
Yes, I'm sure the entire state.