- I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Tonight on "Here and Now,"
all roads lead to the transportation budget.
We'll hear from the state capitol and beyond about how the
legislature will pave the way for road funding.
After that, the Madison school superintendent describes a new
program designed to get students on an early career path.
Before we go to transportation, though, a quick political
update.
This morning a federal judge denied a request to put a stop
to the ongoing presidential recount in Wisconsin.
That request was filed by two political action committees.
Now to the state budget.
We're going to be talking a lot about how to pay for Wisconsin
roads and highways in the coming months because road funding in
the state faces a nearly $1 billion shortfall.
This week the assembly transportation committee heard
from DOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb whose two-year budget proposal
calls for borrowing a half billion dollars for highway
projects without increasing the gas tax or vehicle registration
fees.
This would mean continued delays of major projects.
Gottlieb laid out some realities for lawmakers, including the
percentage of highways which would be in poor condition going
forward ten years if funding stays the same.
He started by comparing 2018 to the year 2027.
- The total system in fiscal '18, 21% in poor condition.
In fiscal '27, that would be 42%.
With regard to the 3R system which is essentially all the
state highway system that is not backbone, that'd be 26% poor in
fiscal '18, 49% poor in fiscal '27.
- Bottom line, if there's no change in funding for state
highways, nearly half would be in poor condition in a decade.
It's even worse by the U.S.
Department of Transportation metric, which says that right
now 71% of roads in Wisconsin are in poor or mediocre
condition.
- I never even thought of the difference.
- Putting a finer point on the issue, this week Republican
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos released a video of himself
taking a ride in the back of an ambulance to highlight the rough
ride over rough roads.
Notwithstanding the bumpy ride ahead in the face of road
funding shortfalls, Transportation Secretary
Gottlieb's proposed budget is in keeping with Governor Scott
Walker's pledge on the matter.
- That's why I was pleased that with this budget recommendation
by our state Department of Transportation, they met the
challenge.
A challenge I gave when I spoke to the voters two years ago when
I asked for your support in my re-election in 2014.
I said explicitly when talking about transportation that I
would not support an increase in the gas tax or the vehicle
registration fee without a corresponding decrease in some
other tax.
- Now, the governor said this week that if the assembly
leadership's plan is to raise taxes, they should make their
plan public so the people understand exactly how much it
will cost them.
Now, this represents a rare split between leadership and the
administration.
We turn to Joint Finance Chair Republican Representative John
Nygren to ask him how much taxes need to increase and thanks very
much for being here.
- Good to be with you.
- So as to the governor's question, and my own, how much
do taxes need to increase to fix this shortfall and move forward?
- I don't think we're there yet.
Honestly this is more of a dialogue with the people of the
state of Wisconsin.
It's a dialogue we began back in July when we made public our
concerns about transportation funding in our state.
You know, my colleagues in the senate are throwing out numbers
like a 28 cent gas tax.
Nobody is looking for anything anywhere near that.
We began a dialogue and an honest conversation with the
people of the state of Wisconsin.
I would point out in my district I got more votes than I've ever
gotten before so I do think the people do understand the
challenge and they also understand we're elected to
solve problems.
- So no specifics then on the increase amount, but what is on
the table?
- Well, first of all, first and foremost I think it's reasonable
to have a conversation about what type of reforms could we
implement.
Are there cost saving measures?
That's why we asked for the audit
of the Department of Transportation.
We're going to wait on that.
Are there reforms such as prevailing wage reforms that
could be implemented to save dollars?
I do believe that there are.
But to look at a billion dollar shortfall and believe that
reforms and cost saving measures are going to be able to make up
for that deficit, I don't think that's realistic.
That's why we said let's look at all our options.
Let's not eliminate anything from the discussion with the
people of the state of Wisconsin.
- What are all your options?
- Well, as I mentioned, the reforms.
Could we reduce, could we cut some of the projects that are
currently on the docket?
You know, the Secretary talked about 70-year delay in the
southeast mega projects.
And 30 years before we could look at any more projects
out-state.
So I think we need to have the conversation about what are our
priorities?
What priorities are going to help us maintain an efficient
and safe system in our state and what's going to help us drive
our economy?
Secretary Gottlieb, when he testified, he admitted that the
budget the governor put forward would make congestion worse in
our state.
It would reduce safety and it would hamper our economic
development opportunities.
- Now, four years ago a bipartisan commission that
included Secretary Gottlieb recommended raising taxes and
fees, but the majority, including yourself, rejected
those recommendations then.
Why pick up with them now?
- Well, first of all, I think it was a different time and
place then.
Four years ago, I think we all know where we were as a state,
where we were as a nation.
The economy has recovered.
It's not recovering at a rapid rate.
Growth is fairly soft here.
Not only here but throughout the country.
So we're not looking for major changes today, but we're in a
much better position than we were four years ago to have that
conversation, to do a complete top to bottom evaluation and
decide how we are going to fund our transportation system for
the next generation.
- Do you favor not bonding at all in the upcoming budget?
- No.
I think that has to be part of the discussion as well.
However, we're at a position where under the Doyle
administration and the Walker administration, the amount of
dollars, bonding that we've committed to fund transportation
has gone up exponentially.
Under the governor's proposal, we will be pushing 23 cents of
every dollar that comes in from our registration and our gas tax
will be pledged just to pay off debt.
Bonding are at a very low rate, so that is a reasonable
conversation, but if we don't find a way to reduce that
overall debt, it's going to continue to eat up at the buying
power moving forward.
- Now, if you can't go to gas taxes or registration fees or
tolling or some of the other things that might be on the
table, would you consider transferring money out of the
general fund into the transportation fund?
- I don't believe that's a reasonable option.
I think that's one of our concerns.
We believe-- hey, the people of the state of Wisconsin a couple
years back made a very pointed-- gave us a very pointed
direction to say that the dollars raised for
transportation should be used for transportation
and no other purposes.
Those dollars should be segregated.
I believe that we also should be utilizing the dollars for - or
GPR dollars for education and other priorities of our state.
That's why we need to have this conversation today.
- Now, the governor did say he doesn't support gas tax or
registration fee increases without corresponding decreases
in other state taxes.
What other state tax decreases would you entertain to get these
road hikes?
- I think that'll be part of the conversation as we head
through the budget.
I mean are there opportunities for us to reduce our income tax
in our state?
Are there opportunities for us to reduce our property taxes?
You know, we are a very high-tax state in the grand scheme of
things, so we'd be in favor of finding ways to reduce our
overall tax burden.
But let's be honest here.
So we're talking about a 5 cent gas tax increase would relate to
about a $25 for the average driver
in the state of Wisconsin.
We could look at a registration fee increase of $25 and, you
know, that would only be paid by Wisconsin drivers.
A gas tax would be paid by people who travel into our state
as well.
So, you know, we're not going to limit anything from the table.
Whether we can find the revenues to be able to pay for a tax cut
in another way, that is the big question.
- All right. We need to leave it there.
John Nygren, thanks very much.
- Thank you very much for having me.
- If the split amongst Republicans at the top in
Wisconsin is rare, so too is the bipartisan agreement over road
funding and the need to raise revenue.
Democratic member of the Assembly Transportation
Committee Representative Deb Kolste of Janesville says the
current course is an unsustainable path.
Thanks for being here.
- Thank you very much for having me.
- Well, so you have called for an adequate dedicated funding
source for vital transportation infrastructure.
What in your mind would be the best source or sources?
- Well, you know, in 2006 we had a steady -- before I got to
the legislature, they said we were going to have a $700
million shortfall and they gave all sorts of suggestions,
starting in 2011, 2013.
They gave us a billion dollar shortfall and put all the
options on the table: increased gas tax, go back to indexing,
look at toll roads, increased licensure and registration fees.
I mean, all those -- you know, I don't think there's one thing
that's going to make--get us out of this hole.
I think it's going to take a look at all of the above.
They tried to say efficiencies could maybe get this out of
this.
But I don't think that's possible.
Some of the efficiencies they brought--this is a -- you know,
a big project and little, small amounts of money aren't going to
get us out of the problem.
- What is the status -- I know that because of this problem
some of these major projects have been delayed, but what is
the status in your district of the I-39/90 project?
- Well, that's still a go, but it's not supposed to be finished
for another four years, so this is a system.
And so there needs to be -- you know, everything needs to be
fixed.
So while we're held whole in this budget, that doesn't
necessarily hold true for the next budget if we don't find a
source of revenue.
- If bonding allows the interstate project in your
district to proceed, are you still opposed to such borrowing
as a funding mechanism?
- I'm not necessarily against bonding, but at the rates that
we've bonded, it's a cause for concern.
I think in 2006 we were at 7%.
I shouldn't quote that number.
But we are at 20% of, you know, to meet the cost of the bonding,
and it's supposed to level off at 25% of all revenue dollars
would go for the cost of bonding.
And that's probably not a sustainable way to go.
So although most major projects do need -- have bonding on them,
I think this is just not a sustainable path right now.
- You say quote the failure to address our crumbling road
system is perhaps the governor's most visible misstep.
Wisconsin roads are ranked third worst in the nation.
Democrats seem to be saying that republicans made this problem.
But what about during the democratic administration, when
$1.4 billion was transferred out of the transportation fund to
the general fund?
- Well, we rectified that problem by the constitutional
amendment to keep road monies where it is.
But over the long run, over the whole process of transferring
GPR to transportation and transportation back to GPR, GPR
has paid more into transportation than vice versa.
So that problem has been rectified.
The revenue that goes to transportation stays in
transportation.
The problem is there's just not enough revenues into
transportation, and I have grave concerns about where some more
revenues might come, which would be out of general purpose
revenue.
- What are your concerns about that?
- Because everything else comes out of general purpose revenue
also.
We already had to cut $250 million from the universities.
If we continue to use more out of that to fix the
infrastructure on the highways, something else is going to have
get cut and that concerns me.
Because we know Medicaid is going to continue to grow, just
because we always have to meet the need.
So programs like educational just take a hit and that
concerns me a lot.
- What's your position on cutting other taxes if gas taxes
or registration fees have to go up?
- Well, it would be the same as taking from GPR.
If we cut taxes, our problem is right now that we don't have
enough revenue to cover all the programming.
The revenue for the transportation is expected to go
up .
5% and the cost of inflation for road projects is four times
that.
So we have a revenue problem in transportation.
I don't want to cut education.
- All right.
Representative Deb Kolste, thanks very much.
- Thank you.
Appreciate it very much.
- Our next guest says borrowing is no longer an option for
transportation funding in Wisconsin.
Well, the proposed budget calls for half a billion dollars of
it.
President of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, Todd Berry
is here with his take and thanks for being here.
- Good to be back.
- Why isn't borrowing an option?
- Well, you know, transportation is one of those
things that it might be logical to borrow for it.
It's a long-term capital expenditure.
The problem is we had Governor Doyle do a lot of borrowing.
Then we had Governor Walker do a lot of borrowing.
And as a result, the amount of debt service that we're paying
per year is pushing a half billion dollars.
Not a cent of that is going to roads or transit.
It's going to pay off debt service.
And just to give people some sense of the magnitude of this,
in terms of debt service relative to budgets, we are
already where the federal government is going to be in
2040.
And everybody is saying, oh, there's a federal debt crisis.
Well, Wisconsin's transportation system is in worse shape
financially.
- But if not borrowing, then taxing?
- Well, you have two choices then.
You either decide that you're going to have a source of
revenue to pay for it and it's better to pay for it that way
than pay for it indirectly through layoffs from employers
that can't get goods to market or back, or better than paying
$500, $600, $700 a year to repair your tires, replace them,
shock absorbers.
I means it's just a question of how you want to pay.
Never mind that the gas tax and vehicle registration fee have
actually been heading down.
- Well, so how long have people been sounding the alarm on this?
And why no answers?
- We're about to celebrate at least the 20th anniversary.
We've had so many task forces and legislative study
commissions and the governor asked his new transportation
secretary to study the matter.
We have had-- everybody says there's a problem.
There should be.
People are driving less and they're driving more efficient
vehicles.
The gas tax doesn't do the job anymore.
But this isn't about reality.
This is about, you know, symbolism.
- Well, other states obviously have these same kinds of
problems.
Do other states do it better than we do?
- Other states have broader means of financing.
It could be tolls.
Some of them have general fund monies, their sales taxes or
their sales tax goes on the gas tax.
We don't have that.
We have a very narrow funding system.
It doesn't rise with inflation.
The thing that I find is so interesting is the same people
that don't want the gas tax and the vehicle registration fees to
grow as the economy grows are the same ones that are more than
happy to see the income tax go up 4%, 5%, 6% a year just
because the economy is growing and happy to spend the money.
- Well, what about that?
I think this fits.
What about the governor saying about, well, if we raise the gas
tax and the reg fees, then we got to cut income taxes or
property taxes?
- Well, we have been cutting gas taxes and registration fees
first of all.
Not only in nominal terms but in real terms we definitely have.
They're losing revenue.
They're losing value.
But, you know, if you want to balance tax increases and tax
cuts, in the -- in 2014 we spent $400 million to cut technical
college property taxes.
In '13-'15 budget we spent $600 million to cut income taxes.
The governor, to his credit, has had some significant tax cuts.
We're still in the throes of phasing in a $300 plus million
dollar corporate income tax cut.
We've had over a billion dollars of tax cuts.
I think you could change the way the tax gas and registration
fees were designed and not necessarily have a tax increase
at all.
It's just we need a system that works.
- We need to leave it there.
Obviously, we'll be covering this for months to come, years
to come.
Todd Berry, thanks very much.
Moving away from highways and into schools, the Madison School
District is embarking on a new program starting new year that
allows for several hundred high school students to focus on
specific learning topics.
The Personalized Pathways program allows students to learn
about and try on certain career areas.
Next year the area is health careers.
Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham says the hope is to make high
school more relevant to students so they not only graduate but
move on to college and careers.
- Personal Pathways are a way of making sure that every one of
our children graduate from high school, but more importantly
graduate with a clear post-secondary plan.
It is a strategy to ensure that every child is learning in a
smaller, more intimate learning community.
It is a strategy to ensure that every child is learning in a
smaller, more intimate learning community.
It is a strategy that ensures that students see the relevance
of their coursework, make sure that their core courses are
linked and thematic and provide opportunities for them to
explore a theme.
And it is a way to ensure that every child has intentional
opportunities to explore college and career options.
And all of that is driven by a student's unique academic and
career plan that is created by them, with support from the
staff and their family, and continually refined as they make
their way through high school.
- So you're starting with a pilot of this program;
is that right?
- You know, I think what we like to call it is the first
phase.
It is a small cohort of 120 to 150 freshmen in each of our four
high schools.
- And what is the topic area that these high schools will be
offering?
- Yeah.
The thematic focus in the first pathway is focused on health and
that was selected based on interest.
We do these interest surveys of our students annually, as well
as the array of kind of resources in the health area
that we have in our community, right, where students can really
get connected to what's happening in the real world when
it comes to health and health equity.
- So how does that work for the 9th grader and these 100
students that might partake?
- Yeah.
So for every student who chooses to enter into this first
pathway, their core courses, English, science and history,
those three teachers would work very closely together to design
integrated units of instruction around this theme, exploring
different aspects of health and health in our community, health
in our country, health in our world.
And through that theme they'll all learn the key skills that
they need to attain to be ready for college, but they'll do so
in a way that's much more applicable to the world around
them.
- And then in addition to the core courses, there will also be
other classes that they can take more specific to health?
- Yeah.
For each year of high school, there will be at least one
half-credit elective course that would allow them to dive more
deeply into some aspect of health.
Other than that everything else that they take, their arts,
their language, those courses and elective options exist
outside of the pathway and are very similar to what students
experience now.
- And what are the other opportunities that are included
in this kind of cohort?
I mean, I understood that there might be internships or
shadowing, that kind of thing?
- Yeah.
So a key component of the pathways model in addition to
the coursework that they're taking and this more technical
elective course is the experiential learning
opportunities that they have.
So that the freshman year might include some simpler things like
having guest speakers come to the classroom and talk to them
about aspects of health in this particular theme.
In future years, as they near their senior year, for example,
it could include something like an internship.
- Is this career-oriented?
- You know, I think-- I've heard that a lot, and it's
really about the theme.
But each theme is tied to a viable career cluster.
And that's important to us, because we want students to have
opportunities to explore career options and the full array of
career options, because that helps them make a stronger, more
intentional post-secondary choice.
- What about the concerns on the part of some that this is
basically tracking into vocational fields?
- I know.
I've heard that a lot, and I just need people to know that's
not what this is.
That is not the intent in any way, shape or form.
This is about creating more relevance in our high schools.
It's about making sure that every student, not just the
students who are privileged to have the right connections, but
every student gets a chance to understand and explore all the
options that they have before them for life after high school.
I think that's our obligation.
- And so the smaller kind of learning groups, is that just
for the people that end up being in the Personalized Pathways
program, or is it across the board
within the entire high school?
- Yeah.
At this point, some of our high schools already have the
structure of the smaller learning community, meaning
every student may be assigned to a cohort within their school,
but we haven't been maximizing that structure, meaning teachers
haven't been working as closely as they would within the
pathways model to surround and support their students.
So I think that that aspect, the way we want to use that smaller
learning community is what's new.
- Is this unique to Madison, or are other districts doing this?
- It is not unique to Madison.
Other districts have been doing this.
And some have been doing it for some time,
with excellent outcomes.
We've done a lot of exploring over three years now to develop
our Madison-specific approach.
While other districts have been doing something like this, we're
doing in a way that fits the unique needs and the context of
Madison, which I think is important, and we'll continue to
do that.
- In Madison, the application window for the pathways program
is open until January 6.
That is 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.