- Front and center in the part of the budget that pays for
roads and highways will be the nearly billion dollar shortfall
in the transportation fund.
Republican Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke says to fix
that there has to be a long-term sustainable funding formula.
He joins us from Green Bay.
And very much for being here.
- Thanks for having me.
- What is a long-term sustainable funding formula?
- Well we've got to figure something out because currently
the way the transportation fund is structured 54% of our revenue
comes from the gas tax.
And that gas tax revenue has been relatively flat over the
last ten years or so.
It's risen about 3% in real terms
and our construction cost index has gone up 46.5%.
It's just not keeping up with demand
based on the number of hybrids on the road.
The number of electrics and just the (audio drop out) standards
for cars that are out there.
We need to fundamentally fix the formula.
- You'd like to see a boost in that?
- I'm not certain an increase in the gas tax is a long-term
answer because like I said, it's kind of a dwindling source.
Over the course of the coming years we're going to see
higher and higher fuel standards,
more and more electric cars on the road.
So I think we have to figure something else out
for the long term.
- Well, what kind of a box does it put Assembly majority
leadership in to have Governor Walker repeatedly talk about
how he's not raising taxes or fees to get there?
- Well, it's difficult because we do want
to see a long-term solution.
I mean, if we just focus on what the governor is proposing,
there isn't really a fix there.
All he does is (audio drop out) and delay maintenance out into
the future, which is going to end up costing us more in the
long run for those projects.
And we're going to end up spending about $200 million on
southeast Wisconsin freeways alone just to patch them while
we're waiting to replace them.
So I think it's a waste of money that's unnecessary.
And if we fix the funding formula long-term,
we can go ahead with those projects on time.
- But now the governor has launched an online petition and
digital ad saying, "I remain opposed to increasing your taxes
despite pressure from some to take more money from Wisconsin's
working families." As the pressure from some he's talking
about from you and Speaker Vos, do you suppose, in particular?
- Well, we're not talking about -- yeah.
We're not talking about raising taxes or fees right off the bat.
What we want to do is on the front end we want to save as
much (audio drop out) possibly can, make sure every taxpayer
dollar is being spent wisely.
But then if there's a gap between that
and the construction and maintenance needs,
we do need to figure out a way to fund it.
I think conservatives believe that it's more conservative to
pay for things as you go rather than delay the costs and make
them worse in the future or, worse yet, bond for them.
And that's one of the things that we've seen over the course
of the last few years.
We've been bonding a lot for transportation.
We've taken transportation bonding from about 10 or 11
cents on the dollar up to almost 20 now.
And the governor's proposed budget takes it up to 24 cents
on the dollar heading towards 30.
It's just not a conservative solution in our mind.
- So now another budget item the governor spoke to in his
address had to do with the UW.
- Our 2017 through 2019 state budget will do more than just
freeze tuition.
We will actually cut -- that's right -- cut tuition for all
Wisconsin undergraduates throughout the UW System.
[Applause]
- So, Representative Steineke, what's your reaction to cutting
tuition with the budget backfilling that to pay for it?
- Listen I've been a big proponent of the tuition freeze
over the last four years.
I think that's really important.
We have to do what we can to keep college education
affordable in this state.
I think to a large extent we've done that.
(audio drop out) Some of the reforms that we've made and the
tuition freeze, the average student is saving about $6,000
over the course of a four-year term.
So that's important.
The devil's kind of in the details
on what the Governor's proposing.
I'm a little concerned that we're shifting taxpayer dollars
away from General Fund Revenue into the university system to
make up for that tuition cut because we have a lot of
priorities we need to invest in, whether that's k-12 education,
the correction system and a number of other things
that the budget needs to fund.
- Now, I've read that Speaker Vos is worried that this
proposal leads Wisconsin down the Bernie Sanders route
of free college.
Do you agree with that?
- Well, I don't know -- you know, obviously I don't think
the Governor believes in eventually ending up
(audio drop out) where we're giving free college
to any student that wants to come.
But it does concern me that we're transferring
more General Fund Revenue into the university system
just to offset tuition cuts.
The university system compared to its peers is already a pretty
good bargain for the in-state residents in Wisconsin,
so I think a tuition freeze is reasonable, but I think
backfilling a tuition cut with General Fund Revenue
is concerning to me.
- We leave it there. Thanks for joining us.
- Thanks for having me.