- Eyes are on Washington, what with work and dissension over
major tax overhaul and other more salacious matters.
But the Wisconsin legislature has been powering through
its session.
In tonight's closer look, a check-in with Assembly Speaker
Robin Vos.
We'll hear from the Minority Leader coming up.
And Speaker Vos, thanks very much for being here.
- Happy to be here.
- So you join us today to talk about the Assembly session.
Foxconn stands out. - Yeah.
It's one of the biggest accomplishments we probably had
in our state's history.
The largest foreign investment in generations.
Thousands of good-paying jobs coming to southeastern
Wisconsin.
And luckily thousands of good-paying jobs will probably
filter their way throughout the entire state.
Governor Walker often talks about the impact of large
corporations and the suppliers that they give business to
through the state.
So Oshkosh Corporation as an example;
300 different suppliers that continue to help a company that
does a lot less in business than Foxconn will.
Still incredibly important to the Fox Valley.
It's a good example of how one large corporation like that -
while there's good-paying jobs that'll be just in Racine County
and southeastern Wisconsin - it will also help the entire state.
- What should taxpayers make, though,
of the governor not mentioning Foxconn in his re-election
announcement?
I mean, is he distancing himself from it?
- No. I was just with him at the signing.
I think he's incredibly proud, as all of us are,
of the opportunity for us to create 13,
000 good-paying jobs in Wisconsin.
I think that for the critics, I wish they would take some time
to actually look and say let's focus on positives about
Wisconsin.
They are so busy constantly berating every possible good
thing that happens, trying to talk down Wisconsin.
I don't understand that.
- Will your members in districts outside southeast
Wisconsin campaign on this?
- I think they'll mention it.
I mean it's not the entire agenda that we've had.
We've done lots of good things.
If you look at our budget as an example.
Tax cuts, getting rid of the personal property tax,
more money than we've invested in schools in close to a
generation.
At the same time, we've been able to make sure we focus on
our priorities of making sure we have more funding for worker
training.
More funding for mental health care.
All of those things are lots to be proud of.
Now Foxconn is one important bill this session but it's
certainly not the only one.
- Speaking of this session, it's not over.
There are several bills still hanging out there.
What is your reaction to Republican Senator Steve Nass
saying he expects you to kill conservative bills after the
flap where you blasted Nass and two other Republicans senators
for their negotiating tactics during the budget?
- Well it's kind of typical of what Steve Nass does, right?
He's kind of a frame-thrower.
That's what everybody knows him as.
Conservative legislation has happened the entire time I've
been speaker.
We're going to continue to push an agenda that makes Wisconsin
a place that people want to work.
They want to retire and they certainly get to keep
more of their own money.
Now I know he has a problem actually communicating with his
own caucus members to be able to get bills through his caucus.
So if he gets bills through, send them to the Assembly.
If they're good legislation, they'll pass in our House.
- On some of these bills, what's your position on
concealed carry without a permit?
- I've always been in favor of that as a general idea.
Now Governor Walker has come out
saying the system we have works fine.
He's right about that.
There's not a huge need to make a change.
I think we passed concealed carry and Democrats said it was
going to be like the Wild West.
We certainly haven't seen that.
It's been very responsible.
We see tens of thousands of Wisconsinites getting a
concealed carry permit without issue.
So I certainly am open to the discussion but I want to make
sure Governor Walker and my colleagues are in the same place.
- What about banning fetal tissue research?
- There's two competing bills.
I think they both have merits.
Neither one has the ability to pass in our caucus at this
point.
We'll continue the discussions to try to find common ground.
I think the vast majority of Republicans have considered
themselves pro-life and we want to make sure we do those things,
but we're also pro-research.
And that's why I have
a preference between the two bills.
But certainly either one addresses that concern.
- What about civil forfeiture reform?
- That's something that we have talked about.
I've been a supporter of that for a long time.
Representative Mark Born has taken the lead in our caucus to
try to find a consensus between those who worry about protecting
people's fourth amendment rights but also the ability of law
enforcement to use those funds to help combat drugs and all the
opioid crisis we have.
We'll find a consensus and
I hope we're able to pass that too.
- So you're not stopping down bills.
- Not at all, as long as they're good ideas.
- Why didn't you appoint any Democrats to the task force that
will study building a new prison?
- Yeah, it's actually not about just building a new prison.
I mean I know once again, continuing with their theme,
it's all politics all the time.
I was incredibly disappointed that one of the first things
that Gordon Hintz did was to take somebody off of WEDC,
as a Democrat appointee, who had been there the entire time to
understand the Foxconn deal and put somebody on who was running
as a Democrat for governor.
It's not surprising to me that as we are not talking about
reforming sentencing or any of those kinds of things,
that is not part of this commission's purview.
It's really looking at the fact that we're at 142% of our prison
capacity and we do not have the ability to put more people in
jail without additional facilities.
- Why no Democrats on the task force?
- Yeah, we had three people came to me during the budget
process: Michael Schraa is the chairman of the corrections
committee.
Mark Born is our expert on correctional issues.
And we also had David Steffen who asked for it.
So those three asked for it.
Those three got on.
- What do you think about the potential for Democratic gains
in next year's elections?
- You know it's interesting because I've heard this now ever
since 2010 that of course, after the recall we're going to make gains.
We gained a seat.
In 2014 of course Governor Walker was on the ballot.
It was supposed to be a repudiation of him.
We gained a seat.
Here we are in 2016 with Donald Trump on the ballot.
They guaranteed they were going to make gains and we gained
another one.
I saw what happened in Virginia.
The vast majority of those gains were in seats that Hillary
Clinton carried in 2016.
We don't have many of those in Wisconsin.
She was not carrying Wisconsin as a state.
I'm confident we'll maintain a good,
strong majority and continue our conservative reforms.
- Robin Vos, thanks very much.
- Thanks, Fred.
- Speaker Vos holds a commanding majority of 64 out of
99 members.
Minority Leader Gordon Hintz of course
hopes to pick up a few seats.
He joins us now.
Thanks for doing so.
- Thanks for having me.
- Robin Vos says he's not worried at all about Democrats
picking up any seats in the next election.
What do you say to that?
- Well that's the Speaker's prerogative.
I think the big thing we have going for us that we saw in
Virginia last week is we've had eight years of failed Republican
leadership, both by the legislature and the governor.
After eight years, we literally have cracks in our
transportation infrastructure.
I think that we've seen that we've cut funding for the UW
system significantly.
We've had cuts to K-12 education and mostly we've had ineffective
economic growth.
We're a little more than half the national average.
We lag behind our neighboring states.
Everything that the governor has promised hasn't worked.
Lower-- bad economic growth and we've done it at sacrificing our
environment and our future financial security in terms of
budgets.
- So you think that resonates with the voters because one of
the messages of course of the administration is the
unemployment rate is historically low.
- Wisconsin has always had a lower unemployment rate than the
national average.
If you have low unemployment but slow job growth,
that's not an economic indicator.
What that shows is you have a people shortage.
One of the things we've seen over the last five years is
we've had an out-migration of working age people to other
states where there's greater opportunity and no one's moving here.
I think this is going to be one of the telling narratives of the 2018 election.
Jobs will follow people.
And if you don't have clean drinking water,
if you don't have well-funded public transportation systems,
if you don't have innovative and dynamic communities that are
funded partially by the state, this isn't going to be an
attractive place for people to live.
- Foxconn is now signed and delivered and on its way.
Of course, Speaker Vos thinks that means it's a great day in
Wisconsin.
Are most of your members still sour on it?
- It's not just our members who are sour.
It's the public statewide.
Again, you'd be hard-pressed to find too many people maybe
outside of southeast Wisconsin that thinks it's a good idea to
give $3 billion of taxpayer money to a foreign corporation,
the largest taxpayer subsidy in United States history,
when the best potential payback if everything happens is 25
years.
We've had a number of start-ups, small business people say if we
had spent a fourth of that supporting new business
investments, growing small business, providing capital,
you'd be a lot better economically.
- It's a done deal now.
Anything to do?
- Hold them accountable.
Look, if it's going to happen, I hope it's the best deal
possible, but I want to make sure that we are getting good
information, that we're holding WEDC accountable.
Their track record hasn't been great.
When you're charging that agency with both the oversight and the
enforcement, I think there are a lot of questions to ask.
But yeah.
I mean, look, I hope for the best,
but the reality is the opportunity cost is the biggest
loss for Wisconsin taxpayers.
- Speaking of WEDC, we asked Robin Vos why there were no
Democrats on the prison task force and he said because his
members approached him and wanted to be on it.
So this is where the WEDC part comes in.
He said that by way of explaining this,
he said that he took issue with you assigning Dana Wachs to the
WEDC board when he's running for governor.
Was that appointment a politically deliberate one on
your part?
- Only in the sense that-- no.
My colleague Dana has been an outspoken critic of Foxconn.
He's an attorney who's used to reading a lot of detailed
contract language.
Certainly wanted someone who I thought was going to hold things
accountable.
He's a legislative colleague.
I'm the Minority Leader.
I wanted to put someone on there who I knew was going to hold
this governor and administration accountable.
- What about the prison task force?
Are you upset that there were no Dems on that
that Vos was appointing?
- I'm more disappointed.
Every other committee that we have, they come across,
tell us they just created a new international committee,
asked us for six members.
Senator Fitzgerald obviously reached out to Senator Shilling
and asked for a Democrat on there.
I think it has more to do with hiding the fact
that there is no prison policy.
That our numbers are only escalating,
that the costs are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions
of dollars more.
They don't want to be held accountable.
You can hide behind the whole appointment thing but the
reality is the speaker and this governor's track record on
corrections is a disaster.
- Do you have any idea whether or not the governor will appoint
a Democrat?
- I don't.
But we had a number of members, especially our minority members,
who have a lot of communities of color who are
disproportionately-impacted by our correction policies.
And I think it would be a good move on his part if this
committee is actually going to have any meaning or
effectiveness at addressing a lot of problems
with our criminal justice system.
- All right, lots more to talk about but we'll leave it there.
Thanks very much. - Thanks for having me.