Cowles, Tauchen hold listening session in Shawano

Education, transportation, health care and the environment led the list of concerns expressed by roughly a dozen people who turned out for a listening session with state Sen. Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, and Rep. Gary Tauchen, R-Bonduel, Friday at City Hall in Shawano.

Asked by a constituent what he thought the state’s number one issue is, Tauchen said it used to be jobs but has moved from that to finding skilled people to fill the jobs that are available.

“When Gov. Walker took office it was jobs, jobs, jobs, now it’s workforce, workforce, workforce,” he said. “It’s a key issue for everybody in the state.”

Tauchen said more than 80,000 jobs have been created since the economy turned around from where it was eight years ago, but employers can’t fill them because applicants don’t have the right skills.

“That’s why we’re why focusing on technical colleges,” he said, as well as other training programs, including training for disabled workers.

While worker training might be one of the state’s highest priorities, proposed funding for transportation might turn out to be the most controversial part of the biennial budget being proposed by Gov. Scott Walker.

“That isn’t an issue that’s going to be resolved easily, and it’s going to be the biggest issue we deal with in the Legislature,” Tauchen said.

The budget proposes an increase for local road projects but delays several state highway projects.

The budget also comes on the heels of a recent state audit that, Cowles said, was “not good news” for the state Department of Transportation, including massive cost overruns, a shortage of contractors bidding on projects, and failure in some cases to meet performance criteria.

“This is definitely a flashpoint in the state budget, because we’ve got problems,” Cowles said. “There are all sorts of projects in limbo that are not being finished, irritating people across the state. This is definitely one of the most contentious parts of the budget.”

The legislators also faced sharp questions and comments from some constituents.

Greg Strum had a positive view of the proposed budget overall, particularly its increase in education funding, but qualified that opinion.

“This is obviously an election year budget from a governor who is realizing that his treatment of public education has been extremely unpopular and is now trying to get his approval ratings up heading into 2018,” he said. “It’s good to see the governor finally admitting that his deep cuts to our public schools and universities for the last three or four biennial budgets was wrong for Wisconsin families.”

Cowles said he was concerned about the deep cuts to the university system in the last budget, which he voted against.

Tauchen said the state remains committed to education.

“Education has always been our number one priority and I’m glad to see it’s being recognized as such,” he said.

Cowles and Tauchen also found themselves having to defend their support of the state’s voucher program, which some attendees criticized for taking taxpayer dollars away from public schools to support private schools that don’t have to publicize test results, don’t have to provide for special education needs, and subsidizes religious education in violation of the separation of church and state.

Georgia Stapleton said the trend toward taxpayer private school subsidies are likely to get worse with the appointment of Betsy DeVos to head the federal Department of Education.

“With our new secretary of education, we’re all very concerned about public schools,” she said. “We have a secretary of education who doesn’t really want public schools to begin with.”

She said President Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments would eventually impact state governments that will have to deal with cuts in education and health care.

Cowles said he has fielded a lot of constituent calls about those appointments and hinted he might not have supported some of them if he had the chance.

“I haven’t figured out how to vote in Washington yet,” he said.

The legislators also heard criticism of the state’s plans to spend taxpayer money on outside legal counsel to fight a challenge to the redistricting that occurred in Wisconsin and the state’s Voter ID law, which one visitor said was not about supposed voter fraud, but voter suppression.

Several constituents spoke about the need to maintain the Department of Natural Resources’s environmental efforts, such as its stewardship program, and objected to a proposed reorganization that would split up the DNR.

Cowles said he objected to that proposal.

“I’ll fight that all the way,” he said. “If (the DNR) was already divided, we’d be advocating the merger for efficiency. I don’t know what the policy reason is. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Tauchen said similar proposals have been floated for about the past 15 years.

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to pass,” he said.