The Governor's Budget Listening Tour rolled into Eau Claire on April 16 at the Western Wisconsin Technical College. This session was unusual in several ways for Wisconsin. For one, it has been a long time since a Wisconsin Governor has held open listening sessions where the public was invited. For another, the new Governor held this somewhat differently than normal. After an address from the Governor, Lt. Governor, and several local officials, the group split up into multiple sections by particular concerns with the budget (education, transportation, criminal justice, healthcare, etc.)
I jumped around into several of these sessions, and the main concerns I heard revolved around some of the following:
- Taking the federal Medicaid money for the state
- Keeping Seniorcare
- Expanding state expenditures for K-12 education, the University system, and the technical colleges. People were very concerned that the past administration had rolled back education expenditures and that Wisconsin is now behind.
- Criminal Justice - Wisconsin incarcerates twice as many people as our neighboring state Minnesota. Concerns were raised about increased funding for judges and drug courts, as well as making the parole system fairer and finding more ways to have people succeed rather than being returned to prison.
- Fair Maps - many in the crowd were concerned about the gerrymandering of legislative districts, and many of them called for a non-partisan redistricting method as called out in the Governor's Budget.
- Improving roads and infrastructure in the state, even if this required an increase in the gas tax.
- Addressing the nursing shortage in the state.
The session was followed by a short press conference with the officials at the hearing session. This video includes the pre-session address, an interview with Selika Lawton about criminal justice, and the post-session press conference.
Memberships
EPA Water Listening Session in Eau Claire
On Tuesday Nov. 15 approximately 300 people attended the EPA listening session at Chippewa Valley Technical College. The session was set up for the Administrator of US EPA’s Region V, Robert Kaplan to listen to citizens testifying about water quality in the state and to help determine if the EPA should take over the oversight of Wisconsin's compliance to the Clean Water Act. Wisconsin's DNR has been shrunk in size, and water quality enforcement has become much less of a priority, as the DNR is often not following its own rules or enforcing the law consistently. This is a (rather long) video of most of the citizen testimony on this issue. Many people testified at the meeting, requiring an extension of the meeting. The meeting was sponsored by the Sierra Club – John Muir Chapter, Sierra Club Wisconsin, Midwest Environmental Advocates, River Alliance of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Lakes Association, Citizen Action Organizing Co-op of Western Wisconsin, and Clean Wisconsin
This unfortunately was the only such meeting held in the state, so may of the attendees had to drive in from other parts of the state that have been having water quality crises. You may submit your own written testimony to the EPA at the region 5 EPA web site . You may also find out more information about the situation in general at Clean Wisconsin and Midwest Environmental Advocates, who filed the original petition with the EPA.
EPA LISTENING SESSION EAU CLAIRE, WI NOVEMBER 15, 2016
Warren Petryk listening session cancelled by car dealership
[img_assist|nid=46790|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=76|height=100]My local state Representative Warren Petryk was scheduled to have a listening session in Eau Claire, at Ken Vance Motors on Monday. We were planning to go to let you know what happened, but the session was abruptly cancelled today -- not by Petryk, but by Ken Vance, apparently out of concern for security of the business and its customers.
"Due to phone calls that we have received, we needed to respectfully request that Representative Petryk cancel his event at our location that we had originally offered to him," said Jason Vance, General Manager of Ken Vance Motors.
So my question is -- real threats, or is this fomenting fear?
Steve is a member of LION Publishers , the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, the Menomonie Area Chamber of Commerce, the Online News Association, and the Local Media Consortium, and is active in Health Dunn Right.
He has been a computer guy most of his life but has published a political blog, a discussion website, and now Eye On Dunn County.
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