Here & Now

Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke on Policing Reform

Frederica Freyberg:

The chair of a new Republican Task Force on Police Standards and Racial Disparities, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, says he expects the governor’s proposals as well as the Republicans’ own plan will be taken up when the Legislature convenes after the first of the year. Representative Steineke joins us now from Kaukauna. Thanks for being here.

Jim Steineke:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So why wait to take up police reform in Wisconsin?

Jim Steineke:

Well, first I want to correct something. It’s not a Republican task force. It’s a task force that is going to have bipartisan support. We expect to announce in the coming days a co-chair that is going to come from the other side of the aisle. We’ll be making decisions on the makeup, the composition of the task force together and setting agendas and talking about how we move forward together. So really what we want to do is show the state and the nation that when we bring people together, Democrats, Republicans, people from communities of color, along with law enforcement, we can still solve these big issues but do it in a way that, again, brings people together.

Frederica Freyberg:

Still, the governor did not respond particularly favorably to this, saying that the people of Wisconsin don’t want another task force to mull things over. What’s your reaction to that?

Jim Steineke:

Yeah. It’s kind of funny coming from a guy that’s created I think somewhere around a dozen task forces on his own over the course of the first two years of his administration. So he’s relied heavily on task forces himself to look at issues. But it’s a little frustrating because the administration has typically thrown things out there and told us to pass it by starting a special session, said you guys just pass this. We want to do things a little differently, again, bringing together Democrats and Republicans, people from communities of color and law enforcement all to work on issue together so we can have some consensus around these issues.

Frederica Freyberg:

I know your leadership decided to extend the special session call until Tuesday. What’s that about?

Jim Steineke:

Really, again, it’s keeping it open so that we can examine these issues through the use of the task force so that if the task force completes its work on time, we have the special session available to us to take up those bills. If we run into the end of the year or early next year, then we can go back in regular session. But there’s no reason to adjourn the special session right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

So, I mean, are you suggesting that you’d be able to take something up at the start of next week?

Jim Steineke:

No. No. No. No. No. Because we’re going to take some time as far as the setting up the task force. So that’s going to take a couple of weeks. We’ll start meeting by the end of the month. The reason to recess the special session until next week is we have to do that on a weekly basis. So we have to come in, open it up and then recess to the next week just to keep the special session open.

Frederica Freyberg:

There does seem to be some overlap between Republican proposals and the governor’s; namely, on use of force. He calls for standards. The speaker was talking about looking at a use — or actually it was Senator Wanggard looking at a use of force review board but do you expect to be able to come together on this and other policy around police reform and racial inequity?

Jim Steineke:

Absolutely. I’m really excited about it. My initial conversations with members of the Black caucus and the Assembly have been very good. I think we’re kind of on the same page as far as what we want to see come out of this task force. And really, at the end of the day in order to get anything substantive passed, we have to have buy-in of not only Democrats and Republicans, but the people this affects in communities of color and law enforcement all coming together. So I expect we’ll take up and look at the Democratic proposals. We’ll look at Republican proposals. But then we’ll also look at the WPPA proposals that they put out this week and what other states are doing as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

That’s Professional Police Association?

Jim Steineke:

Yes, ma’am.

Frederica Freyberg:

So moving on to the visits by the presidential candidates this week, former Governor Walker said that Joe Biden was using Kenosha as a political prop. Why can’t the same be said of Donald Trump?

Jim Steineke:

Yeah. I mean, for me, I welcome any type of attention that these visits bring to the state because it has been such a pain point for the people of the city of Kenosha, and hopefully these visits, both from the president and from Joe Biden, will begin the healing process. It would be frustrating if they were using it as campaign ploys. Hopefully that’s not the case. Really appreciate what the president did in allocating resources to the state to help rebuild the community and help heal that area, because it’s incredibly important.

Frederica Freyberg:

Were you surprised to learn that Governor Evers actually also asked Joe Biden not to come, as he had the president?

Jim Steineke:

Yeah. That’s what Governor Evers says that he did. You know, he made it very public announcement that he didn’t want President Trump to come. If he did say that to candidate Biden, he did it a little quieter and not in a public letter. But I’ll take him at his word that he asked both candidates not to come.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave our conversation here, but thanks very much and we will be following the work of the task force as well as the full Legislature as it moves ahead on police reform. Thank you.

Jim Steineke:

Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.