Gov. Tony Evers on New Laws, Vetoes and 2024 Ballot Measures

Frederica Freyberg:
Wisconsin voters go to the polls next Tuesday, April 2nd. This spring election includes a presidential preference vote, which may give a sense of which way our pivotal battleground state could tip. Meanwhile, in policy and politics at the state level, Governor Tony Evers with what he signed into law and what he vetoed and why. He joins us now. Governor, thanks very much for doing so.

Tony Evers:
Thanks, Frederica. How are you today?

Frederica Freyberg:
I’m well, thank you. So you have taken action on a raft of legislative bills in the past several days. What, for you, are the most important bills that you’ve signed into law this session?

Tony Evers:
It’s actually been a pretty good bipartisan session. I know the — when people hear it from the outside, we’re fighting all the time, but the fact of the matter is we have fair maps. That was a bipartisan win. Shared revenue was very, very important. Brewer stadium, affordable housing, just to name a few, and all of them were bipartisan and very meaningful and important bills, so I was really, really happy about that. We provide some more money for our schools. Clearly, we had decades worth of kind of starving our schools, so it wasn’t enough, but it certainly was an important issue and lots of resources for mental health for kids. That’s really critical.

Frederica Freyberg:
You spoke to the bipartisan nature of these bills, now signed into law, but do you look forward to a changing political landscape because of new maps should it lead to even less feuding and more compromise?

Tony Evers:
It should, and that’s critically important. Fair maps does not mean democratically gerrymandered maps. It just means the rationale here is that Wisconsin is a purple state and races should be close and hard-fought and give people the chance to interact with candidates from both parties. And so I just think it’s best for democracy, and so I’m really happy about that. I think there will be more Democrats in the Legislature than before, but it’s going to be close. And so I do think that bipartisanship will be amplified by that, absolutely.

Frederica Freyberg:
Which do you believe were your most important vetoes?

Tony Evers:
Well, I would say the important vetoes, there’s several, but the one I’m concerned about is all the ones that just never made it to me that weren’t — we didn’t have a chance to veto. Essentially the postpartum piece, where we could give — could have gave women a full year instead of 60 days, making sure that our people at the polls are doing — you know, can open envelopes the day before so that they’re not so scurrying around on Election Day. There’s a whole number of things that frankly didn’t happen, and the one thing that I’ll continue to advocate for that, frankly, is critical, is childcare. Childcare operations in the state are just barely hanging in there and if we want to have a strong economy, we need a strong industry of childcare. So those are things I didn’t veto; we just never got there.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what are some lingering issues? The 15 million in healthcare kind of help for the Chippewa Valley and PFAS come to mind.

Tony Evers:
Yeah. I have yet to understand why we can’t release that money for folks in the northwest Wisconsin. I heard directly from the folks up there that they wanted — the legislation itself just said here’s $15 million for emergency room work. That’s important, but we need to deliver babies up there. We have mental health issues in northwest Wisconsin. So it was important that I did a partial veto on that and made it more reasonable for the people up there to kind of get through until they have something permanent. But the Joint Finance Committee just cannot see fit to send them the money. It’s just very, very disappointing.

Frederica Freyberg:
On schools, you spoke to school funding earlier, but voters will be asked on their ballots on Tuesday’s election whether to approve some $1 billion in spending by way of referenda to supplement funding in their schools. What if voters feel they cannot vote ‘yes’ on those?

Tony Evers:
Well, certainly, you know, it’s difficult. As I said before, we did a pretty good job of having a head start on the issue of funding, but funding is different in every different — you know, it’s a very complex situation in some schools because they have revenue at home in their own district, they get less state aid. So it’s a complicated thing. Not everybody is in that position, but we have 10 years or more of essentially starving our schools and what we were able to do was — that finally got through was about 50% of what the original budget was, and so I’m not surprised that there’s more schools going through referendum, they need it. I hope that people will be supportive, but I also understand that any time we have a referendum, you’re going to be increasing the tax — the local taxes. But people at the local level make those decisions, but in the past, I’m assuming it’s the same case here, is there will be plenty of winners and a handful of losers and unfortunately those losers will likely have to make some really difficult decisions, especially as it relates to the number of teachers they have.

Frederica Freyberg:
What about the constitutional amendments that seek to prohibit outside grants in election administration or outside experts stemming from 2020 concerns? Why did you veto those when they were legislative bills?

Tony Evers:
Because they are unnecessary and, frankly, were going to make it difficult to vote. It’s a core thing for me and I think most Wisconsinites. We need to encourage people to vote instead of discouraging them, and so I felt both of those were headed in the wrong direction and so I vetoed them. Now, I find it amazing that, because they can’t override my veto, somehow the Legislature can put it on the ballot and make it part of the constitution. These things aren’t constitutional issues, but so I will be voting against those because I vetoed them to begin with. I thought both of them would make it more difficult for people to vote and we should be making it — making it a friendly opportunity. We want people to vote. We want more people to vote. Simple as that. And both of these are not headed in that direction.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. We leave it there. Governor Tony Evers, thank you very much.

Tony Evers:
Thanks, Frederica. Have a good day.