Here & Now

Here & Now Feb. 17, 2017

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here and Now,” a “First Look” at what more money for schools as proposed in Governor Scott Walker’s budget could mean for one school district in northern Wisconsin. After that a “Closer Look” at the turbulent first weeks of the Trump administration. Then, in our “Look Ahead,” the uncertain future for refugees and immigrants in Wisconsin. It’s “Here and Now” for February 17.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here and Now” is provided, in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

Frederica Freyberg:

A “First look” tonight at Governor Scott Walker’s state budget proposal, which increases funding for public K-12 schools by nearly $649 million over the 2017-’19 budget period. The increases come in the way of per-pupil hikes, taking it from $250 this year to $450 in 2017-18 and $654 in 2018-19. The governor’s budget also increased funding for rural schools by nearly $31 million, addressing needs arising from declining enrollment and high transportation costs. And we go now to a rural district: Hurley. Hurley is the county seat of Iron County and is located right across the Montreal River from Ironwood, Michigan. Hurley’s school district encompasses more than 600 square miles. That’s a lot of miles on school buses. The district is administered by Chris Patritto, who joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Chris Patritto:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

What’s your reaction to the bump in school funding under the governor’s proposed budget?

Chris Patritto:

Well, I guess from past history I guess we’re pleasantly surprised right now, I guess. I’d put it that way.

Frederica Freyberg:

How specifically would this per-pupil increase and increases for rural schools benefit Hurley?

Chris Patritto:

Well, I think it would benefit us immensely at this point in time. With where we fit in the formulas, the revenue limit formula, the equalization aid formula, we don’t fit well in those categories and lose a lot of funding. Next year I think in the revenue limit formula, we’re projecting a loss of $195,000. So right off the bat I've got a $195,000 deficit to deal with. That’s before any type of fixed increases in our budget. With the governor’s proposals, I think a lot of his proposals would fill our hole, the $195,000 hole. I would still probably need to deal with how I'm going to deal with any future increases. So what we’re getting on one hand is very much appreciated. It’s filling a hole. But it’s still not going to solve my long-term problem.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because what has the financial situation been for your district in recent years going back?

Chris Patritto:

Well, I've been superintendent in Hurley for 13 years now, and we’ve had to cut every year. I believe my first year as superintendent we had to cut $700,000, the second year we had to cut $500,000. But then in some years there’s been a little; some years has been a lot. We’ve changed transportation contractors. Some things come up where you get lucky to balance it. But we’ve had to make a lot of tough calls over the years. We went from a three section school to a two section school. Classroom sizes get bigger. You can’t pay people, give them the raises you really want to cause they work hard every day. It’s been a struggle. Hurley is no different than most schools right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, what factors play into these budget woes that you’ve had?

Chris Patritto:

Well, declining enrollment really hurts us. As you decline in enrollment, your funding is going to get nixed a little bit. You know, insurance increases every year, transportation, heating, cooling. All those things, when you don’t have a solid formula every year to give an increase to your expenses, it gets kind of tough.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you were talking about having to make cuts of like $700,000. How do you even do that?

Chris Patritto:

Well, that’s where I said there were a lot of tough calls to make and unfortunately it meant people. And I think the first year I was superintendent I think we had to let about six people go, which is really tough to do in a small, small school.

Frederica Freyberg:

And then how does that affect the students that you’re trying to educate?

Chris Patritto:

Well, like a lot of schools, that’s the trend that’s been happening. Classroom sizes get bigger. You know, the supply budgets get a little smaller. You can’t do what you really want to do for the kids. And you just struggle with it every year.

Frederica Freyberg:

Didn’t the so-called “tools” of Act 10 kind of help smooth some of that out with employees paying additional contributions to their health care and retirement?

Chris Patritto:

Well, I think to a certain extent it helped in the fact that the money that was taken away from us, you know, by Act 10, when the revenue limit formula was drastically cut, you know, we were able to balance the budget that year pretty much on the backs of all the employees. But once again, that was a Band-Aid fix. Now you look forward, you know, five, six years later, the environment has changed a lot. You know, we’re struggling to find teachers. We’re struggling to pay them well. You know, the market for teachers, especially in northern Wisconsin, it’s tough right now. Replacing teachers in the future is going to be another challenge for us. You know, I think probably within five years I'm going to probably have to replace probably 20%, 25% of my staff.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow.

Chris Patritto:

In ten years, probably about 60%. So it’s a matter of–the pool of candidates and teachers out there isn’t what it used to be. Can we afford to pay people to come to northern Wisconsin? You got to be a special soul to live up here, number one. And can we afford to keep them? That’s the other hard part, is retaining these people.

Frederica Freyberg:

So with all of these concerns, even in the midst of some additional funding proposed at the state level, what do you think needs to happen going forward?

Chris Patritto:

Well, I think all school district administrators would agree that somewhere down the line we have to come up with some type of sustainable funding system for schools. You know, I don’t have a silver bullet answer for you on that. It’s just we need something every year. You know, like us. Next year we got $195,000 deficit plus increases to deal with. Okay. The governor’s budget hopefully will help us a lot to fill that gap. But once that gap is filled, that gap’s going to be there the following year again because the formulas are going to do the same thing to us. So the second year, yeah, the extra $200 would help immensely to fill some of that hole. But we need to come up with something that’s just sustainable, where the school districts can plan from year to year to know what they’re going to have rather than the carousel we have every two years and waiting for the governor’s budget and what’s going to go and what’s not going go.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah. We need to leave it there. Chris Patritto, thanks very much.

Chris Patritto:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

The breaking news out of Washington just doesn’t let up. A “Closer Look” now with our next guest, who calls it turmoil in the Trump administration. Turmoil, he says, that is unprecedented. He should know. UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer is an expert on presidential powers, executive orders and war powers. He joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Ken Mayer:

Good to be with you.

Frederica Freyberg:

You called this turmoil. What stands out?

Ken Mayer:

What stands out to me is from what we can observe of this White House is that it deviates so profoundly from the established practices and what we think we understand about the types of things that presidents need to do that I think it raises questions about whether we have a functioning White House. And the evidence of that comes from a variety of different directions, and it’s not just the leaks, which the president is deeply unhappy about. I think the leaks are a symptom of the problem rather than the cause of the problem because it’s not clear who’s in charge. It’s not clear who has the authority to make decisions, and you have the different stakeholders internally all working to try to protect what they perceive as their own positions.

Frederica Freyberg:

And this on your part is not just a partisan, liberal, academic persuasion?

Ken Mayer:

No, it’s not. You can see, even for someone who’s a Trump supporter, there are consequences to this. To give one example, one of the reasons federal judges put the temporary restraining order on the immigration order is that it was so sloppily drafted and so chaotically rolled out that even the Justice Department lawyers when they were arguing before the federal judge of the 9th Circuit, they couldn’t really tell the judges what the language meant or how it applied and it was just a function of a casual process. And I think that’s one of the reasons why they lost. And so it’s actively causing the Trump administration to trip over its own shoelaces.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet in his press conference yesterday President Trump described his administration as a fine-tuned machine and described the roll-out of the travel ban as very smooth and perfect.

Ken Mayer:

And that’s what you would expect a White House to do to defend itself, although I don’t quite see what the disadvantage would have been to say that they’ve hit some bumps in the road and they’re fixing it. But at some point it calls to mind the old Groucho Marx line, “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?” The indications are so clear that I think I find it hard to believe that someone who isn’t fully invested in this takes that seriously.

Frederica Freyberg:

Couldn’t this just be kind of chalked up to President Trump’s outsider status? He came to Washington to shake things up, right? And that’s what his voters wanted.

Ken Mayer:

Well, in a sense, that’s true, because one of the reasons he got elected and one of the things his voters want is for Trump to go in and start breaking things and to be disruptive and to not show due respect for what they perceive are ossified or even corrupt political relationships. But one of the things we know from history is that presidents going all the way back to Washington have been very aware of the fact what they do and what they say matters. And even the presidents that we regard as disruptive or transformative – Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan – these are people who came in and did institute significant change. Even they understood that the presidency really ought not to be — ought not to function like almost a random walk or improv exercise, because when presidents get that wrong, it has implications for what they want to do later in their administration.

Frederica Freyberg:

We were talking about what this might mean, this style of governance, if you could call it that, to establishment conservatives or Republicans like Paul Ryan.

Ken Mayer:

Right. So one of the issues here and this has nothing to do with partisanship or policy. I tell my students, one of the most important elements of any political relationships is credibility, in part because there’s no way to enforce a political agreement. It’s not like a binding contract. And people who are striking deals or are reaching agreement need to be able to have confidence that the person at the other side of the deal is going to uphold their end of the bargain and do what they say they’re going to do. And take Paul Ryan, for example. There are a number of things that he wants to do that are controversial, whether we’re talking Medicare reform, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. These are risky things. And if he’s going to stick his neck out on his behalf and on behalf of his Republican caucus to pass legislation to institute these kinds of changes, there’s significant political risk to that. And if he can’t be confident that a President Trump is actually going to do what he said he’s going to do and if he is thinking that the president may reverse himself or do something unpredictable, it’s going to interfere with his willingness to do the things that he and other Republicans want to do and at some point — and you’re already seeing some indications of that in the senate, where some members of the Republican Caucus are starting to express some bewilderment or some opposition to what the president is doing. If there are enough Republicans who start wondering whether this is worth supporting the president, then he’s got a real problem. Because the reason why people are getting along so far is that the interests of Congressional Republicans they think are aligned with the interests of the president. But if they can’t be certain of that, there are going to be some bumps in the road.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave it there. Ken Mayer, thanks very much.

Ken Mayer:

My pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

If the political overload out of Washington has people shutting down, tonight in keeping with expert heavy hitters we turn to one of the ten authors of a paper in the Journal of Communication this month titled “When We Stop Talking Politics: The Maintenance and Closing of Conversation in Contentious Times.” “When We Stop Talking Politics” actually looks at what happened in Wisconsin in the midst of Act 10. UW journalism professor Michael Wagner is here and thanks for being here.

Michael Wagner:

It's my pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why did you look at Act 10 as a focus on this?

Michael Wagner:

Well, Act 10 came at a time of severe financial stress, both in terms of growing economic inequality among regular citizens and the need for a budget repair bill in Wisconsin and it came at a time of growing political polarization both within Wisconsin and around the country. Act 10 itself became a symbol, a flashpoint for the divisions between Republicans and Democrats, in some ways between rural Wisconsinites and urban Wisconsinites. In other ways between public employees and non-public employees in other ways. So there was lots of overlaps of clash that we really wanted to understand in this context of financial stress.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now polling around this found that in the midst of Act 10, 32% of all respondents said they stopped talking politics. 43% of public employees stopped. Why did people stop?

Michael Wagner:

First of all, that’s a really high number. Typically if you ask somebody outside of a context like Act 10, have you stopped talking to someone because of their political views, maybe one in ten say yes. Certainly not a third of people. So this is a remarkable finding that comes out of the Marquette Law Poll surveys. So one reason people stopped talking was that those who had talked a lot, so people in rural areas who had talked a lot about politics began to stop because they were encountering people with whom they disagreed. People who were public employee union members stopped talking about politics because they were the center of this debate, crisis, this set of proposals and protests. And other people who were members of government unions as well or private unions also kind of experienced that same sort of situation. And so it was — the reason, I guess, is that politics affected parts of lives that politics normally doesn’t affect and it highlighted other kinds of identities that we don’t normally think of overtly political, like being a farmer, being a teacher, being a member of a union who works. Those things became political and they became contentious, resulting in some people stopping talking with their friends, people who they had lived social and civic lives with for years.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is the consequence if people stop talking politics?

Michael Wagner:

So there’s a few different things that could happen, right? On the one hand, you could say we’ll stop talking politics and we’ll redirect and talk about something else. We’ll talk about the Badgers or we’ll talk about the weather or something like that. You could also just say we’re going to stop talking altogether. And in some of the work done on this project, the work done by Kathy Cramer, where she would go into communities and talk to people who would get together and talk politics, she would go back and back and back to these communities. And after Act 10 she would find some people weren’t showing up anymore. And she would say, “Well, gosh, what happened?” And they would say, “Well, we’ve got different views on Act 10 than the person who’s not here and we’ve just stopped hanging out together.” So some of the consequences are the fracturing of social networks that weren’t political in the first place, which is a pretty devastating consequence when you think about how people just live their regular lives, especially when they’re not trying to be political in the first place.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because I know some of Charles Franklin’s polling also talked about it, it wasn’t just kind of neighbors over the fence who couldn’t talk anymore, but families actually were split in this way as well.

Michael Wagner:

Right. We saw that in the public opinion polling. We also saw that in Professor Cramer's data where she would talk to say, a farmer in a rural part of Wisconsin who would say my daughter’s a teacher and so now we’re at odds because of these decisions that are being made in Act 10 and where I stand given what farmers believe are the set of scarce resources that available and their perception that they’re getting far less and their perception that members of unions are getting many more things. And so it would even fracture families in some respects.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is what happened in Wisconsin happening at the national level, in your mind?

Michael Wagner:

Many Republicans would like it to and so Governor Walker has reportedly spoken with the White House and also spoken with members of the Iowa state government about pursuing similar kinds of legislation both in Iowa at the state level and the White House is talking nationally. So it could be that these sorts of things continue in terms of policy, which we would then suspect would also begin to affect national civic dialogues and informal conversations people have about politics.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what kind of concerns do people who are — who have gone deep on this have if in fact the people stop talking politics altogether?

Michael Wagner:

I think one consequence is an erosion of trust. If we can’t talk across lines of difference, it becomes very difficult to see the world from someone else’s point of view, which makes it really hard to compromise, which is a central requirement of a democrat system, especially in terms of governing. If different branches of government can’t compromise with each other, it becomes very difficult to get things done. And if the citizens aren’t encouraging lawmakers to compromise because they’re not talking to each other anymore, then there’s little incentive for lawmakers to compromise.

Frederica Freyberg:

Michael Wagner, thanks very much.

Michael Wagner:

My pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

President Donald Trump says his administration is writing a new executive order on travel bans that is tailored to address the court decision that blocked it. Tonight, we hear from a group trying to help refugees who are caught in the middle of presidential action on travel into the U.S. Mary Flynn oversees immigrant and refugee programs for Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. Thanks very much for being here.

Mary Flynn:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as we’ve just described, the president says that he will issue a new executive order sometime early next week having to do with this travel ban. But in the midst of all of this, what has been the impact of this ban on your organization and the people you serve?

Mary Flynn:

Well, the impact has been two-fold. First of all, as of January 27 there was a great deal of uncertainty put into our work and that is that there was a complete halt of refugee arrivals for at least 120 days. Every arrival who comes to the United States and comes to a resettlement agency, we receive a relatively small amount of funding to serve the refugees. And that’s what we pay staff with and pay rent and operations. So that income stream has effectively been cut off for the time being. The other thing that’s happened has been really positive and we’ve seen this happen again and again. When there is an outpouring of what appears to be national sentiment against immigration and refugee resettlement, actually the community steps up in a really big way. So we’re seeing a great outpouring of support and concern and volunteering and donations. So very positive.

Frederica Freyberg:

What number of people did you have that you were helping to resettle that might have been coming from some of these countries that were pinpointed in this executive order that might have had to not arrive as scheduled?

Mary Flynn:

We actually get about two-weeks notice before a case arrives. So as of the date of the executive order, we were expecting upwards of about 30 people to arrive. So that effectively stopped. We were particularly concerned about one young man who was from the Sudan and he was 24 years old and had been in the camps for already six years. So, you know, he had arrived there at age 18, which tells me that he was probably in flight for a very long time, fleeing. And he was also alone. So who knows what happened to his family. He was probably a very young boy when he had to flee for his life. And he was supposed to arrive on the Monday after the executive order. So he was literally in transit on the way to the airplane when the executive order took hold, and his travel was cancelled at that time. So that was just one of the examples that we have of people that really needed to be here and were stopped.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you know what his status is now, or is he back in the camp, or what happened to the people who were in transit or very soon going to be in transit that were turned back?

Mary Flynn:

Once again, there’s been a lot of instability, uncertainty. So we really are making efforts to cautiously and thoughtfully do our work each day. A week after the executive order took place, a court put a hold on it for a while. And so the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration, also known as PRM reinstituted all of the valid visas and travel that was already scheduled. So there’s a happy ending to this, because he was the first person to arrive.

Frederica Freyberg:

Oh.

Mary Flynn:

And he arrived about a week ago. The other 30 people we were expecting to receive have also arrived. But that’s been very changing thing for our office. Are they coming? Are they not coming? Yes, they are. Are we sure? And so they have. But we have no further travel scheduled for anybody in the near future.

Frederica Freyberg:

Especially because it’s unknown exactly what the new executive order on this might say.

Mary Flynn:

Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so these people that were turned back or held but then arrived, what is their demeanor now, now that they’re here, and what did they describe that was like, that uncertainty?

Mary Flynn:

We are really lucky to welcome people to the United States, because when they arrive, they are so grateful to be here and they are so excited about the opportunity of the United States. Part of our job is to really set forth a new life for them, help them take their next steps. We don’t really ask them a lot of questions about what they’ve been through, and we actually have no influence on pre- arrival anyway. So we really want to help them maybe put that hardship and hard feelings behind them and really be hopeful, because that’s why they came here. They often will tell us what happened. But that will take a few days for that to come out. So we haven’t heard any stories quite yet.

Frederica Freyberg:

Just very briefly, with less than 30 seconds left, how well-vetted were these people that arrived?

Mary Flynn:

Extremely well-vetted. They go through a preliminary vetting process when they register with the U.N. Again when they’re put on a travel list for any country in the world and again, once again, that very thorough, comprehensive vetting when they reach the United States travel list and before they’re allowed into the United States.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. Mary Flynn, thanks very much.

Mary Flynn:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now for other news and our “Wisconsin Look.” Parents of children with seizure-related health problems testified at the state capitol Wednesday in favor of a bill which would legalize possession of a medical marijuana extract. The oil can alleviate symptoms of serious ailments, including seizures but is currently illegal in Wisconsin. Madison father Ron Jordan testified in support of the bill. His son Giovanni is 11 and has epilepsy and is severely intellectually and developmentally disabled.

Ron Jordan:

But there is hope. It’s right here in front of us in the form of CBD oil. We know so many people who have uprooted their lives to move to states where their hope has increased as they have seen their epileptic children thrive. The seizures diminish because of a simple oil taken from a natural plant. We’ve seen it help our son. His seizures have diminished. He is starting to use sign language. He is learning to be potty trained. He is trying to speak. Why then should we have to fear using this oil when it offers us so much hope? You all have a chance to let that hope grow for so many families. All we ask is that you remember holding your children for the first time and remember all the hope you had for them. Please let us have some of that hope as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

And finally tonight, a look ahead to next week. That’s when I will have a report on proposed changes to the state’s food stamp program and hear from FoodShare recipients who under a 2015 change were required to work or train for work in exchange for the benefit. Did they get a job or were they bounced from the program? We’ll check in on that as the governor proposes expanding that work requirement to parents of school-aged children. Until next week, I'm Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here and Now” is provided, in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.