Frederica Freyberg:

Democrat Jon Erpenbach is one of two Dems on the Joint Finance Committee. He has harsh words for the Governor and his budget. He joins us now and thanks for doing so.

Jon Erpenbach:

Thanks.

Frederica Freyberg:

So late this week the Governor said that he would be open to putting more money into schools, roads and the UW, potentially. As the committee sets out to work the budget, how welcome is that news?

Jon Erpenbach:

It’s welcome, but I wish he would have just done it in the first place. Then we wouldn’t even be having this discussion right now. I mean, if that’s something he feels he wants to do, he had plenty of opportunity to so. The budget as a whole seemed like it was slapped together. Not a lot of thought went into it. And, you know, we’re going to borrow some money here, we're going to cut some spending there. I want to get this budget done as soon as I possibly can. It appears it’s getting in the way of something else he wants to do right now. But it’s welcome news, but it should have been a priority from the beginning.

Frederica Freyberg:

It does potentially allow him to say that his proposals were to do x, but it got changed in the process.

Jon Erpenbach:

Well, again, it’s his budget. And it’s his $300 million cut to the university system. It’s his $1.6 in borrowing to pave roads. His totally his budget. It’s our obligation to make the changes we want to make. Again, if the Governor's open to it now, a week after he introduced his budget, why wasn’t he open to it before? That’s the big question.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of the $300 million cut to the UW System, what’s been the response from your constituents?

Jon Erpenbach:

Some of them wonder what the Governor has against the UW System. People are upset. They’re upset economically what it means, not only to parents who have kids who are freshmen or sophomore in high school right now and want to go to one of the system schools, but small businesses around. You know, they do that kind of cut, it’s going to affect my business because University employees, who may be getting laid-off, come in and visit our shop. People are upset about it.

Frederica Freyberg:

What’s your response to it?

Jon Erpenbach:

Upset. They took a $250 million cut in the last budget and now $300 million? Economically, what the System as a whole, means to the State , is a lot. It’s the economic engine that drives the State of Wisconsin. But if you’re up in Superior, where they’re struggling just to keep the doors open, this doesn’t make it any easier. At what point are you going to start to sacrifice quality for the sake of We have to meet budget numbers? There’s no guarantee two years from now if the tuition freeze comes off that tuition won’t go up 25% or 30%. it’s not because they can. It’s because they won’t have a choice. The cut, in and of itself , is very, very frustrating.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of time to meet budget numbers, going into this looking at a $2 billion deficit, where would you cut?

Jon Erpenbach:

Well, there’s a couple of things I would take a look at personally. I would capture the Medicaid money that’s rightfully ours here in the State of Wisconsin. We are spending $600 some million in Medicaid. There’s $315 million sitting in Wisconsin. You could plug that hole, put more money into public education, put more actual money into the roads here in the State of Wisconsin. So that would be the first thing that we need to do. But overall we handed out a huge tax break in the last budget that we are dearly paying for right now. Perhaps that’s something that we need to revisit. Handing out tax breaks– Every time you hand out a tax break, you’re spending money. That’s money that won’t be coming in. We weren’t in any position to do so and we’re paying for it this budget.

Frederica Freyberg:

On taxes, on roads, the bonding. You talked about. Would you push or do you think even Republicans would be going for a gas tax instead?

Jon Erpenbach:

I think it’s something we need to think about. We eliminated the automatic indexing of that gas tax. Had we kept it, it would have been another $300 million we would have taken in this year. We need to take a look at the projects as a whole and see what projects could be pushed off, what projects need to be immediately addressed right now. The biggest issue I have with the transportation budget and I’m pretty certain the Republicans do, too, it doesn’t fix the problem. We have a huge problem with transportation. And it’s funding. It’s identifying a dependable revenue stream into the future so we won’t always have to borrow money to build the road or we won’t always have to raise taxes or talk about tolls. We talk about tolls all the time here in this state. What we need to do as a Legislature is find and identify a sustainable funding source for the transportation budget. One of those could be upping the gas tax a little bit to the point of where it would have been had we department indexing on the books. That would generate money right away.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ll be watching. Senator Jon Erpenbach, thank you very much.

Jon Erpenbach:

Thank you.