Here & Now

Mark Born On Bills Requiring Drug Tests For Public Benefits

Mark Born:

Drug abuse occurs at all income levels. Tying drug testing only to certain forms of public assistance unjustly holds those applicants to a higher standard of accountability than the rest of us.

Frederica Freyberg:

Concern at the State Capitol this week over new bills to drug test public assistance recipients and limit what foods they can buy with food stamps. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on Here & Now we will hear from both sides of those proposals. Also tonight the Dane County DA will soon decide whether or not to charge the police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 19-year-old, a city leader is here who seeks to help the community prepare for that decision. Saturday marks the fishing opener in Wisconsin. It’s also, the start of a five-year ban on taking walleye from the Minocqua Chain of Lakes. We will hear how tribal and state biologists came to that decision together. And later legal news, the John Doe political flap and electing the State Supreme Court Chief Justice. But first, members of the Assembly Committee on public benefit reform heard testimony Thursday on a raft of fast tracked bills. Those measures include a limit on foods that can be purchased in the FoodShare program and mandatory drug testing for people on unemployment benefits and for public assistant recipients in work training programs. Under the bills the recipients are first screened and if suspected of drug use are tested. A positive test results in state paid drug treatment. But failing that, loss of benefits including unemployment benefits. Republican Assemblyman Mark Born is the chair of that Committee. He joins us now. Thank you very much for doing so.

Mark Born:

Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your Committee on public benefit reform trying to get at?

Mark Born:

Well, this is — these three bills we heard yesterday are part of a number of bills I think we will hear this session that we’ll continue to work on things to improve our public benefits system to make sure they are providing help for the people that need it and in the real time of need but also that are providing accountability to the taxpayers that make significant investments in these programs. We are looking for ways to make sure they are helpful like the drug testing bill that you mentioned and really in most programs helping people get back into work and also making sure they are accomplishing what they are supposed to be accomplishing for our taxpayers that are making considerable investments in them.

Frederica Freyberg:

On the bill that limits FoodShare recipients from buying shellfish, things like lobster and crab and shrimp. That gets a lot of attention, but why those items in particular?

Mark Born:

That bill the real — the main part of that bill is about promoting health and wellness in the program. That’s what the supplemental nutrition program was supposed to be about was helping people in their time of need provide essential things to help individuals and their families. We are trying to put some of the focus back on nutrition. That’s the primary part of the bill. The shellfish thing like you said gets a lot of attention. It is a very small part of it. It’s one if the things that when people talk about their concerns with the System everybody has a story. When we are on the campaign trail talking to folks and everybody says, “I see this with the benefit cards,” I see that. I don’t like to see that. I am not buying lobster. Why are these tax payer-funded things buying lobster?” So I think folks like to call it anecdotal, but the fact is, we hear a lot of that on the campaign trail. Like I said, everybody has a story. If you talk to clerks and convenience stores or grocery stores especially folks who have been doing it a long time, they have a lot of things that they’ve seen with those uses, and we are just trying to put some rules in place. The program already has rules. You can’t buy alcohol. You can’t buy cigarettes and dog food. We are trying to focus more on nutritional things. It is a supplemental program. Only a portion of the program is being focused on those things so they can still use some of the funds to buy whatever their preferences are. But I think it’s trying to take it back to what the program was really supposed to be about and that was supplemental nutrition.

Frederica Freyberg:

On the drug testing bills, is there a way to gauge how many people would test positive for drugs and either successfully complete treatment or become ineligible for benefits? Has that kind of been worked out?

Mark Born:

I think it is difficult to gauge. You have two different areas there that you are trying to gauge in your question, too. How many people are going to be successful? That is pretty hard to gauge. Some folks, you know, being asked to work on a program will be very successful with it, others aren’t ready for that yet. As far as how many people might be involved, I know people like to play to other states. The fact is these other states, all those programs are a little bit different. We have our own way of trying to accomplish those things. You can look at some data from the federal government from a few years ago that shows anywhere between I think it’s four and 38 percent of folks in these programs, maybe having some sort of drug abuse problem. So you can see the federal data has a pretty wide range. We won’t know where Wisconsin falls into that until we start participating in some of these programs.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. We will be watching these bills, however. Representative Mark Born, thanks very much.

Mark Born:

Thanks for having me.