Frederica Freyberg: Tonight, in our Budget Watch segment, we check in with Floor Leaders at the Capitol. We begin with Assembly Speaker, Robin Vos , who says he is a big fan of the Governor and his policies — but himself has expressed some issues with the budget plan. He joins us from the Gateway Technical College in Racine. Mr.Speaker, thanks very much for doing so.

Robin Vos: I’m always glad to be here.Thanks a lot for having this discussion, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg: So I understand that if the State sees higher tax revenues, you would add some spending back into the budget or would like to.Where would you like to do that?

Robin Vos: Yeah. I’ve been pretty clear in saying that, of course, Republicans highest priority is to always maximize the amount of money that we can put back in the hands of working families all across the state.But I also know that as we look at our priorities throughout the State we try to have discussion finding a balance between ensuring we have a great educational system, a good University System, and still have the ability for people to afford to live here.I was pretty clear in saying that we've got concerns in our caucus about making sure that we have adequate funding for the University, that we fix the problem with transportation without more bonding and that we ensure we have great public schools and that we have choices for parents all throughout the State.I’d rather put money in making sure those are all done before we get back to more tax cuts which I’m hoping to do in the next budget.

Frederica Freyberg: On roads, I know you and others have taken some issue with the bonding for transportation.But how would you personally like to see them funded instead?

Robin Vos: Well, the idea that I've always wanted was toll roads, which is to say if you are using a highway, you should make sure you pay for it.I’ve accepted the fact that is a long discussion because the federal government has to give us the authority to do it so it’s not something that we could do today.But along that same line, I think that the more you use Wisconsin’s roads the more you should pay for it.Somebody who literally puts on almost no miles should not be paying a significantly higher cost than someone who drives 40,000 or 50,000 miles a year like I do.One of the ideas we’ve discussed is take that registration fee that we pay in Wisconsin and rather than having it be the same for everybody no matter how much you drive, if you drive a little bit in Wisconsin, you probably wouldn’t see much of an increase.But if you drive a lot, you’d pay a higher registration fee based on how many miles you put on per year.Not a Black Box in your car, but just an idea, with an honor system where when you sell your car, you’d reconcile that.I think we all have agreed that Transportation bonding is way too high under Governor Walker's proposal and especially if we accept the fact that two years from now after we’ve done all this bonding we’re in the exact same problem without putting more revenue into the transportation trust funds.I hope we can find some ways to put reforms into place to drive down costs, maybe look at every project and say we can’t afford them all.Ultimately, we have to put more revenues in the pot as well.to make it all balance out.

Frederica Freyberg: On the UW-System, what is your position on keeping a capon tuition tied to the rate of inflation even after a two-year freeze comes off?

Robin Vos: As you know, I’ve always been one of the biggest supporters of more flexibility for the university System.Having been a member of The Board of Regents, I have a passion for higher education and I know that the UW System has more fat than it should and there should be more reforms so let’s take that as a given.But I also want to make sure that we put a system in place that allows us to keep our most important priority, and that's giving a great education to every single student who enrolls and getting them out of school as quickly as possible so they don't have an overwhelming debt that they can’t dig out from.If those priorities can be maintained, I think we can have a reduction in the amount of money we are giving from the State to the University.

Is $300 million the right number?I think it’s probably too high.And that’s why hopefully if we have new revenues that come in May we have an updated based on our economic growth, some of that money will be able to be given back to the University.Still having reforms.I still would like to have the authority where they have more control over their future.But probably a reasonable cap on tuition makes sense too.I don’t want any student to be priced out of the market, and once again have more debt than they should be.

Frederica Freyberg: I just want to ask a question. You started by talking about the importance to you and your caucus and the Governor about tax cuts and giving back to the taxpayers.But why is it so important to cut property taxes, say $10 per household, when the choices in this budget are so hard?

Robin Vos: Well, let’s remember the goal for this budget was not necessarily to cut property taxes.The goal was to keep property taxes frozen.So we want to see what the numbers are going to be from Governor Walker’s own budget prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.That will probably be three or four weeks from now.