Here & Now

Scott Fitzgerald Previews Next Legislative Session

Frederica Freyberg:
In Wisconsin, the further down the ballot you went, the happier Republicans became. State assembly control was maintained by the GOP and over in the senate a new 17-15 Republican majority snatches back the power temporarily lost in that house after last summer’s recall elections. What’s on the Republican to-do list for the January session? Let’s ask Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. Senator, thanks very much for being here.

Scott Fitzgerald:
Yeah, good to be with you.

Frederica Freyberg:
I know everybody’s got their sleeves rolled up working on the budget at this point.

Scott Fitzgerald:
Right.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are some of the highlights of that that we can look forward to?

Scott Fitzgerald:
Well, you know, we’re not privy to everything that the governor’s working on and that’s fine. We have our own standing committees that we have to work through and get organized again. We’re doing that right now. But I think most of my members would tell you, first and foremost, we want this budget to be in balance, and to not have any structural deficit associated with that. That’s really the big goal. We did a lot of heavy lifting last session, and we want to make sure that, you know, in the end, that document kind of is a testimony to what we did last session. And it needs to be in balance to do that.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are some of the other, kind of, policy priorities that you’re looking at?

Scott Fitzgerald:
Well, I think the economic development and the jobs bills, they’re coming, and some of that has been spun out of the Wisconsin economic development corporation and the work that’s been done there. Others come from bills that really weren’t ready for prime time at the end of last session. But once again, I think you’re going to find with the majorities in the assembly and the senate there’s going to be a lot of work done in the area of job creation and economic development.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, I know I’ve also read that some priorities include income tax cuts, the mining bill once again.

Scott Fitzgerald:
Yeah. The income tax cut, that discussion is coming out of, really, the March, April, May forecasts on income tax collections that exceeded the forecasts. And as a result of that, if you carry that forward all the way into January, there’s going to be additional revenue that otherwise we weren’t necessarily sure was going to be there. So I think it’s good, yeah. There’s a number of members that I’ve spoken to that said it would be great and would be a super tool to be able to stimulate the economy if we could definitely look at some type of tax cut that could be included in that budget.

Frederica Freyberg:
And would your interest in that cut be, kind of, across the board, for all kind of income earners?

Scott Fitzgerald:
Yeah. I mean, there’s a number of different ways you can, kind of, slice that. There certainly are ways of collapsing the different levels of taxation, changing the charts, or you could– depending on the size of it, and that’s really what’s difficult to answer right now. We just don’t know where we’re going to be with total revenue by the end of the year, but, again, I think it’s great that we’re talking about it and that the legislature is focused on, once again on the economy, and getting jobs back here.

Frederica Freyberg:
Speaking of jobs, mining becomes a big priority?

Scott Fitzgerald:
It does. And, you know, with ending up at 18 seats, it gives us a little more flexibility, but overall I think we need to revisit the issue, kind of, top down. I don’t know that rolling out the bill that passed the assembly and came up one vote short in the senate last time is the way to approach this. I would prefer to really move this through the committee process again, and if there’s tweaks to what we did last time, I think that’s fine. I don’t know that we need to start from scratch. But, once again, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any legislator over at the Capitol that says current statute is acceptable, unless you believe there should be no mining in the state. It’s so antiquated. That set of statutes is so onerous. It definitely sends a signal to the mining industry, Wisconsin is not a place to do business, and that’s not acceptable, and we need to revisit that.

Frederica Freyberg:
You know, a lot of what we heard when we were covering these elections was that people were very upset at the polarization of the two parties and the fighting. What incentive do you have in the majority here to work across the aisle?

Scott Fitzgerald:
Oh, I think, you know, I always bring up the figure, 90 plus percent of the bills we passed last session were either bipartisan or voice votes. There’s always, I think, a willingness to make sure that you have, kind of, an agreement of all constituencies, whether they’re served by Democratic legislators or Republican legislators, to get the job done and I look forward to seeing who the Democrats elect as their new leader and working with them to make sure that, again, most of the bills we pass are bipartisan.

Frederica Freyberg:
Senator Fitzgerald, thanks very much.

Scott Fitzgerald:
Thank you.