Here & Now

Here & Now for Dec. 8, 2017

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here and Now,” a first look at a new ad campaign designed to lure young workers to the badger state. Attorney General Brad Schimel’s report on John Doe leaks. An update on a WisContext story about Wisconsin medical supply shortages due to Hurricane Maria. It’s “Here and Now” for December 8.

Announcer:

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

Frederica Freyberg:

In our first look tonight, Wisconsin wants to blitz the nation with a marketing campaign to persuade people to come here to work. Governor Scott Walker says it’s critical to, “get more bodies” in Wisconsin, saying the state projects the need for 45,000 workers in seven years to fill jobs in manufacturing, nursing, information technology and services. The governor is calling on the legislature to approve $6.8 million for the marketing, but with Foxconn coming, a separate million dollar campaign to lure young professionals in Chicago to Wisconsin kicks off in January.

Male announcer:

“Your ramen or ours?” In Milwaukee, the cost of living is 22% less than in Chicago.

Frederica Freyberg:

The “Your ramen or ours?” spot is one of the many marketing messages across platforms, including even a Chicago commuter train wrap, espousing the benefits of moving to Wisconsin from the windy city. The target? Young professionals, including those who graduated from Wisconsin colleges.

Tricia Braun:

We’ll be putting ads in places where millennials tend to frequent, commuter trains, and the train stations themselves. Inn health clubs that they might be exercising in and bars, restaurants, et cetera that they spend time in.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is talent spotting to fill existing and future jobs.

Tessa Conroy:

Wisconsin just doesn’t do as good a job attracting workers into the state as some of our other states around the country.

Frederica Freyberg:

UW Economist Tessa Conroy says it’s likely to be an uphill battle because workers aren’t as mobile as they were even a decade ago. Plus, Wisconsin competes for millennials with states that have larger cities with a special pull.

Tessa Conroy:

Workers like thick labor markets. That’s why they go to Minneapolis and St. Paul and Chicago. And comparatively, Wisconsin doesn’t have an urban center quite like that that has that kind of gravitational effect on workers.

Frederica Freyberg:

Millennials, Conroy says, like what are called high amenities.

Ryan Monfils:

I think a lot of millennials just want to go where opportunities are like, where the cities are, like music – not looking for development and activities do to that are just not basic like a walk in the park – like concerts, sporting events.

Frederica Freyberg:

In a quick survey of 20-somethings on campus in Madison, we asked, do you want to stay in Wisconsin after getting your degree?

John Douglas:

I'd prefer to leave, to be brutally honest, but it really depends on where I'm able to get a job. I’d prefer to go back either to D.C. or LA or somewhere like that.

Riley Farrell:

A lot of people want to go to Chicago. Not a lot of people are sticking around.

Frederica Freyberg:

But it turns out, most in-state students do want to stay and work in Wisconsin, at least eventually.

Riley Farrell:

I want to start out my career in a big city. Get the feel of a different kind of lifestyle and see more things than Wisconsin has an offer. I mean, but I want to come back for sure. It’s always been my home.

Male announcer:

Did you know that almost 80% of in-state students live and work in Wisconsin in the years after graduation? UW-Madison, working for Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

And UW systems schools report 87% of their grads stay in Wisconsin. The problem is not as much how many people leave as how few people come.

Tessa Conroy:

I wouldn’t say it’s the case that people are leaving the state at unusually high rates compared to other states in the U.S. It’s really the in-migration that seems to be one of the potential weaknesses in the state. That our in-migration just isn’t enough to offset the average rates of out-migration we do have.

Frederica Freyberg:

That’s why the first marketing blitz goes after out-of-state graduates.

Tricia Braun:

Individuals and students that have gone to one of our universities already have experienced the state. They have a feeling of connection with them. Reaching out to the alumni populations across the country, across the world essentially and using and leveraging the networks that they already have in place to tell this story seems like an obvious way to go.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Scott Walker wants to add to the “Come Work in Wisconsin” advertising budget, seeking nearly $7 million for targeted campaigns, including trying to attract military veterans to the state.

Tricia Braun:

Veterans are a really important part of the workforce and as they’re needing talent now, folks transitioning out of the military come with a set of skills that typically are very aligned with our industries and the job opportunities that companies are looking to fill here in the state.

Frederica Freyberg:

But what about the question of whether the demand for workers in short supply could command higher wages to possibly incentivize a move into the state?

Tessa Conroy:

I think a lot of the story in Wisconsin is that we’re raising wages and we still can’t find workers. I think that might be the case, but maybe what’s going on here is that we have been increasing but they’re still low compared to jobs in another sector or jobs in another city.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as to that question of wages in Wisconsin and other matters relating to the short supply of workers, we turned to workforce policy specialists at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Chris Reader. Thanks for being here.

Chris Reader:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about that question that Tessa Conroy, the economist brings up in our story about low wages compared to jobs in other sectors and other cities? Is it our leading sector of manufacturing that’s not able to keep pace with higher-paying sectors?

Chris Reader:

No. I think manufacturing consistently is a high-pay industry in Wisconsin. It’s one of the top states for manufacturing in country. If you take a look at wages over the past several years, Wisconsin has been very strong on wage growth. I think we’ve been 11th in the nation since 2010 in terms of wage growth. Kind of the situation that we have now where we have a workforce or worker shortage, which we’re all trying to address, really should continue to put upward pressure on wages and benefit packages as manufacturers, health care and other industries try to draw talent not only from other sources within Wisconsin, but from other areas to come to Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

There has been upward pressure already on wages, but is it accurate that maybe we aren’t competing well with other cities or other states?

Chris Reader:

No. I think we do compete. I think when you take a look at Wisconsin and you take a look at our cost of living here, we have a very low cost of living compared to Chicago or compared to some other communities throughout the country. So when you take our cost of living and you take our wages, we really have a great story to tell. I think we have a place that workers, if they do all that calculation, should want to come to Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

What's the extent of the worker shortage in Wisconsin?

Chris Reader:

For our members, it’s something that is very top of mind. We do a survey of our CEO members every six months. We’re just getting that data in now for the December survey. And it’s very high. It’s 80% of our members are saying that they are having a hard time right now finding workers that they need. That’s up from 77% last year and up from only about 50% a few years back. So it’s top of mind. It’s growing. Four out of five employers cannot find the talent they need right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is this in any particular sector or across the board?

Chris Reader:

It’s all over. It’s across the board. It’s health care, manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, I.T. It’s really all types of jobs. It’s somebody to work on the factory floor. It’s also somebody in management. It’s cross-sector and cross-job.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why is this happening?

Chris Reader:

Well, if you take a look at the plain demographics, we have in Wisconsin a birth rate that is slightly below the national average, a little bit below. We have a situation that was accurately displayed in the story of people for most part staying in Wisconsin if they go to UW school or a private college here in the state. They stay here. But we’re not drawing people to Wisconsin. And other states are drawing people from other states to their area. So we have kind of a stagnant population. We have a population of baby boomers that are exiting the workforce. So we have a vacuum being created without a new sector — section of workers coming into it.

Frederica Freyberg:

What's the result for employers of this worker shortage?

Chris Reader:

Sure. Well, if we can’t get workers to come here, which is why it’s so important that this campaign that the governor is kicking off now works. If we don’t get workers to come here and families to move here, we’re looking at economic stagnation. In order to keep our economy moving forward in the decades to come, we really need to solve this issue now and get people to move here in order so that we can fill our jobs going forward.

Frederica Freyberg:

There was discussion in the story about how young professionals like these “thick” labor market with these high amenities and not mentioned in the story but mentioned by the economist, things like really robust mass transit systems. Is there any way that Wisconsin with its largest city Milwaukee can really compete with those “thick” labor markets?

Chris Reader:

Absolutely. We actually just this week unveiled a different video. You can see it a wmc.org. It’s a video where we interviewed a couple from Janesville that used to live in Chicago. They moved to Wisconsin, to Janesville, out of Chicago because they saw the cost of living in Wisconsin. They say the life quality in Wisconsin as something, once they were in their careers for a few years, having kids, they wanted to move back to Wisconsin. They were originally from Wisconsin. So they’ve moved back to Janesville. Absolutely, if you stack our quality of life up with big cities, we can compete I believe with anyone in the country. And Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine, they do have a lot of great amenities for folks that want to come and have that purely urban life living downtown in a high-rise. We do have that. It’s maybe not as played up as much as it should be in Milwaukee, but we have a great quality of life in the city of Milwaukee for folks that want that downtown lifestyle.

Frederica Freyberg:

Are all eggs kind are in this marketing outreach campaign?

Chris Reader:

Yeah. This is where it’s at right now in terms of what we need to do as a state to continue to prosper and grow. Again, from our members, four out of five are having a difficult time right now finding the workers that they need. It’s across sector. So it’s something we really need to get right. We need to make sure our K-12 system continues to produce education results that let our kids get into jobs Wisconsin will have. We need to make sure that people in higher ed in Wisconsin want to stay here after they finish their degree. And we need to bring folks in in order to meet the coming numbers crunch.

Frederica Freyberg:

Chris Reader, thanks very much.

Chris Reader:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now to news out of the Department of Justice. The Wisconsin attorney general issued a scathing report this week relating to his inquiry into leaked John Doe documents. AG Brad Schimel is not recommending criminal charges, but only, he says, because it’s not possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt who leaked the documents. As investigative records that were part of the secret probe into Governor Scott Walker’s campaign were grossly mishandled by being kept in unlocked locations within the offices of the former Government Accountability Board. Schimel’s investigation also discovered a previously-unknown John Doe III, which investigated a wide range of GOP officials and staffers suspected of campaigning on state time. John Doe III didn’t result in any charges, but that probe’s warrants and subpoenas of Republicans included personal correspondence unrelated to any campaigns. Some of those subpoenaed materials were found in a file labeled “opposition research.” Schimel’s report says, “DOJ is deeply concerned by what appears to have been the weaponizing of GAB by partisans in furtherance of political goals.” The Department of Justice recommends disciplinary action against a former GAB attorney whose hard drive containing secret documents cannot be found. Justice also asked the judge overseeing the leak case to initiate contempt proceedings against that lawyer and several others, including the former GAB director and the John Doe special prosecutor Francis Schmitz. To that, Schmitz says, “… all I can say is that I was completely surprised to hear about this. I cooperated with officials from the DOJ at the outset of the investigation and had no further contact with them.” One Democrat says Schimel’s report reads like a partisan hit piece, according to the AP. Now a follow-up on reporting from our partners at WisContext on medical supply shortages. Shortages resulting from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where IV fluid products for the U.S. are produced. The supply of these products and others used daily and in quantity at facilities like UW Hospital in Madison. We check in now with Philip Trapskin, manager of patient care and services at UW Health, who joins us from Washington, where he just met with staff from the offices of Senator Tammy Baldwin and Speaker Paul Ryan to brief them on this problem. Thank you so much for joining us.

Philip Trapskin:

Great to be with you.

Frederica Freyberg:

A letter to Congress last month said that the hurricane in Puerto Rico heavily compromised pharmaceutical manufacturing, which leaves the U.S. health care, this letter said, “… on the brink of a significant public health crisis.” What is the situation now?

Philip Trapskin:

The hurricane shed some light on vulnerabilities that exist within our supply chain within health care. Drug shortages have been a problem within health care for many years and the fact that all of these fluids were made on an island that was prone to — or that was potentially affected by hurricanes is just one of the many vulnerabilities that exist today.

Frederica Freyberg:

And my understanding is that virtually all of these products come from Puerto Rico. Is that right?

Philip Trapskin:

Well, there’s three main manufacturers in the IV fluid marketplace. And one of the lines of fluids, the fluids that are used to mix up drugs that patients need, things like antibiotics and chemotherapy pain medications, they require a smaller bag to put drugs in to safely administer it. All of the production of those bags from one of the largest vendors was from Puerto Rico.

Frederica Freyberg:

Describe what’s in critical short supply at your hospital.

Philip Trapskin:

So the smaller bags that we mix drugs in, it’s something that we use approximately 30,000 doses a month. We needed to find an alternative for all 30,000 of those doses when production in Puerto Rico stopped. The marketplace quickly dried up, no pun intended, to make those medications differently. And so we used a lot of different mechanisms to make that happen. Luckily, no adverse outcomes have happened with patients at UW. We’ve been able to provide all the medications we need. But it does put strain on the system in terms of opportunities for medication errors whenever you quickly implement new work flows within health care.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah, cause what kind of a scramble is that?

Philip Trapskin:

Well, it’s a lot of work. It’s a big team. It involves things like the pharmacist and the pharmacy technicians that work in the IV rooms learning and researching what different concentrations can be made. We needed to rent equipment to–instead of administering things via bags, we administered them through syringes. There’s training of staff that needs to happen. There were over 1,000 medications within our electronic medical records that we needed to reconfigure to make them for patients as part of the shortage.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is it the same across Wisconsin and in other states?

Philip Trapskin:

Yes, it is. Through the network that I have of other hospital pharmacists within Wisconsin, we’ve done a couple surveys. One shortly when the crisis started and one as recently as this week. And they all have similar stories to tell about medications being hard to get. Obviously IV fluids have been one of the focus. Another medication that’s made on the island that was difficult to come by is intravenous potassium. An electrolyte your body needs. And hospitals right now are also currently dealing with severe shortages of IV opioids or medications like morphine. Medications that treat seizures like Lorazepam. And it’s not a new phenomenon, but one that continually puts strain on the system.

Frederica Freyberg:

Right. Because I was going to ask you about your sounding the alarm on drug shortages in general even apart from hurricanes on islands. Why is that happening?

Philip Trapskin:

Well, in general, if you think about the infrastructure–things like roads and bridges–they need to be maintained over time. And when you want to build roads or bridges, it takes a large infusion of capital to do so. Because many of these medications are generic and no longer protected by patents, it’s easy for people to get into the marketplace, but the amount they’re able to charge for those medications is much less. So players come in and out of the market and don’t always maintain their factories as well as they could. And so one of the things that happens is sometimes there’s supply interruptions because of quality issues at the different manufacturers. One of the fluid manufacturers prior to the hurricane needed to shut down temporarily because of quality issues. Also, just the general capacity to make some of these medications can’t keep up with demand. So the folks that make the IV fluids run their factories pretty much continuously, 24 hours a day all year and maybe shut down for a couple weeks of maintenance around Christmastime. So we’re actually nervous given the way the fluids exist today that we usually see a demand rise around this time of year with things like influenza and other illnesses that happen in the winter. And the fact that the companies typically take a break from production causes additional strain on the system.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, you’re in Washington trying to —

Philip Trapskin:

Those are just a couple —

Frederica Freyberg:

Sorry. There’s a little bit of delay. But you’re in Washington trying to tell people about this issue. What can be done about it?

Philip Trapskin:

Well, in 2012, when the authorization that Congress does to fund the FDA went through, a number of measures were put in place. And those measures have helped. However, we feel like more can be done. And really we’re bringing awareness to the Wisconsin delegation about the issue. And then working with them to brainstorm ideas that might help. Some things that I personally think could make a difference would be figuring out if there’s ways to better incentivize the production of some of these critical medications that are kind of the baseline or essential medications that a hospital needs, things like antibiotics, IV fluids, things to resuscitate people when they have a cardiac arrest. And incentivize those to be made here in the U.S. but also incentivize them to be made in quantities sufficient to meet the demand of our health care system. So many of these things are also manufactured, not only in places like Puerto Rico but overseas in countries like China. Some people feel like there would be an opportunity to bring some of that manufacturing back to help with jobs, but also to prevent any potential national security type issues that could arise if we’re too dependent on any one company that’s located outside of the U.S. to rely on that for our health system.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there, but thank you for bringing awareness to this really critical issue. Philip Trapskin, thanks very much.

Philip Trapskin:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Police arrested nine protestors outside Speaker Paul Ryan's Washington office this week. Protesters voicing display over tax changes for graduate students. Tonight we take a closer look at the changes in the House tax bill that would make tuition waivers taxable income. According to the American Council on Education, about 145,000 U.S. graduate students receive tuition waivers. Michael Bellecourt is a UW-Madison graduate student who represents the Teaching Assistants’ union. Michael, thanks very much for being here.

Michael Bellecourt:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

As you know, the House version has to be squared in conference committee with the Senate bill, which does not include this provision, but what would this tax change mean to students like yourself?

Michael Bellecourt:

The situation is really different for every graduate student, so I don’t want to go in with one number and say every grad here at Madison will pay this much more. But for a very sizable chunk of grad students here at UW-Madison, their tax burden could go up by several thousand dollars if this bill passes with the House’s language.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would those grads students be able to pay that?

Michael Bellecourt:

Many of them would have to take out additional loans just to pay their taxes.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so what’s been the reaction on this campus and others to this proposed tax change?

Michael Bellecourt:

Amongst grad students there’s a lot of disbelief, a lot of fear and a lot of disgust about this proposed change. And it’s really motivated a lot of grad students to speak out.

Frederica Freyberg:

You are a biochemistry Ph.D. candidate. What is the value of your tuition waiver?

Michael Bellecourt:

My tuition as a senior graduate student is actually very low. So I have a very low burden, according to this language. But incoming biochemistry graduate students, they have a much tuition because they’re still taking classes. And these are some of those students that will have that additional several thousand dollars of taxes if the House version of the bill.

Frederica Freyberg:

So for those younger, incoming grad students, what is tuition for grad school that they get waived potentially?

Michael Bellecourt:

The value of the tuition, the actually monetary value is around $2500. Most of us don’t even know that because we don’t ever see our tuition. It’s just money that’s being handed from one part of the university to the other. So the fact that they want to tax us on that money that we never even really see is kind of amazing. A lot of grad students don’t even know what their tuition is.

Frederica Freyberg:

You said it was $2500. Per semester?

Michael Bellecourt:

That's per year. It is an approximation. I don’t have the exact numbers on me because these numbers are just kind of mysterious to the grad student. It’s buried on the UW-Madison website.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you have any idea how many UW-Madison students are granted this tuition waiver?

Michael Bellecourt:

All UW-Madison grad students have a tuition waiver. Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would that be the case where there are Ph.D. programs elsewhere?

Michael Bellecourt:

Most universities across the nation waive tuition for their grad students. I would even venture to say it may be all universities.

Frederica Freyberg:

I heard one critic of the tax change say it would mean only the wealthy could afford graduate students. How real is that in your mind?

Michael Bellecourt:

We have so little money at the end of month because we don’t make a lot. Our stipends are very low. If we had to throw additional money at taxes, we would have nothing. We would have to take out loans or we would have to have a wealthy source funding our graduate student career.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would that be an impact on research?

Michael Bellecourt:

Absolutely.

Frederica Freyberg:

How?

Michael Bellecourt:

Taxing tuition would cause people to stay away from grad school. We would have so many fewer graduate students. And the graduate students are really the people who are doing research. We have all these really intelligent professors and they’re instrumental to the process, but their role in research is advising others. They’re telling others what to do, how to do the experiments, what to research. And others are doing it for them. Whether that’s a graduate student or a post doc, you would scare away grad students, you will have no one doing that research and it’ll all just–the system will collapse.

Frederica Freyberg:

Michael Bellecourt, thanks very much.

Michael Bellecourt:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Turning now from education to politics and allegations of sexual misconduct at the state legislature. Representative Josh Zepnick faces allegations by two women, both of whom say he kissed them without consent. This week he was stripped of his committee assignments and currently faces calls to step down. Zepnick apologized for the incidents but says he will not resign from the Assembly. In a statement released Saturday he says, “I will not be resigning and I will continue to work hard on behalf of my constituents.” And that is our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:

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