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The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

A busy week at the Capitol with an address from the governor and his call for a special session on tax refunds. Plus, a rally in the rotunda in support of overturning the 2020 presidential election. And Wisconsin’s workforce is left wanting.

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” we break down the governor’s fourth State of the State address and the Republican response, all in the context of an election year. And election overhaul or overthrow? Wisconsin is ground zero for a conservative movement redefining how elections are run. And finally, with COVID taking a U-turn, are Wisconsin jobs and the economy back on track? It’s “Here & Now” for February 18.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Tony Evers:

Indifference in this building is getting expensive, folks, and let me be frank. The people who bear the burden of inaction are almost certainly not the people sitting in this chamber tonight. So don’t sit here in a white marble building with state coffers that are full and tell Wisconsinites who are working hard every day, we can’t afford to do more.

Devin LeMahieu:

We’ve created an environment in which individuals and businesses can both thrive. But despite being in better financial shape than many other states, Wisconsin is nowhere near where we want to be. Nearly every other aspect of our lives has declined in quality because of Joe Biden’s disastrous policies and Tony Evers’ weak leadership.

Frederica Freyberg:

Ouch. Can you tell it’s an election year? In his State of the State address this week, Governor Tony Evers challenged Republican leaders to take up his plan to give checks from the state surplus to every tax filer. His call for a special session, March 8, to do that is so far not being met with enthusiasm by Republican leaders who slammed his idea in favor of their own. It seems like a nice election year problem to have, a $3.8 billion state budget surplus, but leave to folks under the dome to make it a political fight. Senior political reporter Zac Schultz is at the Capitol now, where we check in with him. Hey, Zac.

Zac Schultz:

Hello, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is this tax refund fight over?

Zac Schultz:

Well, it’s really what to do with the surplus in an election year. Obviously Governor Evers has laid out his plan. He’d like to send some of it back. You may recall four years ago, Governor Scott Walker did nearly the same thing. He sent $100 per child home to taxpayers in an election year. At the time, Democrats called it a gimmick. Well, he had the Republican Legislature to advance it so it actually happened. This time around Republicans are calling it an election year gimmick. Governor Evers doesn’t have a legislature that’s going to let him pass this. Republicans would much rather see that surplus stay there in the hopes that they have a Republican governor who will sign a much more tax cut-friendly bill in the budget next year.

Frederica Freyberg:

So here’s what Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu had to say.

Devin LeMahieu:

Ultimately, Governor Evers abandoned his own unrealistic budgets and followed our lead by signing our responsible budgets.

Frederica Freyberg:

Budgets that included tax cuts, which they say that Evers is taking credit for. But here’s what Evers says about why he wants to cut these checks now and not wait for a tax cut later.

Tony Evers:

It won’t help Wisconsinites pay for child care, heating their homes or putting food on their table today. Wisconsinites cannot wait.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the governor not only wants to give the surplus refund to families but beef up education funding by $750 million, which he says preserves this federal funding to Wisconsin schools, which is at risk if the state doesn’t spend enough on education. Does this put the opposing party, Republicans, in a bind?

Zac Schultz:

Not from their perspective. They’re perfectly content to let the chips fall where they may. If there’s any issue between the state and the federal government over any of these funds down the road, they will blame Governor Evers. They will blame Joe Biden in Washington. They will blame the Department of Public Instruction in Madison. They are just looking to get through this unscathed and get into the next election cycle.

Frederica Freyberg:

As part of the plan to boost employment, the governor would increase child care tax credits. Meanwhile, the Assembly just this week passed these measures to get at the need for workers, including moving rules to get more people off government programs. So what does this say about kind of the divergence in approach here?

Zac Schultz:

Well, it’s a pretty classic look of where we are with the perspective of the different parties and how to handle the economy and jobs. Republicans have for years said well, we need to get everyone off unemployment. We need to get them into the workforce. Doesn’t matter what job, just get them there as fast as possible. Any incentive for people to possibly stay on unemployment longer, to look for a job more suited to their field or their particular family situation, that’s not to their liking. Whereas Democrats are much more comfortable trying to create incentives for people to build careers off unemployment, and they point to actually a very small number of people in the workforce that are on unemployment right now, and the fact that we don’t have enough workers, period. So it’s a different perspective that goes back a long way on how to approach jobs and the economy.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, Republicans chide Evers for giving out federal COVID funds, calling the money “federal tax dollars borrowed against our kids’ futures” but then they also complain he hasn’t given it out fast enough. It’s like he can’t win for trying here?

Zac Schultz:

It’s more politics, Frederica. I mean, you have to look at the history of this money. It wasn’t too long ago that Republicans were trying to make every dollar the governor wanted to give out through the federal money have to go through the Joint Finance Committee, which they controlled. And in that scenario, it seems much more likely that that money would have been slowed down, if not stopped all together because at the time, Republicans were still hoping they could have a Republican governor spending those funds because the funds are still good for a couple more years. They’ve been frustrated at the governor’s choices at every step along the process. They passed a lot of bills directing him to do this or that, and he’s vetoed all of them because he’s maintained sole authority on where to put these dollars and he’s still dolling them out right up through the election season into areas that he thinks are critical for Wisconsin’s economy.

Frederica Freyberg:

So overall, as an election year address, how did this one fare?

Zac Schultz:

It’s pretty standard. You’re going to see the incumbent governor cheerlead and talk about what’s going great. That’s what the State of the State address is. And you’re always going to see the opposite party say you didn’t talk about all the things that really matter, all the things we’re trying to hype up. Election years don’t have much meat on the bone at the Capitol when it comes to legislation. The session’s almost done. We’re not going to see much done in that sense. So this State of the State is really all about the next election.

Frederica Freyberg:

And we’re coming in to the next election. So Zac Schultz, thanks very much. Thanks for being with us from the Capitol.

Zac Schultz:

Thanks, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

Amid the flurry of activity at the Capitol was a rally from far right Republicans. The group once again petitioning to overturn Wisconsin’s electoral votes for Trump on grounds that the election was administered illegally. A charge that has long been discredited after numerous lawsuits, audits and investigations. Representatives Timothy Ramthun, who just announced his run for governor, and Janel Brandtjen, chair of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, pushed for a resolution to reclaim Wisconsin’s 10 electors.

Timothy Ramthun:

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m into truth. I want justice and closure on the details of the mechanics of our process. It doesn’t matter who’s on the ballot. What matters is what’s the effect on the voter and is their vote true. And is it being counted properly.

Janel Brandtjen:

They advertised for specific groups to be represented, not all voters. Is that the job of the municipality to only reach out to specific groups and not all groups as voters? You are not crazy. You are not crazy.

Frederica Freyberg:

This move on the part of specific lawmakers comes despite the legislature’s non-partisan legal counsel saying such action violates the Wisconsin Constitution. How does a politician like Timothy Ramthun resonate with Wisconsin Republican voters, and where is the party headed? We turn to Marquette University Professor of Political Science Paul Nollette with those questions, and thanks for being here.

Paul Nollette:

Hi. Great to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what kind of Republicans are setting the agenda right now in Wisconsin?

Paul Nollette:

Well, right now, it really is a battle, I think, between the more mainstream Republicans, many of the leaders in the state legislature, as well as the closest allies to former president Donald Trump. And that battle is really, I think, one of those big battle grounds, anyways, over this question about the 2020 election, and voting rights. And so some of what the more conservative members of the Republicans at the state level are really focused on is this question of the election, and the 2020 election, almost in a single issue way.

Frederica Freyberg:

So which faction of the Republican Party, then, in Wisconsin do you think most resonates with voters?

Paul Nollette:

Well, I think the conservative side definitely has a number of adherence. I mean, there’s a lot of energy on the more pro-Trump side of the party, and certainly Donald Trump remains a popular figure within the contemporary Republican Party, both nationwide and here in Wisconsin. I do think, though, that in terms of policy, looking at how things are actually going, the somewhat more establishment or mainstream, whatever word we want to use, who are pushing back on the more extreme conspiracy theories and claims about the 2020 election, so far those Republicans have been in control. We’ve seen the Wisconsin Legislature carry on a very long investigation of the 2020 election, but so far those calls to actually decertify the election, to pull back electoral votes from Joe Biden in Wisconsin, those so far have not gone anywhere.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do Republican candidates for governor have to try to be the Trump-iest to win?

Paul Nollette:

It’s a balance. It’s really a balance, and a tightrope, I think, for people like Rebecca Kleefisch, for instance, who I think probably enters as the favorite in the race on the Republican side. And I think the pro-Trump energy, I mean, these are the people who are really fired up to vote. They’re ready to vote in the primary in August and then in the general election this November, but ultimately, I think they are still likely a minority on the Republican side, in terms of embracing the more extreme versions of the conspiracy theories to say not only was there fraud and this election stolen from us, but, in fact, we need to reverse the election in favor of Joe Biden.

Frederica Freyberg:

In your belief, is the fervor over these investigations into the 2020 election genuine, or is it kind of political fodder to fire up the base?

Paul Nollette:

Well, it’s a difficult question because it’s hard to get into everybody’s mind about how they’re thinking about this. I do think that there is a genuine belief on a number of Trump supporters and Republicans in the state that there was fishy business, even though there has not been any evidence, really whatsoever, to justify those claims. I do think that a lot of the Republican leadership in the state has to navigate this difficulty of having most of the Republican Party still allied, very much so, with Donald Trump and his claims about a fraudulent election, but also trying to govern in some sense and not to lose the ability to win in the general election. And to appeal to some voters who might be willing to vote for Republicans but not willing to vote for the most extreme conspiracy theories. So it’s really a balancing act that a lot of these officials are trying to maneuver right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

What would cool or heat up the dominance of Donald Trump in Wisconsin electoral politics in your mind?

Paul Nollette:

Well, it will be interesting to see what Donald Trump himself does, and how involved he gets in the Wisconsin races. We’ve seen him quite willing to endorse candidates who are loyal to him and loyal to this idea that the election was stolen and that there was massive fraud. So the extent to which Trump officially kind of makes an endorsement in this race and tries to get involved with speeches and so forth, I think could really raise the temperature, and in many ways raise the difficulty level for Republicans on the more establishment mainstream side to try to turn away from these issues and relitigating the 2020 election instead of issues that they do want to concentrate on like inflation, jobs, other issues that resonate with the majority of Wisconsinites.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ve seen this election cycle, these kind of fractious school board elections. Does this mark a shift in political activity?

Paul Nollette:

Yeah, well, I think we’ve seen a lot more attention on local races. As you mentioned, school boards also, you know, secretary of state races, and other races below the marquee races, the senate races, the governors’ races that tend to get a lot of the attention. And we see Republicans and kind of pro-Trump Republicans really target these races here in Wisconsin and across the country in a way that we haven’t really necessarily seen before. And I think that’s a new type of political organizing, and in a way that I do think has some real ramifications for democracy here in Wisconsin and across the country.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Professor we need to leave it there, but thanks very much. Really important information. Thank you.

Paul Nollette:

All right. Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Prior to the governor’s address, the Republican-controlled Assembly passed a joint resolution that would put a constitutional amendment before voters. If approved by voters, the resolution would require the court to consider the severity of a person’s criminal record when determining their bail.

Robin Vos:

Now if you look at last session and you look at some of the concerns that we have had, I didn’t always support this idea. I always had concerns about making sure that anybody who says that they are innocent has the right to prove themselves innocent in a court of law. And that’s the whole point. You’re innocent until proven guilty. But I think the author has done a good job of making changes to this amendment to meet those concerns and allow us to move this bill forward and this constitutional amendment. What happened in Waukesha, and I’ll let the folks who represent that area — was a wake-up call for many of us who saw that in far too many circumstances, a criminal justice system puts the onus on the victim to be able to guarantee that their safety is protected as opposed to the onus on the perpetrator to make sure that they should be let out because they are not a danger to society.

Frederica Freyberg:

On next week’s “Here & Now,” we’ll hear more on the bail setting proposal.

Looking ahead to April and the general election in Milwaukee for mayor, this week saw two candidates advance after the Tuesday primary. They are Cavalier “Chevy” Johnson, who’s been acting mayor since Tom Barrett stepped down in December, and Alderman Bob Donovan. John Johnson, a Marquette Law School research fellow says the primary results reflect a city whose demographics have drastically changed.

John Johnson:

In 2005 or 2004, when Barrett won his first election, probably a majority of the city’s adults at that time were still non-Hispanic white. That’s not true anymore. Milwaukee is a very diverse city, segregated, yes, but also diverse. So if you’re going to win a city-wide race today, you need a multi-racial coalition to do so. That was not necessarily the case two decades ago. And so it will be a real challenge for Donovan, based on his past election results, to achieve that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Soon after the polls closed in the spring primary election, the Wisconsin Elections Commission met to rescind its directive on absentee ballot drop boxes in concurrence with a recent state Supreme Court order.

Robert Spindell:

We’re not issuing any additional guidance because, you know, maybe the guidance shouldn’t have been issued in the first place. So I don’t think we’re in the position now to start issuing additional guidance regarding drop boxes or who cannot bring in the ballot to the clerk.

Frederica Freyberg:

The guidance was written in 2020, a year when more than 2 million absentee ballots were requested by voters statewide.

Also this week, the Republican-led election investigation directed by former Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman has withdrawn all subpoenas issued to immigrant advocacy group Voces de La Frontera Action.

In his State of the State address, Governor Evers boasted of the current unemployment rate of 2.8% as being the lowest in Wisconsin history. Good news. Bad news, worker shortages. National labor statistics show in Wisconsin 209,000 jobs remain unfilled. Our next guest, UW-Madison professor of public affairs in economics says the word “shortage” is a misnomer. So we welcome Professor Menzie Chinn. Thanks very much for being here.

Menzie Chinn:

Well, thanks for having me on, Frederica. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

So if it’s not a worker shortage when employers can’t fill jobs, what is it?

Menzie Chinn:

Well, I think there’s a distinction between how economists use the term shortage and how it’s generically understood. So a shortage would be, for economists, we would say where for some reason prices or in this case wages aren’t allowed to move up to the level where people are joining the labor force and taking jobs in the levels that they want to. Now there’s nothing that restricts firms from raising wages and benefits and the working conditions so that you fill all the jobs but it takes some amount of time. So I think it would be better to say not a labor shortage, but there’s a shortfall in the number of people who are willing to take the jobs, given the wages and working conditions that firms are willing to offer. So I think that’s a distinction we should put into place, and then we can think about why is it that workers at these wages aren’t willing to take the jobs that are available.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is salary the defining factor then in people taking a job?

Menzie Chinn:

Well, I think it’s a whole slew of characteristics. I mean, for a long time, we’ve had what has been called a shortage in Wisconsin, the appropriate workers that have the skills that are necessary. But really nothing has stopped firms from raising wages. In addition to that, it’s the conditions. How flexible is work? It’s the availability of other sources of labor, for instance, immigration, to allow more people who are willing to work for whatever [unintelligible] wages. Lots of these things have just been exacerbated tremendously by the pandemic, wherein for a while, benefits were elevated for good reasons to help workers who lost their jobs to manage through these times, but in addition to that, people might say, well, I can’t get child care during these times, and so it’s very hard for me to get on maybe a bus service that doesn’t exist anymore to get to a job that might be available. So those things have occurred, but then also the fear of infection and getting sick. So what’s happened is you’ve had a re-assessment by a lot of workers, either because of the constraints that are imposed upon them or just because they’re thinking about the tradeoffs that exist in their lives and the fact that maybe they’ve got a little bit of savings socked away to wait out until they can find the right job in the right place, which has meant for some period, I think it’s already dissipating, you have this juncture between job openings and those job openings being filled.

Frederica Freyberg:

You say nothing is stopping employers from raising wages. But potentially, you know, profits?

Menzie Chinn:

Sure, and if you look at the aggregate numbers, what’s true is profits are shooting way up. They have shot way up during this pandemic. If you look at overall corporate profits. Now what’s true is, the degree to which firms can pass on the costs of higher wages differs a lot. So you see profits jumping up for some meat processors. Well, there’s a degree of concentration there, which is meeting at the same time high demand for what’s being produced. And so there, well, profits are jumping up even if wages might also be rising. Now other firms that are more exposed to competition, maybe there are lots of producers so they don’t have this monopoly power, they’re going to be less able to pass on those price increases. So for sure I sympathize with those firms. They’re going to feel incredibly pressed and they’re going to say I just can’t raise the wages enough without squeezing my profits below what I consider survivable profits. So I understand where they’re coming from, where they say I can’t raise the wages, but if you think about how we’ve always argued the free market system should work and prices and wages should move to equilibrate the market, that’s not actually a consistent answer.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what kind of public policy could you be put in place to help? Would it be moving people off benefits programs or boosting things like child care tax credits?

Menzie Chinn:

Well, I think, you know, without thinking about the usefulness of either of those, I mean it’s true, if we were to reduce benefits and reduce benefits to zero, that would probably increase the labor force participation rate. It would induce people to take jobs more readily, that’s for sure. I’m not sure how big that effect is. I mean, for the things that are being contemplated, for instance, when we eliminated extended or enhanced unemployment efforts in September in Wisconsin, did you see an enormous jump in the number of people working and joining in the labor force? You saw a small one but not enormous. So you have to ask yourself how big of an effect there. On the other hand, you do know, at least anecdotally there are people who say I have these difficulties where I’m juggling familial responsibilities, either it’s children or parents that have to be taken care of and that and that constrains them in a time when some services like transportation might be cut back and people can’t get a car to travel to where they need to to take on a job, I think there are a variety of constraints that policy can sometimes mitigate. So that would include, for instance, a child tax credit, which I’m sorry to see is not going to be part of, as far as I can tell, the federal plan or what would be possibly contemplated at the state level. So we could do these things. I would say that if you could induce people to, for instance, get more vaccination rates up so that people had a better assessment of lower risk of working in the workplace, that, too, would be something that changes the benefit cost calculation for individual worker whether to take a job or not. Particularly in those sectors that have been hurting like leisure and hospitality.

Frederica Freyberg:

Indeed. All right, Menzie Chinn, thank you very much. Thanks for your information.

Menzie Chinn:

Okay, my pleasure. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

On the COVID front, major institutions, local public health officers and schools are moving to remove mask requirements as cases drop across Wisconsin. The UW system reports mask mandates will be withdrawn as soon as March 1st, depending on the campus. A statement from System President Tommy Thompson says, “Due to vaccination and infection-induced immunity, it is expected the population will continue to build its overall immunity and the risk of severe disease will decrease.” You can watch our coverage of the full State of the State address online, and for more Wisconsin news, politics and COVID-19 updates, visit our website at PBSwisconsin.org, and then click on the news tab. That’s our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a good weekend.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.