Here & Now

Here & Now for July 24, 2020

Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” UW System President Tommy Thompson is here. He’ll detail plans for opening state universities for the fall semester. We get the latest from one of the nation’s top experts on COVID-19 transmission. And Senior Political Reporter Zac Schultz investigates how police unions play a role in any meaningful changes ahead. It’s “Here & Now” for July 24.

Announcer:

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

Frederica Freyberg:

With an annual budget of $6 billion, the University of Wisconsin 26 campus system is among the largest in the country. This week even as the system determines how to safely open for the fall semester, Governor Tony Evers announced $250 million in pandemic-related state spending cuts. This after a $70 million reduction in May. UW System President Tommy Thompson responded almost immediately saying the university system already absorbed more than its fair share of cuts last spring. This disclaimer, PBS Wisconsin is part of UW-Madison. Late this week I spoke with System President Thompson about the threat of further budget cuts. I also asked him about how the system was preparing for the safe return to campus instruction for the fall term. Secretary, Governor, now President of the UW System Tommy Thompson, thank you so much for being here.

Tommy Thompson:

Well, it’s my honor, Frederica. It’s always a pleasure to see you. I remember fondly our days when you used to interview me when I was governor. So I’m very happy to be back on your program and thank you so very much for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, thank you. Well, just to jump in, with K-12 districts in certain parts of the state deciding to go virtually for the start of the school year, how can the UW safely open to even a hybrid of remote and in-person classes safely?

Tommy Thompson:

We’re dedicated and passionate about making sure that our professors, our instructors, our employees, and above all, our students are going to be safe. You got to remember that I was secretary of health, and I would never put anybody in harm’s way if I can help it and we are doing everything. We’re preparing our classrooms. We’re making sure our large classrooms are not going to be utilized. We’re making sure that every student has to have a mask on when they’re inside. We’re also asking them to wear their masks outside if they cannot socially distance. We’re making sure that in our entrance and exits, a lot of them are only going to be one way. We’re making sure our classrooms got the highest cleaning standards put down by CDC. We are dedicated to that. We are putting instructions out daily as to how to make sure our classrooms are safe. We feel that we are going to have our classes and classrooms as publicly safe and as safe for our employees as we possibly can and above all, our students. So I feel very confident. We’re opening on September 2nd, and I’m here to tell you, I’m dedicated to make sure that everybody will be safe.

Frederica Freyberg:

Young adults, as you know, were in large measure responsible for kind of the most recent surge. How can the university manage their behavior on and off campuses?

Tommy Thompson:

Well, there’s no way that you are going to be able to, Frederica, manage students off campus but what we are doing is we are asking students to wear their mask. We’re putting out a lot of information. We are asking students to get flu vaccinated, and have the vaccine, you know, purchased so we can help students get vaccinated. We are putting out a lot of instructions. We are talking to a lot of students and we are encouraging students. And the most important way to do it having students talk to other students. Let’s be safe. Let’s be healthy. We are going to enjoy campus, but we have to be healthy to enjoy it. This is the message going out. And using my public health days, my public health hat on, I’m going to do everything I possibly can through social networking, through signs, through encouragement, using students, using our professors to make sure our students are safe both on and off campus.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, you are obviously deep into the books at the UW System. What kind of financial — what kind of financial hit is the UW dealing with because of closures last spring?

Tommy Thompson:

Well, huge. Amazing thing because we had to refund pro rata the share of the student dorms, the food we purchased. A lot of food we purchased for the full semester and then we had to give that away, so it was a financial really strong hit. Harder on some campuses than others, but overall, it was really tough for the system. And now, and we also got in the first semester, we also got hit by about $50 million from the state of Wisconsin. We are going to have to take another hit. So, University of Wisconsin System has financial problems. But I am confident. I am confident working with the governor’s office, working with DOA, working with my contacts in Washington that we are going to be able to get enough state and federal dollars, with the help of what we are going to do managing this problem at the system level, we are going to make it. We are going to make it and we are going to come out stronger next year than we are this year.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because as you mentioned, Governor Tony Evers has now announced an additional $250 million budget cut to state agencies and presumably the UW would have to take a portion of that. Is there any portion of that that you believe the system can take and still embark on reopening and providing all of the kinds of PPE, etc., that you need to do to do so safely?

Tommy Thompson:

Well, there are two pots of money we are talking about. The state money that the governor is talking about is money that can be lapsed by the governor and his office, and we are pushing back on that, but we are trying to accommodate the governor and the DOA. We are trying to show how difficult it’s going to be and why it’s probably going to be problematic for the system. But we are working with the governor and his staff and DOA. We want to be — we don’t want to be confrontational. We want to be cooperative and want to make sure that they understand our financial conditions. We are also working in Washington to get more federal dollars. And as you know, I’ve asked the governor for $110 million for personal protective equipment, as well as for tracking and tracing and testing. And we think, you know, with that money, if we could get $100 million, we would be able to definitely open. Well, we are going to open up. We’ll be safe. But it would be much more helpful if we had that extra money for testing and tracing and for purchasing the protective equipment.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you think the likelihood is of getting that kind of money?

Tommy Thompson:

You know, it’s always an uphill battle. Nothing is easy when you are acting president of the University of Wisconsin System, I’m finding out. But we are going to do everything we possibly can. I am aggressively seeking money from the state and federal levels. I think that we are going to be — I’m cautiously optimistic. I come from Elroy, Wisconsin. You have to be cautiously optimistic just waking up in the morning. And so I feel that we are going to do it, and we are going to be — we are going to get through this. And we are going to be able to be stronger and healthier next spring than we are today. I am confident of that.

Frederica Freyberg:

We leave it there. Former Governor Tommy Thompson, now President of the UW System. Thank you very much for joining us.

Tommy Thompson:

Frederica, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Frederica Freyberg:

It’s been another record setting week of COVID-19 numbers in Wisconsin, including the first day of over 1,000 positive cases reported. Secretary of Health-designee Andrea Palm said there are two main reasons for the continued increase.

Andrea Palm:

These numbers are at least in part a reflection of two patterns. A significant number of cases that reported attending gatherings like parties and bars and barbecues and an increase in cases among young people.

Frederica Freyberg:

We take Wisconsin’s alarming COVID-19 numbers to Minnesota now where we are joined by one of the nation’s top epidemiologists, Dr. Michael Osterholm. He’s the director of the Center for Infectious Disease at the University of Minnesota. Doctor, thanks very much for being here.

Michael Osterholm:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wisconsin has seen a surge in positive cases charting day over day, record numbers just this week. Why is this happening now?

Michael Osterholm:

Well, this virus is doing what it was made to do. Infect humans. And the only thing we can do to stop that from happening is how we distance ourselves from people. How we make sure that we are not sharing air with each other. That is where the virus is largely being transmitted now. And unfortunately, around Memorial Day, we decided that we were done trying to deal with the virus and we went on to our everyday lives as we had largely done before and the virus now is being transmitted at levels that are very concerning.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you make of the fact that people don’t seem to understand that or be willing to distance?

Michael Osterholm:

Well, you know, at this point, I think we are going to be seeing some changes in that. Only because when this all started, it seemed to be a blue state or a red state or blue county or red county kind of event. And what’s happening is it’s really becoming a COVID color event, where we are seeing more and more cases occurring in urban and rural areas. We are seeing more deaths in people we know, in loved ones. And in the end when you think about the fact that right now about 8 to 9% of the U.S. population has been infected with this virus to date, you think about all the pain and suffering, economic disruption and deaths that have occurred just with that 8 to 9%, think what it’s going to take to get us to probably 50 to 70% of the population infected before we would reach what we call herd immunity, or a state where the transmission would slow down. Now we are hoping we can truly get a vaccine to be available before we get there through illness, but rather through protection with a vaccine. But over the next 6 to 10 months at a minimum, we are going to see lots and lots of this transmission unless people understand that this, you know, we won’t win a debate with this virus. You have a better chance of winning a debate with 2,000 tired, angry 2 year olds than you do with this virus. And I think that’s what people just have not understood yet.

Frederica Freyberg:

Did it surprise you that this virus turned red and blue or political?

Michael Osterholm:

You know, given the conditions in the country before this pandemic began, and realizing that it goes to the very heart of who we are as a society in terms of economic issues. It’s accentuating all the challenges we’ve had with class and financial security, it’s not surprising. I think the point though is if there was ever a time that anything could and should rally us to come together, it’s about this virus. This is not an issue about, you know, one political party or one skin color or one geographic location. It’s about us against the virus. And if we could just stick with that. If we can understand that we are all in this to help each other, I think that that will surely be a start for us to actually have more impact on this virus. Please don’t forget, there are lessons to be learned here that have already happened. If we look at many of the countries around the world, earlier this spring that were in the same dire straits we were when we saw this virus going through New York and places like that, causing the damage, these countries stayed the course. They got the virus levels down to a very low level and then they could use testing and contact tracing to try to keep them down. We never did that. We decided we were done before we got those numbers down like that and now you are seeing the situation and I think it’s not until we actually take some more extreme measures: to do a re-do, to try to get the numbers down, to try to do the testing, contact tracing, follow up before we are going to see really a reduction in these cases. They are just going to continue otherwise.

Frederica Freyberg:

If we did a re-do, could we reduce the infection rate to, say, near 0 before we could see a vaccine?

Michael Osterholm:

You know, look at all the other countries in the world that have done it. Some will say it’s the Asian countries. They’re unique. Well there’s also the European countries. They have done it too. And so I think it’s very possible. We surely have the tools here in this country. It’s do we have the political will to do it? And how are we going to take care of those who might suffer under further restrictions. Economically, people need to work. People need to have jobs. People need to be able to send their kids to school. We know all those things. As a society and for the next year, we have to understand we may be having just our COVID year. Whether it’s about schools. Whether it’s about work. Whether it’s about what we do publicly. Let’s just get over our COVID year. Get it done. Get it behind us and move on. But if we don’t address those things, we are just going to be in this limbo land where basically you are going to see a huge forest fire of this virus transmission through this country and it’s looking for every piece of human wood it can burn and it will find many of them.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to a vaccine, how far are we from having an effective one?

Michael Osterholm:

This is the trillion dollar question. We will have vaccines. We have over 200 vaccines that are being evaluated to see how they protect. The challenge we have — this is a coronavirus, which historically we’ve had really an unsatisfactory ability to develop a vaccine that might provide durable immunity or long-term immunity. And so one of the things we’re challenged with right now, when we find an effective vaccine, what does it mean? What if it protects only 50% of the population and it is not the population that is most at risk for serious disease. That’s a vaccine. Is that considered acceptable? What if we find a vaccine that only works for 6 to 12 or 18 months and we’re going to have to keep re-vaccinating like we do for influenza, which on an international level would be an incredible effort to be able to do that. So there’s just a lot of questions left and finally we want to assure it’s safe. And we’re going to have to make some decisions about when to go forward with this vaccine. We can’t wait for five years to find out how durable the immunity is before we use it. We are going to be doing intensive studies looking at the potential for reactions with the vaccine early on. We’re just going to have to keep following that and also tell the public we’ll just keep them informed. Most of all, we need a vaccine. We are headed back to where we were in late April, early May. If you think about this, on the first week of March in the country, COVID-19 was not in the top 75 causes of death. By April, May, it was the number one cause of death every day. Now we saw those numbers come down as a result of the improvement but unfortunately they are going right back up and very possible soon COVID will again be the number one cause of death in this country.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there, Dr. Michael Osterholm, thank you very much for joining us and we hope to speak with you again.

Michael Osterholm:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Homeland Security agents engaged city of Portland protestors every night this week under orders to protect the federal courthouse from vandalism. This week President Trump announced more federal enforcement would be sent to other cities, including Chicago, Kansas City, Albuquerque and Milwaukee. A group of Senate democrats, including Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, sent a list of questions about the deployment of federal forces to U.S. cities to Attorney General William Barr and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. The statement said in part, “All of this is part of an alarming pattern by the Trump administration in taking aggressive and excessive response to protests catalyzed by the killing of George Floyd.” Governor Tony Evers said that he sent a letter to President Trump expressing his disapproval of federal forces in Milwaukee or anywhere in the state. Last month protestors in Madison destroyed statues on the Capitol square.

This week, the board that oversees Capitol restoration voted unanimously to restore the statues. “Forward,” the personification of the state motto and the statue of abolitionist and Union soldier Hans Christian Heg will be returned to their pedestals.

It has been two months since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. A national conversation about police reform is ongoing. One of the issues is how to make sure the “bad apples” in the police profession can be removed from the force. “Here & Now” Senior Political Reporter Zac Schultz has been working with our colleagues from Wisconsin Public Radio and WisContext to examine police union contracts and the role they play in protecting bad cops.

News announcer:

The Black Lives Matter movement is highlighting police unions and the role they play in protecting officers.

Zac Schultz:

You’ve probably seen stories about the bad cops who get reinstated to the force, shielded from consequences by a bureaucratic system and a union contract.

Police Officer:

You react, I react.

Sam Sinyangwe:

So, we have to talk about limiting the power of police unions.

Zac Schultz:

Sam Sinyangwe is co-founder of Campaign Zero, a nonprofit group focused on eliminating police violence. It tracks police union contracts from cities across the country and has come up with a list of provisions which it says block accountability. Things like giving accused officers access to video and evidence before they are interviewed, not allowing officers to be interviewed immediately after an incident, and policies that erase old misconduct records after just a few years.

Sam Sinyangwe:

Even if you have the best police chief and the best mayor, in many cases they are limited in what they can do because the accountability system has already been negotiated away and the unions have veto power over any changes to that structure.

Zac Schultz:

We wanted to know whether any of these provisions are in union contracts in Wisconsin. Along with our colleagues at Wisconsin Public Radio and WisContext, we examine the police union contracts for eight cities: Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, Kenosha, Madison, Beloit, Green Bay, and Wausau. What we found is that Wisconsin is quite different from the rest of the country.

Jim Palmer:

There’s a level of transparency, accountability and independence that exists in Wisconsin that just does not exist elsewhere.

Zac Schultz:

Jim Palmer is the executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association or WPPA. It is Wisconsin’s largest law enforcement union, representing most of Wisconsin’s police officers, sheriff deputies and prison guards.

Jim Palmer:

We represent just over 10,000 members now from more than 300 local association affiliates.

Zac Schultz:

Most police union contracts in Wisconsin have very little to say about discipline.

Jim Palmer:

Unlike in other states, we don’t have contractual language that insulates officers from having to cooperate with those types of internal investigative interviews.

Zac Schultz:

State law says police misconduct in Wisconsin is governed by local police and fire commissions (PFC), citizen boards with members appointed by the mayor.

Jim Palmer:

Which are, at their very root, a legitimate form of civilian control and they have existed here in Wisconsin for over 100 years.

[crowd chattering]

Zac Schultz:

No mayor in Wisconsin can fire a police officer. And outside of Milwaukee, no police chief can either. Typically, an internal investigation will hand over evidence and a recommendation to the PFC and it will decide the punishment. And that leads to the second big difference in Wisconsin.

Jim Palmer:

The vast majority of law enforcement officers in the state of Wisconsin can’t arbitrate their discipline.

Zac Schultz:

Arbitration is often blamed any time a bad union employee keeps their job.

News announcer:

These officers and many others were fired and all of them got their jobs back thanks to a police union contract and state law that leaves final punishment in the hands of an arbitrator.

Sue Bauman:

An arbitrator basically listens to the parties and makes a decision. It’s kind of like being a judge but it’s a whole lot less formal.

Zac Schultz:

Sue Bauman is an arbitrator who has ruled on law enforcement discipline cases in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The arbitrators are supposed to be neutral. But both sides get to influence who hears the case.

Sue Bauman:

There is no question that unions and management keep score on arbitrators. They know better than arbitrators know how many times an arbitrator has found for the union or for the employer.

Zac Schultz:

In Wisconsin, sheriff’s deputies can arbitrate discipline, even though it is rare. Bauman is also the former mayor of Madison, and she says Wisconsin’s PFC model is not perfect.

Sue Bauman:

The fact that all discipline has to go through the PFC and that the police chief can only make a recommendation, and the mayor has absolutely no say doesn’t make sense to me.

Zac Schultz:

Bauman says no matter whether it’s arbitration or a PFC, the biggest factor in disciplining a police officer is whether their supervisors did their job in presenting the evidence.

Sue Bauman:

The employee broke the rules and the employer shows that to the arbitrator. The arbitrator will uphold the decision.

Don Taylor:

How many years have we heard you can’t fire a bad teacher, and now what we are hearing is well, you can’t fire a bad cop.

Zac Schultz:

Don Taylor is a professor at the University of Wisconsin’s School for Workers and specializes in labor relations. He says the most important protection in police contracts is due process.

Don Taylor:

Not just police contracts, but all contracts contain some sort of provision that the employer has to follow some type of due process in order to discipline or terminate any employee.

Zac Schultz:

Taylor says getting discipline to stick comes down to management following the proper steps.

Don Taylor:

In 70% of cases where an employee was reinstated, it was due to management error, overlooking mitigating circumstances, not creating a paper trail, things like that.

Zac Schultz:

What’s different about police union contracts is whether those steps include strict timelines, and letting the officer review the evidence before an interview. Taylor has done work for police unions in Wisconsin and says if those items are in the contract, they didn’t get there by themselves.

Don Taylor:

We shouldn’t forget those were not just simply carved into stone by the police officers and their union, the municipality or whatever government entity they work for agreed to those things.

Alfonso Morales:

But there’s always items in the contract we wish we could have.

Zac Schultz:

Which brings us to the Milwaukee Police Department and Chief Alfonso Morales.

Alfonso Morales:

If you read between the lines, most often somebody commits crime, they eventually lose their job but that’s after the due process.

Zac Schultz:

Under state law, the city of Milwaukee is treated differently, and that extends to the police department. The only special provision related to discipline in the union contract says officers can review bodycam or squad car video before being interviewed about an incident. Here, the chief of police imposes discipline and the PFC is called the Fire and Police Commission and it acts as a court of appeals to the chief’s discipline.

Alfonso Morales:

When the Fire-Police Commission hears it, they here it two fold. Was the investigation done properly, that’s phase one. And phase two focuses on discipline.

Zac Schultz:

Chief Morales came up through the ranks in the MPD so he’s seen how the union works.

Alfonso Morales:

Sometimes the union gets tied up representing somebody that the entire organization, both union members say that person should be pushed out of the department. They are giving law enforcement a bad image.

Zac Schultz:

As the debate over police reform continues at both the local and statewide level, Chief Morales says there is not a perfect solution.

Alfonso Morales:

There’s pros and cons to either way. I don’t think either — there’s no system that’s perfect.

Zac Schultz:

Reporting from Madison, I’m Zac Schultz for “Here & Now.”

Frederica Freyberg:

Earlier this week protestors in Milwaukee gathered outside a meeting of the Fire and Police Commission to call for Chief Morales firing. The commission declined to fire the chief but is calling for more timely reports on investigations, discipline and promotion. That is our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:

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