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The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tony Evers signs the biennial state budget but not without first executing a slew of partial vetoes with consequences for years to come.

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” we speak with Governor Tony Evers about his final actions on the nearly $99 billion state budget. The mayor of Madison joins us to discuss affordable housing. And coming out of the Fourth of July holiday, we look at record-breaking tourism in Wisconsin. It’s “Here & Now” for July 7.

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

Frederica Freyberg:

In a breaking ruling today, a Dane County judge says a lawsuit attempting to overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban will indeed move forward following an attempt to dismiss the lawsuit. Judge Diane Flipper wrote in her ruling, “There is no such thing as an 1849 abortion ban in Wisconsin. A physician who performs a consensual medical abortion commits a crime only after the fetus or unborn child reaches viability”. The 1849 law applies to feticide and not consensual abortions, she said.

Turning to budget news, the state’s record $7 billion surplus meant new opportunities and new challenges for lawmakers. Governor Tony Evers signed the Republican Legislature’s budget but not without making some considerable changes with his veto authority.

The months-long budget process kicked off with the governor releasing his budget, a veritable wish list of Democratic priorities. When Republicans on the finance committee got their crack at it, they threw out the governor’s budget and started from scratch. But that boilerplate political posturing was contrasted by compromise on K-12 education spending and shared revenue funding for local governments.

Robin Vos:

What we’re announcing today is the single largest investment in local governments in the history of Wisconsin. That is something that all of us should be proud of because it’s being done in a collaborative Wisconsin bipartisan way.

Frederica Freyberg:

After big ticket agreements, the GOP-led budget committee raced to finish. Its work included a $3.5 billion income tax cut, giving the biggest breaks to the highest earners, a $32 million cut to the UW system for diversity initiatives, and cuts to the Childcare Counts program. Evers had threatened to veto the Republican budget in its entirety over such provisions, but instead used his powerful partial veto to reduce the income tax cuts from $3.5 billion to $175 million by eliminating tax cuts for the two highest income brackets and he restored the 188 UW positions related to diversity.

Tony Evers:

I have also used my broad veto authority to provide school districts with predictable long-term increases for the foreseeable future.

Frederica Freyberg:

Foreseeable future became not two years of a budget, but 402 years, because Evers struck individual numbers and punctuation to increase school district levy limits through the year 2425. Republicans were livid. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos saying, “Clearly now that he’s won re-election by taking credit for Republican ideas, it’s business as usual for Governor Evers as he returns to his true liberal ideology.” Here to discuss the final budget is Governor Tony Evers. Governor, thanks very much for being here.

Tony Evers:

Thanks, Frederica Freyberg.

Frederica Freyberg:

Republicans are certainly outraged by your vetoes. One Republican senator even going so far as to say they were not the work of a rational governor but a radical. What’s your response to that?

Tony Evers:

It’s laughable. We actually came to some good bipartisan solutions during this budget, including issues around affordable housing and taking care of PFAS, and shared revenue, Good Lord. I mean we just completely made that a new system that is going to help the municipalities do their important work. Other wins, too. We’re going to continue fixing our roads and bridges. So the idea that somehow this is radical is, in my view, ridiculous. We worked hard. We worked hard to get what we could.

Frederica Freyberg:

Some Republicans, though, are saying that your veto to increase per pupil funding for the next 400 years violates the deal you made with them over school funding, that compromise of which you speak. Did it?

Tony Evers:

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I heard that and it’s a breathtaking time when I hear something that I just know isn’t true and they’re saying that. The bottom line is during those negotiations around shared revenue, we came to some agreements on the issue of the next two years for public schools. Not the next 400 years. The next two years. And so I took the opportunity during the — when I looked at the budget to make sure that we have some sense of rationalness going forward for our schools, and that includes having that revenue limit be for some time, obviously 400 years, were the digits that I had available to me, but did that violate anything? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It’s kind of sad at this point in time, we’re reaching some agreements, and for people to go off the ledge here. Just relax, folks. I broke no promises here.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet that levy limit increases going out 402 years. I mean, why did you do that?

Tony Evers:

To give some — well, first of all, as you know, other governors have done this also. It has — when Scott Walker was governor, he used it to bring that same number to zero, as I remember, over I think a thousand years. So it’s not unusual. Those are things that are available to a governor and he or she going forward should be able to use it just like I did. It gives our schools some notion of reality that the legislature and the governors going forward will consider public education a top priority.

Frederica Freyberg:

I don’t think very many people were surprised that you vetoed the income tax cut for the top bracket, but you also vetoed the tax cuts for the third bracket, which kicks in for couples making more than $36,000. Isn’t that the middle class that you wanted to see get a tax cut?

Tony Evers:

First of all, the middle class did get a tax cut in this, primarily in the neighborhood of $1.75 million, but that same area that you’re talking about, the same, it goes up through I think $400,000, which I don’t believe in anybody’s guesstimate would be considered middle class. The bottom line here, by doing the veto as I did, everybody got a tax cut. Everybody. Wealthy, poor, people in the middle. Mostly people in the middle got the best deal. I feel good, I feel confident about that. We’ve worked together with the legislature over the past several years to bring $1.5 billion in tax cuts, almost the vast majority of that for middle class folks in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

So that third tax bracket goes from $36,000 all the way up to $405,000 as you mentioned, for married couples. Would you support breaking that up into separate tax brackets in order to more precisely target relief for the middle class?

Tony Evers:

Yes, and hopefully the legislature — we have some options going forward. There’s plenty of money left in our reserves, and if they want to bring something back, but if it’s the same old same old. If it’s about let’s help the wealthy and not the middle class, then that’s going to be a problem and I’ll likely veto that. But, yeah, of course, that’s a big span and I will say that $405,000 is not middle class.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as to kind of reserves going forward and the use of them, you called out childcare center funding as a disappointment. You wanted $340 million. Republicans approved $15 million. You say, again, that you left enough money in the budget for the legislature to go back in and fund that and other things like family leave, which are priorities for you. Reportedly there’s something like $3 billion to start the next budget. But why, governor, would Republicans, the Republican Legislature, spend on your priorities if they didn’t here in the first instance?

Tony Evers:

Well, they’re going to see what’s going to happen. I mean, it’s clear that we’re at almost full employment. And as I deal with childcare providers almost every single day, there’s going to be a whole bunch of them going out of business or reducing the number of children that they can take care of because it’s not a sustainable situation without some help from the state government. So as we do that, we’re going to lose people out of the workforce, and that is a big deal, not just for Republicans. It’s a big deal for Democrats also. And so, yes, I’m hopeful that they’ll take another look at that. It’s a perfect opportunity for us to do the right thing, make sure that we have a workforce that’s going to work for everybody, and move forward. I think if it’s put together in a good bipartisan way, we can make some headway.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to funding for higher education, you restored the 188 diversity and inclusion positions with a veto but said that the UW system could recapture that $32 million cut from the legislature with a workforce plan but is now Speaker Vos says after that veto restoring the 188 positions, the UW will not get the money unless it eliminates diversity programs. What’s your response to that?

Tony Evers:

Well, that’s not what the Joint Finance Committee said. They said there’s $32 million if you bring us back a workforce plan, we will consider releasing that to them. I do not believe they say a workforce plan and let’s get rid of DEI. I don’t believe that’s what was put in there, so I anticipate that the University of Wisconsin System and Joint Finance Committee, they can work it out.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about overall funding for higher ed in this budget?

Tony Evers:

It’s ridiculous. Obviously, we can’t have the University of Wisconsin System or, frankly, the technical college system, be, you know, have no increase. They have costs that go up just like everybody else. I would say that, unfortunately, where the Republicans have been for several budgets that I’ve been working on and even before, having been personally on the Board of Regents, and that is there’s like this war against higher education. It’s got to stop. If we care about workforce, we need to make sure that our tech college system and our University of Wisconsin System is strong.

Frederica Freyberg:

You and the Republic majority, as we’ve discussed, compromised on school funding and shared revenue. Is that goodwill gone now with your vetoes?

Tony Evers:

No, no. Republicans — they may have forgotten, but Republican governors vetoed things also. But, no, I don’t think so. We’ll continue to work together where we can and there’s going to be this kind of blah, blah, blah over the next couple of weeks that the sky is falling, but at the end of the day, here’s what’s going to happen. We made some progress in some really important areas. We’re going to continue to hopefully talk about areas that have been left fallow, and that includes higher education and childcare in particular, and we’ll move forward as a state. And so I — you know, I’m not going to overreact to that. We’re just going to continue working with people as much as possible.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why didn’t you just veto the budget in its entirety?

Tony Evers:

I knew that we could move forward. I knew that we could make some vetoes that would make things even a little better, and it was the right thing to do. Simple as that.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Governor Tony Evers, thanks very much for joining us.

Tony Evers:

Thanks Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

The budget also included $525 million toward affordable housing in Wisconsin. Housing is sorely needed in this state with experts saying Wisconsin will need to build nearly 140,000 housing units during this decade to accommodate its under 65 population. In Madison, the fastest growing city in the state, the cost of housing, both renting and buying, is out of reach for many. Needed housing units fall way short of demand due to population growth. Madison gained 5,600 residents just since 2020. The capital city is one of the most expensive places in the state to buy a home, and because the city’s rental vacancy rate is so low, demand pushes the average cost of a one bedroom over $1,400 a month, according to rental sites. How do efforts to boost affordable housing make a dent? We turn to Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. Thanks for being with us.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So will the five measures in this affordable housing package that are part of the budget between funding to rehab or converting commercial buildings into housing help the crunch in Madison?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

I certainly hope so. I think we have been doing perhaps more than other cities around the state have in terms of the production of housing, so it doesn’t change a lot for us in terms of what the city does, but any time there’s more funds available to produce housing, that’s helpful.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what are your city’s particular pain points when it comes to not having enough housing?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

I think really what we’re facing is that historically, and I’m talking for decades, Madison has underproduced housing. We have not kept pace with population growth. You referenced our recent population growth, but we have been growing as a city for quite some time, and we just have not produced enough housing units. That’s why we find ourselves in the problem that we’re in now and really the solution is to build more housing. When I say that, I mean every type of housing. We need more single family. We need more condos. We need more apartments. We need big buildings. We need small buildings, and so we’re trying to do anything we can to make it easier to produce housing.

Frederica Freyberg:

Like what?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

So we’ve done a number of things around our zoning code to make it easier to build housing by right or to add additional height if you’re building housing or if you’re building affordable housing. We’ve made it easier to build backyard cottages. We do a bunch around subsidizing affordable housing out of the city’s budget as well, and then we work closely with partners, whether that’s developers, the university, you know, other entities in town to encourage the production of housing in different areas of town.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet it seems like you need these housing units to go up right now.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Yes!

Frederica Freyberg:

All of that takes a long lead time.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Yeah. We do see projects take two to three years, really, to come to fruition. And so that’s why it’s been so important that we work as fast as we can now to make it easier so that we start to see the impacts of that going forward. I will say that under my administration, we have permitted thousands of housing units and we have seen hundreds of affordable housing units come on-line so we’re making progress, but there’s more that needs to be done.

Frederica Freyberg:

One thing that stands out when you drive around or walk around Madison, is all of these kind of luxury high-rise apartment buildings going in. Now that gives you some units, it gives you some vacancy, but do those buildings ratchet up the rents for everyone?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Well, so a couple of things there. First of all, you see those buildings and you think they’re luxury buildings but, in fact, not all of them are. In fact, many of them have affordable components inside that building. So when we’re subsidizing housing, we are often not creating an entire building that’s affordable but we are creating a percentage of the units in that building. And so that definitely helps. The other thing is that there’s actually good data that putting in new market rate housing does not raise the rents of surrounding available housing. Now, what is causing rent pressure is the lack of units because when landlords can rent for a higher rent, they’re going to. As long as we have vacancy rates in the one or two percent, the market is entirely tipped to the landlord’s favor as opposed to the tenant.

Frederica Freyberg:

So this is not to mention low-income housing. How would you grade Madison on that?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

So we need all types of housing, but we particularly need to be creating housing that is affordable for people that are at 30% or lower of the area median income. And interestingly, that people that are between 80% and 120% of area median income. Those are the two places where we see the biggest need, and so that’s where we’re trying to focus the work that the city does to produce housing.

Frederica Freyberg:

So if as projected Madison is expected to grow by another 100,000 people by 2050, what will the housingscape look like then?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Well, I hope that we will have caught up in our deficit of housing and that we will keep pace with housing production. It does mean that Madison is going to be more dense than it is right now and that we are going to see more big buildings. We’re also going to see more duplexes, and triplexes and backyard cottages but I really hope the work we’re doing now is going to pay off and allow us to catch up with the housing market.

Frederica Freyberg:

Madison Mayor Satya-Rhodes Conway, thanks very much.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

The tourism industry in Wisconsin hit an all-time high in 2022. That’s according to a recent report from the state Department of Tourism with a total economic impact of almost $24 billion. All 72 counties had an increase over the last record-breaking year in 2019, including Bayfield whose tourist dollars saw a 24% increase. Coming out of the big Fourth of July holiday, we check in with Kati Anderson from the Bayfield Chamber and Visitor Bureau. Thanks very much for being here.

Kati Anderson:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how is the tourist season shaping up in Bayfield this summer?

Kati Anderson:

Well, we’re right in the thick of it now. Tourism here really ramps up around mid-June. July, August are our busiest months here in Bayfield. September as well has a lot of great tourism activities going on. We have some new events. An art escape event in the middle of September and then, of course, going into October, we have our Bayfield Apple Festival, which is always the first full weekend in October.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how does it compare to years past for tourism?

Kati Anderson:

Sure. So, well, this year we won’t know what the numbers are exactly for 2023 until next year, but the — as you had mentioned, we broke some records here. It was a 24% increase in tourism spending over 2019, and even in 2022, we also upped our tourism spending in September, which is technically a shoulder season with the launch of a new event called art escape, and we were able to bring in another — an additional $700,000 to the Bayfield County and Madeline Island area through that event, art escape. And this year we’re doing that again. It will only be our second year doing that and it’s September 9th through 17th, so we have a lot of — we have some new initiatives, which is helping bring in more people and hopefully we can continue that throughout the years, but even since, you know, 2020, Bayfield really saw a lot of people come here in 2020 to get away from the city activities, so we’re still seeing that momentum.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you’re super busy and Bayfield, obviously is a beautiful place to visit, but are local businesses able to keep up?

Kati Anderson:

Well, one of the challenges here is finding workers. We are noticing that and it’s kind of a double-edged sword because I think people want to live here but the problem seems to be housing. There’s not a lot of options here in Bayfield County for housing, but those are some initiatives that we are hoping to partner with some local other entities to try to help spur that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Okay. I know that the state budget that just was signed into law has some money in it for the Department of Tourism. What more could areas like yours use from the state? I mean, you just spoke to affordable housing or housing units, period. What more could the state possibly do?

Kati Anderson:

I think the housing is really the biggest piece right now. One thing that was really encouraging here in Bayfield, a lot of businesses and new businesses popped up within the last year or two and that was due to the Main Street Bounce Back Grant. We had several businesses here, a good — I know four off the top of my head for sure, who took advantage of that $10,000 funding. So things like that, initiatives like that do really well, could really help us for economic growth here in Bayfield, especially in Bayfield County where our main industry here is tourism.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we are envious that we are not in Bayfield with you. You said the weather is beautiful today but enjoy this busy season and even the season going into the fall. Kati Anderson, thanks so much.

Kati Anderson:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

In agriculture, southern Wisconsin has seen severe and exceptional drought, with spotty rain and high temperatures testing farmers’ patience, but they are holding on.

Sam Bibby:

Mother Nature seems to be keeping us on the edge of our seat this whole time. We’re get just enough spotty precipitation I think to just keep us guessing, keep us wondering if we’re going to — how things are going to play out, but so far, you know, I’ve been impressed with the crops. Modern genetics and management has really played a big role in the success that we’ve — or the — at least the lack of, you know, crop failure, I guess we’ve seen so far. You know, we have corn and beans drying up on the lighter ground that has been sort of unlucky with those spotty showers, but then we’ve got some ground that is just hanging on and you wouldn’t quite know we’re in a drought, at least from looking at it from afar. We’re just right on the edge there, I guess. I don’t want people to worry yet. There’s no need for mass panic. There’s never a good time to have a drought, but if you have to have a drought, it’s good to have it in the early half of the season.

Frederica Freyberg:

For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, 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.