Here & Now

Here & Now for June 4, 2021

Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

The stage is set at the state capitol for the summer budget battle. Money for Wisconsin schools is on the table.

Tony Evers:

It’s a pleasure to be here with all of you as we kick off Pride Month in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

And the Pride Flag is raised over the state Capitol. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” why some rural school districts are worried about the current state budget proposal. How safe is going maskless? The state epidemiologist is here. And “Enough is Enough” says one state lawmaker who introduced a new package of police reform plans this week. It’s “Here & Now” for June 4.

Announcer:

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

Tony Evers:

It’s too early to tell, but that is always an option that is on the table.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tony Evers this week threatens to veto the entire state budget that Republicans are now recrafting over school funding. Evers called it an insult to the kids of our state. That’s because the budget committee voted to increase state funding by $128 million over the next two years, when Evers had proposed a $1.6 billion increase. The Republican version also does not meet the spending threshold set by federal rules for Wisconsin to get $1.5 billion in the latest pandemic aid package to schools. The Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance says that with its action, the Joint Finance Committee gets an “F” on adequately investing in K-12 education. We turn to Kim Kaukl, executive director of the Rural Schools Alliance. Thanks very much for being here.

Kim Kaukl:

Thanks for having me, Frederica. Appreciate it.

Frederica Freyberg:

When the Joint Finance co-chair says their on-going investments represent a responsible budget, what do you say?

Kim Kaukl:

I think they missed a great opportunity here. We know there’s about $2 million in surplus coming in and there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in this budget. I think they are relying a lot on the federal funding that’s coming in, but missing the point on the federal funding that that is really dedicated to COVID relief and COVID activities, and is not meant to backfill. And as you had stated earlier, the $128 million is only about 10% of what Governor Evers put in the original budget. I think a couple things that really concern us is there’s no increase in general aid, no increase in revenue ceiling and no increase in per-pupil spending in that. What we are really concerned about heading down the road, with the Joint Finance Committee really relying on this one-time federal funding, it is setting us up for a financial cliff probably in the next two years. I know the GOP, members of the Joint Finance and many of the GOP legislators don’t like referendums and this is going to put us right back in that cycle of referendums, where here they had the opportunity to use some of that surplus that we — probably the biggest surplus we have had in a long time, to really take care of some of those issues and to prevent districts, especially rural districts, from going to operational referendums to keep their doors open.

Frederica Freyberg:

In addition to that fiscal cliff, not maintaining a certain threshold of state education funding puts that federal aid at risk itself under federal rules. But majority Republican budget writers think that can be managed. What kind of gamble does that represent in your mind?

Kim Kaukl:

To me, it is a big gamble because it is not only affecting the ESSER III money that hasn’t been sent out yet, but it is also going to have an impact on the second year of this ESSER II money that is coming. And a lot of our folks — now as we get into the summer, just haven’t had time to put all their claims in yet for the ESSER II and so we’ll be doing that over the summertime here and if the decision not to meet the —

Frederica Freyberg:

The threshold for state funding, yeah.

Kim Kaukl:

Thank you, yes, would be real devastating if we don’t get that ESSER money because these people were planning on it. They just haven’t had time to get their receipts submitted to the DPI. So, again, that could really put us in a real bind.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you talk about this money coming in, and a lot of COVID relief has come in to the state. Are schools being greedy to want so much spending at this time?

Kim Kaukl:

I don’t think so. I believe through this whole pandemic, they have spent a lot of extra money on things they normally wouldn’t have spent on, especially last spring when we had to make the pivot from face-to-face to everybody basically going virtual. A lot of our rural districts were paying for internet plans for families, hot spots for families, going out and purchasing additional computers. And as we went into this fall, what we realized from last spring is so many of our kids got left out last spring because of lack of internet service, so a lot of our rural districts were sending out classroom packets via their bus routes and delivering them to families and then teachers contacting them either by phone or some kind of socially distanced, face-to-face where they could at least ask questions and that. Yeah, there was just a lot of unexpected costs there and —

Frederica Freyberg:

Just super quickly with less than a minute left, one of the things the majority budget writers want to do is reward districts who stayed open through at least 50% of the pandemic. They want to reward them with aid. What do you think of that, especially given that it was largely rural districts that did return to in-person?

Kim Kaukl:

Yeah, it is an advantage for our rural districts because many of them were face-to-face because of that internet issue, but we are also concerned about the whole precedent that that is setting because so many districts talk about local control and so many districts did what they felt was right. Many of our rural districts were face-to-face. Many of the moderate districts were hybrid and then the larger districts fell to virtual, and that was what was best. I think everybody did the best they could with what we had.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ll be watching this going forward. Kim Kaukl, thanks so much for joining us.

Kim Kaukl:

Thank you, have a great day.

Frederica Freyberg:

You, too. We invited the Republican co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee to join us tonight. He was unable to be here, but Senator Howard Marklein wrote this about the school spending plan. “We invested $150.5 million in education. This is a tremendous investment of state resources in addition to federal funding that is already arriving at schools, colleges and universities all over Wisconsin. We also doubled investments in mental health programs for K-12 schools. We invested $19 million more in this important priority. We know that there are a lot of kids who are struggling as the result of the pandemic.” Senator Marklein went on to tout money for the state technical college and university system. UW System President Tommy Thompson is especially approving of the end of the UW tuition freeze and said by doing so, “the budget committee offers the UW System flexibility to develop talent, generate life-changing research and deliver the education students expect and families deserve.”

In COVID news, the last of the masks came off this week as Dane and Milwaukee Counties lifted their mandates, allowing people outdoors and indoors to choose not to wear masks if they are fully vaccinated. Speaking of fully vaccinated, where are people holding out in Wisconsin, and why? This week’s “Noon Wednesday,” Marisa Wojcik asked “Here & Now” reporter Will Cushman.

Marisa Wojcik:

Do we know of the people who are not yet vaccinated, why are they not yet vaccinated? Is it folks who are just saying, I’m never going to get vaccinated? People who are just still waiting for more information? Or are there still issues of access?

Will Cushman:

We certainly have been hearing about and I’ve read through polling data that suggests there is definitely a political dimension to people generally — their willingness to be vaccinated for COVID-19 specifically. We see lower rates of self-identified Republicans express willingness or enthusiasm to be vaccinated for COVID-19 than we do political independents or self-identified Democrats. But there definitely are other elements as well. We are seeing in Wisconsin, which is really a nationwide phenomenon that rural counties are generally speaking, lagging more urban counties in vaccination rates. I mentioned that Door County and Bayfield County have really high vaccination rates, so clearly there are some local areas that buck trends but when we look at the data overall, rural counties are generally lagging behind and part of that may have to do with politics. The rural parts of the state are generally a little bit more conservative, a little bit more Republican than the urban centers. And there may also be access issues in rural parts of the state. And also, a sort of kind of different understanding of the pandemic and its impact. In some parts of the state that are sparsely populated, they may not have been as much of an obvious impact of the pandemic, either through pandemic-related restrictions on gatherings or masking, or just knowing people who got the disease. So there may very well be just kind of less motivation in some parts of the state for receiving vaccinations. And then I should also definitely mention that we are continuing to see disparities by race and ethnicity around the state in vaccination rates. Even in Dane County, which has the highest vaccination rate overall, there is a wide disparity between the counties’ white residents and Black and Hispanic residents. The vaccination rate for Black residents of Dane County is standing at about 25% right now. So we’ll definitely continue to see vaccination rates rise over the coming months, but it will most certainly be slower than it has been this spring.

Frederica Freyberg:

So when it comes to COVID public health practices, is the new normal like the old normal? Well, it could take a while because some Wisconsinites who were compliant to the letter with guidelines, are discovering it may be easier to put a mask on, than to take it off. We open the door to post-demic life now with someone who has been a valuable resource to us this year, state epidemiologist Dr. Ryan Westergaard. I should say this year and last year but welcome.

Ryan Westergaard:

Thanks for having me back.

Frederica Freyberg:

With restrictions mostly lifted, is this over?

Ryan Westergaard:

It’s not quite over, although I think everyone agrees we are in a much better place than we were even just a few months ago, so — but as of today and this last week, there is still just under 200 people in Wisconsin who are in the hospital with COVID-19 and these past several weeks we have averaged four deaths per day. The pandemic is still here, things are looking better. We have learned a lot, but it is not over yet.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is there any sense on your part with restrictions gone, there will be a surge?

Ryan Westergaard:

Well, we hope not but we need to remain vigilant. The decision by CDC a couple of weeks ago to really change the norms around mask-wearing from mandates in large community settings to making it an individual choice, was really reflective of the science that showed when enough people are vaccinated and vaccination is highly effective as we know it is, we are protected as a community from surges. There is still some threats because there are viruses still circulating. The threat of emergence of new genetic variants that might be more highly transmissible is ever present, but our hope is with now approximately half of the people in the country and in Wisconsin getting vaccinated, that we are in a safer place overall as a community.

Frederica Freyberg:

Should the public though be concerned about infection if unvaccinated people will not in fact, wear masks, even though the guidance says they should?

Ryan Westergaard:

I think if we are particularly in indoor settings where there is people with mixed vaccination status, meaning people who have been fully vaccinated and people who haven’t, for me if I was organizing one of those events and particularly if there were going to be older folks or medically-vulnerable folks, I think wearing masks in those settings is still a reasonable recommendation to have as a norm for vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But the focus really for public health recommendations are to encourage people to make these individual choices. The recommendation for people that have not been fully vaccinated remains exactly the same, which is to wear masks when you go out.

Frederica Freyberg:

Our reporter Will Cushman described this phase of COVID as a positive thing, but also messy and confusing, and it does seem even in Dane County where vaccination rates are high, people are slow to let go of their masks. They just don’t feel safe about it. What is the psychology of this and do you expect it to take time to readapt?

Ryan Westergaard:

I do. I think a lot of us have personal experience with that. You know, as you mentioned, I’m talking to you here in the state office building where the Department of Health Services is, and we just recently removed the mask-wearing norm for fully vaccinated people, and people are finding it a little awkward and a little confusing. I think like all things related to individual decisions, we deserve to give and receive kindness and compassion and empathy to each other as we make these decisions, because it’s been extraordinarily unusual and difficult year for everybody. There is no one right way or wrong way to feel or act in this environment. We just need to support each other and respect each other’s decisions and wearing masks when people are out in public even if people are fully vaccinated is a totally acceptable thing to do and fully supported by the science.

Frederica Freyberg:

Even though the world now seems almost fully open, is it still important in your mind to get vaccinated if you haven’t been?

Ryan Westergaard:

In my mind that is the single most important thing people can do. We know about the effectiveness of vaccines, both on the individual level and on the community level. There is really no other medical or preventive health treatment that I could recommend as enthusiastically as a COVID-19 vaccine. Both as a physician to my individual patients or as medical officer for the Health Department, it really is our strongest possible recommendation. All that being said, we understand this is a new vaccine, that the science is complex and that people have questions. So we want to have that firm, enthusiastic recommendation, but also be prepared to listen when people have questions about vaccines, and providers need to listen to patients who aren’t immediately eager or enthusiastic about getting a vaccine. People in the community need to listen and to trust each other. Talk with people you know about whether you have been vaccinated, what the experience was like, and ask honest questions about the really complicated science. When we try to communicate in public health and medicine to the science, we are highly confident in the vaccines, but it is going to take some time to bring people along and for everyone to feel comfortable with the idea.

Frederica Freyberg:

We leave it there. Dr. Ryan Westergaard, thank you very much and thank you for your work.

Ryan Westergaard:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

At the state Capitol, the Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety took up several bills around policing Thursday that emanated out of the speaker’s Task Force on Racial Disparities. Among them, provisions for reporting the use of no-knock warrants, and law enforcement grants for body cameras. But the work of the bipartisan task force whose co-chair is a Democratic member of the Legislative Black Caucus is not getting praise in all corners. Representative David Bowen also on the Criminal Justice Committee held a press conference decrying the lack of meaningful work on police reform in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha and the murder of George Floyd. He was joined by community advocates including Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Milwaukee.

Angela Lang:

This is a time to invest in our communities, not invest in further policing or further criminalization and these bills, while they are not a silver bullet, there is no silver bullet to unravel the generations of white supremacy, these are bills that are a step in the right direction and continue to move the conversation forward.

Frederica Freyberg:

At the press conference, Representative David Bowen made public 12 legislative bills he is proposing to put teeth into police reform in Wisconsin. He joins us now from Milwaukee. Thanks very much for being here.

David Bowen:

Thank you so much for having me on.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why are you proposing these bills now, even as there is work ongoing in the Legislature around police reform?

David Bowen:

Well, now is the perfect time. The task force that was created by the speaker, their seven bills have made their way through committee. I myself had a chance to vote and support five out of the seven of those bills. Two of those that I really believe in communication with folks that have been marching and advocating for quite some time, since the death of George Floyd, they feel it goes in the opposite direction of what they have been asking for. Two out of the seven, I really hope, if that’s what the task force and if that is what the Legislature is going to sign off on, I really hope it is incumbent on the governor to veto those bills so it can go back to the decision-making table and have its way with the other bills that are out there. We wanted to add into the solutions, into the table that should be there to be talked about, to be discussed, to be debated, and not limit it to just where the task force left off. We know it took them seven-and-a-half months to get to the conclusion of those seven bills and we want to add to that. We want to build on to that. So it’s really about having a holistic conversation on the solutions and it is just very clear that certain solutions weren’t allowed to be discussed at that table and there are some other bills that have already been out there with Representative Meyers, my colleague with the ban on no-knock warrants. My colleague Rep. Moore Omokunde with decertification and qualified immunity and then the 12 bills we have here in the “Enough is Enough” package.

Frederica Freyberg:

What are you saying wasn’t allowed to move forward or be discussed? What are those?

David Bowen:

Sure. So one of the bills in our package is to highlight the decision-making around prosecuting officers and that should lie with a special prosecutor decided by a court, rather than the current process is to give that investigative report to the DA and the local DA makes a decision, even though there is a very close relationship between a local DA and a police department. We should recognize that we don’t want to have a conflict of interest there. Another bill is to ensure that in investigations, any investigator is not related to someone on the same force that they are doing that investigation on. And that they themselves have been at least ten years removed from working for that same police department. It’s important to remove the conflict of interest, things that could get in the way. The hurdles that are creating a lot of distrust in this system, especially when it is very shown that it’s possible that an officer made a move of misconduct, made an abuse of power.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so as to your slate of bills you’re proposing, one of them you’re introducing is on police use of force. What precisely does it call for?

David Bowen:

Essentially, it’s very specific. It’s calling for directives in state statue to every officer in the state of Wisconsin. It is preserving the sanctity of life. It is ensuring that officers are using the least amount of force possible in situations to keep people alive. And we know that those — that definition of use of force is not complete to come out of the task force, so we wanted to make sure that was a part of the “Enough is Enough” package, a collective of solutions from the people and from those in law enforcement. We also have a bill to respect the decision of police chiefs when they make a decision of firing an officer. A lot of onus needs to be put on police chiefs to make that decision and when they do it should be respected and it should take more than a regular majority of a fire-police commission to overturn a decision of a police chief. We also want to ensure that police unions aren’t advocating for standing up for officers that have exemplified misconduct, that have exemplified not having the proper conduct to be in their positions and go against a decision of a police chief. So we’re getting those local solutions from clearly different folks that are connected to this system.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to ask you just very briefly, we don’t have a lot of time left, but how do you and other Democrats accomplish more on police reform with majority Republicans without that seat at the bipartisan task force table?

David Bowen:

I think it’s exposing the riff that exists in our state Legislature. It is about power to some of my colleagues, instead of actual solutions to keep people alive. We are talking what about what folks have been marching, what folks have been advocating for since the death of George Floyd in an extraordinary way, in ways we haven’t seen since the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s. It is incumbent on Speaker Vos and Representative Steineke who is in leadership to hear the cries of people that they want bold change. They just don’t want stutter steps and talking and lip service towards real solutions. We have to get at the root. That is what our task — that’s what our “Enough is Enough” package creates. It is about bringing those solutions to the table in decision-making and prosecuting and direct contact with law enforcement on the front end, and law enforcement has a really big role to embrace these reforms that keeps them safe as well, and that’s what we really want to highlight here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. We’ll have you on again to talk for longer duration on these issues. Representative David Bowen, thank you.

David Bowen:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Gay Pride Month kicked off at the state Capitol this week. Governor Tony Evers and assembled guests witnessed the raising of the Pride Flag. Speakers included Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.

Tammy Baldwin:

As we raise the Pride Flag again today in recognition of Pride Month, let us remember it is a symbol of fairness about whether LGBTQ Wisconsinites deserve to be treated just like their family members, their friends and their neighbors. It is about opportunity, about working together to break down barriers so that everyone in Wisconsin has an equal opportunity to dream the same dreams, to chase the same ambitions, and to have the same shot at success. And it’s about the ongoing march for freedom, the freedom of full equality for the LGBTQ community. Most of all, it’s about whether the progress Wisconsin has made will continue. Today, we ask ourselves if we will live up to our state motto “Forward,” and today we come together as one community to answer that question with a resounding “yes!”

[applause]

Frederica Freyberg:

Finally tonight, we say farewell to someone you have never seen on camera, but who has played an essential role in getting programs to your living room over the last three decades. Never seen on camera, until now. This week engineer Mike Hansen ends a 30-year career with PBS Wisconsin. His technical know-how has kept cameras rolling the whole time. He is also a transmission engineer making sure our show actually hits the airwaves every week. That is his job tonight. There he is at his post. So thank you, Mike, and happy retirement. Congratulations. That is our program for tonight. Have a good weekend.

Announcer:

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