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The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Robin Vos:

What we have here are people of goodwill saying here is something that Republicans could move on to be able to update the statute.

Frederica Freyberg:

Assembly Republicans circulate a bill allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest, but the Senate says no go. A federal agency recommends strict standards for toxic forever chemicals, and the Legislature hosts the annual State of the Tribe’s Address. I’m Frederica Freyberg, tonight on “Here & Now,” Senator Tammy Baldwin addresses clean water and abortion. Zac Schultz reports on the intensifying Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Tribal leaders explain barriers to healthcare, and a look at a law criminalizing overdose deaths. It’s “Here & Now” for March 17.

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

Frederica Freyberg:

In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency just released recommendations for drinking water standards contaminated with forever chemicals known as PFAS, setting them at four parts per trillion. Wisconsin standards are currently set at 70 parts per trillion. The new standards will regulate public water systems but not private wells. Earlier, we spoke with Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, whose new bill would provide grants to households dealing with PFAS. Senator Tammy Baldwin, thanks very much for being here.

Tammy Baldwin:

It’s my pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

The new EPA-recommended standards and remediation funding under the Infrastructure Act covers public water systems only. Is that where your bill comes in?

Tammy Baldwin:

Yeah. As the Healthy H2O Act really focuses on rural communities where so many households depend upon private wells for their source of water. And right now, a lot of folks who use private wells don’t test the water quality on a frequent basis. It’s actually rather expensive. And so this will encourage, through use of grants, communities to up the level of well testing that goes on and what’s really promising about this legislation is that if contaminants are found, like PFAS or others, that the grants also, then, cover the cost of filtration so that you can uncover the issue and address the issue in the same program.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because how concerning is this kind of PFAS contamination across the state of Wisconsin for you?

Tammy Baldwin:

You know, it wasn’t so many years ago I had never even heard the term PFAS, and then community after community is testing their water, oftentimes the communities doing the testing have a public water utility and so they’re testing water that’s going to be distributed among hundreds if not thousands of people, and we’re seeing PFAS contamination in communities across Wisconsin. But I’m really worried about those with private wells who may also have contamination but, again, because of the high cost of testing, there’s not necessarily an understanding in real time that filtration or other remediation is necessary.

Frederica Freyberg:

So according to the bill language, the appropriation for this would be $10 million nationally annually until 2028. How far does that go when Wisconsin alone has one million private wells?

Tammy Baldwin:

Yeah. So not far enough, but we have to start somewhere, and right now, there’s very little, if any, assistance for those who are dependent upon water from private wells. And yet we know we have communities in Wisconsin right now who have PFAS contamination and are served by private wells. A perfect example of that is, on French Island, adjacent to the city of La Crosse, where all the wells have discovered PFAS contamination and they’re struggling as a community of homeowners with each — their private well of how do we go forward. We need to make sure that we’re equipping as many folks as possible. And these grants, as we start up the program, you know, assuming we can get it passed in the Farm Bill or as freestanding legislation, these grants can come to community organizations that can help organize private well testing and the follow-through if contaminants are found.

Frederica Freyberg:

Moving on to another issue, you’ve also reintroduced a bill that includes provisions like prohibiting states from limiting abortions if the health of the mother is in danger. Why is that important to you in Wisconsin now?

Tammy Baldwin:

Well, the Women’s Health Protection Act, which was introduced with a record number of senators on board, would, first of all, codify Roe versus Wade at the federal level, but as you say, go on to tell states and other governmental units that you cannot restrict or limit access to these freedoms and rights at the state level. And it’s really important for those of us in Wisconsin, where an 1849 criminal abortion statute has nearly totally eliminated access to abortion care and left many in crisis.

Frederica Freyberg:

Exactly what would the bill call for?

Tammy Baldwin:

Pre-viability. The state cannot interfere in any way with access to reproductive care, including abortion care. But post-viability, consistent with Roe versus Wade, states can act as long as they’re acting in a way that is consistent with protecting the health and life of the mother. In Wisconsin, these rights have disappeared in an instant when, last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe versus Wade.

Frederica Freyberg:

Will it pass?

Tammy Baldwin:

We need to recognize that the situation is urgent. Fourteen states, including Wisconsin, have virtual bans on abortion care and that’s not acceptable, that a whole generation is living with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers enjoyed.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of the state of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Assembly was circulating a bill calling for exemptions for rape and incest and in situations where the mother’s health was in serious jeopardy, though the Republican-led Senate said they wouldn’t take it up. What is your reaction to all of this action that’s happening at the state level in our Legislature?

Tammy Baldwin:

Yeah. Well, on one hand, there needs to be a recognition that the status quo in Wisconsin is unacceptable. We have a pre-Civil War era criminal abortion ban, and I can’t help but think that that was 70 years before women got the right to vote. There were no women in the Wisconsin Legislature in 1849 participating in the debate and we know so much more in terms of science and medicine today. It is unacceptable that that is the law of the land in the state of Wisconsin, but I don’t think tweaking around the edges of this 1849 law is acceptable and I stand with the Governor, Governor Evers, who said that he would veto such tweaks and, instead we need to call for modernizing and, frankly, to act in line with the Women’s Health Protection Act, which I lead at the federal level.

Frederica Freyberg:

Senator Tammy Baldwin, we leave it there. Thanks very much.

Tammy Baldwin:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

You can watch our extended interview with Senator Baldwin by visiting PBSwisconsin.org/news.

As we approach the April 4th Supreme Court election, we are continuing our look at past decisions by the court. How the candidates might have ruled and perhaps changed the outcome. “Here & Now” senior political reporter Zac Schultz has this story.

Zac Schultz:

In May of 2020, the world was in lockdown. The COVID pandemic was only a few months old, vaccines were months away and any political unity about how to stop the spread of the coronavirus was gone. Governor Tony Evers’ emergency authority lapsed after 60 days, and when Andrea Palm, his secretary-designee for the Department of Health, tried to reissue emergency safer-at-home orders, the Republicans in the Legislature filed a lawsuit saying the orders were a rule and should go through the rule-making process, which would allow Republicans to kill the orders.

Daniel Kelly:

As you know, the opinion of the court was that the safer-at-home order did not follow the rules for promulgating a new rule and, as a result, it was an unlawful order.

Zac Schultz:

Daniel Kelly was on the court at the time. He had lost his bid for re-election a month earlier but his term went through August and he cast the deciding vote in a fractured 4-3 decision.

Daniel Kelly:

Justice Rebecca Bradley and I wrote separately to address the constitutionality problem and so the way we looked at it was we saw an executive branch agency making the law and that’s something that our Constitution gives only to the Legislature.

Zac Schultz:

Janet Protasiewicz was much less willing to stake out a position, even though the liberal dissent in the case said the majority ruling would likely result in additional deaths in Wisconsin.

Janet Protasiewicz:

I don’t know, and I’ll tell you this, obviously I’ve got a lot of concerns about public safety, but executive orders and extending executive orders, those are interesting, complicated, intricate cases. So, you know, I’m not just going to pull a rabbit out of a hat and say one side or the other because I really am contemplative and I like to think about the law and think about all of the issues.

Zac Schultz:

Seven months later, another significant case came to the court. Trump v Biden, in which Donald Trump’s campaign sought to overturn the results of the presidential election in Wisconsin by tossing out thousands of absentee ballots in Dane and Milwaukee Counties. With Kelly off the court, the three liberals and Justice Brian Hagedorn ruled 4-3 they would not hear the case, sealing Trump’s loss. Kelly was vague about whether he would have taken the case.

Daniel Kelly:

You know, I think there were a couple of important questions that were embedded in those cases, things about ballot drop boxes, ballot harvesting. They were subsequently answered in following cases, but I don’t think there was any reason they shouldn’t have been answered in those cases. I don’t know that it would have changed the result at all, but as a question of law, you know, obviously those questions were going to have to get answered at some point.

Zac Schultz:

Recent reporting has shown during that time, Kelly was actually advising the Republican Party of Wisconsin on their slate of fake electors that would have counted for Trump on January 6th if his lawsuit was successful. Protasiewicz says Kelly’s actions leave little doubt about how he would have voted.

Janet Protasiewicz:

He was recently touring the state with, of all people, of all people, Michael Gableman, on an election integrity tour. What were they trying to do? Peddle the ‘big lie’ that the 2020 election was stolen? We all know that election wasn’t stolen.

Zac Schultz:

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

Frederica Freyberg:

At the Capitol this week, Chairman Robert Van Zile of the Sokaogon Chippewa community addressed the Legislature in the annual State of the Tribes Address. A top issue for tribes across Wisconsin he says is affordable and accessible quality healthcare.

Robert Van Zile:

The tribes face a huge barrier with recruiting and retaining medical staff since the pandemic. Wages of healthcare professionals have skyrocketed. It’s very difficult for a tribe to compete with the wages for healthcare professionals at this time. Tribes work on very limited funds from the Indian Healthcare Services, which barely covers wages.

Frederica Freyberg:

To understand more of the health challenges Wisconsin tribes encounter, we turn to Debra Danforth, director of the Oneida Comprehensive Health Division. Thanks very much for being here.

Debra Danforth:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So according to your latest community health assessment, 26% of respondents said that they had to delay care because they couldn’t be seen soon enough. So is healthcare access hindered by these wage pressures and difficulty recruiting medical talent, as was pointed to in the State of the Tribes?

Debra Danforth:

Most definitely. Many of the tribes, particularly for Oneida, we have a great deal of difficulty in terms of recruiting and retaining providers. We’ve had some positions that we’ve had posted probably since even before the pandemic started, so it was difficult prior to and then when the pandemic hit, it even complicated the matters greatly. We are not able to be as competitive as our partners in healthcare in the surrounding communities, and for Oneida, we’re fortunate in that we’re in a pretty popular location in terms of our access to other healthcare facilities and other healthcare systems. However, for the tribes that are much smaller than us that are located in the northern areas of Wisconsin and throughout the other areas of Wisconsin, it is extremely difficult to try and be competitive with some of the healthcare systems in those areas. So recruitment and retention has always been an issue, but it has been magnified by the pandemic simply because we can’t be competitive. It’s very difficult for people to get access to care, and with the limitation of funding that we receive, it’s often — makes it even more difficult for us.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to the people that you are caring for, your annual assessment also showed that 85% of those enrolled in the Oneida are overweight or obese and 25% have diabetes. How major a challenge are these kinds of health profiles?

Debra Danforth:

The work that we’ve been continuing to do in our community, as has many of the other tribes, as a result of the IHS and special diabetes programs, they have been able to educate the communities and give people hope that, by providing opportunities for exercise, providing opportunities for diet and education, they have been able to make impacts into controlling diabetes within our communities. Still not to where we need to be, but we’re heading in the right direction. It’s interesting that a few years ago, we did have a number of people that were — we had a number of high rates of amputations as a result of uncontrolled diabetes. We have been able to see that impact improve where there’s very few amputations from our diabetic patients that there used to be — I mean, it used to be something that we dealt with on a regular basis, and with the work that we’re doing, we can see those impacts. Does it take a while? Yeah. 25, 30 years to see that impact in our community, but we’re seeing that impact, and that’s what I think keeps all of us as healthcare providers struggling and fighting to make sure that our communities have that access and make sure that they can help to continue to improve overall for our community.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to talk about this next point, too. The number of opioid deaths among American Indians in Wisconsin according to the Department of Health Services is reported as 2-1/2 times higher than the statewide rate. How crushing is this crisis where you are?

Debra Danforth:

This crisis affects all of the tribes, not just in Wisconsin, but across the country. The opioid crisis has been very evident and, you know, we’ve done a lot of work with trying to address education in the community, doing outreach into the communities, but many of our tribes are facing the same level of crisis within their communities. A lot of that is related to, again, access to care. We have limitations in terms of being able to get access to mental health providers. Many times it’s not just the drug or the alcohol itself; it’s a combination. It’s dual diagnoses, it’s mental health on top of opioids on top of alcohol, on top of whatever other drug is their drug of choice, and then having access to care, you know, complicates that. We don’t have enough of the mental health providers to be able to provide that service. We don’t have the ability to provide the services like in-patient care that’s necessary to treat the drug addictions and the alcohol addictions, and so many of our community members have to be sent outside of our communities, they have to be sent out of the state to be able to get the specific services that they need and then when they do come back, again, they’re faced with the same kinds of complexities of coming back to the same community they left, coming back to the same types of triggers that they left.

Frederica Freyberg:

You are doing the good work. Debra Danforth, thanks very much.

Debra Danforth:

Mm-hmm.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tony Evers today appointed former state treasurer Sarah Godlewski to secretary of state after long serving Secretary Doug La Follette resigned effective today. La Follette held office for eleven consecutive terms spanning more than 40 years. He said he was quitting after many years of frustration over trying to run an office without adequate resources or staffing levels. Godlewski served as state treasurer from 2019 to 2023 and will fill the remainder of the term ending in January of 2027.

Also, at the state Capitol this week, a Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety heard testimony on a bill that would increase penalties for drug overdoses that are treated as homicides, saying Wisconsin’s current law doesn’t go far enough at targeting suppliers of drugs like opioids laced with fentanyl. But some experts say what these laws seek in theory is not what they target in practice. To learn more, we speak with John Gross, a clinical associate professor of law at the UW Law School and director of the Public Defender Project. And professor, thanks very much for being here.

John Gross:

My pleasure. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So current state law makes causing the death in an overdose a 40-year maximum penalty. This bill would make it a 60-year. What’s your reaction to that proposal out of the Capitol?

John Gross:

Well, my first reaction is that I don’t think it’s necessary to increase the penalty here. Wisconsin actually has very high penalties relative to some other states for various felony offenses. So moving this from a 40-year maximum to a 60-year maximum, I just don’t think it really addresses any of the underlying issues.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, does it seem, given the opioid crisis, that policy makers are looking to use kind of a tough on drugs hammer to quell it?

John Gross:

I mean, I think that’s the knee-jerk reaction here, is to say that they’re going to appear to be tough on crime by increasing the penalty, but we have good data that suggests that this type of knee-jerk reaction that just makes something more punitive, increase the penalty on it, is not really going to impact what decisions people are making. Particularly in this area when we’re talking about people who have opioid abuse disorders. So, I think, again, it’s an attempt to appear harsh on crime, but it’s really ignoring the underlying issues that are causing the overdoses.

Frederica Freyberg:

So, again, you don’t think that it deters overdose deaths?

John Gross:

No. I mean there’s even an argument to say that increasing this type of penalty could cause more overdose deaths, and the scenario I’m imagining is a situation where people are using drugs, someone has gotten drugs, shared them with someone else, and that other person overdoses, and we would hope that in that moment, they would seek medical attention for the person, but if the message from the state is if you happen to hand the person the drugs that they used and they are now overdosing, you could go to jail for 60 years as a distributor of the narcotic or the opioid? Well, I mean, I don’t think that necessarily is going to prevent overdoses.

Frederica Freyberg:

So in your mind, is there a better way?

John Gross:

Well, I think if the state is sincerely concerned as we all are about lowering the number of overdose deaths, they’ve reached a high point. Historically what you need is to really address the underlying issues of addiction. You need to provide more opportunities for treatment, and you need to create, I think, safe spaces for people who are overdosing to have others try to get them medical attention, and this is really just the opposite of that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, when it comes to criminal penalties, should there be a difference between kind of a high-level dealer selling opioids laced with fentanyl and those addicted to opioids using with their friends. I mean, is there a place for this kind of penalty for the “dealer”?

John Gross:

So it’s interesting because these types of offenses are usually labeled drug-induced homicides, and Legislature started to criminalize that as a homicide back in the ’80s when we were experiencing an uptick in crack cocaine use, and the theory behind doing this was to really target people who were sort of drug kingpins. Right? To hold people accountable if they were distributing drugs that were killing people and making a prophet off of it. Unfortunately, the way the statute is written, it creates the potential to charge anybody who distributes or delivers drugs to someone else. So there are instances that — where we see friends using drugs together and one person overdoses and dies and then the other person is charged under the statute. So on the face of it, we’re really just hoping that prosecutors will use their discretion to only charge people who are the supposed drug kingpins, but we have cases and significant evidence to show that that’s not what’s happening. They’re really targeting other people who are co-users, and I think that’s really problematic.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet, when a family member or child dies of an overdose, shouldn’t someone be held criminally liable?

John Gross:

I mean, I think there’s certainly an argument to be made that anybody who helps procure or distribute a drug that is itself illegal and does lead to someone else’s death, that that can be criminalized. Should we be criminalizing it at 40 years as a sentence or 60 years as a sentence? I mean, I think those are extremes and I think, again, I think the underlying issue here is the addiction and there’s other ways that the state can do to help reduce opioid deaths and other overdoses rather than this sort of punitive, let’s just make the penalty longer approach.

Frederica Freyberg:

Professor at the UW Law School, John Gross, thanks very much.

John Gross:

Thank you.

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” provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.