Here & Now

Here & Now for May 31, 2019

Frederica Freyberg:
I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” Chief Justice Pat Roggensack says a pay raise approved for appointed public defenders is welcome news. She joins us in a moment. And we’ll look into how new Republican budget plans impact the UW System. It’s “Here & Now” for May 31.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided in part by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

Frederica Freyberg:
In all the state budget action that is mostly argued along partisan lines like funding for the UW System or K-12 or the DNR, with transportation yet to come, rare agreement on a matter that some experts have said was bringing the state close to a constitutional crisis: the funding for appointed public defenders. This week the Joint Committee on Finance passed a budget measure that would hike the pay for state appointed lawyers to $70 an hour from the current $40 hourly rate. The measure also increased pay for assistant district attorneys and added positions. It did pass on party lines because Democrats wanted the defender pay rates to be indexed to inflation, which was not included in the Republican plan and some Milwaukee County prosecutor positions were grant-funded instead of funded with general revenue. But the larger issue is something on which both sides can agree and the defender pay increase got positive reaction from the highest court official in the state, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack. And she joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Pat Roggensack:
Oh, you’re very welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:
So it is not usual that a chief justice would weigh in on a budget matter but in your mind, how important is it that we boost pay for these appointed public defenders?

Pat Roggensack:
I think it’s absolutely critical. It’s critical in a couple of senses. First from a very fundamental basis, we have to be able to have qualified lawyers for those who cannot afford to pay for private rate attorneys and we’ve been having a very hard time finding people who are qualified that will work at $40 an hour. Lawyers are in short supply in the northwest part of the state at any hourly rate and at $40 an hour, it’s almost impossible to find them. But, you know, each person has a constitutional right to be represented by competent counsel when they’re charged with a crime. And so there was a problem here. In addition, it’s a matter of effectiveness and efficiency for the court in that the court system doesn’t function well if you don’t have qualified attorneys for people who are charged with a crime. So I began to work with other people on this as a package, talking to legislators privately, talking to — actually I talked to the governor before he gave his State of the Budget Address and he did put it in his State of the Budget Address. I was very pleased with that.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, the $40 rate was set in 1995. Why has it taken so long to address this?

Pat Roggensack:
I don’t know. I honest to goodness I don’t know. But when it was asked in the last budget to raise it and nothing happened and at that point in time I thought, I’m going to get involved because it really matters to the entire court system. Of course it matters in a constitutional sense to the defendants who are needing counsel and competent counsel but it matters. The system does not function well if you can’t bring someone charged with a crime quickly before a magistrate, that’s a problem.

Frederica Freyberg:
And so that’s a practical effect on the defendants but what effect did this have or does this have on the system itself and even the counties?

Pat Roggensack:
I think it has a big effect on both, okay? To go to the counties, the Legislature also increased the amount of money that they give to the courts in the budget that I submitted because there’s an amount of money that we simply pass through to the counties and that’s because the counties really are our partners. You know, those circuit courts are maintained. They’re state courts but they’re maintained in partnership with the counties so because we as the Supreme Court had upped the rate that the counties have to pay to $100 an hour, there was going to be a big, big increase. Now with the rate up to $70 an hour, it isn’t going to be as necessary to travel to the $100 an hour rate. It really affects the functioning and it affects the counties, too.

Frederica Freyberg:
How far do you think the $30 an hour hike will go toward attracting more of these private, appointed attorneys in places like you’re saying, northwest Wisconsin?

Pat Roggensack:
Yeah. You know, the $70 an hour wasn’t a rabbit that we picked out of a hat. I had Kelly Thompson come in and talk with me about this problem when we didn’t get anything for it in the budget last go around. And I said, “What would you pay a new attorney hired as an in-staff person in your office?” And she told me and I said, “Well, if you monetize the benefits, what would the dollar an hour be?” And it was 70. So that’s how we came up with the $70 an hour figure.

Frederica Freyberg:
And Kelly Thompson is the head of —

Pat Roggensack:
She is the state public defender. That’s right.

Frederica Freyberg:
So would you have wanted this indexed to inflation?

Pat Roggensack:
You know, that’s always a good thing but the Legislature is always chary of binding another Legislature to something they decide today. I don’t know of anything that they’ve indexed to inflation.

Frederica Freyberg:
As you’ve said, you worked to get this measure passed. What’s been the early reaction?

Pat Roggensack:
Early reaction from —

Frederica Freyberg:
From the system, from the courts, from the judges.

Pat Roggensack:
I think it’s been very, very favorable. It’s not partisan at all. I think everybody realizes the time has come and so it’s moved forward. We have a Democratic governor. We have a Republican Legislature and they are, I think on all sides, committed to doing this out of fairness and out of a concern that the courts function fairly for all the people in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
Chief Justice Roggensack, thanks very much.

Pat Roggensack:
You’re very welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:
In other budget news, leaving leaders decidedly less pleased, the Republican majority on the budget writing committee reduced a proposed funding increase and continued a tuition freeze for the UW System. The move would give the system about $58 million, less than half of what the governor proposed. And $45 million of it would only be released if the Legislature approves. Joint Finance Committee Co-chair Representative John Nygren made the case.

John Nygren:
There will always be a desire from some to spend more. And there will always be an opportunity for us to have those conversations. But first and foremost, we need to realize that there are expectations that have to be built into any resources that we provide for, any taxpayer-funded entity here in our state. It’s my hope that this motion, that those conversations do take place and at the end of the day, the UW System is stronger because of it.

Frederica Freyberg:
UW System President Ray Cross said the vote felt like a kick in the shin saying, “Today’s vote was a missed opportunity and shortsighted. The UW System is the best investment the state can make to develop its workforce and attract and retain talent. The UW System budget is reasonable, specific and responds to workforce needs. We need at least $60 million to keep up with the inflation alone. The motion would provide $45 million with significant strings attached. By not addressing these financial challenges, we are severely hamstrung in our ability to continue to grow vital programs and high-need fields that the people of Wisconsin expect and demand.”
Before we introduce our next guest, we should mention Wisconsin Public Television is part of UW-Madison. At Madison, faculty are weighing in on the budget action for the UW. A faculty organization called PROFS agrees with Cross saying the budget vote this week was a missed opportunity to reinvest in the UW System. Chemistry Professor Judith Burstyn joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Judith Burstyn:
Thank you for asking me.

Frederica Freyberg:
The message from Republican budget writers seems to be that the economy is booming, tuition revenue from out of state students and grad students is up and the last state budget provided a really healthy boost in funding. How do you respond to that?

Judith Burstyn:
So the faculty members work on the front lines of the UW System. We know firsthand that in order to continue to address the needs of our students and drive our state’s economy, we need greater investment from the state. And as chair of a major department at UW-Madison, I deal on a daily basis with the realities of a very competitive academic marketplace. Our competitors know that Wisconsin’s had an issue with the state not supporting our university and our faculty are targets.

Frederica Freyberg:
So you’re suggesting that there is a retention problem for potentially the best and the brightest here at the university?

Judith Burstyn:
There has been and there continues to be a significant retention problem.

Frederica Freyberg:
Because I know that on Joint Finance, John Nygren, the co-chair was talking about how Democrats say that the university has been cut more than a billion dollars since 2011. John Nygren said yes, but they’ve been able to make it up because of the, “tools of Act 10” whereby staff has had to contribute more into their health care and into their pension funds. He said that it basically evens out but you’re suggesting that Act 10 also still has some issues for faculty deciding to leave.

Judith Burstyn:
So there has been a history at UW-Madison, our salaries have always been below those of peer, comparable institutions to UW-Madison. But the reality was that because of our good, state benefits package, we would argue that that was one of the pieces. And that benefits package has been eroded. Those resources never really became available for the university to use because they had been associated with fringes and it’s just coming out of the pockets of the faculty and the staff at the universities.

Frederica Freyberg:
In terms of students, what does your organization believe will be the practical effect of a budget if it looks like this in its final form?

Judith Burstyn:
So in preparing for the current budget debate, the UW System worked very hard to develop a reasonable budget proposal that focused on student success and making it easier for students to get into STEM and other high demand fields. The governor’s budget was very similar to what the regents proposed but then also went a step further and funded the freeze, that is, didn’t just freeze tuition but also paid for the revenue that would have been lost. Universities don’t have many sources of revenue. Our public institutions have as their resources tuition dollars and state dollars and that’s what funds our educational mission.

Frederica Freyberg:
How bad in your mind from your organization’s perspective is this?

Judith Burstyn:
The situation for UW System and UW-Madison is that we’ve sustained many years of tuition freeze and budget cut and although last biennium there was a small increase, it did not cover the inflationary costs and again, the loss of this funding for the tuition freeze essentially is a budget cut again to the university because these are inflationary costs and they’re not covered. It means that student access, student support is not going to be funded.

Frederica Freyberg:
Another matter was the funding of a 2% pay increase for staff and faculty but funded only 70%. Then what happens?

Judith Burstyn:
Well, that means that the additional 30% is going to come out of other programs in the university. There’s relative little flexible dollars within the university. It’s primarily driven towards the educational mission and that means those funds are more likely than not to come out the educational mission of the institutions.

Frederica Freyberg:
And what do you and faculty members of your group think about the fact that most of the increase approved by Joint Finance, that being $45 million, would only be released with the Legislature’s approval?

Judith Burstyn:
The people making — who are best suited to make the decisions for UW System are the Board of Regents and the leadership of the UW System institutions. And I don’t see any compelling reason for the Legislature to micro manage those decisions. I would also comment that our governor has broad experience in education. He understands how to deliver effective educational programs. He understands the value of education and also the expertise of the individuals who laid these institutions and I would trust them to do the work that they need to do.

Frederica Freyberg:
We need to leave it there. Professor, thanks very much for joining us.

Judith Burstyn:
You’re welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:
As for state budget action on clean water regulation, Republicans on Joint Finance approved two of the five scientist positions Governor Tony Evers requested. But cut more than $40 million from programs the governor had proposed toward reducing water pollution. The budget committee postponed a vote on an Evers proposal to increase fees on concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs which consist of farms with more than 1,000 animals like large dairy operations. There are about 300 CAFOs in Wisconsin with more every year. The executive budget would increase fees on CAFOs to $5,910 for five-year permits. That’s up from $1,725 currently. The extra fees would go to pay for DNR regulation and enforcement protection of drinking water from farm pollution. A lobbying group for the state’s large dairy operations oppose the fee increases. Cindy Leitner is president of the Wisconsin Dairy Alliance. She joins us from Fond du Lac. Thanks very much for being here.

Cindy Leitner:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So again, your group lobbied against the increase in permit fees for CAFOs. Why?

Cindy Leitner:
Well, we’d like to look at why it’s needed. The permit fees actually are not very good for our farms. We are struggling in this industry, whether it’s a CAFO or whether it’s a small farm. Five years of bad milk prices, the export issues of this year. We’re all struggling. We’re struggling just to survive. Added fees aren’t going to help. And what are the added fees used for? Extra positions. So let’s look at the positions. Are they needed? Do we need to have more positions? We have 14 positions in field positions for CAFOs in the state of Wisconsin. We have approximately 305 CAFOs in the state of Wisconsin. That includes pigs and chickens and goats and other CAFOs. 274 are dairy. That would mean, in a five-year period, each one of those 14 people that are going out to the dairies is required by law to make one visit every 10 1/2 weeks for permit renewal. That leaves quite a bit of other time for them to come and visit farms. Quite a bit of other time for enforcement. In fact, that probably leaves them, if they only do it half their time a year, at least once a month they should be on the farm talking to the dairy person or talking to somebody about what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, how they can do it better and building that relationship so that we’re all looking towards no discharge in water.

Frederica Freyberg:
So again, 14 positions for 305 CAFOs you believe is adequate.

Cindy Leitner:
Yes. The renewal permit requirement is only once every five years. So it’s mandatory for them to go once every five years to these farms. That’s a three to five hour visit and then they have to write something up. Beyond that, they can go there any time they want. They can go to the farm any time they want and visit with these people. So that’s the field positions. They also have eight positions in-house so — and I’ve gotten mixed signals from people in Madison and talking to them. Are we talking about enforcement positions? Or are we talking about permit positions for upping the permitting time and renewing the permits faster? I’m not sure which they’re going for.

Frederica Freyberg:
You believe, again, that an approximately $1,000 a year permit fee is onerous even for the largest of the dairy operations?

Cindy Leitner:
Nobody has escaped the milk prices. Five years of this. Five years and we can’t milk our way out of it. We can’t produce more milk so that we have more money. Yet, our input costs, the cost of doing business has gone up. And that’s for every single dairy and that’s why we’re losing so many dairies. We’re losing big dairies also in the state of Wisconsin. We’re not just losing small dairies. We’re losing all dairies and this is $43 billion of our economy. We produce in the dairy industry, $82,500 a minute in the Wisconsin economy. We have people that are leaving our state because it’s too hard to work here as a dairy.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do you feel as though the regulations for CAFOs to comply with water pollution are onerous?

Cindy Leitner:
We believe that the regulations we have right now are fine and we’re working with them and we’re working with the DNR. We’re not asking for release of regulations. We’re not asking for less regulations. What we like to do is work with the DNR. We’ve met with Todd Ames and we’ve met — we’re meeting with DATCP. We’d like to help. We believe that because we are a zero discharge by our WPDES permit, we are required not to discharge, no poop in the water. We have a unique perspective of how to do this and we can help. We can help in all aspects. But we have to look at the whole problem. So we have 7800 farms approximately in the state of Wisconsin. 274 are dairy farms that are CAFOs. We have 1.3 million cows in the state of Wisconsin. 300,000 are CAFOs. Yet we produce 40% of the milk. So let’s get rid of the CAFOs. Let’s just get rid of them. Have we solved our problem in water quality? We haven’t. We have to look at every aspect. We have to work with Senator Novak and the Water Quality Task Force. We have to look at different regions. We have to look at water sheds. We have to look at municipalities. We have to look at homeowners. You know, with fertilizer. We have to look at everything and we’re here to help them do that.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do you feel as though then that CAFOs are catching the blame erroneously for water pollution in this state?

Cindy Leitner:
I think they’re catching the majority of the blame and, you know, it’s okay to assign blame where someone’s done something wrong and you can prove they’ve done something wrong. But for instance, look at — let’s look at Mark Borchardt’s data up in Kewaunee County. Kewaunee County has been in all kinds of news and yet they still are number two in tourism dollars in the state of Wisconsin for two years in a row. So there’s something good happening in Kewaunee County. In his research, he said that 50% of things they found in the wells came from bovine and 50% came from human. There are five times more cows in Kewaunee County than there are humans. That means there’s 210 — it’s a 210-1 ratio in bovine waste to human waste. If we got rid of all the cows, would we have solved our problem in Kewaunee County?

Frederica Freyberg:
We need to leave it there.

Cindy Leitner:
We have to look at everything.

Frederica Freyberg:
We need to leave it there with that question. Point taken. Cindy Leitner, thanks very much for joining us.

Cindy Leitner:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
Concentrated animal feeding operations are big business in Wisconsin. For their part, environmental organizations call for higher fees and more oversight on CAFO businesses, including groups like Wisconsin’s Green Fire, a group of conservation professionals, including former DNR employees. Green Fire’s executive director is Fred Clark, who is also on the state DNR board. He speaks today on behalf of Green Fire, not as a DNR board member. Thanks very much for being here.

Fred Clark:
Great. Thanks for having me Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:
So just to ask you first, what are the environmental impacts in Wisconsin of CAFOs?

Fred Clark:
Well, CAFOs, along with other dairy operations are a source of — unfortunately, they’re a source of contamination of rural water supplies. Primary pathway for that is animal manure that goes onto farm fields and leaves those fields through leeching and makes its way in water bodies. We’re talking about phosphorus. We’re talking about nitrates, which are a human health contaminant and we’re talking about fecal coliform bacteria that can cause human illness.

Frederica Freyberg:
Our last guest suggested that in Kewaunee County, for example, its half animal manure and half human sewage that is contaminating the wells there and that the answer is not to get rid of CAFOs or other animal operations.

Fred Clark:
Well I don’t think anyone wants to see us get rid of dairying in the dairy state. Depending on where you are, in rural areas especially, we know that unfortunately, agricultural operations are the biggest contributing factor toward rural water contamination and well contamination.

Frederica Freyberg:
How well are they being regulated?

Fred Clark:
Well, with the large CAFO program, there are a fairly complete set of regulations that both the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Agriculture, Trade, Consumer Protection enforce and CAFOs pay a relatively small fee for the regulation under the Clean Water Act that Wisconsin exercises.

Frederica Freyberg:
So would increasing the fees for these permits, for the CAFOs help the DNR and other agencies keep up with regulation and enforcement?

Fred Clark:
I think the thing to keep in mind right now is that the total cost to the DNR of the CAFO oversight program is something over $2 million. The fees that large CAFOs pay is somewhere around 5% of that total cost. So unlike many other regulated entities in Wisconsin that are carrying all of the oversight costs through their permit fees in dairy agriculture, we’ve chosen not to do that. The increase that’s been proposed would still only be a fraction of what taxpayers are picking up in order to fund the positions in DNR that oversee those operations.

Frederica Freyberg:
So it’s your sense that that kind of increase in those permitting fees would not be onerous for these large operations?

Fred Clark:
Well I’m a former business owner myself and I appreciate that costs are always a factor. If you look at the average large CAFO, dairy CAFO in Wisconsin, that operation probably has about 2,000 animals. Most of those operations are selling somewhere between $5 and $10 million worth of milk every year. These are very large businesses. They’re facing struggles in this economy. Absolutely. But the permit fee is the smallest of any of the surrounding states that also regulate dairy operations in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
What was your reaction when you saw that the Joint Finance Committee postponed action on this?

Fred Clark:
Well, I’m encouraged that legislators and policy makers are recognizing the water quality problems that we have in this state, probably to a degree that we’ve never seen before. So they’re — I understand that they will take that up again in a future session. We hope that the emphasis on, you know, providing enough oversight in those programs will still be there. At the end of the day though, I think is regulation important? Absolutely. But regulation alone isn’t going to solve the problem we have right now with our farm economy and the environmental problems that are associated with it. Farmers can be part of that solution and in many cases they are. And we need consumers to understand that when they buy dairy products, they need to be assured that the soil and water quality associated with those farm operations is high. Otherwise, we lose the integrity of our brand here in Wisconsin and we cannot afford to let that happen.

Frederica Freyberg:
Absolutely. Fred Clark, thanks very much.

Fred Clark:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
Turning now to the 2020 spring election where a new candidate has entered the race for state Supreme Court. Incumbent Justice Daniel Kelly says he will be seeking a full 10-year term next April. He was appointed to the bench in 2016 and is considered part of the court’s four seat conservative majority. He joins two other candidates vying for the seat, Dane County Judge Jill Karofsky and Marquette Law Professor Ed Fallone, both of whom are expected to receive liberal backing. A February primary will narrow the field to two candidates who will face each other the same day as Wisconsin’s April presidential primary.
And that is our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided in part by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.