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The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor is suing the state legislature after years of power grabs from Republican lawmakers. And the United Auto Workers strike comes to an end. How will the deal impact local workers?

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” details of the governor’s lawsuit against the state legislature. Then we check in with a local UAW president on his way to ratify a new contract. A town supervisor details life for residents without clean water, and the next in our series “Wisconsin in Black and White: Health Divides.” It’s “Here & Now” for November 3.

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

Frederica Freyberg:

Democratic Governor Tony Evers says he’s had enough and so this week he filed a suit against the state legislature saying Republicans are holding hostage pay raises for tens of thousands of UW state employees. We should note PBS Wisconsin is part of UW-Madison. Senior political reporter Zac Schultz has more.

Zac Schultz:

Earlier this month, the Republican-led Joint Committee on Employment Relations, cochaired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, signed off on raises for all state workers except employees of the Universities of Wisconsin. It was the last straw for Democratic Governor Tony Evers.

Tony Evers:

The Republicans decided that 35,000 people that work for the UW System shouldn’t get a raise without having any legislation that gives them that authority. That’s just bull-[bleep], and so that was the defining moment right there.

Zac Schultz:

The raises were already approved in the state’s biennial budget. The lawsuit, brought by Attorney General Josh Kaul on behalf of the governor alleges this and other actions by GOP-led committees are violating the Wisconsin Constitution and intruding into executive powers. Evers further says Republican legislators are unconstitutionally obstructing basic functions of government.

Other alleged violations from Republican-controlled committees include the Joint Committee on Finance has repeatedly blocked conservation projects, selected under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program and the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules is blocking updates to the state’s commercial building standards and ethics standards for licensed professionals.

Tony Evers:

There’s nothing in law or the budget that was passed, which is law, to say that the speaker or the Republicans in general, leadership can say, “Well, that 4%, you’re not going to get it or you might get it if you do x, y and z.” None of that is in law and so that is an illegal act and so that pushed me over the edge. I mean, the other issues, I do believe it’s just a further effort that started before I became governor with the lame duck law and all the things that they’ve done about not approving my appointees or not — you know, all of that. It’s all part of it. But when you mess with 35,000 people at one time, that’s enough.

Zac Schultz:

Are you looking for the Supreme Court, if they take this case, to make a broad ruling? Or would you be satisfied if they issued a narrow ruling, specifically on UW employees or JCRAR or any of the other committees?

Tony Evers:

I think the legislature — it would be helpful for the legislature to have a broad idea of what their authority is and what’s mine. That would be the best of all the alternatives, but we have — at the end of the day, we have to make sure that we pay people what they should be paid. So I think the best alternative would be a broad sweeping of things saying this is what your job is, this is what the governor’s job is. Start behaving.

Zac Schultz:

You mentioned the lame duck laws and some of these actions you’re referring to came out of the lame duck laws. So is this in effect another lawsuit attempt to re-litigate some of those issues that were passed into law under the previous administration?

Tony Evers:

Yeah. I mean, because of that actions, we’ve always felt that they are wrong-headed and so if we have to make some changes, that’s fine. I think, broadly speaking, the way the Republicans have essentially taken more and more power over time from the executive branch, we have to stop that and we have to understand that they’re coequal parts of government, the judicial, executive and legislative, and that’s the way it’s supposed to work. It’s not working that way now.

Zac Schultz:

Would you have filed this lawsuit under a different makeup of the Supreme Court?

Tony Evers:

Yes. Oh, gosh, yes. Oh gosh, yes. I think we’re going to get more than four votes on this one. I mean, people should be able to understand that is there is broad authority in all three branches. So absolutely. This recent thing, whether new judges or not, that’s irrelevant to this. We would have filed that regardless.

Zac Schultz:

Speaker Vos said in a statement, today’s lawsuit by Governor Evers and Attorney General Kaul is an attempt to eliminate the 4% raises given to all state employees by the legislature and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said the governor is working to diminish the voice of Wisconsinites by limiting the authority of the legislature and unduly strengthening his own administration. You have dealt with the legislature rules even as your time as superintendent of public instruction. How longstanding are some of these issues when it comes to the balance of power between the executive and the legislature?

Tony Evers:

I’d say it accelerated with my election. I think it’s always a little bit of an issue going forward, but because it’s just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, it became a thing and we have to deal with it. So I’m glad we filed this suit and we anticipate winning this suit.

Zac Schultz:

A year ago, you were talking about a reset with Republicans in the legislature. Since then, they have voted down your appointees and you filed this lawsuit. Was a reset ever realistic? Was it always going to be limited, or is it just the current state of politics?

Tony Evers:

It’s the current state of politics, but we passed the budget. I signed the budget. We brought shared revenue to Milwaukee and other places across the state, every municipality. So we’ve had some successes. But we can’t stand for is people not following the law and following what we’ve agreed to, and we did not agree to what the speaker is doing now.

Zac Schultz:

All right. Governor Tony Evers, thanks for your time.

Tony Evers:

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Frederica Freyberg:

After striking for nearly six weeks, the United Auto Workers union has settled with the big three car makers. Votes to ratify the deal are underway, including by union members from Wisconsin at GM and Stellantis, the former Chrysler. The GM contract deal with the companies includes a 70% starting wage hike to $30 an hour and the ability to reach the top pay scale of $42 an hour. For more on the union battle to recoup losses workers took in concessions to help the companies stave off bankruptcy, we turn to Steve Frisque, UAW local 722 president at GM in Hudson who is in Detroit right now for the vote. Steve, thanks very much for being here.

Steve Frisque:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is it like to have settled and be off to vote to ratify?

Steve Frisque:

Well, it’s exciting. We were out for just about 39 days this time after being out 42 four years ago, so it was a long time out and, you know, it takes a toll, especially on a lot of our younger members who just started working here and don’t make the top wage. It takes a huge amount of sacrifice and dedication to be out there on that picket line, which we were 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s exciting that we have a tentative contract. What I’m reading and hearing so far sounds very favorable. We will be rolling that out this afternoon for all the presidents and chairmens of the UAW General Motors departments across the country and then we will take a vote on whether to send it to the membership for a ratification vote. So that’s what we will be doing this afternoon.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would you expect this to be ratified by members?

Steve Frisque:

What I’ve seen so far, yes, I really do. It’s a huge increase, especially for our younger members. It’s bringing them up to the wages that the legacy employees that have been here for a long time are at. It’s getting rid of the tiers, which we have been arguing and fighting for since they were implemented back after the near bankruptcy in 2008 and 2009. Unions were based on equal pay for equal work. That’s our belief. We believe that these younger people should have a path to get to the full wage and make the same as the people that they’re working next to, and this contract allows that to happen. Cost of living is back in the contract, which we had suspended since the bankruptcy time frame. So I really expect this contract to pass. We obviously need to go over some stuff yet because we haven’t seen everything in that contract book yet, but I’m very hopeful that we will pass it and send it to the membership for ratification.

Frederica Freyberg:

What does the contract deal borne of the UAW strike say about the new might of the union?

Steve Frisque:

It’s a totally different leadership, as I’m sure you know. There’s a lot of corruption in the UAW and the administrative caucus that was in there since basically since the union started has now been replaced with a one member, one vote. So Shawn Fain has only been in office since February of this year. They had obviously a different approach to the strike. Normally, they pick a company and a target company and go after them to try and get an agreement and then the other two companies, we call it patterned bargaining, will basically go on the same type of contract pretty close to the pattern bargaining the original place was. This time, he pitted all three against each other and to see who would get out the best deals, and I think it kept the companies on their toes. They did not know what plants were going to be maybe struck next and they couldn’t prepare for it and I think it was very successful and that’s why I think we — all three agreements are probably going to be ratified and because I think it’s the biggest gains that we’ve gotten in my lifetime since I’ve worked here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of big gains, do increased labor costs jeopardize auto makers as they transition to electric vehicles?

Steve Frisque:

That’s what the company would like you to believe. Labor costs are very minute portion of what a vehicle costs. It’s typically in the 5 to 7% range. They like to say that, but these companies have been making record profits for the last 10 years. The last decade, they’ve made over $250 billion in profits between the three of them. CEO pay has — went up 40% in the last four years. The cost of vehicles have gone up 30% in the last four years. Inflation has gone up just under 19% and our wages have gone up 6%, so if they want to blame it on our wages, that’s just not factual. It’s just once again — they don’t want to share the money that they make with their workers. That’s not just a problem with the big three; that’s a problem across every business, they don’t want to share profits with the people that actually make them the profits and that’s their workers.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there. Steve Frisque in Detroit, thanks very much.

Steve Frisque:

Thank you for having us. You have a nice day.

Frederica Freyberg:

Town of Campbell residents on French Island this week filed a $42 million lawsuit against the neighboring city of La Crosse for contamination from the cancer-causing forever chemicals, or PFAS. Red dots on this DNR map show areas where water samples on the island exceeded hazard levels. The agency has named the city of La Crosse as the responsible party for the widespread contamination related to firefighting foam that was used for decades at the city’s airport. PFAS were first discovered in La Crosse municipal wells and then in private wells. More than 2,000 residents there are receiving bottled water from the DNR as a result. For an update on the Town of Campbell’s water woes, we turn to Lee Donahue, a member of the town’s board of supervisors. And thanks very much for being here.

Lee Donahue:

Yes. Thanks for inviting me.

Frederica Freyberg:

How long have residents been using bottled water and what kind of hardship is that?

Lee Donahue:

So residents have been using bottled water that has been paid for by the DNR since spring of 2021. We were first notified that there was a possibility that there was contamination in our water in October of 2020, so we’re coming up on three years. And the hardship is imagine trying to move a 5-gallon jug of water. They’re unwieldy, they’re heavy. You have to find a place that you can store them that is climate controlled. You can’t leave them in your garage or your front porch or back porch or your breezeway because they will freeze during the wintertime. So it’s a tremendous hardship for people to find places to store them and to be able to just heft them around and deal with the physicality of using large bottles of water.

Frederica Freyberg:

How long before the DNR started supplying bottled water was PFAS seeping into the wells?

Lee Donahue:

Well, truthfully, the PFAS could have been seeping into the wells as early as 1970. That is the period of time that the city of La Crosse airport was using the AFFF, and it’s likely that it’s been there for 40 to 50 years. We really don’t know. It was only discovered first in 2014 in one of the city wells that’s co-located on the island and then it was found in a second well in 2016 and then we were notified in 2020.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is it like for people living there to have this dangerous contamination part of their everyday lives?

Lee Donahue:

You change everything that you do, from when you wake up in the morning and you brush your teeth with a little bottle of water at your sink. You can’t grow foods that you eat in the soil. You can’t use your sprinkler to water foods that you would grow in your backyard. I have a raspberry patch that’s probably 50 feet long and 10 feet wide. I haven’t been able to eat a raspberry for years. It’s hard. It changes everything that you do.

Frederica Freyberg:

How will the $402 million directed from the governor and the $125 million in the state budget for PFAS mitigation help address the problem in the Town of Campbell?

Lee Donahue:

Well, a lot of that really depends on Senate Bill 312 and how that bill is structured to be able to help small communities that are on private wells access that PFAS trust fund. It’s unclear whether that bill will pass in its current form. I know it’s already been amended once and now there’s discussion about further amendments that it might come to the floor next week.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do people want to stay on French Island or are people hesitant to locate there?

Lee Donahue:

Well, I would say if it wasn’t the water problem, it’s a glorious place to live. We’re a small island. We have our own fire department and police department and we’re hugged by two rivers. It’s beautiful. It’s lovely. It’s a small-town community, but when you can’t drink the water out of your tap and you have to maneuver these very heavy large bottles so that you have a safe alternative source, it’s a struggle for many people and many people have chosen to move elsewhere.

Frederica Freyberg:

What would be your advice to others in the state suffering the same kind of thing?

Lee Donahue:

Well, I think the most important thing is to make certain that the water you are drinking is in fact safe.

Frederica Freyberg:

Supervisor Lee Donahue, thanks very much and good luck with this.

Lee Donahue:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Turning now to our series of special reports on race with Wisconsin in Black and White, in partnership with the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development. Last week, reporter Nathan Denzin explored the social determinants of health and why they are so important to health outcomes. Tonight, we take a look at maternal and infant health, where Wisconsin’s disparities are stark. Here’s the next installment of Wisconsin in Black and White: Health Divides.

Nathan Denzin:

The harsh reality is from the first day they are born, Black babies are much less likely to thrive and more likely to die than white infants in Wisconsin. The same holds true for their mothers. In fact, this has been true since the first infant and maternal mortality data was gathered in 1912.

Tiffany Green:

I think one of the big things that people don’t realize is that this is a problem that we have identified more than a century ago.

Nathan Denzin:

Tiffany Green is a professor for population health sciences at UW-Madison. She says that while overall maternal mortality has greatly decreased in the last century, the gap between Black and white mothers and infants has persisted especially in Wisconsin.

Tiffany Green:

We still unfortunately have among the highest Black infant mortality rates in the country, meaning Black babies that don’t reach their first birthday. Black birthing people have about five times the pregnancy related mortality rate relative to their white counterparts in Wisconsin.

Jasmine Zapata:

In general, we are leaders in the nation as it relates to many of the inequities that we see.

Nathan Denzin:

Dr. Jasmine Zapata is the chief medical officer for community health at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Jasmine Zapata:

There’s no one answer. We could talk about this for hours and hours. It’s multifactorial.

Nathan Denzin:

Advocates say one potential reason we see disparities is because healthcare providers can carry implicit biases into the clinic.

Jasmine Zapata:

So a lot of times when we talk about implicit bias and talk about racism in our healthcare system, a lot of people think about, like, direct interpersonal racism where somebody would come up to me and say, “I don’t want you to treat me cuz you’re Black.” That’s not a lot of what we see. A lot of it is unintentional.

Nathan Denzin:

Because of those unintentional biases, Zapata says Black people are less likely to go to a doctor when something is wrong, which can lead to worse health outcomes.

Jasmine Zapata:

There are many people, especially in the maternal and child health fields, that have access, that have insurance, and they’re still not attending their healthcare appointments. Just because you have insurance and you can physically make an appointment, is it somewhere that you feel safe and comfortable.

Nathan Denzin:

But while access to quality healthcare can be a large driver in outcomes, national data shows that even the infants of the richest Black mothers suffer worse health outcomes than the babies of the poorest white mothers.

Tiffany Green:

I think we focus a lot on hospitals and doctors because that is something we can easily wrap our heads around, but the reality is there are a lot of reasons, and I think they have a lot more to do with the social environment.

Nathan Denzin:

And the societal environment for Black Wisconsinites is one defined by racism. When it comes to where Black Wisconsinites live, only a quarter own their own home. They face one of the highest income gaps in the country and are five times more likely to live in a food desert than white people.

Tiffany Green:

A lot of people have linked things like segregation, things like the resource-deprived environments to poor, to the risk of prematurity, and those things matter.

Nathan Denzin:

Dr. Zapata says she experienced this difference in outcomes firsthand when she had her second child.

Jasmine Zapata:

I got pregnant with my second child, a little baby girl. I was so excited. And she was due on January 2nd, but on September 20, I had a sharp pain in my lower abdomen.

Nathan Denzin:

When it happened, she was in class for medical school and knew something was wrong. Doctors told her that it was just false labor, but when she saw blood a few minutes later, she went to the hospital.

Jasmine Zapata:

Ultimately, within two hours, I was in an emergency c-section and I delivered a one-and-a-half-pound baby who didn’t cry when she came out. When babies come out, they’re supposed to be kicking, screaming, crying. It was completely silent.

Nathan Denzin:

Her daughter was then taken to the neonatal intensive care unit to start her breathing.

Jasmine Zapata:

It was so hard for me at that moment because I knew all the statistics about Black birth outcomes.

Nathan Denzin:

After three weeks in the NICU, Zapata’s baby was able to thrive and is now a very healthy teenager, but Zapata knew the outcome could have been much different.

Jasmine Zapata:

I knew that it was an honor that she was there with me because there are so many other birthing people and families, particularly Black women, Black birthing people, who do not have that same outcome.

Tiffany Green:

There are reasons above and beyond, sort of these individual level characteristics that don’t explain why we are seeing these disparities.

Nathan Denzin:

But there is work being done to bring parity to birth outcomes for Black mothers and infants. In 2022, Governor Evers announced $16 million in additional funding for DHS to work on closing those gaps.

Jasmine Zapata:

We’re currently working on this with intensity and passion.

Nathan Denzin:

Dr. Zapata says there are three big things that money is going toward: increasing access to healthcare for Black mothers and infants, educating current healthcare practitioners about the issues, and increasing the number of Black doctors and nurses.

Jasmine Zapata:

We will have a bigger impact if we can go upstream and focus on how can we eliminate some of the very factors and social determinants of health that cause some of these health outcomes in the first place.

Nathan Denzin:

Along with the $16 million, healthcare providers in Dane County have another effort to improve the social determinants of health called ConnectRx. ConnectRx is a program that provides support to pregnant Black people at risk.

Tiffany Green:

Making sure families at risk of losing their places are getting housing, making sure that they are getting food. I’ve been privileged to hear stories about people getting employment that they need.

Nathan Denzin:

The program also connects mothers with doulas if they choose and with an individual community health worker, both during pregnancy and after.

Tiffany Green:

I’m just stunned at the work that they’ve been able to do that addresses these social determinants.

Nathan Denzin:

But even with these programs, Green says more needs to be done.

Tiffany Green:

When we talk about things like Medicaid expansion, which we have refused to do in our state, despite the fact that places like Georgia and Mississippi have expanded postpartum Medicaid for up to a year.

Nathan Denzin:

The Wisconsin Legislature removed Medicaid expansion from the governor’s budget again in 2023, making Wisconsin one of only a few states which has not expanded postpartum coverage.

Tiffany Green:

If we live in a Wisconsin where everybody is able to reach their highest potential, everybody needs access to a provider.

Nathan Denzin:

While expanded coverage remains elusive, health officials look to fill the gaps and improve the outcomes wherever they can. For “Here & Now,” I’m Nathan Denzin.

Frederica Freyberg:

Next week on our program “Here & Now” reporter Aditi Debnath brings us the first of two stories speaking with Wisconsin residents with family and friends now in Israel and Gaza. Hear their fears and hopes in the midst of heightened violent rhetoric and social media misinformation. Also, what led to this point and what people are doing to help.

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.