Here & Now

Rep. Steineke: Counties Have Tools to Manage Pandemic

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Evers cited Republican pushback as his reason for abandoning statewide guidelines for reopening Wisconsin. For reaction, we talked to Assembly Republican Majority Leader Jim Steineke. He joined us early this afternoon. Representative Steineke, thanks for being here.

Jim Steineke:

Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Did the majority Republicans in Wisconsin get what they wanted when Governor Evers withdrew his coronavirus rule plan?

Jim Steineke:

No, I mean, I think what we wanted all along was the ability to sit down and craft a plan together and unfortunately after the Supreme Court case, the governor, in our initial conversation, pretty much said that he was planning on reintroducing the rule as he has had it before, without really giving us any indication he was going to negotiate with us and I think that’s kind of where things broke down and that’s where– why we ended up where we are today.

Frederica Freyberg:

So, is the status quo right now with counties imposing their own orders or not how the management of the pandemic should proceed in your mind?

Jim Steineke:

I think really it’s our best option right now given the fact that the administration isn’t really willing to work on a more regional plan. So having the local health departments, who have all of the same tools that the state does, having them do it in areas where there are greater impacts to the virus than some other areas, I think, does make some sense and we’ve are also said to the counties that if they need any additional tools or if there’s gaps in what they’re able to do, that they need to be able to do more, we’d be happy to talk to them about that.

Frederica Freyberg:

So at this point, it doesn’t seem as though the legislature will take up any kind of rules?

Jim Steineke:

No, I mean again what we’re– what we understand is the county and local health departments have the tools necessary. They’re– they deal with infectious diseases on a regular basis, much less covered and much less of an impact than the coronavirus has had, but they do have the tools at their disposal, and especially in a situation like this where the hotspots are localized in this state, I think it’s a reasonable way to attack this.

Frederica Freyberg:

It seems fair to say that the communication between the majority Republicans in the Legislature and the governor are strained, with your letter saying that Governor Evers was ignoring nursing homes coming the same time that he allocated $100 million to them. What is going on?

Jim Steineke:

Yeah, so that was– the letter went out before they made the announcement on the $100 million. Now, the fact is that $100 million, it’s a step in the right direction so I’m appreciative and I know the nursing homes are thankful to Governor Evers for providing that through the CARES Act, but the fact is, it is a much larger problem in nursing homes. 40% of the deaths come from nursing homes. Only 5% of the federal money went towards them. They’re going to need much more investment in the future, and I just wish the administration had talked to them about their needs before announcing the $100 million.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, will the majority Legislature draft measures to spend any state money for needs of the people like those needs. Earlier, you had said that you wanted to kind of wait and see what was coming in from the feds. Well, we now know that.

Jim Steineke:

Yep, so the truth is and as most people know that we don’t– the state doesn’t have any money. We had an $800 million surplus before the virus struck. That’s all but been wiped away. Going forward, we’re probably looking at deficits. So we don’t have the ability to spend money that we don’t have like the federal government does. So we have to be really fiscally conservative here going forward to make sure that we’re doing the right things because come January 1st, if there are no changes, we’re probably going to have to have cuts to the budget so we just simply don’t have state money to spend right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your position as to whether or not you would like federal money to come into state government coffers?

Jim Steineke:

Yeah, so the federal government already gave Wisconsin about $2 billion through the initial round of the CARES Act. That was a large sum of money and I think an important step. What they do going forward, I’m not sure. That’s something they’re going to have to then negotiate but we’ll have to see. But right now I think we have to utilize that $2 billion in a way that assumes that we won’t be getting more from the federal government.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would you like to see though federal money coming in in any additional federal legislation that goes directly to state government, like government operations?

Jim Steineke:

As long as it is dealing strictly with dollars going for COVID relief, so we’re not paying for the mistakes of state governments over the course of a number of years and bad management practices. But if we’re, if we’re talking about just money to help support the relief efforts for the COVID-19 crisis, I’m all in favor of that, but I’m not in favor of propping up governments who made bad mistakes in the past.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right Majority Leader Jim Steineke, thanks very much for being here.

Jim Steineke:

Absolutely, thank you.