Here & Now

State of the State: Governing in a Divided Government

Frederica Freyberg:

A first look tonight at action by way of executive orders that the Governor Tony Evers announced during his State of the State Address this week. Action including Evers’ call for a special session of the legislature next week to take up a package of bills on rural economies and farming. Among the eight bills, a call to create the Wisconsin Initiative for Dairy Exports, creating a regional mental health program for rural communities, an issue we will address later in this program, and a bill to connect farmers’ food production to universities, hospitals, and businesses. Evers also announced he’ll sign an executive order creating a nonpartisan redistricting commission. Again, more specifics on that to come in a moment. But first, we check in with WPR Capital Bureau Chief Shawn Johnson to discuss governing in this divided government. Thanks a lot for being here.

Shawn Johnson:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So meanwhile, Speaker Robin Vos says they won’t be on the floor next week, but the bills can go through committee. Is this kind of tantamount to putting the skids on the governor’s call for a special session?

Shawn Johnson:

I think the way Republicans deal with the governor’s call for a special session is still kind of an open question. Just because they’re not on the floor next week doesn’t mean that they are killing these bills. You know, they could still come into special session. They could still deal with these at a later time. The thing with special sessions is the governor can call them. The legislature doesn’t really have to follow them. They can gavel in and gavel out.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ve seen that.

Shawn Johnson:

I mean, that’s — they’ve done that on a previous session. It’s hard to imagine them doing that quite so quickly when it comes to dairy, you know. Such an important issue in this year in particular, and an election year, and when it’s becoming an issue. I imagine that they’re going to give it more attention than that. But as for the fate of these bills that the governor is introducing, we don’t know yet what’s going to happen there.

Frederica Freyberg:

As we listened to the governor’s address, you pointed out the executive order is one way that the governor can exert his will or can he, really?

Shawn Johnson:

He can. It’s just a matter of like what — what comes of it. An executive order is not law. So anything done by an executive order does not have kind of that staying power that passing a bill and signing it into law will have. But if you look at some of the issues that the governor has tried to get accomplished, he tried to include them in his budget. They were taken out by Republicans. He has supported Democratic efforts to introduce them as stand-alone bills. That hasn’t gone so well for him. So he has found some issues here where he is going to introduce an executive order and you know, maybe create a study commission or special committee, something like that. It’s an action that he can take without having to have the legislatures’ okay. Just not a law.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let’s take a listen to what Speaker Robin Vos said about working together with the governor.

Robin Vos:

Webster’s dictionary defines bipartisan as marked by or involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties. It actually requires people sitting down, compromising, in a give and take, that we have not seen from the Evers administration even with the proposal they put out this week on vaping which should be easy bipartisan. Something that have be a lay-up. They put it out a partisan way. Having no discussions with anyone in the legislature, only talking to themselves and Democrat legislators, putting it out and calling it bipartisan. That’s not the reality.

Frederica Freyberg:

The blame game over bipartisanship, as we even saw evidence during the State of the State Address, where majority Republicans didn’t stand and applaud. There was this kind of standing up and applauding and sitting down on that side of the aisle. Even for that call for a special session around agriculture issues.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. The whole standing, sitting thing when — depending on which party is giving the address is — has been very pronounced at speeches like this for a while. That’s not new. And maybe — it maybe looks different depending on the issue though. I feel like you know, Republicans and Democrats kind of follow those cues pretty closely.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yes.

Shawn Johnson:

But on agriculture, you may see some of those Republicans who sat and didn’t applaud supporting these bills. You heard after the speech, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald saying pretty clearly they were open to what the governor was proposing when it comes to agriculture, when it comes to dairy. It is sort of — sort of weird, I think, if you watch these speeches. On tax cuts, there was a WisPolitics reporter that pointed out the governor is touting these tax cuts that he signed in his budget. Democrats are applauding. They didn’t vote for the budget. Republicans are not applauding. You know, they passed the budget. They passed the tax cuts. So that’s sort of the absurdity of the whole applause game when you watch the State of the State speech.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of taxes and spending, the special session bill on agriculture I understand, appropriations of about $8,500,000. Meanwhile the state just learned that they have $818,000,000 in tax collections that they didn’t necessarily expect. Do we expect this then to go that same road whereby the Republicans would like to give that $818,000,000 back to taxpayers and Democrats say, well, let’s use some of it to spend on some of these programs that we need to spend money on?

Shawn Johnson:

It is like you’ve watched this debate play out before. I would say within the hour you had plenty of competing proposals on how to use this money. And that was the pattern that it followed. I mean you had Republicans calling for a tax cut. Senator Fitzgerald probably most clearly, loudly, he’s also running for Congress. And that is also a factor in this. You have a surplus in an election year. When that happens, and you’ve got a few months left to go in the legislative session, you are going to hear these familiar arguments.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let’s talk about another executive order that the governor put out there to create a nonpartisan commission on redistricting. How would that work in a Republican legislature that does not appear to have interest in that?

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah, this is one of those where the governor wanted to create this nonpartisan system of redistricting like they have in Iowa. He tried to do that as part of his budget. It was taken out. He supported a bill to do that. It’s not going anywhere. So this is an executive order and we established, this is not law, right? Whatever this commission comes up with is not going to be the redistricting process. But it could be kind of a symbolic gesture, and it could be potentially used in court. You know, if we have — when the map is redrawn for — you know, after the next census, in the next session, if you have a Republican legislature and the Democratic governor, they’re probably not going to agree on new political boundaries for the next decade. So it’s gotta go to court in that situation. What’s one thing that a court can consider? A court could consider a map that was drawn by this commission depending on what it looks like and who’s on the commission. It could be a factor, you know.

Frederica Freyberg:

Interesting point. Shawn Johnson, thanks very much.

Shawn Johnson:

Thank you.