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The state budget crafting machine is in high gear. We'll hear more on that in just a moment. But also tonight a proposal to freeze your property taxes. Who wouldn't like that? We'll tell you. And later we'll hear about a plan to protect Wisconsin water. Plus, state senator Gary George is in some rough water facing a recall. But first tonight, the legislature's powerful joint finance committee, late this week, stripped the governor's budget of policy. That's a move the committee traditionally does to remove items determined to have no fiscal impact. Just 21 items found this time, many fewer than usual. But among them, the governor's budget proposal to repeal a state law that allows school boards to limit teacher pay increases. It's called the qualified economic offer or QEO. It allows school boards to avoid arbitration with teachers unions by offering pay and benefit increases of 3.8% each year. Brookfield Republican Senator Ted Cannabis is a member of the joint finance committee and he's in Milwaukee with us. Thanks for being here, Senator.

My pleasure. And Madison Teachers Union Executive Director, John Matthews, joins us here in Madison again. Thanks to both of you for being here. Senator Cannabis in Milwaukee, I'll go to you first and just ask you, why doesn't teacher pay come out as a fiscal item? Well, it's a fiscal item because what it does, it's not a fiscal item, rather a policy item, because it directly affects the entire management of all of the education system in the state of Wisconsin. And if you remember, Fredericka, the governor said that he was interested in having a task force on this, that basically went through the process of determining how we should have a continuation of our education financing through a task force. The legislature agrees with the governor, we believe that there should be a task force, that there should be a process for looking at all of this, and that the legislature should debate the entire issue of education financing just not one leg of a three-legged stool. All right, so it's been pulled out, that's been done. Let's let people hear what the governor's reaction was to this, just after that was done in joint finance. He said, quote, the QEO hamstrings school districts across Wisconsin and has made it very difficult for many schools to attract and retain teachers.

He says after months of saying that the QEO has a major fiscal impact on school budgets, the committee is now saying that it has no fiscal impact. He says this is pure politics, and it will deprive our children of the quality teachers they deserve. With that, let's go to John Matthews and ask whether or not the QEO does prevent attracting and retaining the best teachers. Well, it certainly does, and it hurts on both ends. It's forcing people to go into other occupations who are high quality teachers, rather than staying where they want to be and working with children. It's forcing people to go into early retirement, and it's telling youngsters at the university that they're really not worth much, because we're going to hold down your wages. And what we're seeing in Upper Wisconsin is teachers going to Michigan, and lower Wisconsin, we're seeing them going to Illinois. In the far west, we're seeing them going to Minnesota because of these controls that are on.

Ted, can I just do you think the teachers make too much money, or do you like this QEO? I think the QEO is act as a leavening effect, obviously, on the way that communities have been able to have some structure for planning wage increases and health insurance increases in a particular community. There's no question, Frederick, as we looked at it, that we didn't anticipate as the teachers you didn't anticipate, the velocity with which health care costs would go up. If you take a look at the QEO, only about one or one and a half percent of the amount of money that's going on an annual basis to the increase for teachers is going to actual salary, that's an issue, and that should be considered. But I'll quote the governor. The governor said that this issue, talking about school financing, is too important of an issue to squeeze into a budget proposal or devise a news plan in a few weeks. And we agree with him. He said that on January the 30th in his state of the state address, at the time we all agreed with him. Since that time, he's kind of conducting some budget politics and playing politics with the budget process.

We've pulled this policy out, and now on what we'd like to do is try to pull this issue and put it into a focused situation and let the legislature debate this. That's exactly what we believed in from January 30th on, and we're going to continue to take that position. What I don't understand here is why you and the legislature want to try to control local school districts. The foundation of school districts nationwide has been to let the people who live in that district make policy, and you're saying you're trying to control that policy. You passed a law back in 1993 that you said was going to be a one year short term fix, but you've stuck with it for 10 years to the point where school districts are falling apart, not only falling apart by losing staff, high quality staff. But they're falling apart by the physical plants themselves, not being maintained. I agree with you in one part that the QIO is just one little part of this. The revenue controls to me are the more significant, because by the school district not being able to operate the schools at the level and the quality that the people in each locality demand,

the schools are really losing quality in, and what you're losing side of long term is that the kids that are going through school now are not going to be getting the quality education that you and I got. And the employers, five years, ten years from now are going to say, whoa, what happened to the quality of employees I used to get? I think John and I are in agreement that you can't take a look at one component of this entire formula and say our job is done and move on. That's why I think as you move through the process, you have to negotiate an agreement between all sides. You have to bring the school boards into this equation. I agree. I served on a school board for three years as its treasure and fully understand what John's describing. When you have revenue caps in place and the QIO in place, if you remove one of those, the QIO suddenly you put pressure on local school districts to make a terrible choice. Do you choose to increase property taxes in a very aggressive manner to keep current programs intact or do you cut programs and teachers?

Now, that's a Hobson's choice. I don't want to make local school districts make. It's very difficult and I think we need to have a full sounding of this issue. Before you're missing here though, as local school boards are elected to make those choices. They should be deciding how large class sizes should be. They should be deciding the quality of the program. They should be deciding how much they want to pay teachers. So they get mediocre teachers or they get really good teachers. Well, we've gone through this equation in Elmbrook where I'm from and what we've looked at is how do we create balance between the needs of the schools and the needs of the local property taxpayers. And it's about finding balance and you can't do that when you pull the QIO out of this equation and allow the QIO to come off in the middle of a budget year. That doesn't make any sense to me. What I really don't understand here though is you're saying control, control, control, control that the legislature has to control. I remember the foundation of the Republican Party being that the people should control. It should be a local issue, not federal mandates, not state mandates, but people district by district or locality by locality.

So why not let the people decide? Well, people do decide every year and they decide by electing school board members that they think bring into balance what their concerns are locally. And we have, there's no question that there was some dialogue with the local school districts when this was put into effect in 1993. And there's going to be dialogue now. But to do this in the middle of a budget is not the time to do it. And we all know that. The governor knows that and it's hard of hearts. And that's why, again, on January 30th, he said this is too important of an issue to squeeze into a budget proposal or devise a new plan in just a few weeks. Okay, Senator Cannabis and Milwaukee, thanks very much for joining us and to John Matthews here. Thank you. Thank you. On Tuesday, the legislative fiscal bureau estimated a 13% two year increase in property taxes for Wisconsinites.

The estimate was based on the assumption that any dollar lost to shared revenue cuts to cities would be made up by a dollar hike in property taxes. The report was requested by Republican Senator Bob Welch, who, along with other Republicans, proposed a bill that creates a property tax freeze to stave off the threat of increases. Republican State Senator Dave Zine is one of the sponsors of that bill. Wisconsin Alliance of Cities Rich Eglsten says the fear of rising property taxes is political, not fiscal. Thanks to both of you for being here. First to you, Senator Zine, you know, this estimate of property tax increases based on the dollar to dollar kind of assumption. Don't you trust the locals to hold the line that, you know, they'll take a cut in state aid and immediately apply it to the property tax? No. We, we think that we have to have this legislation in place and that's why we proposed it. We think that we are going to see massive tax increases, property tax increases across the state, what you've just showed.

But the bottom line is we got to stick up for the taxpayers. We got to stick up and we cannot be the third highest tax state. Anything we can do to make sure that we are not the third highest state. And this is one little ingredient in the big pie, but we got to do it. And we're very emphatic that we're going to do at this session. Dave, the problem with what you're saying is that you're assuming that local officials will act like state officials in the past. And state officials have dug a $3.2 billion budget hole and local officials have minded their budget year after year after year. And local officials that I've talked to say we're going to handle this as best we can. The freeze will stay off some tax increases. The freeze would stay off tax increases in high growth communities that desperately need more public services. Well, in this budget cycle, we got to pursue every resource leave no stone on turn to make sure that we hold taxes down.

We come up with the deficit. And the deficit is not just the fall of the legislature. 47 states have a budget deficit. Severe budget deficit because of 9.11 and the nationwide economy. But if the local units are government, if they feel that confident, then they should be okay with this freeze. They should be okay with it. Well, have you had mayors or county executive in your district that have said, you know what, we're going to raise property taxes? We've heard that as a threat. We're having local units to government say that we, what are we going to do? We're going to try to cut services. We're going to try to make priorities. But we're going to have to raise taxes. And we're saying no. The property tax payers are coming first. This is a property tax budget. And we're going to hold. We're going to freeze those property taxes for two years. What does that do, Richard Olson, to a city? What are your members saying? Our members are saying we are going to cut. But if we can't cut enough, we might have to raise taxes. And we want to wait and see.

We are talking about laying off police officers, firefighters, office staff cutting to the bone. We're going to have less snow plowing. We fewer garbage pickups. I had a local official talking to me on the phone the other day who said, well, we can't go from once a week to twice a week, garbage pickup, because it would be a public health problem. What about that Senator Zing, cutting into public safety? Well, we would absolutely hope that would not happen. And it's just like cutting the football team or the cheerleading squad in a school. They cut something that looks very sensitive and creates a havoc among the public. But there are other ways to come up with monies. And one of the initiatives we're doing on a statewide level is selling state property. Now, this isn't a permanent fix. It's going to get us by the next couple of years until our economy starts growing. And as we know, we're down about 120 million from what we were projected in our growth. But like local units, the government sells some property. We got Clark County up north that is selling all lands that are non-contiguous to county forest.

They've reclaimed land back to the 1930s. People couldn't pay their taxes. And all these years, they're just lying idle and vacant. So let's utilize that and put them back on the property tax roll. That includes the state of Wisconsin as well. There are properties that we must sell and we can do it. I think that when we talk about things, I'd like to talk about things we can do instead of things we can't do. And the legislature too often says, you can't do this, you can't do that. We have a whole list of proposals and the she-he task force, the governor's task force on state and local government, Milwaukee Business Leader Tim Rashihi, headed it. They said, we should be able to do this. We should be able to do that. I'd like to see some of those things in there. We passed through the Senate the mandate relief tag and that's something unfunded mandates we're trying to get out from under. But again, we have to pursue every resource, leave no stone unturned and freezing property tax.

Is the mandate of all times? Well, it's the mandate of all times, but it's for the property taxpayers. And again, I cannot stress enough that we must look out for those individuals or senior citizens, those farmers, those people that don't have jobs. The best way to help our economy is to keep taxes down. You know what I want to get at a little bit is that people who propose this freezer saying that it'll generate economic development and you're saying exactly the opposite is true. Tell me first about that premise. Well, we know that you raise taxes that hurts jobs. That hurts employers or not as bound to survive or expand. And individuals, if we want to hold taxes down, that helps the economy. You raise taxes, it hurts the economy. If you need growth and you need the resources to produce that, you need to be able to borrow money to create industrial development like this proposal does. And what it looks at is borrowing about $12 million over a few years in order to generate $100 million in new development and bring in high-tech businesses.

And how does a freeze affect borrowing money? It affects your bond rating. It makes it more difficult to borrow. When municipal bond investors hate a freeze. And when Wall Street coughs, main street catches cold. And so, however, you can take it to the voters. I mean, we can all decide to vote for higher taxes. Think that'll happen? Well, that's the beauty of it. And that's the key. I mean, if people want their taxes to be raised, they can pass a public referendum. We already do it in a school districts. And that doesn't work, does it? Well, it's helped. Bottom line there is the people decide if they want to pass building referendums, if they want to pass referendums to increase their taxes. If the community feels a sense, an urgency feels that the tax increase is warranted, they can pass it. The local people decide. Let the people decide.

We'll leave it there. Senator Zayn Richegelson, thanks very much. Thank you. Senator Gary George has become synonymous with the Milwaukee district he's represented through good times and bad since 1980. But now, a number of his constituents say they've had enough of his representation. A committee to recall the senator has gathered 12,000 signatures. And that is 4,000 more than required to file for a recall election. The committee lists 18 reasons to send the senator packing. We go over a few of those now with a leader of that recall movement, Leon Todd. Thanks very much for being here from Milwaukee. We appreciate it.

But for the record, we should also say Senator George is the chair of the Educational Communications Board. That board partially holds the license to Wisconsin Public Broadcasting and Senator George declined to participate in tonight's program. He's been together, Mr. Todd, that he's been kind of hard to find lately in terms of any reactions of this. Well, unfortunately, the senator has taken the ostrich position with the press, with the media, as well as his constituents who want some answers right now. And the ostrich position is not doing him any good from a public relations standpoint. Describe for me the rapidity with which these signatures have been accumulated. You've gotten a lot pretty fast. Yes, I think the committee did a strategic, or made a strategic move, if you will, day one when they began to solicit signatures at the polls on April 1st. That allowed them to hit hardcore voters going into the polls and get the signatures, 77,000 of them, day one, with people who actually vote. One of the things that recall is, if you go door to door, you can get a lot of recall signatures, but those don't wind up being the people who vote.

This recall effort is a little different right now in the way that it's being organized. I've got to be pretty politically frightening to Senator George, I would think, given that the first 7,500 of those signatures come right from people who are likely voters to be sure. Well, I think it's frightening to the community with some of the charges that are being, you still have to convince those voters going into the polls that there's an issue here. Now, tell me, why now? I mean, why not just wait until his re-election in 2004? What is it right now that demands this attention? Well, I think his vote to deny the governor the right to negotiate with the Potawatomi tribe was, first, it offended the governor, second of all, it offended the Native Americans, third, it offended the Black community, which depend on the jobs in the casino industry. And you've got people who just galvanized together. This was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will. It certainly wasn't something that was planned for before that vote. There was another vote of concern, though, as well, about the penalties against prison guards for having sexual relations with inmates. Was that another of them?

This was not a vote. This was where Gary George allegedly buried in committee bills and did not allow them to advance that would have made it a felony for prison guards to have sex with inmates. Now, you have to understand how that plays when it crosses the racial divide. When people are going out getting signatures, and I did some witnessing of those signature gathering processes, look at the wordsmithing here. Gary George prevented a bill from going forward that would make it a felony for guards, which are too often white, to intimidate and have sex with by force of their position, with inmates, female inmates, who are most often black. Now, once that crosses the racial divide like that, with that kind of wordsmithing, you've got women begging to sign up.

Let me just ask you this. He's got a lot of experience, and he's regarded as a smart guy. Can't he do the job? Can't you express concerns and have him continue to do the job? Yes, if he would come forward and say, hey, I screwed up, hey folks, I'll fix what I've done wrong, but so far, again, the ostrich position is preventing, or let's say it's accelerating this move forward. I wish the senator would have come forward. I wish that he would have gotten his head out of the sand, and I wish he would address the 18 items, you know, quite frankly, that are on the table now, and the black community is taking very seriously. We'll need to leave it there. These signatures will be filed in June or before? Before. All right, Leanne Todd, thanks very much. Appreciate you being here. With Lake Michigan to the east, the Mississippi River to the west and 15,000 lakes in between water is Wisconsin.

No amount of statistics, however, can come close to defining the beauty and quality of life. Water brings to Wisconsin residents and the many tourists who come here. There are nearly as many sets of state water regulations as there are waterways in the state. The absence of an overall state water management strategy motivated a group of environmentalists and business leaders to draft a new plan, a plan to uniformly manage the health of Wisconsin waters. The project is spearheaded by the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters. Next Tuesday, Earth Day, the Academy will release the management plan. Kirtminey is one of the study's authors. Thanks very much for being here. Tonight we appreciate that the pictures of water are beautiful, and that's exactly what you're about. Absolutely. But why do we need this integrated policy? Because the challenges that we're facing in the future are different from the ones in the past, and the way we've gone about things in the past, the fragmented approaches to different water uses, water bodies, water activities are not the same types of needs we're going to face in the future. Does it put our water in jeopardy to have this kind of fragmented approach?

Absolutely. Everyone learns and early in their school year, the waters are connected, and the water problems are also connected. If we want to solve any of the specific issues that we're all thinking about or hear and read about in the headlines, we need to be thinking in a more comprehensive integrated way. What are some of the biggest concerns for Wisconsin's water right now? Well, there are several, and you could spend entire hours talking about any of them, but the ones that I think of and I've learned about through the process of this project, I would specifically mention the one having to do with water quantity. We're used to the water quality issues, the nasty things that show up in our water that we all have to work to clean up. But it's the quantity issues that we, of course we read about in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. And even though we're a water-rich state, we face those quantity issues too in terms especially of groundwater. Because there was a time when we were talking about selling our water to the southern states. Absolutely, and occasionally you still see those stories popping up, especially in relation to the Great Lakes. And the Great Lakes issues are going to be coming out as very quickly in the near future too.

Interestingly, this plan was put together not just by environmentalists, but business leaders. That's kind of a switch, isn't it? Well, and I would expand that list to say there were many others involved. There were farmers and agricultural representatives, industry representatives, tribal members, conservation and environmental groups. A whole wide range that was part of our whole effort here was the product and the process are both important. And we had to bring together a wide range of voices to think in a new way. And so give me a very quick example of how one integrates all of this policies at one kind of umbrella organization? Well, that's part of the question for the future. First thing you have to do is get a sense of what your policy is already tell you and what we've inherited. So one of the first things we have to do is get a sense of the full range of laws, legal decisions, administrative guidelines, executive orders, the whole body of statements that make up the existing de facto policy. And that's part of our recommendation is that we take the time out to actually do an inventory of where we are and where the gaps and needs are in the state water policy arena.

And lastly, is there a waterway in Wisconsin that you think of as emblematic of this state? Oh, emblematic. Well, I tell you, I live a couple blocks away from the Wisconsin River. And I have the blessing every morning of waking up and seeing bald eagles flying over the bluffs along the Wisconsin River. Wisconsin River would be a good one. Kurt Miley, thanks very much. That's our program for this evening. Thanks for joining us. I'm Frederica Freiber. Good night. Support of here and now is made possible in part by strong financial helping investors build and manage wealth for over 20 years. Strong financial helping you build a strong portfolio.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.