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Speaker Vos End of Year Interview
By Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance staff | December 20, 2016
Check out Speaker Robin Vos’s comments in his end of year interview regarding education funding.
From The Wheeler Report . . .
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told The Wheeler Report in his end of the year interview that he would like to see the legislature work towards long-term goals instead of just fixing issues in the short term. Vos said he is looking forward to session because he enjoys working on policy.
When asked about his goals for the 2017-18 session, Vos said he had three: education, workforce development, and fixing DOT. With regards to education, Vos said there is a shortage of workers in Wisconsin and that starts with education. Vos said he wants to be able to fund education, both k-12 and higher ed. Vos said funding education will in part depend on the revenue numbers as the legislature starts the budget process. Vos expressed optimism in funding schools and higher education, including “as coming as close to the UW’s request as we can “($42.5 million). Vos emphasized the cost of higher education needs to be kept down, and the state needs to work to keep graduates in Wisconsin.
When discussing workforce development, Vos said, “We need to look at the people who have been marginalized, or people who haven’t been as productive as they need to be. It could be people who are disabled, returning veterans, people who have been on benefits for far too long in their life.” Vos expressed excitement about the possibility of the Trump administration and Congress returning control back to the states. “To me I look at worker training as being one of the places we could start by having a block grant. People talk about all the big ones, but I look and say there are dozens upon dozens of training programs that duplicate each other with administrative costs. How about if we took worker training and shifted it back to the states? Allow us to partner with the technical colleges, schools, internships, apprenticeships and do a better job training our workers” Vos explained. Vos described concern over the loss of good paying jobs to technology due to the lack of people trained to take positions.
Vos’ third goal was addressing transportation, saying, “Addressing what I think is critically important for us to do for the first two goals. If we are going to pay for all the services we need and all the tax relief I want to give, it means you have to have more people working and they have to have higher incomes so they can pay in. I’m optimistic that we have achievable goals.”
Vos said his biggest regrets over the past session were, ‘That we weren’t able to find longer-term answers and that we are right back at the table talking about the same issues we have been talking about for far too long.” Vos highlighted the accomplishments of the GOP over the past six years including right to work, voter ID, lower tax burden, and labor reforms; then said government needs to run smarter. Vos highlighted that over two thirds of school districts have declining enrollment but school funding is based on the number of students in a district, “That’s a problem in the long run.” Vos said the transportation system is focused on the gas tax as the primary funding source, but cars are increasing in miles per gallon. Vos said, “We need to do a better job of not just looking at the two-year horizon, but a better job of looking at the five, ten or twenty-year horizon. While we have been good at addressing Wisconsin’s problems, we need to do a better job of looking long-term, not just short-term.”
Vos was asked to reflect on his biggest accomplishments as Speaker of the Assembly, he said, “After a very difficult period, 2011-12, I feel like I have tried to re-establish the cordial relationship the majority and minority have together. The fact that we were able to do what people told me I could never do, which is make people start on time, caucus first, be able to have a regular life where you knew you could go home and see your family. I think those, for the institution, are a good thing. I am most proud of the fact that I am not using this position to run for anything else. I have told people that this is the last elected job I will hopefully ever have. I’m done. I hope to stay here for awhile, I’m not in any rush to leave. I love the legislature; I think it’s the most important of the three branches. The executive is supposed to carry out the legislature’s wishes, and the judicial is supposed to interpret when we have a disagreement. The legislature is the most important voice of the people. For far too long we have not recognized that and focused too much on the executive. My job has always been to empower the legislature and make sure we do not give away our authority. I think we have done that by things like Right The Rules. More people understand what it takes to put a proposal together. My leadership style is to bring more people into the room. I have served under a number of different speakers and I have had so many people come to me saying that the style I use is more inclusive. We have a larger leadership team. We have more leadership meetings.”
When asked about school funding, Vos said he has talked with Sen. Fitzgerald and Gov. Walker about taking a longer view of the issue. Vos said “on some of the bigger issues” he would like to have bigger discussions. Vos said he would like to bring in people from the outside and experts to discuss issues. Vos highlighted that he didn’t want it to just be legislators looking at long-term fixes, but include more people from the outside. Vos repeated that current school funding is based on a per pupil basis, yet over two-thirds of Wisconsin school districts have declining enrollment. “Maybe that model doesn’t work anymore when you have a school that has to pay for a building when you don’t have as many kids in the building anymore. I feel like we need to take a longer view of how government is going to be efficient, so we can reduce taxes and reduce the overall burden, without making it seem like we don’t have a plan.”
Vos was asked how to implement large change without creating winners or losers or without having large amounts of money up front in make change, he said, “It’s easy to do when you have billions of dollars in surplus. I would say if we do those kinds of changes they have to be phased in so people have time to prepare. If there isn’t a lot of money to make a big quick start, you phase them in over 1,2 or 3 years so people have time to plan accordingly. I think that is a more likely scenario instead of passing a budget for July 1 with everything taking effect on July 2.”
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