So some lefty school board member is upset at this.

Doug Perry, a retired teacher and former president of the Greenfield Education Association, is now a school board member in South Milwaukee. He voiced his disappointment over Walker’s silence in a letter published by the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the Capital Times opinion section.

Perry said he was “insulted and embarrassed” for his constituents and the children in his district by Walker’s refusal to answer the questions WASB posed.

“So the WASB, which is a member-driven organization of 424 communities that supports, promotes and advances the interests of public education in Wisconsin, is now an ‘interest group’?

Hmmm… “interest group“…

Interest group, also called special interest group or pressure group,  any association of individuals or organizations, usually formally organized, that, on the basis of one or more shared concerns, attempts to influence public policy in its favour. All interest groups share a desire to affect government policy to benefit themselves or their causes.

From the WASB website:

Advocating on behalf of Wisconsin public school boards and the students they serve.

Sounds like an interest group to me.

My column for the West Bend Daily News is up.

Walker has earned another four years

Governor’s race outcome will come down to turnout

Wisconsinites are already heading to the polls for the general election with the start of early voting Monday. If the polls are accurate, most voters made up their mind about the governor’s race long ago and very few are going to change their minds. What will matter most is who, and how many, decides to get off their duff and vote. When we wake up Nov. 5, the result will look obvious with the benefit of hindsight, but as we peer into the near future, obvious is not the word that comes to mind.

I will go to the polls to cast my vote for Scott Walker for the third time in four years. Frankly, given the progress that Wisconsin has made during Walker’s first term, I see no reason to replace him — especially with a Madison one-percenter who hasn’t been employed for the better part of a decade.

Walker signed a tremendous amount of consequential legislation since becoming governor. Walker signed the bill finally allowing for concealed carry in Wisconsin. This came after concealed carry had thrice been thwarted by Democrats in the past few years despite strong public support for it and 48 other states already allowing it. Almost 250,000 Wisconsinites are now permitted to exercise their right to carry a concealed weapon.

One cannot write about Walker’s record without mentioning Act 10 and its impact on the state. For the first time in generations, Act 10 allowed all levels of government to get a handle on the largest component of most government budgets — personnel costs. Here in West Bend, we have seen the tools made available by Act 10 used by the county, city and school district. For the first time since anyone can remember, almost every unit of government is talking about frozen or declining tax levies. Meanwhile, government services are as good as or better than they have ever been.

On taxes, Walker has signed multiple tax cuts, thus putting billions of dollars back into citizens’ pockets. He reduced and simplified the state income tax. He signed multiple property tax cuts.

Perhaps most impressively, Walker signed legislation reducing the tax withholding tables by 10 percent. While not a tax cut, it reduced the penchant of state government withholding too much from every Wisconsinites’ paychecks just to give it back to the taxpayers in the form of a tax refund. Taxpayers are able to keep more of their own money instead of being forced to give it to the state government as an interestfree loan.

Even with these substantial tax cuts and increasing state spending in two consecutive budgets (something with which I vehemently disagree), the state’s financial standing has not been this good in years. The state of Wisconsin finished its last fiscal year with a $517 million surplus. If the history of this governor is any guide, a good chunk of that surplus is likely to end up back in the pockets of taxpayers in the form of even more tax cuts. Meanwhile, all of Wisconsin’s priorities are being generously funded including the rainy day fund, which is 16,500 percent greater than it was the first day Walker sat in the capitol as governor.

In the area of education, Wisconsin is surging ahead. High school graduation rates have improved since Walker became governor. Our students’ ACT scores, which have historically been high, now rank second in the nation. Third-grade reading scores are up. Walker’s support for the expansion of school choice has led to opportunities for thousands of kids to find and fund the educational option in which they can succeed. As people around the nation complained about the skyrocketing cost of college education, Walker did something about it by enacting a freeze on tuition for the past two years. This freeze has saved college kids and their families millions of dollars and Walker proposed to continue the freeze and expand it to technical colleges.

On the economy, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has dropped to 5.5 percent. That is the lowest unemployment rate since 2008 and almost half a point below the national average. Under Walker, the state has added 111,000 private sector jobs.

Despite the massive upheaval in Wisconsin when the liberals revolted and forced a recall election where the citizens of Wisconsin affirmed their support for Walker, the state is better off than it was four years ago. Unemployment is down. There are more jobs. Taxes are down. Civil rights are expanding. Education is improving. The state budget is running at a surplus while responsible local governments are using Act 10 to balance their budgets while cutting taxes.

Could it be better? Sure. It could always be better. But Wisconsin is far better off with Walker as our governor than without him. He has certainly amassed an impressive record of achievements and positive results that would be the envy of any governor in the nation. For this, and for what Walker can accomplish in a second term, he deserves our votes.

(Owen Robinson’s column runs Tuesdays in the Daily News.)

Thanks you, Governor Walker.

DOA said this afternoon the state finished the last fiscal year with a gross balance of $516.9 million.

The Department of Revenue reported in August that tax collections for 2013-14 came in $281.2 million lower than previous projections. Today’s annual fiscal report added in actual expenditures in assessing the state’s general fund.

The report said expenses came in $165 million less than projections.

Interesting idea.

MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – Governor Scott Walker says he’s thinking about trashing Wisconsin’s gasoline tax, and replacing it with a sales tax instead.

Of course, Walker did not share any specifics. He is just floating the idea at the moment. What do you think?

Conceptually it is an interesting idea. One of the problems with transportation funding is that the gas tax is a flat per-gallon tax. As fuel mileage has increased and alternative forms if fuel become more readily available, the revenue from the gas tax has remained stagnant as transportation spending has increased. This leaves a gap.

Walker’s idea is to get rid of the gas tax as it is today and replace it with a sales tax on gas. This has the advantage of fluctuating with the price of gas and is less dependent on the gallons consumed. It also has the advantage of being a standard mechanism that can be applied easily to alternative fuels too – thus making it easier to make sure everyone using the transportation infrastructure is paying for it.

The down side is that in times of high gas prices, a sales tax will scale accordingly and be painful for consumers to pay. And, although Walker said that the new tax structure would not result in more money going to Madison, the only way to prevent that would for there to be a cap on the tax of some sort. That would be difficult, but not impossible, to manage.

It is an idea worth considering, but it does not solve the issue that transportation spending is just too high in Wisconsin. While I am all for considering better funding methodologies for transportation needs, we must first get the spending under control.

I do get a chuckle out of the fact that the very same liberals who are griping that Walker may not serve an entire term are the same ones who attempted a recall to prevent him from finishing his first.

ASHWAUBENON – While Gov. Scott Walker lays out plans for a second term in Madison, he will not promise to serve the entire four years if the 2016 national elections beckon.

More NARAL mail today! I think someone must have spammed me by putting my name on some lefty list. As evidence, I also got the Penzeys catalog. It is interesting to see their marketing thrust though.

I would note that the person who does not stand with Walker is freeloading off of the one who does.

That’s a good ad. Plain ol’ kitchen table economics.

Give me a break.

Jeff Kaminiski, president of United Steelworkers Local 2006, said this week he called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Madison office and asked that Walker be fined.

“Gov. Walker’s violations send the wrong message to anyone trying follow the rules and come home safe at the end of the day,” Kaminski said in a statement. “Safety is the backbone of the union movement. We want all workers to come home safe at end of the day, we can’t have an example like this playing statewide.”

The ad does illustrate multiple violations of OSHA rules for working in trenches, said Adam Finkel, executive director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania and a former OSHA director of health regulations under President Bill Clinton.

The good news is that they are doing this. If this is all the liberals can muster against Walker, it’s pretty small ball. It means they know they are losing on the issues.

As for the complaint itself, here is the ad for reference:

It’s not the best ad in the world, but it makes a point. What’s so stupid about the complaint, in addition to the fact that it is a political ad and not a workplace, is that OSHA doesn’t even apply. According to OSHA:

OSHA covers most private sector employers and their workers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and other U.S. jurisdictions either directly through federal OSHA or through an OSHA-approved state program. Workers at state and local government agencies are not covered by federal OSHA, but have OSH Act protections if they work in those states that have an OSHA-approved state program. To find out if you are in a state with an OSHA–approved state program visit our website at www.osha.gov/dcsp/osp/index.html.

And if you follow the like, Wisconsin does not have an OSHA-approved state program. So in his role as a state employee, OSHA does not apply to Walker. In his role as a candidate, he is not an employee of any sort and OSHA does not apply.

One would think that if “safety is the backbone of the union movement” is true, as Kaminski contends, that he would have taken 30 seconds to see which safety regulations might apply before opening his mouth.

But still… small ball.

Now we’re talking. Just a few days ago I complained about Walker needing a second term agenda and he released a pretty good start to one. Some of the agenda items are pretty boilerplate, like “Provide tax relief for manufacturing and agriculture,” but some of them have some teeth. Let’s take a look at a few.

• Cut property taxes so that the levy on a typical home in 2018 is lower than it was in 2010.
• Reduce income taxes so that they are lower in 2018 than they are today

Awesome. While not promising a specific amount (lesson learned), Walker is committing to reducing two of the big three taxes. That’s a very good start and adds to the accomplishments in reducing taxes in the first term.

• Continue the freeze on UW tuition.

This is another great item and one that is already very popular. As the parent of a kid in a UW school, this is huge. Not only does it help with keeping the cost of college under some control (it’s still too high), but the stability allows for better financial planning for the duration. Many families had to include a normal 5%-10% yearly tuition increase when planning how to pay for a degree. The tuition freeze helps make it easier to plan for, and pay for, tuition that is no longer increasing faster than incomes.

Going a little out of order, but:

• Freeze technical college tuition

This is new and mirrors the benefits already in place with a UW tuition freeze. Frankly, this is long overdue, but it doesn’t address the biggest issue with technical colleges. Shamefully, Wisconsin’s technical colleges are run by unelected boards with taxing authority. They are unaccountable to the taxpayers and have routinely increased taxes and spending at rates far and above those of elected boards. Walker should make it a goal to either make the boards that run technical colleges elected, or strip them of their taxing authority. Without that change, the technical college boards could simply increase taxes even more to continue spending whatever they want even in the face of a tuition freeze.

Still, freezing tuition for the technical colleges is a good start.

These will be the most controversial of Walker’s goals, but they shouldn’t be.

• Put common sense limits on the amount of time able-bodied, working-age childless adults can be on public assistance.

“Common sense” will be the point of contention, but it’s difficult to argue against such a time limit. If you are able-bodied without any dependents, then at some point it is reasonable for the taxpayers should expect you to become a contributor to the tax base instead of a recipient of the fruits of others’ labor. What is the right amount of time? I don’t know. Twelve months seems more than generous.

• Require a drug test for those requesting unemployment and able-bodied, working-age adults requesting Food Stamps from the state.

This is very reasonable too. If one has their hand out seeking financial support from others, it is reasonable for those putting money in that hand to expect a level of responsibility. If a person has money for drugs, then they shouldn’t be permitted to receive the taxpayers’ largesse. Also, if a person is high, it is reasonable to assume that they are also not putting forth their best effort to obtain employment and self-sustainability.

Walker’s objective is noticeably silent, however, on what should happen if a person fails a drug test. He does not state the goal of stopping unemployment or food stamp payments in the event of a person failing a drug test. That is merely my assumption and preference.

Before cutting off benefits in such a circumstance, significant thought will have to be put into managing it. If people are cut off of the safety net, they will react in some fashion. Some will get their stuff together and find work to sustain themselves. Some will rely more heavily on private support systems like churches and family. Some will move to another state with a more generous welfare system. And some will resort to crime. Three of those four outcomes are positive.

• Require working-age childless adults receiving food stamps or unemployment benefits participate in employment training or part-time work.

This item is easy and commonly done in other states. Honestly, I thought that this was already in place from when Tommy Thompson signed W2, but perhaps it has been relaxed more than I thought.

Overall, Walker’s plan is an excellent start on a conservative agenda for his second term. There are some solid proposals that would be real, long-term reforms to benefit Wisconsin.