28.) Emasculating Open Records Law
Governor Scott Walker created a firestorm when he and GOP legislators proposed to gut Wisconsin's open records law. More than 400 emails opposed to the proposal arrived from both Walker opponents and supporters. The proposal was approved on July 2, 2015 by the legislature's Joint Finance Committee. The changes would have exempted from public scrutiny, government materials considered part of a "deliberative process.' The public would have been blocked from from reviewing nearly all records created by state and local lawmakers and their aides, including electronic communications and the drafting files of legislation.
Governor Walker responded to the angry public reaction by initially telling reporters that he would review the changes; later he said he would work with legislators on unspecified changes; and on July 4, 2015, proposed changes to the open records law were announced as dead.
Walker's complicity in the scheme was confirmed by an email with the subject line of "Governor's Request," written by Michael Gallagher of the Legislative Reference Bureau; Gallagher wrote: "In the interest of expediency, I am going to enter this as a Speaker Vos request and copy David Rabe from the Governor's office on it. I just talked to David. He is fine with proceeding that way. let me know if you want to do it differently. It should go out tomorrow morning." That email was dated June 15, seventeen days before the legislative committee voted on it.
29.) Rewriting the Wisconsin Idea
The Wisconsin State Journal has dissected the effort of Governor Walker and his staff to rewrite the Mission Statement of the University of Wisconsin System. In Walker's 2015-2017 executive budget, the phrase ":the search for truth" and the Wisconsin Idea were removed from the Mission Statement. Walker attributed the language to "a drafting error," "a big mistake," and "no big deal."
Contrary to Governor Walkers evasion of responsibility, his staff provided line-by-line instructions and specific talking points to University of Wisconsin administrators, with whom they were in detailed talks.
The Wisconsin Idea had been the guiding principle for the state's universities for more than a century.
In a report published on May 9, 2015, PolitiFact Wisconsin rated Walker's explanations as "Pants on Fire," their highest rating for a lie.
30.) Mental Health Care Funding
Recently, Hillary Clinton said that if guns were not so readily available, carnage like the shootings of TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward may not have happened. Scott Walker responded that the proper stance is to increase mental health treatment. Since 2001, Walker was one of the Milwaukee County elected officials who cut 200 mental health complex jobs, one in five. The county board blocked Walker's effort to cut fifty additional jobs. These Walker-supported cuts were reported in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on August 22, 2010.
As reported in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on November 16, 2009, while Milwaukee County Executive, Walker used his veto power to cut $593,000 for mental health care managers and cut $367,000 and nine jobs for the mental health complex's day treatment program. The county board overrode his veto.In an article on September 19, 2003, the same newspaper as above said of Walker's 2004 budget that it: "trimmed or privatized staffing in mental health and disability programs."
Although county executive Scott Walker once prepared a wish list for stimulus spending from the federal government, he opposed a request from three members of the county board to accept $92.25 million in federal stimulus money to construct a new mental health complex in Milwaukee, as reported in the January 17, 2009 Daily Reporter.
31.) Update on Education Cuts and Tuition Costs
The Greater Wisconsin Committee stated that: "Scott Walker cut school funding more per student than any governor in America." PolitiFact Wisconsin rated the claim as "mostly true." On September 7, 2014, PolitiFact reported that: "Based on the latest census figures for 2011-'12, the Wisconsin cuts were the largest based on two measures -- state revenue provided to local schools and overall spending by schools of state, federal and local money." The reason for the rating of ":mostly true" is based on the finding that Wisconsin was no longer number one in school funding cuts, yet it ranked among the fifteen states that reduced state per-pupil spending from 2013-'14.
Governor Walker's proposed 2015-'17 budget had a cut of $300 million for the University of Wisconsin System and a lesser cut for K-12. Walker has said he thinks he can find a way to restore all of the proposed K-12 funding and reduce the higher education funding cuts. Walker is thus trying to throw the onus of education cuts on the state legislature for cuts that he originally proposed.
The Wisconsin Budget Project says Wisconsin is spending $1,014 less per public school student than it did in 2008.
32.) An Expanded School Voucher Program
In his 2015-'17 budget, Governor Walker raised the cap on the Milwaukee school voucher (or "parental choice") program and proposed the eventual elimination of the cap. Under the raised cap, a married couple with two children can receive a public voucher for private schools if they earn $78,637, well above the median U.S. household income of $52,250. Wisconsin's voucher program, started in 1990, was originally intended as a social mobility ticket for minority students. The Wisconsin legislature wants to eliminate the cap but it proposes to eliminate it over a ten-year period. Of course, eliminating the cap would allow very wealthy families to receive voucher payments for costs that they can easily absorb.
The current voucher program enrolls 26,000 students at an annual cost to the state of $191 million (an average of $7,300 per pupil).It takes $61 million from the Milwaukee Public Schools. Walker has launched new voucher programs for Racine and statewide that will enroll about 3,000 students and cost another $20 million.
Studies have shown that voucher students perform worse than public school students in reading and math. The Wisconsin State Journal recently calculated that $139 million had been lost through failed voucher schools. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has called for more transparency and accountability in voucher schools and an end to for-profit schools participating, but Governor Walker has turned a deaf ear. The U.S. Department of Justice has been looking into numerous complaints that voucher schools were not serving children with disabilities.
Looking at the additional money for voucher schools and the fact that the 2015-'17 calls for at a cut of $127 million in public K-12 education, coupled with another $140 million cut proposed for the next biennial budget, Tony Evers, head of DPI, has said: "The budget sets Wisconsin on the path to delivering a legacy of less for hundreds of thousands of public school kids." (The source for much of the above is: Jonas Persson, "Unprecedented School Voucher Expansion Planned," The Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch, June 22, 2015.)
33.) A Canadian Fence
At a New Hampshire town hall meeting, Governor Scott Walker said; "They have raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up [a fence between the U.S. and Canada] to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that's a legitimate issue for us to look at." He added that "if we're spending millions of dollars on TSA at our airports, if we're spending all sorts of money on port security," then he said that the fence would be another way of protecting ourselves. Walker has doubled down on the idea in tweets.
Governor Walker told Fox News on September 1 that he never said he would consider building a wall. He narrowed it down to one person previously in local law enforcement who raised the idea. He claimed that all he said was that he wanted to "make sure that there's enough staff working with those local law enforcement professionals." The discrepancies in these two accounts are: 1.) he initially said several people raised the issue of a fence; and 2.) he never told Chuck Todd that all he wanted to do was add more staff at the border.
Walker spokeswoman AshLee Strong said: "Despite the attempts of some to put words in his mouth, Gov. Walker wasn't advocating for a wall along our northern border." Note that the Walker team insisted he had a consistent position on the 14th Amendment when he first said he wanted to repeal it; then said he wouldn't touch it; then said there were other provisions for fixing the birthright problem without a repeal, and then at the end of a week or more of changing positions, Walker said he had no position on the 14th Amendment.
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