Rep. Evan Goyke
Evan Goyke is a Wisconsin State Representative from Milwaukee. He’s an attorney and a former Milwaukee County assistant public defender.
Can you tell us a little about your background?
I represent the 18th Assembly District, which is on the north and west side of the city of Milwaukee; I live on 27th and State, in the Historic Concordia neighborhood. This is the beginning of my fourth term, so I’ve been in office for just more than six years. This session, I’ve been appointed to the Joint Committee on Finance, which is the committee assigned to debate, amend and argue the state budget.
Let’s talk about the budget. Joint Finance just got through with their work on the state budget. This is the first time in eight years that we have split government in Wisconsin; the State Legislature is controlled by the Republicans, and the governor is a Democrat. Clearly, there have to be some negotiations this year on the budget. Can you tell us what happened?
The budget process this year was very, very different than prior budgets under former Gov. Scott Walker. In late February, Gov. Tony Evers presented his proposed state budget, and in the beginning of May, the Republicans—who control the Joint Finance Committee by a margin of 12 seats to four—basically threw Gov. Evers’ budget into the garbage can as their first act and began to rewrite it. But, they had to respond to the governor’s leadership, because many of his ideas are very popular throughout Wisconsin.
Piece by piece, the Republicans have put some of the governor’s issues into the budget. But, while they were on their own, they did this in secret meetings, coming out of a back room with a plan to try to catch up with Gov. Evers’ leadership on the issues; the primary three—the most-contested issues—concern what the state is going to do about health care, our transportation infrastructure and public education.
Let’s take a look at these three, starting with the health care issue. A big part of this is Medicaid expansion, which any legitimate economist will tell you would lower health care costs for everybody in Wisconsin: your individual health insurance costs or your employer’s health insurance costs. What happened with Medicaid expansion?
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Medicaid expansion was the most important issue we debated regarding health care; it is the most important health care-related issue in the governor’s proposed budget. The federal Affordable Care Act gives a financial incentive to states to expand eligibility to a larger population of lower-income people. We would have saved $324 million over the next two years if we expanded Medicaid in Wisconsin. That’s our money; that’s income taxes and sales taxes paid by Wisconsinites. We would have also received $1 billion in new federal spending for those people who would be newly eligible and covered under the expansion of Medicaid in Wisconsin.
What Gov. Evers proposed was using every dollar of that $324 million saved and reinvesting it in the state health care system—hospitals, nursing homes, public health, dental access—and so the governor’s plan had a ripple effect across the entire state—rural, urban, suburban—every Wisconsinite would have had some benefit through lower insurance premiums or access to care.
The Republicans, however, made an ideological choice not to expand Medicaid, which they call “welfare,” but they’re wrong. They argue that it will increase private insurance rates, but they’re wrong. They say that the federal government won’t be good for their money in future years, but they’re wrong.
However, they’ve made that decision, and so in order to be able to fund some of the priorities the governor proposed that are very needed and popular, the Republicans ended up spending more state tax dollars to cover fewer people and avoid receiving a billion dollars in federal money. What this has done is to put a hole in all other areas of the budget, like public education, because it sucked in so many of our general tax dollars.
Regarding education, Gov. Walker, in his budget eight years ago, made the largest cut in the history of Wisconsin to public education, and I think that most people clearly understand that to get into the middle class, or to remain in the middle class, is a function of education. When you cut back on education, you’re dumbing-down the state and hurting the economy. What happened with education?
Gov. Evers proposed a $1.4 billion increase in education funding, and really he proposed modernizing the whole education funding formula to better account for areas with higher rates of poverty, bilingual students and especially those with higher special education costs. The Republicans cut $900 million from his proposed education budget, arriving at a total of about $500 million new dollars, and they really missed the opportunity to invest in special education.
Every single district in the state is required to provide quality education to children with special needs; they have to fund it; they cannot reduce the funding that those young children need. Every school district in Wisconsin has the same problem: Special education costs are going up, but the rate that the state pays has not. So school districts are shifting dollars from their general educational programming—arts, music, extra-curricular activities—to pay for their increasing special education needs.
What the governor proposed was a historic investment in special education, and he would have had the state paying 60% of the cost of special education by 2021, but under the Republican budget, we will only get to half of that, around 30%. So, what we know will happen is school districts will continue to struggle to properly fund special education. Thus, that hole will still be created in their general funds, so the non-special needs students will suffer with diminished educational opportunities throughout Wisconsin’s public schools, because districts are still required to fund special education, and the state’s not meeting its responsibility.
The third issue you mentioned is transportation, and there you actually see a little bit of a split within the Republicans. Wisconsin being the dairy state has historically had some of the finest roads in the country, because farmers had to get their milk to the market quickly. But now they’re terrible, and I think everyone will agree with that. What can you tell us about transportation in the state budget?
Gov. Evers proposed increasing the state gas tax by eight cents a gallon and the annual registration fee by $10 per vehicle. The Republicans refused to even consider the gas tax increase and instead proposed annual vehicle registration fee increases of $10 for cars and $25 for minivans and SUVs. Also, every time you buy a vehicle, you have to pay what’s called a title registration fee; it doesn’t matter if you buy a brand-new luxury car or an old jalopy, you have to pay the fee. The Republicans propose increasing that fee by 137%.
The governor and the Democrats in the state Legislature have made the argument that a gas tax is closer to a user fee. If you drive a lot, if you use a lot of gas, you pay your share; if you drive less, you pay less in gas taxes, because you’re causing less wear and tear on the roads. Also, a gas tax takes money from everyone using the state’s roads, not just drivers who buy or register their vehicles here. Under our plan, people driving into Wisconsin from Illinois, for example, and buying gas here, would be paying their fair share of maintaining our roads, too. Under the Republican plan, though, it’s 100% on us, and we fail to capture our visitor’s spending.
The state Republicans haven’t exactly been shy about their contempt for the city of Milwaukee, and they’ve articulated that numerous times. So in the budget, what damage have the Republicans proposed doing to Milwaukee?
Gov. Evers’ proposed budget made incredible investments in the city of Milwaukee, be that in infrastructure, kids or health. The Republicans treated Milwaukee, uniquely, very unfairly in a number of ways.
They cut $40 million that was proposed for lead abatement, which is a huge issue in our community, and they did it because, as they said in their own words, too much money is going to Milwaukee.
Ours is the only county that is not receiving any addition district attorneys. We were up for four additional positions, and the Republicans said no to all of them—though they funded such positions in two dozen other counties around the state.
There’s a Republican shared-revenue cut of 16% over the next two years to Milwaukee County—the only shared-revenue cut in the state. That means less state money toward the county’s sheriff’s budget, the parks budget, the transit budget… Gov. Evers had a proposal to expand a program to Milwaukee County for first-time, non-violent offenders in the criminal justice system, which the Republicans cut, while keeping it in place in other counties.
Time and time again, we heard the refrain that too much money was going to Milwaukee—the Republicans essentially pitting the rest of the state against the city and county of Milwaukee.
I think anyone who looks at the numbers, where the money comes from, where the revenue comes from, realizes that Milwaukee heavily subsidizes the rest of the state. Do they not understand this?
I think that Republicans understand but can’t publicly admit that. I don’t know what the disconnect is, but I think you’re 110% right. Milwaukee generates the most wealth, the highest income and the most sales, income and corporate taxes. Without Milwaukee, the state wouldn’t have the revenue it spends on education or even for tax cuts. If the Republicans didn’t have Milwaukee, they wouldn’t be out there campaigning on cutting taxes, because the state wouldn’t have enough revenue to return it to people. They’re just dead wrong on their portrayal of Milwaukee and the benefits that we give to the state of Wisconsin.
