While some Democrats have grumbled over the locations and times selected by the Joint Finance Committee, the first public hearing on the governor’s proposed budget for the next biennium will be held Thursday on the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point campus.
The Committee will hear public testimony on Gov. Scott Walker’s budget starting at 10 a.m. and ending at 6 p.m. in the Quandt Fieldhouse, which will be set up like a commencement service and can sit about 1,500 people. UWSP Chancellor Bernie Patterson said the JFC probably chose the campus because of its central location in the state and because it is a public university.
He said task forces have been coordinating logistics to deal with the amount of people who could show up for the hearings since the university received the announcement.
“We’ve thought about [attendance numbers] quite a bit, but there’s no way to accurately predict it,” Patterson said. “It could be anywhere from one thousand to a couple thousand.”
UWSP spokesperson Stephen Ward said he was expecting a large amount of people Thursday and not all would necessarily be there to participate in the hearings.
There will be multiple law enforcement agencies providing security for the event, including UWSP’s security force, and officers from the Wisconsin State Patrol, Stevens Point Police Department and Madison’s own Capitol Police, Patterson said.
The Democrats have criticized JFC committee co-chairs Rep. Robin Vos, R-Burlington, and Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, for scheduling only four public hearings on the governor’s proposed budget. The amount of hearings scheduled is the lowest in 25 years, according to a statement from Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha.
Barca said it is important to hear from people across the state, but the public hearing should not be held in only a few locations and during businesses hours when many people would be unable to attend. The Democrats have scheduled six official hearings in places like Wausau, Eau Claire and Baraboo, while five more unofficial hearings will be held by Democratic representatives in other cities, including Green Bay and Racine.
However, only five of the collective eleven Democrat-led hearings go longer than the 6 p.m. stopping time designated by the Republican co-chairs of the JFC.
Vos spokesperson Kit Beyer said the co-chairs were doing the best they could to ensure a large number of Wisconsin citizens are able to have their voice heard. The committee members have another hearing the next day in Superior, which forces them to cut off public testimony at sometime.
“They have to go up to Superior the next day, so there is limited time,” Beyer said. “But, there is not limited time to reach out to them.”
Concerned citizens who are unable to testify can write to their representatives or email them through an account setup specifically for the JFC hearings, Beyer said. Along with the Democrats, Republican legislatures will also be holding their own informal public hearings about the budget that would provide more opportunities for constituents to be heard, Beyer said.
She added the main reason the JFC is only holding four public hearings is because the hearing planning process was delayed due to the drama surrounding the governor’s bill that would curtail collective bargaining rights for public employees.
