With the April 5 election approaching fast, candidates running for Dane County executive and Madison mayor continued to solidify the key positions of their campaigns in the best attended forum throughout weeks of debates.

To address questions that have not seen much light in previous square-offs, candidates met Tuesday at the Barrymore Theater to a full audience, moderated by Cynthia Lin, host of Public Affair and Wisconsin Public Radio producer Judith Siers.

The forum was fueled by differing strategies concerning racial and gender disparity in government employment, economic development solutions and funding for public transportation.

Dane County Executive Race

Running for the executive seat, an office that is responsible for county level departments with general directives as well as human services, are Rep. Joe Parisi, D-Madison, and Sup. Eileen Bruskewitz, District 25.

A University of Wisconsin graduate and avid proponent of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights and protection of natural resources, Parisi said his focus would be protecting the resources that have allowed him to excel in Madison his whole life.

“The university school system, local start-up businesses – these resources are under a threat,” Parisi said. “The Dane County way will not be the Scott Walker way.”

Parisi said implementing an economic development position within the county and working directly with business would meet the challenges of bringing new industries to the area.

Parisi said Madison is ranked the fifth-highest city in the nation in working with solar business. He said the office of economic development would work with these clean energy jobs to create an educated workforce and more job-centered opportunities.

Bruskewitz disagreed with the formation of a new office, saying as a fiscal conservative, she is against the redundancy found in the county’s human services that she said is wasting taxpayers’ dollars.

“We have to look at the over 200 service agencies that the city purchases,” Bruskewitz said. “Why do we pay more for multiple services that give us the same results”?

To tackle the racial disparity in “troubled communities”, Parisi said he would focus on root causes of incarceration of minorities with community programs.

Bruskewitz, involved with an existing program aimed at giving life-coaching and job opportunities to troubled youth, said her service is working with 32 individuals involved in rival gangs.

When asked by Parisi why she supported Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to cut collective bargaining rights, she said Walker was the only candidate to face the existing fiscal crisis but was unaware of his intentions to affect unions.

Madison Mayoral Race

Both candidates for Madison mayor said they would create a position that would try to bring more diversity into government committee seats.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said a key point to address was the issue of equal employment opportunities in government committees. He proposed the creation of a recruiter position to discover diverse pools for equal employment, a position former Madison mayor and current mayoral candidate Paul Soglin said was successful in his previous terms as mayor.

“The makeup percentage of employee diversity matches the population of Madison, but a good deal of disparity is in departments,” Cieslewicz said.

Soglin said he sought out recommendations in affirmative action programs during his term in the 1970s that were geographically balanced as well as ethnically and gender balanced.

On economic development, Soglin said Madison still has distressed communities and said it was the government’s role to invest in services such as public education and non-profit organizations to relieve them.

“With 51 percent of our students on or below the poverty line, I’m going to make sure the position of mayor is responsible [by] coordinating and combining all of our services and creating trust,” Soglin said.

Cieslewicz said the city also needs to focus attention on improving human services in the coming years, starting with updates on Madison’s public transit system. He also said creating a transparent budget planning process was a top priority.

“We need to fight the Walker budget, making positive contributions against his draconian measures,” Cieslewicz said. “[Madison] needs an inclusive city budget to understand what the numbers are.”

Soglin agreed the city needed to update its transit program, but said transit to work programs and other progressive policies implemented during his previous terms were forgotten after he left office in the 1990s. He said the city has increased funds in human service programs and is currently at the level where he left it upon exiting office.