Madison area residents criticized Gov. Scott Walker’s education and health care proposals at the Democrats’ unofficial budget hearing in Madison Tuesday.
About a dozen Democrats held a hearing on the state budget in Madison’s Black Hawk Middle School, where about 40 people testified on Walker’s budget. No Republicans were present at the unofficial hearing that arose from Democrats’ wishes to hear from more Wisconsinites.
“The finance committee chose to only have hearings in populations covering 2 percent of the state,” Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, said. “We’re trying to correct that with the additional 10 to 12 [or] 15 hearings. We hope to cover two-thirds to 75 percent of the state.”
Jeff Ziegler, a Marshall school board member whose children attend public schools, said the state needs to reinvest in public schools, as the reduction in state aid has been going on “for an entire generation.”
Although Ziegler said he is encouraged by some Republican lawmakers proposing a $150 per student funding increase, contrasted to Walker’s flat funding, he added that is not enough.
People criticized Walker’s proposed voucher school expansion, citing new numbers Tuesday that showed Milwaukee’s voucher school students had lower test scores than its public school students. A top voucher school advocate criticized the methodology behind those numbers in an interview.
Madison Metropolitan School District member Ed Hughes criticized Walker’s proposed voucher school expansion because of their lack of accountability. Since Madison is one of the cities targeted in the expansion, he said voucher schools would take funding from its public schools.
“We’ll either have to raise our property taxes significantly [to keep quality], or we’ll have to cut services,” Hughes said.
The special needs voucher scholarships that would apply statewide faced criticism from Joanne Juhnke, who chairs the grassroots group Stop Special Needs Vouchers Wisconsin.
Juhnke has an 8-year-old daughter with disabilities who she said has gotten great services at public schools. Juhnke and her other daughter, 11-year-old Lydia, said the scholarships would take money away from public schools.
“They would hurt the public schools more than they’d help anything,” Lydia said.
Republican Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Joe Fadness called the hearings across the state a “partisan political gimmick” in a statement Monday.
Fadness focused on Walker eliminating the $3.6 billion deficit in 2011 and creating a better business climate, which he said is a “stark contrast” from former Gov. Jim Doyle.
“What the Democrats won’t tell you is that, when they controlled state government, taxes and spending were through the roof, and 150,000 jobs were lost during the last three years of the Doyle administration,” Fadness said. “This is clearly nothing more than a failed attempt to distort Governor Walker’s agenda for moving Wisconsin forward.”
Libbie Meister, a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health program manager, criticized Walker’s Medicaid plan. Walker has said his plan would promote independence while covering slightly fewer people.
Meister said it was “ridiculous” that Republicans did not hold hearings in the state’s largest cities.
“Certainly people in small towns need to have the opportunity to be heard, but it seemed like a very calculated political move,” Meister said. “It seems like its intention was only to minimize people’s involvement and access.”
