Contact: Sen. Janet Bewley (D –Ashland) (608)266-3510
MADISON, WI – Senator Janet Bewley (D-Ashland) offered the weekly Democratic radio address today.
The audio file of this week’s address can be found here:
http://media2.legis.wisconsin.
A written transcript of the address is below:
“Hello, this is State Senator Janet Bewley.
“All across Wisconsin children are heading back to the classroom. One of the best ways school helps prepare our sons and daughters for the real world is teaching them to show up every day, do their homework and hand it in on time.
“Unfortunately, here in Madison my Republican colleagues seem to have missed out on that lesson. The state budget is more than two months late, school districts still can’t finalize their own budgets and the earliest this bill could pass is the middle of the month.
“My Democratic colleagues were ready in June with a plan that would have cut your property taxes more than the Governor, built up aid to rural districts and allowed local voters to decide if they want their property taxes to pay for voucher schools.
“When the Republicans on the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee finally got around to working on the education portion of the budget this week, they rejected our plan. Even worse, they scrapped one of the few provisions in Governor Walker’s budget that united people in northern and western Wisconsin. Instead of increasing sparsity aid targeted for hard hit districts with low populations, they came up with a plan to increase revenue caps for low-spending districts, but without state funding – putting the burden on local property taxpayers.
When I was going to school you needed a good excuse to miss your assigned classes. If your homework was incomplete, there were consequences. Once in a while, if you were lucky, you got another chance to do it over and get it right. The republicans in control of the legislature have had more than their share of chances to get it right. According to the people who’ve reached out to me, the republican budget doesn’t even come close reflecting our priorities.”
