Budget Horrors

Budget Horrors
Here are some of the horrifying things added to the proposed state budget

Public Schools

• Redistricting RUSD School Board, requiring all 9 members to be up for election at once
• Eviscerate the licensure process for teaching in Wisconsin, could allow high school dropouts to teach Special Education
• Take over MPS despite the disapproval of the 15 legislators who represent Milwaukee
• Increase voucher schools at the expense of public schools - money for any student from a district who enters a voucher school comes out of the district budget, whether or not that student ever attended a district school.  Devastating for Racine, but equally harmful to small school districts.
• Reduced funding for public school
• Public schools must allow home and private school students participation in sport
• Special Needs vouchers added to budget because they could not be passed on their own merit
• Killed the Chapter 220 busing program

UW System

• Reduced funding over all UW system schools
• Remove tenure - lots of misunderstanding about this. Tenure is designed to ensure that professors are not restricted in what they teach by the prevailing political philosophies of the state or the university administration. New language allows dismissal if a course or category of study is unpopular. The Regents have agreed to keep the tenure language in tact as a policy, but Boards of Regents might change and policy is easier to change than state statute.
• Repeal Shared Governance
• Placed Grebe on UW Board of Regents as a political favor - beginning of stacking the Board

Labor Issues

• Right to Work
• Remove or seriously amend Prevailing Wage

Conservation

• Remove the whole science division from the DNR
• State takes over the Dane County water plan
• Lake shore counties can no longer have more strict zoning rules than the state
• More timber cutting in state parks
• Higher prices and fees in state parks

Women and Children

• Ban 20 week abortions
• Allow fathers to sue doctors who do abortions
• Make changes to IRIS and Family Care - even though they are models throughout the country and are working perfectly

Misc

• Instant access to guns
• Charge us for a Bucks Arena - even though Miller Park has not really improved our economy
• A larger % of hotel taxes must be used for  state tourism instead of the city's general fund
• Add 5 million to the prison budget in order to increase the number of prisoners. Wisconsin incarcerates more black men than any other state in the US.
• Restricted access to public documents on the budget - worried you will be confused by non-monetary items

In a league of its own: Abolish the Legislative Audit Bureau - because it is so much easier to make bad changes without a watch dog.