Notes from the West Wing
By
State Representative Garey Bies
A New Session
I hope all of you have had a chance to decompress from the campaign cycle! For those of us in Northeast Wisconsin it was particularly intense with a lot of activity from a lot of different campaigns! It’s nice to be able to step back a bit and enjoy the holiday season and I hope all of you in the First Assembly District have a wonderful holiday season.
Down in Madison, the legislature is preparing for the new session which will commence right after the New Year on January 3rd, 2007. With the new dynamics in the building with Democrats now in control of the State Senate, the two houses will have to work together if either hopes to accomplish anything. I have enjoyed working with all my colleagues in past sessions and I look forward to continuing to do so in the upcoming session and I am hopeful for great cooperation from all.
With the new session fast approaching, I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some of the issues that I am working on. First, and one of the most complex, concerns the Wisconsin Technical College System. How the Technical College System is funded is a major concern for residents of the First Assembly District who year after year are forced to provide vastly disproportionate funding for the system through the system’s property tax. My goal is to reduce or eliminate the Technical College System’s reliance on the local property tax, the hurdle I face is how. How to reduce or eliminate the property tax reliance while providing an alternate revenue source? How to establish an equitable funding mechanism that conforms to constitutional requirements? How to increase the state’s contribution? How to provide for suitable accountability? Difficult questions all.
Another important issue this session is ethics reform. I had planned on reintroducing my legislation from last session regarding campaign finance reporting requirements, but with the announcement of the ethics reform agreement between leaders of the Assembly and Senate, I will look to have my reforms suitably included there and I intend to fully support this bi-partisan ethics agreement.
I also plan to revisit my legislation on the disclosure of wetlands. Basically, this proposal aims to ensure that the existence of wetlands on property is fully disclosed when the property is sold. My goal here is to make sure an individual who buys a piece of property is fully informed about the land they intend to buy and aware that if wetlands are on the property, that the property will be subject to restrictions on how it can be developed or altered. I want to safeguard against a situation where an individual buys a piece of property only to discover later that the property has some form of wetland within its boundaries and the property can no longer be utilized for the purpose for which it was purchased.
I have more legislation planned but not really the space to talk about it here. Not to worry though, I’ll be discussing those legislative ideas in future editions of this column, so keep your eyes out for that!
Again, I hope you all have a happy holiday season and if you have questions or comments on this column or any other topic you might see or read in the news, I can be reached by e-mail at Rep.Bies@legis.state.wi.us or by telephone, toll-free at 1-888-482-0001. I’m also on the web at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/assembly/asm01/news/.