January 13, 2016 at 4:24 p.m.
Governor expands on college affordability plan at Nicolet
Walker addresses Obama, the future, Lincoln Hills
Governor expands on college affordability plan at Nicolet
He also discussed developing matters at Lincoln Hills and the future of the state.
The governor said legislators have been studying methods used by other states that have tackled rising college costs, with the majority using approaches similar to one started in Rhode Island and Connecticut. In most of those states, he said, the goal is to have a program that can sustain itself, much like the Wisconsin Housing Economic Development Authority. He did rule out setting up any mechanism at the state level to issue its own higher education loans to students, however.
"When we started looking at that, and the only thing that gets you close to where the federal loan rates are at, was if the student would do a five-year loan with a co-signer and has a paycheck to draw off of," Walker said. "If that's the case, they probably don't need that loan in the first place. So we found that, while it sounds good, the practicality was it just didn't pan out."
Instead, Walker said, the administration wanted to find ways to make college more affordable in the first place. The announced plans are just a first step, the governor said, and more plans will be discussed in his upcoming State of the State address.
Among proposals being publicly considered already, though, are such things as restoring the Wisconsin GI Bill and creating scholarships for high-school students who lead their classes in technical education courses.
SWalker also responded to Democratic charges that there isn't any money to pay for the new programs. He said those were the same politicians who "sat silent for 10 years" as tuition went up eight-plus percent annually, 118 percent total, and tuition more than doubled in the University of Wisconsin system.
"I think the people of the state have to ask why the people who are criticizing these proposals are the same people who did nothing to keep tuition from going up in the state of Wisconsin for those 10 years," he said. "In reality, I believe, in the end, when we see this go through the Legislature, Republicans and Democrats alike will vote for these proposals. It's a good plan going forward."
One of the best things the state can do, he said - rather than create another state authority or bureaucracy that can't match interest rates at the federal level - is to make college affordable in the first place, whether it is a two-year or four-year institution.
Walker also said many students don't know the cost to them of the loans they are taking out to attend college. He said increasing the transparency, like in Indiana, is key.
"Just providing that information to any of our students who are attending higher education institutions, be it a two-year or four-year institution - getting students more information about what are their costs, what are the issues regarding the student loan rates, what's the total payment - ... can have a dramatic impact, particularly in the four-year campuses, in deciding what courses they are going to take and what processes they are going to use to get out in a timely basis."
Walker said that James Schmidt, the chancellor of UW-Eau Claire, placed the cost of a fifth year at his campus at roughly $50,000.
"That isn't just in tuition, but also lost earning potential," the governor said.
Though the plan doesn't have a lot of funding attached to it, Walker said the proposals are geared toward keeping the costs of tuition more manageable in the first place, as well as giving students the opportunity to deduct the interest paid on student loans on their state income taxes.
Obama's legacy, Lincoln Hills
On the morning that President Obama delivered his last State of the Union address, Walker said he hoped to hear "what I would hope we would hear from any future president, be they Republican or Democrat" and about shifting more responsibility from the federal to the state level.
"I think our Founders would be shocked at the level of power and funding that has moved to the federal level away from the states and the people of this country," he said. "I would hope that future presidents and members of Congress seek to restore the power that was intended back to the states so we can make the decisions that reflect the needs of the people of Wisconsin, not just the people in Washington."
Walker said that Madison needs to spend more time in 2016 listening to people and planning further out than the typical two-year budget cycle.
"We need to figure out ways to listen to people," he said. "We have specific initiatives we want to talk about that we're going to be doing all through 2016, where we're going to talk about things not in terms of a year or two but about where we want to be in the next 20 years. When you think about many of the students that go through this campus (Nicolet) and others like it across the state that have come fairly recently out of high school, for a lot of them, like my sons - they're 20 and 21 - they are looking ahead and wondering what Wisconsin is going to be like 15, 20 years from now."
Walker said he wanted to listen not only to them but to others about our shared hopes, our shared visions, and then set out a strategic plan for the next 20 years.
The governor also addressed growing charges of problems at Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls in Irma. He said attorney general Brad Schimel and the Wisconsin Department of Justice are still investigating the two schools.
"More than a year ago, the Department of Corrections was concerned about several of the staff there," he said. "They took action, pulling them out of that institution and forwarding not just to the Department of Justice but also the sheriff in Lincoln County and asked them to look into that."
In the last year, Walker said, the Department of Justice has gone into great depth looking into that.
"Late last year, they approached both the Department of Corrections and my office and said they think it is broader than they had originally suspected," Walker said. "And so we instructed the secretary of corrections to take immediate action. They've pulled an even larger number of staff out of the institution and made a series of changes."
Obviously, Walker said, there is a new superintendent, a new division head, and several other new staff.
"Our No. 1 priority is making sure we can assure the safety of not only those individuals under supervision but staff and any visitors to the institution," he said. "Parallel to that, we want to work with the Wisconsin Department of Justice to make sure if anyone violated the law, that they are prosecuted as part of the process."
Walker said staffing problems at the two schools and the Department of Corrections as a whole is a chronic problem.
"That's something that has been an issue for the last 20 years," the governor said. "It was an issue when Tommy Thompson was governor, it was an issue when Scott McCallum was governor, and it was an issue when Jim Doyle was governor. Jim Doyle issued furloughs against state workers that included Department of Corrections workers that had a devastating impact on the staffing levels. We're going to have to look at that in the future, try to figure out a balance where we've got adequate staffing, but it's going to be part of the mix to make sure that any money spent in those areas is money that can't be spent on public education, higher education and other things."
He said the challenge the DOC has is similar to what other employers have across the state.
"We have the lowest unemployment rate that we've had in 14-and-a-half years," he said. "We have one of the highest rates of employment in the work force of any state in the country. We're tied for the ninth highest in the United States. Last year, according to two of our statistics from the U.S. Labor Department, we saw the highest number of people working in the state of Wisconsin in 2015 that we have seen in 20 years. Those are all good news items, and that's a reason why we're making investments in our technical colleges because the one thing we hear from all our businesses is we need more workers."
The challenge that corrections or any other employer has, as the number of people in the work force goes up, the demand for workers goes up, and that's something we're going to have to address in the next state budget, Walker said.
Jamie Taylor may be reached at jtaylor@lakeland times.com
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