October 29, 2020 at 11:30 a.m.
Election profile: Mary Felzkowski seeks re-election
Election profile: Mary Felzkowski seeks re-election
Her opponent, Democrat Ed Vocke of Minocqua, declined to answer questions from The Lakeland Times.
Do you think the legislature should have convened into special session to overturn Governor Tony Evers' more
recent emergency order?
Felzkowski said as far as the mask mandate issued by Evers earlier this summer, she doesn't support it but she also acknowledged COVID-19 "is a very serious illness."
"I support people wearing masks," she said. "What I don't support is government overreach and in these cases, I feel the governor has acted out of his authority. I think no matter who our governor is, what party it is, I think it becomes very scary when one branch of government is not a check and balance of the other branch of government. The way our constitution is set up, it's designed so that the legislature has that ability for the check and balance on the governor and I do feel we should have used it."
Limits on public gatherings, 25% capacity for restaurants
Regarding the more recent mandate for bars and restaurants to limit capacity to 25%, Felzkowski said she believes Andrea Palm, Wisconsin Department of Health Services secretary-designee, has acted outside her authority.
"I go back to the start of COVID when the governor shut down some businesses and not others," Felzkowski said. "He basically said, to our small businesses and mom and pop stores on the street, 'You are not essential. Shut your doors.' What that means is, I can't walk into the jewelry store on main street and buy a watch. Now, there's maybe 10 to 15 people a day who go in and out of there. I trust those main street business owners to disinfect, clean and do a good job."
By contrast, she said, she can walk into a large "big box" store such as Wal-Mart or Menards and buy the same watch.
"It was almost like it was driving people away from main street to the large box stores," Felzkowski said. "When you start pushing people and getting in a buying pattern, it's very hard to change that. We can't continue to attack small businesses and that's what's been happening."
All virtual learning
"I absolutely do not support it," Felzkowski said. "I'm disappointed in teachers unions with that one because I think that we have shown that businesses (Wal-Mart, Trig's, Menards, etc.) can stay open and they can do a good job with it. They're deemed essential. All these different places and they've been able to control the spread of COVID. You don't see these large breakouts. Day care centers. Why are day care centers operating? We've had amazing results where we're not seeing large breakouts of COVID. In fact, in the last two weeks, I've talked to all the public health directors in the 35th Assembly District and they're all amazed at how day care providers have been able to control the spread of COVID and it seems like children are not the ones being touched by this. Now, I know we need to keep our teachers safe and I'm all for doing that, but if we can keep day care workers safe and we can keep Wal-Mart workers safe, I think we as a nation have a lot of ingenuity and we can keep children and the teachers safe."
Felzkowski said there are quarterly CESA 9 Zoom calls she sits in on with school administrators and more often when the legislature is in session.
"Just to see what's happening," she said. "I applaud them. They are doing an amazing job. They're burning out, though. It's a lot. It's a lot trying to do virtual and in-person."
Felzkowski is aware school districts have adjusted their schedules in an attempt to give teaching staff some break time as well as more time to better prepare for both in-person and virtual instruction.
"They're finding the (COVID-19) spread is not coming from within the schools but is usually an outside source," she said. "So, we need to keep those kids in school and for a lot of other social and economic reasons also."
Gov. Evers has replaced Caleb Frostman as the state's secretary of workforce development because of the state's unemployment 80,000 claims backed up in the system that may not get processed this year. What specific steps should the state's new DWD secretary take to help unemployed workers?
"I don't even know where to start," Felzkowski said. "There's a whole list that's been suggested to the governor's office. We do know we have a fairly antiquated computer infrastructure system and that has hurt the response."
She said membership of both chambers of the state assembly met with Evers early in the pandemic and let him know he had the capability to move employees where needed.
"He wouldn't have to come back to the legislature," Felzkowski said. "Just move employees around. We also put $75 million into an account for response."
If money is needed, she said the governor was told, the proper administrative steps would obviously need to be taken but it was there.
"In addition to the $1.5 billion (for COVID-19 relief) we got from the federal government," Felzkowski said. "That $1.5 billion can only be distributed by the governor. The state legislature has no say in the use of that money the way Wisconsin is set up."
She said among the suggestions given the governor was to put two shifts of DWD employees on to handle calls and claims.
"At the time, they were operating 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.," Felzkowski said. "There are hundreds of thousands of claims coming in. You can't process them. Train people, put shifts on, extend your hours. That did not happen, I think, until the end of July. Number one, that would have been the simplest thing to do."
Another suggestion was to have "large tech companies" help with the claims.
"They could have been taking the data input and getting these claims started," Felzkowski said. "Then, all the trained DWD people could have been doing the investigations into the claims that maybe had a red flag or needed further investigation. We could have batch processed those claims out."
She said in the past month, the DWD has been starting to bring budget requests for the next legislativ session to the Joint Finance Committee.
"There's nothing in there about upgrading the system," Felzkowski said. "It's been a debacle since day one and it's serious. I would say my office spends two thirds of our time trying to help people with their unemployment claims."
She said it's a difference in how the government operates and how the private sector operates.
"If this was the private sector, these things would have been done," Felzkowski said. "Because it's your business. All the right ideas were there."
She said there would be Zoom calls between the Republican caucus, Evers and Frostman where Felzkowski noted a "lack of urgency."
"It was like 'We're doing the best job that we can,'" she said. "It was surreal and no sense of urgency. I don't understand it."
The FoxConn contract is back on the table after the company failed to meet its threshold for receiving state subsidies. Do you support continued state subsidies for FoxConn? Do you support renegotiating the FoxConn contract and what specifically needs to be done in any new deal?
"The biggest thing people have to remember is that FoxConn gets no money from the state unless they hit benchmarks around employment," Felzkowski said. "People look at FoxConn and people can be upset with it, but there's a bigger picture to be thought about when it comes to FoxConn. We are a global economy and it was very telling when COVID hit. We (the U.S.) don't make our own drugs, we don't make our own personal protective equipment ... there's a lot of things not produced in the United States."
She said also among the items not made in the U.S. are screens for televisions, computers and cellular telephones.
"This is the technology that we brought back with FoxConn," Felzkowski said. "This would be the only place in the United States where those screens would be manufactured. So, part of it is bringing back that technology. Why is that important? Think of our defense. There's a computer with a screen in every jet airplane, every ... everything. There are millions of computers out there ... they're utilized in everything we do."
She said that importance had been pointed out at the time of meetings about FoxConn years ago by former Wisconsin senator Dale Kooyenga, an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve.
"He goes 'Do you realize we're bringing a whole technology back to the United States?'" Felzkowski said. "It isn't here and these would actually be manufactured in the United States. That weighed on some of us. I took that into consideration, but also the amount of jobs that are there and it does not cost the taxpayers money unless they (FoxConn) hit their benchmarks. Most of the jobs are technological jobs and in the $50,000 to $75,000 range. So, I do support FoxConn, but as far as renegotiating it, I'd have to see the contract to see if it's good or bad."
Redistricting
"You know, it's an interesting topic," Felzkowski said. "The left uses the word 'gerrymandering' greatly. I would not be naive to say 'Whoever is in charge doesn't draw maps more favorable to their party.' Having said that, everyone elected to that legislature puts a hand on that Bible and says that we will uphold the Constitution of the state of Wisconsin. Redistricting is in our Constitution and it says the legislature will be in charge of redistricting. Everyone in that legislature is elected so the people put us there and the people put us there by party, by whomever and they put is in charge of redistricting. If you look, how many times has it been challenged in court and the maps have been upheld. When people say we're gerrymandered, they forget we have the Voting Rights Act and what the Voting Rights Act tells us to do is we have to draw minority districts to ensure there will be minority leadership in the state legislature. So, what we do is we draw a minority district and it's usually in urban areas and we're packing people together and those people usually vote the same."
Felzkowski said there are Democratic districts in the inner cities of Milwaukee and Madison she said are 70% to 75%.
"The federal government makes us draw a district like that and then you draw districts in," she said. "In 2018, Tammy Baldwin won 55 assembly districts in the state of Wisconsin. Yet, the Democrats in the state legislature have 36 of 63 seats. That means 19 assembly districts voted for Tammy Baldwin at the top of the ticket and crossed over and voted for the Republican candidate. I don't believe we're gerrymandered. I believe we're independent in Wisconsin. Very independent. They voted for Donald Trump, they voted for Tammy Baldwin and they voted for a Republican Assembly candidate. That's not gerrymandered. That's independent."
No knock raids
On the subject of police reform, Felzkowski said she favors ending "no knock" raids by law enforcement officers and would take qualified immunity away from government units.
By definition, "qualified immunity" is a legal principle which grants government officials performing discretionary functions immunity from civil suits unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."
Felzkowski said she would consider legislation taking qualified immunity away at some, but not all, levels "if it was written right."
"I would not take it away from individual officers," she said.
Marijuana legalization
Felzkowski is in favor of legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes.
"I actually wrote the bill," she said. "I have a bill in that state legislature that I've been working on with a lot of different groups. We wrote it very tight and I wrote it by forming a medical marijuana commission because if we ever went to full recreational use, there would be an infrastructure in place and I wanted to get it out of the hands of the legislature. I didn't want it to be a political football all the time."
Felzkowski anticipates the bill will return for consideration in the next legislative session but portions of it need to be rewritten.
2021-23 state budget
Felzkowski was asked about challenges, besides COVID-19, the legislature is facing as it gets ready to prepare the next state budget.
"We know revenues are going to be down," she said. "We were very fortunate in this budgetary cycle when COVID-19 hit, we were projected to have an $800 million surplus. Some things happened this spring, the surplus has gone down but there were some very large audits that came in and people forget but last year, a young gentleman won $365 million in the Powerball lottery along with some other things so we're going to end up with about a $100 million reserve at the end of this budgetary cycle. We were doing very, very well prior to the COVID-19 pandemic."
Online shopping has increased during the pandemic, Felzkowski said, so sales tax revenue will be down.
"Income tax revenue will be down," she said. "We are going to have to make a lot of hard choices and it's gonna be needs and wants."
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