Felzkowski says she will continue to be a strong voice for northern Wisconsin

State Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), the incumbent running for re-election in Senate district 12, says she has spent her time in the legislature standing up for northern Wisconsin and she’ll continue to do that if she is re-elected next Tuesday.

Citing major successes during that time, Felzkowski says she has been able to deliver because, as a native of the Northwoods, she knows first hand the needs and the struggles of the people who live here.

“I’ve lived here my entire life, which is now 61 years,” Felzkowski said. “And I’ve owned a small business, I’ve been a mom, I’ve been a caretaker, I’ve been a grandmother. I see the struggles that people have firsthand. And we’ve tried to come up with some real firsthand solutions for them.”

As a member of the influential Joint Finance Committee, Felzkowski says she has been able to secure real progress for the region, specifically citing the Agricultural Roads Improvement Program (ARIP), which was part of the 2023-2025 biennial budget to improve highways functionally classified as local roads that provide access to agricultural lands or facilities used to produce agricultural goods, including forest products.

Felzkowski said she stood up for the North even within the provisions of that bill.

“Even when they did the ARIP program, I’m like, I can't support it [unless they] add loggers in there,” she said.

Her colleagues did so, Felzkowski said, and the result has been that a lot of roads have gotten fixed because of the program.

“We did some good things around schools up in this area, more funding for schools, transportation funding, and we’ll continue to fight for it,” she said. “I’ll provide a strong voice for us in Madison, understanding the business community, understanding what it’s like to sign in front of a check and everything that goes into that. Understanding the balance between the cost and the protection, and making sure that we don’t set the level of protection so high in our standards that we bankrupt our municipalities or bankrupt our businesses to get there. I’ll work across the aisle to get things done.”

Highway 51

Felzkowski says she is aware of the dangerous situation that exists along Highway 51 south of Minocqua and will be meeting with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) on the issue as soon as the election is over.

“We actually have meetings set up with DOT after the election to sit down and have that conversation,” she said. “I was a little disappointed when [former DOT secretary] Craig Thompson left because that was who my meeting was going to be with, and Craig’s been in this business long enough, but I’m going to meet with the new secretary appointee on that.”

Felzkowski says something has to be done now, especially at the intersection of Hwy. 51 at Hwy K and Swamp Lake Road, based on conversations she’s had with locals and people who have lived here a long time.

“I’ve talked with actually one of the gentlemen from Pitlik and Wick, because he was in a bad accident right there,” she said. “And what they’re telling me is that the accidents have ramped up since they made it a passing zone instead of a turning lane. They said when it used to be labeled as a turn lane, people slowed down and they had controls there for speed. But now that it’s a passing lane, people just don’t slow down. Everything’s just going too fast there.”

Funding highways and highway safety in northern Wisconsin — or the lack thereof — has been cited by many as inadequate compared to funding downstate, and Felzkowski says that neglect is not just a highway issue.

“I’m probably one of the senators who had a good relationship with Governor Evers because when I was in the Assembly and I was on Joint Finance, education was my issue area in the budget, so I worked with Gov. Evers and his policy team, obviously then he was the head of the Department of Public Instruction.”

After he was elected, Felzkowski said, he went to the Merrill area and she had a meeting with him.

“We were actually in the basement of the Merrill City Hall, and I said, ‘Gov. Evers, just don’t forget about us up north,’ and I’ll never forget this, he promised me he would not forget about northern Wisconsin,” she said.

But Felzkowski says he has not kept that promise.

“This last round of grants, number one, it was around building and infrastructure, and the vast majority of that money went to southern Wisconsin,” she said. “Rep. (Rob) Swearingen is on the building commission. They would take zero input from the building commission. Zero, which I feel bad about. The town of Schoepke wanted $88,000 for fire and EMS, but no.”

The only grant that went to the 12th Senate district was for the tribal clinic in Crandon, Felzkowski said. 

“And I’m very happy for them,” she said. “We wrote a letter for it, they needed it. And I’m glad because Mole Lake, that tribal clinic serves more than just tribal members. It will help that area out greatly.”

But there was nothing else, Felzkowski said. 

“Northern Wisconsin was ignored,” she said. “Now in the past, if it’s a very blue city, maybe we get a few dollars sprinkled that way, or if it’s an election year to help a specific candidate. I know Park Falls got some money in the last election trying to prop up a couple candidates. But by and large, nothing.”

It goes to his voting base instead, Felzkowski said, and that’s not in northern Wisconsin.

“He could have used ARPA money to help Park Falls and save those [mill] jobs,” she said. “He let the [Wisconsin] Rapids mill go and wouldn’t help us with that.”

“He also hates the logging and lumbering industry,” she said. “He makes it pretty obvious. They want old growth policies.”

Stewardship Program

In the interview, Felzkowski addressed the state Stewardship program. The DNR has requested a tripling if of its budget, from about $33 million a year to $100 million a year for the next 10 years.

Felzkowski said she was not opposed to the state owning land for people to recreate on.

“I think it is one of the best things to have wildlife areas for our citizens to go out and be in tune with Mother Nature,” she said. “To me, it beats going to the psychiatrist any day and it’s healthy. If we could get our students out more, it would be great.”

Having said that, Felzkowski said the state had concentrated its land-buying program north of Highway 64.

“Where’s our population base?” she asked. “It’s not north of Highway 64. Let's take Forest County, 17 percent is all that isn’t publicly owned, and I’m not going to get these numbers totally right, but Oneida County, Vilas County, Langlade County, they're all 40 or 50 percent publicly owned. I have young people coming to me saying they would like to buy 40 acres for hunting. Well, they can’t compete against the state.”

It hurts the tax base, too, Felzkowski said.

“Then when the state owns it, we make payments in lieu of taxes, which are very, very low,” she said. “It’s not the same tax base as it was when it was privately owned.”

So local units of government are trying to provide services — fire, EMS, roads — on a very reduced amount, Felzkowski said. 

“And people wonder why there’s no fire, there’s no EMS,” she said. “There’s longer wait times, and you want to try to buy 10 acres and build a house and have a little hobby farm, or maybe you want to do some maple syrup or do whatever. We’re not allowing economic development up north. We’re squeezing people out of our northern areas and we’re forcing them into the urbanization of our state.”

The state of Wisconsin has enough public land, Felzkowski said. 

“It’s the size of Connecticut,” she said. “And you tell me, like the Pelican River or all the land that Langlade and Oneida and Vilas own, you tell me the number of inner city kids in the city of Milwaukee that are ever going to step foot on that, and how is it benefiting the taxpayers down there?”

It’s not, Felzkowski said.

We’re creating the haves and the have nots so the wealthy in the city of Milwaukee and the city of Kenosha and Beloit are going to come up and recreate on that,” she said. “Why aren’t we buying 160 or 300 acres right outside the city of Milwaukee? I don't care if it costs 10 times what it costs in northern Wisconsin and bus those kids out there and have nature centers and allow them enjoy it and learn. But we don’t do that.”

Advisory referenda and enhanced wakes

Felzkowski said she did not support last year’s elimination of local advisory referenda by the state but that it was a product of compromise.

“That’s not something I agreed with,” she said. “It was a negotiation, not one I won, but it was basically because the advisory referendums were being used to turn out the vote and they were becoming politically driven. And I mean, you can still do surveys, so the thought was if towns want information, just do a survey.”

The northern Wisconsin senator also addressed the issue of enhanced wake boating, which she called one of the toughest issues on tap.

“I think what we’re going to end up doing is try to get a study done,” she said. “Here’s the problem. When you look at the map of the state of Wisconsin, when you look at Oneida and Vilas counties, each of those two counties have like 2,000 naturally occurring lakes, and then start looking at the rest of the state. It’s just not the same.”

Oneida and Vilas are really, really unique, the senator said. 

“So I understand why the residents in those two counties want greater restrictions,” she said. “They want larger setbacks and they want them on only larger lakes. But let’s say I live on Green Lake, big round deep lake. I’ve got a 500-foot setback and it’s got to be over 20 feet deep. Now, what am I doing? I’m concentrating wake boats on 63 lakes in the state of Wisconsin. If I’m the senator that represents Green Lake or one of these 63 lakes where I’m concentrating these wake boats, am I going to vote for that?”

The bigger the setbacks and depths, the fewer lakes there will be to allow wake boating, Felzkowski said.

“I’m concentrating them on less and less lakes,” she said. “Who’s voting for that? How do I ever get something like that done? Does it help my two counties? But what about the counties that I have with the big lakes?”

Felzkowski said something needs to be done because enhanced wake boating does damage. She pointed out that there will likely be more and more bans by lake associations, and local ordinances, but without lake patrols there’s no enforcement, and usually such patrols are found only on large lakes and in wealthier areas.

“So I think what you’re going to see is more and more bans, lake associations are going to vote to ban and you’re going to have a patchwork,” she said. “I honestly don't know the answer to this one.”

Felzkowski said funding a study in the next budget would be helpful.

“A lot of the states that have this wake boat legislation already, they’re manmade, like Tennessee, Georgia, most of their lakes are a lot of large manmade lakes,” she said. “So they are very deep and they’re wide. We have mostly glacier made lakes and a lot are more shallow and have more, delicate ecosystems.”

The bottom line, Felzkowski said, it's not a one size fits all.

Cutting spending

Felzkowski, who sits on the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, says spending can’t be cut or the bureaucracy downsized the way the state currently budgets.

In the last few years, she said, inflation and wages have hit the state hard.

“We did a wage study around Madison and we were at about 60 percent compared to what American Family is paying and others were paying,” she said. “We had no choice. … We had to give massive wage increases in corrections. You’re seeing inflation in health care, our Medicaid budget explodes. Everything explodes. So that has hit us in our state budget.”

So we will not get at the size of state government through the budget, Felzkowski said. 

“The only way we do that is get in our committees and start peeling apart the agencies,” she said.

She cited the Department of Natural Resources as an example. 

“They are so mismanaged,” she said. “It’s absolutely unreal. The wildlife account, which is where your hunting and fishing licenses, all that money goes in there. And then Pittman Robertson, those federal dollars, which aren’t even hitting the wildlife account.”

In her first term on Joint Finance, the wildlife accounts were fine, Felzkowski said.

“My second term on finance, all of a sudden it’s $28 million in the hole and they can’t answer why,” she said. “So we transfer $30 million out of the forestry accounts. Now we’re doing an audit as we speak of the wildlife account. So now they’re already saying, we need to raise fees because we're going to be $32 million in the hole.”

Where is the money? Felzkowski asked.

“Take it one step further,” she said. “On the western part of the state, one of the fish hatcheries, they raised trout. All the clubs in the western part of the state depended on these trout hatchlings. They said they don’t have enough money to raise these hatchlings, these fry to maturity.”

But did the agency come back to Joint Finance and ask for more money? 

No, Felzkowski said. What’s more, private hatchery owners knew about the situation and told the DNR they would raise them out so the agency could fulfill contracts. But what did the DNR do?

“They loaded them up and they dumped them in the river immaturely and they’re gone,” she said. “No one’s reporting on it. The media’s not reporting on it. Nothing. So the taxpayer money you currently have invested in them is gone. All they had to do was come back to joint finance and ask for the money to finish it out to get your contract done. But they dumped them.”

Felzkowski said the agency has not had an appointed secretary in 10 months. 

“I have had more complaints on that agency in the last seven months than I did my first two years as a senator,” she said.

Priorities

Felzkowski says her priorities if she is re-elected will again focus on the Northwoods and working to keep government responsible.

“ I think we’ll do what we’ve always done, try to keep regulation low, try to keep personal freedom up, keep our budget intact,” she said. “We’re still sitting on close to $3 billion. So instead of bonding and borrowing heavy, we'll try to hold that down, keep the state’s obligations as low as we can.”

There are areas of concern, Felzkowski said.

“I have a real concern around the Medicaid budget,” she said. “From 61 to 63 percent of our Medicaid budget comes from the federal government. A trillion dollars a year is our [national] debt service, and I do not believe either party will ever cut Social Security or Medicare.”

But the federal government will have to cut somewhere, the senator said.

“So they could cut Medicaid reimbursement to the states,” she said. “And that is one of the reasons I am very happy Wisconsin never took the federal Medicaid expansion.”

Felzkowski also said health care is in crisis mode.

“I don't think people realize just how bad it is,” she said. ”It’s because it’s been trickling. When I got elected in 2012, our costs in health care were about ninth, and our quality was about seventh. Now our cost is fifth in the nation and our quality has dropped to 18th.”

Lowering the cost of health care is critical, Felzkowski said, and price transparency is crucial to doing that, which will be an area of work.

Finally, Felzkowski she will be working to engage private northern Wisconsin businesses to be more involved in promoting economic development together, to weigh in on legislation, to weigh in on what happens in economic development. 

“Madison has that,” she said. “Brown County has that.”

A similar undertaking might not be as powerful, but would speak to legislative and regional interests, Felzkowski said.

“From Hwy. 29 north, we need backup and we need our business community engaged, not partisan, just engaged, to weigh in and say, ‘Hey, that’s not good for northern Wisconsin. That’s going to negatively impact us.’”

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.