MADISON –Nearly three years after state Superintendent Tony Evers signed off on implementing the Common Core State Standards, the Assembly and Senate committees on education got around to holding a public hearing to get the facts on the changes in Wisconsin classrooms.

The room was packed Wednesday, mostly made up of ‘stop Common Core’ advocates with signs and red T-shirts. There was no mixing up these Common Core opponents with the suit-wearing government bureaucrats and experts asked to testify. Some attendees were shipped down the hall to an overflow room to watch the hearing.

The showing at the Capitol could have been a metaphor for the quiet, but growing rumble surrounding the Common Core standards, just now hitting the mainstream even though most states signed on two or more years ago.

At the hearing, audience members let out “mmmhmms” and “Amens” at expert points that gelled with their anti-Common Core views or scoffed at the other side. They politely ignored legislators’ requests and committee rules to keep quiet, applauding their favored speakers.

Miles Apart: Opponents of Common Core State Standards squared off with proponents during a legislative hearing Wednesday. It seems the two sides are no closer to common ground.

Finding the facts – at least agreement on them – proved elusive. The “facts,” it seemed, depended on who was in front of the microphone.

The Common Core was designed to “define K-12 academic standards that are aligned with college and work expectations, inclusive of rigorous content and application, and are internationally benchmarked,” according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

Critics say the standards are one-size-fits all.

“Common Core has not been tested anywhere in the world. It is entirely experimental,” said Joy Pullman, researcher at the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based individual liberty think tank. “To assume that one progression of learning fits every one of the 50 million American, or 850,000 Wisconsin, students is beyond arrogant; it is an affront to human diversity, freedom and dignity.”

“It’s odd to consider this initiative ‘state-led’ when vast majorities of state legislators and the public never heard of it until two years after state officials had already signed the papers,” Pullman said.

Boiled down, Pullman says the Common Core is a set of untested, watered-down standards that cedes educational decision-making to shadowy bureaucrats, with invasive data tracking of students coming down the road.

A representative from the state Department of Public Instruction countered that kind data tracking was not included in the Common Core standards.

But just last week, facing pressure from fellow Republicans in Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal signed an executive order that “no personally identifiable data” on students’ “biometric information, psychometric information” will be shared with the federal government.

Pullman told Wisconsin Reporter after the hearing state legislators could draft a bill to stop implementation, just as a number of other states – including Georgia, Kansas, and Oklahoma – are considering. Indiana passed legislation to freeze the implementation of the Common Core.

“What do these states know that we don’t?” asked Rep. Jeremy Theisfeldt, R- Fond du Lac.

On the other hand, proponents say the Common Core represent a “rigorous” – that was the buzzword of the hearing – set of centrally devised, but state-led learning standards for English and math that in no suggests a top-down takeover of education.

“I hope to help explain why the Common Core holds such promise,” said Kathleen Porter-Magee, of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative, education policy think tank. She added she hoped to “debunk some of the most common myths and misconceptions.”

“Common Core was at its founding and remains today a state-led effort,” she said.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers developed the standards, with funding from private interests including the Pearson and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations. The federal government didn’t mandate states take up the academic standards, though both critics and proponents said watchdogs should keep an eye on federal encroachment on the initiative, including tying funding to implementation.

“Finally, some argue that adoption of the Common Core — or any K–12 academic standards — will usurp local control over curriculum and instruction. On the contrary, by setting standards, rather than adopting statewide curricula, state education leaders are ensuring that local district, school, and teacher leaders remain in control of the decisions that most directly impact the students they serve.”

Ted Nietzke, superintendent of the West Bend School District, testified on some of the changes the Common Core has brought to his school district.

“What it has done to the locals is it has forced us to review our standards, change our teaching practices, adhere to the standards, but change our curriculum and our methods. And that’s a big shift.”

For all the back and forth, critics and advocates did agree on one thing: current Wisconsin standards are weak.

Nietzke said, “Whatever happens, we can’t go backwards” in the state’s educational standards.

“Common Core standards or the Wisconsin state-adopted standards, as we refer them, are much greater now than they’ve ever been in reading, language arts and math,” he said.

“If I leave you with nothing else, I hope I will be successful in underlining this critical point: The Common Core are significantly clearer and more rigorous than the Wisconsin English, language arts and math standards they replaced,” Porter-Magee said.

Pullman conceded that because of Wisconsin’s poor standards, Common Core standards would be a step up – if they didn’t come with all the other strings attached.

Contact Ekvall at rekvall@wisconsinreporter.com

The post No closer to common ground: Hearing airs concerns on Common Core appeared first on Watchdog.org.

MADISON – The weather may be warming up in Wisconsin, but there’s a political chill on the conservative grassroots ground in the Badger State.

Wisconsin tea party members tell Wisconsin Reporter the Internal Revenue Service scandal has had a chilling effect on political dialogue in conservative circles.

While they once harbored suspicions the IRS might be targeting them for partisan reasons, now many tea party and patriot groups say they are convinced.

“It’s been scary” said Kim Simac, president and founder of the Eagle River-based  Northwoods Patriots told Wisconsin Reporter. “I had resigned myself to the idea that the cars could come up the driveway someday.”

CHILL IN THE AIR: Pro-Walker tea party members rally in late winter 2011. Conservative groups in the Badger State say the IRS scandal has hit a nerve among the grassroots movement.

Like scores of fellow conservative organizations nationally bearing the name “Tea Party” or “Patriots” or “9/12” seeking tax-exempt status, Simac’s Patriots confronted “intimidating” forms.

“We all knew it was going on. I’m just glad it’s being flushed out,” said Simac, who unsuccessfully ran against then-incumbent Sen. Jim Hoperin, D-Conover, in a 2011 recall election. “Everybody on both sides should want to have a legitimate, credible and reliable government.”

Lois Lerner, the IRS executive who led the division that flagged and stalled conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, invoked her constitutional rights against self-incrimination Wednesday, refusing to talk about the scandal at a House Oversight Committee hearing. Lerner would only say she didn’t do anything wrong and broke no laws.

“I have not violated any IRS rules and regulations,” Lerner said adding that, contrary to lawmakers’ claims, she never lied to Congress.

But Lerner’s pleading the Fifth Amendment only fueled conservative concerns in the politically charged scandal. Republicans, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, have called on President Obama to appoint a special prosecutor. The president has declined that call.

On Sunday, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, called the scandal “rotten to the core,” asserting the IRS’ actions give the American people the opportunity to see “big government in practice.”

State Rep. Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, a year before his election in 2010, built the Fox Valley Initiative, a political action committee with a mission to “promote limited government, lower taxes, and integrity and accountability in government.”

Steineke said he hasn’t had anything to do with the PAC in a couple of years, but he still is connected to his region’s tea party grassroots movement. The conservative lawmaker admitted to being reluctant in talking to a reporter about the IRS scandal.

“When I got the message that you had called about this particular story, I hesitated to call back and speak out,” Steineke said of Wisconsin Reporter’s request for an interview. “Nobody wants to be a target of the IRS or any other federal agent.

“I had to think about it, and that is troubling,” he added. “But this is too important of an issue for us, whether we are state legislators or any other citizen — We have to speak out.”

Marv Munyon, secretary/treasurer for the Rock River Patriots, a southern Wisconsin tea party organization, told Wisconsin Reporter earlier this month he applied for 501(c)(4) for the group in April 2012. The organization had yet to be approved, although the IRS cashed the Rock River Patriots’ application fee of $400 on May 2, 2012, according to Munyon.

He said he received a letter Jan. 29, 2013, informing him “the initial screening of the application of your case should be assigned to an exempt organizations specialist for technical review. We assign applications to specialists in the order that we receive them.”

The letter further states, “Unfortunately, we are experiencing delays in working applications that require further development.”

Although he has filed the organization’s tax forms, noting the tax-exempt application was pending, Munyon said he still was awaiting word from the IRS.

“I just got a bunch of static out of the IRS,” he said.

John Pierce, vice chairman of the Fox Valley Initiative, said he doesn’t want the IRS scandal to be a “jumping off point” to make conservatives look like they’re sad, abused people. He just wants the facts to go where they may go.

“If Obama and his groups have the arrogance to continue to push this, I think the events will unfold,” Pierce said.

For now, he said, tea party organizations appear to be in the same boat.

“Some of us have been targeted, others not,” Pierce said. “I think this thing should be investigated.”

Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

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MADISON – What makes a man scream out, “Walker sucks!” at a Special Olympics event featuring guest speaker Gov. Scott Walker?

What makes someone try to disrupt a Special Olympics ceremony, protesting what he perceives to be the myriad ills said governor has perpetrated against the people of his state by holding aloft a sign that reads “WALKER CRONIES ARE ECO TERRORISTS”?

Because that’s how you get heard, says ever-present capitol demonstrator Greg Kinsley.

And Kinsley tried hard to be heard at the capitol Wednesday, where a crowd of more than 100 turned out for the kickoff of the 2013 Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics Wisconsin.

Greg Kinsley (left, without sign), an ever-present capitol protester, took his demonstration against Gov. Scott Walker during a Special Olympics event Wednesday.

Walker was there to make some brief remarks. So were state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and several law enforcement officials, all celebrating the life-affirming spirit of the Special Olympics and the fundraising campaign led by law enforcement across the state.

Walker didn’t seemed bothered – or to notice at all – the boos and the greetings from the demonstrators. He thanked law enforcement and the many people involved in making the Special Olympics program a success in Wisconsin.

Officers will carry the torch, representing the Flame of Hope, a symbol of the campaign’s dedication to increasing awareness and raising money for Special Olympics athletes worldwide, according to Special Olympics of Wisconsin’s website.

Kinsley, it seems, was dedicated to expressing his distaste for a governor he believes has ruined Wisconsin through a conservative agenda that has stripped public employee collective bargaining, streamlined iron-ore mining permit process, and has created a work-for-food stamps measure.

Kinsley expressed his disfavor by hollering, “Hey, Scott,” booing, and repeatedly waving at the governor during the ceremony.

A fellow demonstrator standing beside Kinsey, a bearded man in a ball cap and Veterans for Peace smock, held the “Walker Cronies” sign. The man declined to give his name, saying he doesn’t talk to reporters.

The demonstrators stood on the capitol’s second level, just above the bustling first-floor rotunda — enough distance for the low-toned boos to bounce off the stone floors and stairs of the capitol echo chamber.

Kinsley said he and his friend were just trying to send a “direct message to Mr. Walker that we’re not buying his garbage as far as passing mining laws without federal approval.”

“We’ve been protesting him for 600-plus days. We’re not going to give up now,” the veteran demonstrator said. “We want to make sure he understands we’re not giving up.”

Genie Ogden has served in the diminished capitol protest army since thousands of demonstrators swarmed the capitol in 2011, rallying against Walker’s Act 10, the bill – now law – that reformed public sector collective bargaining in the state. She says her husband works for the state.

Ogden, held up a brightly colored sign that read: “Save Public Schools No More Vouchers or Charters,” in opposition to Walker’s plan to expand parental school choice in the state. Her shirt, in bright white letters proclaimed, “Walker’s Embezzling Disaster Corp.,” a shot at the embattled Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., or WEDC, the quasi-public agency Walker and majority Republicans created to replace the state Department of Commerce.

The demonstrator says she’s headed for trial in a couple of weeks, facing charges of unlawful display of a sign at the capitol, including a count of unlawful display or decoration for releasing a balloon.

Ogden bristled when she heard fellow demonstrators yell, “Walker sucks!”

“I don’t do that,” she said of screaming at public officials during events. She quickly admitted she had screamed at a lawmaker to “stop stealing money from public schools.”

But why go to a Special Olympics event to air her grievances with the governor?

“I just read Walker was here. You never see him in the building,” she said. In other words, she, like Kinsley, wants to make sure the governor is still listening.

Kinsley, a vocal advocate for the legalization of marijuana who has had his share of run-ins with capitol police, charged with such offenses as picketing without a permit, said he wanted to be “delicate with the situation”  promoting Wednesday’s Special Olympics event.

“Its intentions are great and we support that. But we do have to make a point that when Walker shows his face in public he is going to have to face the music for all that he has pulled,” he said.

Wednesday’s sparse group of demonstrators was invisible compared to a splinter group of protesters dressed as zombies who heckled the governor during a similar Special Olympics event in June 2011.

On that day, capitol police removed and arrested a dozen zombie demonstrators from the office of Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

Walker, at the time, called the display appalling.

“I can take it – I’m in elected office,” the governor told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time. “We shouldn’t be drawing in people who aren’t involved.”

The Law Enforcement Torch Run is the movement’s largest grassroots fundraiser and public awareness campaign. Annually, more than 85,000 law enforcement officers carry the Flame of Hope across 40 nations, raising more than $42 million, according to Special Olympics of Wisconsin.

Some 900 law enforcement officials raise money by carrying the torch across Wisconsin to Stevens Point, the site of the Special Olympics, beginning on June 6.

Christina Harris, spokeswoman for the Special Olympics of Wisconsin, said the demonstrators didn’t take away from the kickoff event, which stayed focused on the athletes in attendance and the law enforcement officials who work so hard to help make the Special Olympics possible.

“They didn’t diminish from the event  in 2011 and they didn’t today,” she said.

Contact Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

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MADISON — State employees who smoke, food stamp recipients and retirees were all touched by the Legislature’s Committee on Joint Finance Tuesday, as the panel plowed through a busy day of budget work.

The committee passed Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to tie FoodShare — Wisconsin’s version of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — benefits to employment as part of his effort to “end generational dependency on government.”

If the proposal becomes law, qualifying FoodShare beneficiaries would have to work 20 hours a week and enroll in a training program through the state departments of Health Services, Children and Families or Workforce Development. If they don’t, the beneficiaries could lose FoodShare benefits after a few months.

Food for Work: Able-bodied FoodShare recipients would have to work 20 hours a week or enroll in job training programs to be eligible for food stamps under a provision approved Tuesday by the Republican majority on the Joint Finance Committee.

The changes don’t apply to people 50 or older, parents with children up to age 18 or pregnant women, all prohibited under the federal standards.

DHS estimates half of FoodShare beneficiaries might drop off the program due to the changes, according to a report from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

“I think the goals of independence and getting training and trying to get a job is a much better lifestyle than government dependence,” said co-chair Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills. “We’re talking about able-bodied people without children. If you’re able-bodied you have to make an effort through training or work to get the benefit and I think that’s fair.”

Democrats, however, attacked the GOP for lacking compassion. Two southeastern Democrats contrasted FoodShare, with benefits at $191 a month, to a meal at the upscale 21 Club in Manhattan, where Walker was scheduled to speak for a New York Republican State committee fundraiser. Entrees at the posh restaurant start at $72.

“It’s one of the most mean-spirited things I have heard coming out of here,” said Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine. “Today we’re going to say we’re going to take food away from poor people.”

Mason contends the change won’t put more people back to work, but will create more hunger in the state.

The state will spend an extra $16 million to enact the changes, what Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, called an “investment” in getting people back to work. And it might require a waiver from the federal government, which funds most of the FoodShare bill.

In Wisconsin, FoodShare participation has risen sharply in recent years.

More than $100 million in food assistance benefits were paid out to 858,331 recipients of the program in March, according to the state Department of Health Services.

A record 47,791,996 people across the nation received SNAP benefits in December 2012, according to USDA data. That’s an increase of nearly 1.28 million stamp collectors from December 2011.

Read more on the proposed FoodShare changes here.

Sale of state buildings

The budget committee also passed a motion allowing the state Department of Administration or the Building Commission to sell, with some restrictions, state heating, cooling and power plants without soliciting bids for a property. The JFC also would have to approve sales of those assets.

Buildings funded at least 50 percent through gifts or federal dollars would be exempt from the changes. Sales from the buildings would be used to retire debt. A Legislative Fiscal Bureau paper shows the state owes $312,885,400 on state-owned heating, cooling and power plants.

DOA indicated a “specific reason for the proposed sale of state utility plants is so the state can get out of the utility business,” according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau paper on the motion.

“The point of this contention being that the state should be in the business of providing the public services specific to each agency, and should not be in the heating and cooling service business,” the fiscal bureau wrote.

Democrats, however, focused on more extreme implications of the policy. They pointed out, and LFB confirmed, that under the proposal, the state could technically sell Camp Randall Stadium or even the state Capitol.

“It starts us down the field of selling state assets,” said Rep. Jon Richards, D-Milwaukee, making his broader point.

Republicans, though, scolded Democrats for demagoguery of the issue.

“Let’s get real,” Darling said. She assured “there’s not a chance this committee would sell the state Capitol.”

The Republican-controlled committee later rejected a proposal by Sen. Robert Wirch, D-Pleasant Prairie, to sell the Governor’s Mansion.

Smoke? Work for the state? You could pay more

Walker proposed in his 2013-15 budget to charge tobacco-using state employees $50 a month, a fee that’s expected to bring in about $2 million in 2013-14 and $4 million in 2014-15.

The finance committee voted in favor of Walker’s proposal, but changed part of it so that the Group Insurance Board could not terminate an employee’s health care coverage for lying about tobacco use.

The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, prohibits the practice, anyway. The JFC motion does allow for recovery of lost payments.

Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, questioned whether the state should continue to meddle in citizens private health issues.

“As the government takes over more and more of the health care, the more they’re going to say they can run our lives,” he said.

Adam Hoffer, assistant economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, told Wisconsin Reporter in February the fee is akin to a “sin tax,” similar to a $2 tax on a pack of cigarettes.

Hoffer is co-author of “Sin Taxes: Size, Growth, and Creation of the Sindustry,” a study by the Mercatus Center, a free-market research organization at George Mason University.

“It’s just a separate tax on smokers, in a different form,” he said.

Mason, the Racine representative, criticized the proposal as “short on policy and short on its effectiveness and not a good deal for the employees or the taxpayers.”

On double dipping

The committee also approved restricting “double dipping” to only retired public employees who come back to work to collect both their pension and paycheck — if they work less than two-thirds of full time hours, or about 26 hours a week.

A legislative audit found state agencies hired 2,783 public employees after they had retired between 2007 and 2011. Local governments and schools hired 2,599 Wisconsin Retirement System annuitants from January 2011 through March 2012.

Democrats asked, to no avail, for the proposal to be pulled for full legislative scrutiny.

“I would hope we would step back from this and have a broader conversation on it in a public hearing where it’s appropriate.” Mason said.

Round up

The finance committee also voted in favor of $1 million in funding for Teach for America in Milwaukee and to allow college graduates with job experience to teach in charter schools.

“Academic achievement for our children starts with great teachers in the classroom,” Tim Sheehy, president of  the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, vocal advocates of the Teach for America funding, said in a statement. “TFA takes the best and the brightest young teaching talent and deploys them in some of the most challenging urban education settings in America. The Finance Committee’s actions will enable a dramatically expanded presence of these school leaders where they are most needed.”

The funding boost would double the number of teachers from 150 to 300. TFA teaching experience also would be counted toward the necessary qualification requirements for school administrators, under finance committee action.

The committee also approved hiking fees $39.8 million to cover the costs of regulating air pollution. That’s about $2.6 million less than Walker has requested.

And the state added $1,100,000 annually for implementing academic and career planning statewide for students as young as sixth grade.

“It’s always easy to be bipartisan when you’re spending money,” said Grothman near the end of the meeting.

The finance committee meets again Thursday.

Contact Ryan Ekvall at rekvall@wisconsinreporter.com

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MADISON – Call it a quiet controversy.

But there are a lot of people who don’t much care for Common Core State Standards.

Opposition to the K-12 academic benchmarks that some conservatives have described as Big Brother education has swept the nation, and there is a growing core of Common Core combatants in the Badger State. They just don’t seem to get a lot of attention.

Several tea party groups, however, plan to be front and center at 10 a.m. Wednesday in room 411  of the Capitol for an informational hearing on Wisconsin’s implementation of the Common Core. The joint meeting of the Assembly and Senate Committees on Education will include testimony from CCSS advocates and critics, including Tony Evers, state superintendent of Public Instruction and Karen Schroeder of Advocates for Academic Freedom.

AT THE CORE: Opponents are preparing to make their stand against public education standards they see as usurping local control and further weakening the American education system.

Even before it begins the hearing that promises a passionate debate on public education has drawn heat from conservatives.

In a letter this week to Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, and Rep. Steve Kestell, R-Elkhart Lake, chairs of their respective education committees, three dozen conservative organizations criticized the hearing’s guest list, asserting the ratio of experts is heavily skewed to Common Core proponents.

“Out of a total of nine experts invited to speak at the joint hearing, a mere three are known to have serious concerns pertaining to CCSS,” states the letter, also sent to Gov. Scott Walker, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.  “One of those three experts was added only at the last minute as a result of public pressure.”

Olsen spokeswoman Amy Harriman, in an email to Wisconsin Reporter, said the senator appreciates the “help in planning for a diverse group of individuals with various expertise.” She said upon request an additional professional — critical of the Common Core — was added to the list of those scheduled to testify.

Kestell said the hearing isn’t about picking sides; it’s about bringing in people who can answer questions. He predicted the toughest questions for Evers and the Department of Public Instruction, the agency charged with implementing Common Core standards in language arts and math.

“They’re going to have a long day,” Kestell said.

For critics of the Common Core, the more they learn the less they like.

Weakening America?

Wisconsin formally adopted the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts in 2010. Those standards followed a year-long effort by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices to “define K-12 academic standards that are aligned with college and work expectations, inclusive of rigorous content and application, and are internationally benchmarked,” according to DPI.

The standards were reviewed and have been worked into curriculum development ever since, essentially by fiat, Kestell said, with Evers leading the initiative. Testing the effectiveness of those standards is expected to come.

Tea party conservatives aren’t the only critics of the Common Core. Progressives who see the standards and requisite testing as an extension of the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, too, are highly critical of Common Core.

But conservatives like Schroeder, who is also a member of Walker’s Educational Communications Board, see the Common Core as a $16 billion government boondoggle that will deliver the same inadequate academic results as the public education system has in recent generations.

“Many have been given the false impression that Common Core State Standards and the International Baccalaureate programs will reform and improve education. However, these two newest educational policies are an extension of old policies that weakened the American educational system and destroyed its international reputation for excellence,” Schroeder wrote in a column for Wisconsin Reporter.

The veteran public school teacher and educational consultant asserts the standards will be weaker than the rigor demanded of 21^st century students, causing delays in academic requirements. There’s something more nefarious at work, Schroeder contends — the American identity.

“Experts want more time to focus on encouraging American students to exchange their Constitution and national sovereignty for a submissive role in a world community,” she wrote in the column.

Kim Simac, president and founder of the Eagle River-based  Northwoods Patriots, contends the Common Core is an educational prototype, untested and thrown onto the market — a model that “spells disaster” for an already troubled public education system.

Simac, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2011 recall election against then-incumbent Sen. Jim Hoperin, D-Conover, is a principal signer of the letter to the education committee chairmen. Simac said she believes the Common Core is indoctrination of Wisconsin’s children, diminishing the “beauty of our republic.”

“So many things are being taken over and controlled. Our power is being regionalized and taken away from local entities,” she said.

‘Conspiracy theorists’

Some conservatives see the Common Core as another extension of the Obama administration push for big government – in health care, education, regulation, and more.

Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, points out that the Common Core is a state-to-state initiative, formulated long before Obama took office.

He sees talk of student indoctrination as the rhetoric of conspiracy theorists who for years have cried out for improved education and higher standards.

“It’s frustrating. When we try to move toward standardized testing we then get characterized by conspiracy theorists that this is some kind of takeover of student minds,” Turner said.

Turner, who is set to retire this summer after 24 years leading WASDA, defended the standards set in the Common Core as more rigorous and more challenging than previous disparate academic standards across the state. Case in point, Turner said, the tumbling test scores in the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concept Examination after the state modified performance standards to meet the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and math. Eventually, the Common Core assessments will replace the WKCE.

Turner called the Common Core “common sense.”

Primary concern?

Simac and fellow Common Core opponents recognize they’re trying to slow down a runaway train rolling downhill.

With so much of the system implemented, what can be done to change course?

“That’s a really good question,” Kestell said. “I’m not sure I have the answer. School districts across the state have already invested so much time and resources into developing curriculum in line with Common Core standards, and testing is down the pike.”

Kestell said something has to be done to address what he describes as Wisconsin’s “ad hoc attitude” toward curriculum. If not the Common Core, then what, the lawmaker asked.

“What I am very sure of is it’s not OK to do the same things we’ve always done,” he said.

Simac said opponents of the Common Core have just begun to fight. She said lawmakers need to take a stand, and their position could be a “liability” if they “pick the wrong side.” In other words, conservative lawmakers could face grassroots primaries.

“I feel like our generation has made so many poor decisions for the next generation,” Simac said. “If we do not fix our education for the future what are we leaving our children?”

Contact Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

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BARABOO — In this quiet Sauk County town of 12,000, the highly anticipated trial of dairy farmer and raw milk provider Vernon Hershberger began Monday morning with much fanfare.

With the courtroom packed, 30 or so supporters — including Hershberger’s wife and 10 children at times — sat in an overflow room set up with TVs to watch the trial. Unlike the people sitting in Judge Guy Reynold’s courtroom, those in the overflow room were free to cheer, hiss, laugh or talk about their affection for raw milk.

But then this trial isn’t about raw milk, at least so demands the prosecution. For the state, the case is about a dairy farm running a sham operation and flouting the law.

Vernon Hershberger (blue shirt) discusses the first day of his trial Monday afternoon. Hershberger is accused of operating a dairy and selling milk without a retail license in a case with national implications. (Photo: Wisconsin Reporter)

To Hershberger’s supporters, liberals and libertarians alike from all over the United States, the trial is about much bigger issues — personal freedom, the free market and the health benefits of an all-natural product.

Perhaps it’s fitting then, for critics who see the state of Wisconsin meddling where it doesn’t belong, that the week-long trial is being held at the Sauk County Courthouse — just up the street from Nanny Park.

And considering the sideshow of advocates and activists surrounding Hershberger’s day in court, maybe it’s apropos the trial is taking place in the home of the Circus World Museum.

While “food freedom” warriors made their case for the benefits of raw milk outside the courtroom, inside the state stressed that this is not a trial on the healthfulness of raw milk, adamantly keeping any mention of raw milk nutrition from the jurors.

Eric DeFort, assistant attorney general at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, objected several times during the defense’s opening statement on Hershberger’s private food club arrangement, his response to the state Department of Trade, Agriculture and Consumer Protection’s cease and desist order, or any reference to the merits of raw milk.

‘Sham investment’

The state accuses Hershberger of four criminal misdemeanors. The Loganville dairy farmer failed to obtain a retail food establishment license, produced milk in a dairy farm operation and operated a dairy plant without a license, according to court documents. He’s also accused of violating a Wisconsin Department of Trade and Consumer Protection hold order in June 2010, when he pulled down agency tape over his farm store, and resumed serving product to his food club members.

The state says Hershberger simply did not have a retail food license to sell food.

“He was acting as a dairy farmer; specifically he was processing dairy milk,” DeFort said. “He was packaging it. He was putting it in glass bottles and making it available for sale.”

In Wisconsin, “an individual who is a bona fide owner of that business entity may consume raw milk from that dairy farm, and may serve it to family members and nonpaying household guests.  However, a person who merely makes a sham investment in order to obtain raw milk is not a bona fide owner,” according to DATCP.

Regional environmental health officer Mitchell Lohr, witness for the prosecution, testified that Hershberger never had a license for the sale of retail food, although “there was food for sale for consumers.”

The judge at one point scolded Hershberger’s supporters in the courtroom for laughing at the state’s assertion the farmer could have obtained a retail food license had he stopped selling raw milk.

Trouble with the club

Glenn Reynolds, the Madison-based attorney representing Hershberger, says his client operated a private food club, where members are owners and not retail consumers. Therefore, Reynolds argues, Hershberger doesn’t need a retail food license.

“Membership required a yearly fee and suggested price for the product. Some people would pay more, some would not pay at all,” he said.

The defense attorney blasted the judge for “sanitizing the state’s defense.”

“He doesn’t want this to be about the health of raw milk, but that’s what this is about,” Reynolds told Wisconsin Reporter. “They don’t want private clubs to sell unpasteurized raw milk.”

Reynolds said the inspection of Hershberger’s farm came just weeks after then-Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed a bill in 2010 that would have legalized the sale of raw milk to consumers.

“I think it has big implications for the state,” Reynolds said. “If it didn’t, you wouldn’t see four lawyers on the state’s side. To put a farmer in jail for a product that is good and safe and wholesome — DATCP should be there for farmers, helping them, not to put them in jail.”

If convicted, Hershberger faces up to a year in jail and thousands of dollars in fines.

‘This is what we want to do’

His supporters cite the criminal prosecution of Hershberger as a threat to individual freedom, religious freedom, personal responsibility and private contracts.

Across the street at the Al. Ringling theatre, more  “real food freedom” advocates, including some leaseholders of the private food club on Hershberger’s Loganville farm, turned out to show their support. Direct-from-farm activists planned evenings this week of documentaries and discussions about natural food production.

Dontrell Bluford, of Stoughton, was a former co-owner in the food club who said he enjoyed the product.

“There is no license for raw milk. That’s why we have all the private contracts and the community says, ‘Hey, this is what we want to do,” Bluford said. “Nobody was hurt … People here, you will find that they’re adults, they’re responsible they take control of their lives and this is what they want to do.”

Kathryne Pirtle, a professional clarinetist and author from Addison, Ill., told Wisconsin Reporter she nearly died in 2002 from a chronic digestive disorder. She credits raw milk as “one of the main therapeutic dietary changes” she made to heal.

“As I started to eat these foods, I found out the government was interfering with access to these foods and trying to shut these small farms down,” Pirtle said. “Why is the government in the business of the consumer, when the consumer wants to have a relationship with the individual farmer?

“I’m really grateful to be able to eat these foods, because it’s the reason I’m still alive,” she said.

The Sauk County trial is being watched closely and the outcome, David Gumpert of Food Safety News opines, carries national political importance.

“Other cases similar to Hershberger’s have sprouted around the country, from Maine to California, where owners of small farms are selling meat, raw dairy products, and other staples directly to consumers in search of wholesome food,” Gumpert writes. “The controversy, and attendant legal problems, stem from the fact that the farmers are increasingly selling their food via private contracts, outside the regulatory system of state and local licenses and inspections that govern public food sales.”

As Gumpert notes, federal and state regulators have responded by seeking legal sanctions against farmers in Maine, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and California.

“While these cases are testing the limits of food regulation, they raise deeper and more fundamental questions. Why would hard-working, normally law-abiding farmers be teaming with educated urban and suburban consumers to flaunt licensing and permitting regulations and statutes that have held sway for decades?” Gumpert asked.

“These individuals are clearly interpreting ‘health’ and ‘safety; differently than the regulators … To these individuals, safety is much more than the single-minded focus regulators place on pathogens.  To many of them, who are parents, safety means not only food free of pathogens, but food free of pesticides, antibiotic residues, genetically modified (GMO) ingredients, and excessive processing.”

Judge Reynolds, upon bringing the first day of the trial to a close, instructed the jury not to discuss the case or “do any investigating.”

The trial is expected to conclude Friday.

Contact Ekvall at rekvall@wisconsinreporter.com

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MADISON — Lighting up may cost state employees $50 more per month, but the state’s coffers could be about $6 million richer over the next biennium, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed measure to affix a premium surcharge of tobacco-using state employees, a fee contained in the governor’s 2013-15 budget proposal, is expected to bring in about $2 million in 2013-14 and $4 million in 2014-15.

Proponents of the budget item, up for discussion with the Joint Finance Committee on Tuesday, say the surcharge is only fair because smokers and other tobacco users drive up health-care costs for all state employees and Wisconsin’s taxpayers.

Opponents have varying positions, from those who see the surcharge as just another sin tax to critics such as the American Lung Association, which asserts the fees don’t work and hit lower wage earners harder.

SURCHARGE: A proposal that would add a $50 monthly surcharge to Wisconsin state employees who use tobacco would generate $6 million in revenue for the state over the next two years. Obamacare would not allow termination of insurance coverage to state employees who lie about using tobacco.

Walker administration officials, however, have estimated health-care costs for tobacco users are as much as 35 percent higher than that of nonsmokers. The governor has said the surcharge would help offset those costs.

The national smoking rate is 19.3 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Tobacco use is highly correlated with a wide range of serious illnesses and the CDC estimates that annual smoking-related deaths in the U.S. total approximately 443,000,” the fiscal bureau report states. “In addition, the CDC estimates that for every smoking related death, 20 people suffer with at least one serious illness related to smoking.”

Tobacco use among state employees is about 9.6 percent, according to a 2012 state Department of Employee Trust Funds survey, based on self-reported responses. The fiscal bureau analysis does not note revenue projections based on stick incentive – that is, how many state employees would kick the habit should the surcharge be implemented.

ETF’s Group Insurance Board, which offers group health-care coverage plans for state employees, local government employees and Wisconsin Retirement System annuitants, would be charged with developing and administering a crediting mechanism that would credit surcharge revenue back to state agencies, the fiscal bureau states. The bill doesn’t specify how credits would be issued.

A number of issues are unaddressed in the surcharge bill, including just how it will be determined which employees are subject to the surcharge. The fiscal bureau parenthetically notes an attestation process.

Also unclear is:

• How the surcharge will be integrated into the state employee premium structure – “Whether to develop premium rates for tobacco users separate from nonusers, or maintain consistent rates and require the surcharge to be paid by affected employees as an additional employee-required contribution.
• How annuitant premium rates are structured to allow the use of sick leave credits for surcharge payments.
• The definition of tobacco use that conforms to federal law.
• How the attestations relating to tobacco use are to be administered and the information integrated into ETF and state agency computer systems.

State retirees who use tobacco products also would be required to pay the surcharge.

The bill directs surcharges paid by annuitants must be used to reduce future health-care coverage premiums for retirees and to reimburse ETF for costs incurred by the agency in providing health care coverage to retirees. The secretary of the state Department of Administration would be responsible for setting surcharge amounts to be used to reimburse ETF.

“Again, the bill does not specify how the surcharge revenues would be used to reduce future health care coverage premiums for annuitants,” so the insurance board would have to “develop and administer a mechanism for doing this.”

The Group Insurance Board is scheduled to meet Tuesday.

“ETF will be asking the board to approve recommendations for policies pertaining to the administration of the tobacco use surcharge proposed in the executive budget bill,” said Mark Lamkins, ETF spokesman.

In a memo to the insurance board, ETF advises the preferred approach, “in the interest of both administrative ease and fairness to our members,” is to apply the surcharge as an add-on.

“For example, if a Tier 1 contribution for regular employees is $85 (the 2013 value), a tobacco user would be charged $135. A state patrol classified employee who pays $31 for a Tier 1 plan would pay $81,” the memo states.

Wisconsin would join a growing lineup of states implementing tobacco use surcharges. The American Lung Association, according to the fiscal bureau report, cites a dozen states that impose a tobacco-user surcharge for state employees. Surcharge amounts generally fall in the range of $25 to $80 per month, according to Employee Trust Fund officials.

Wisconsin’s surcharge proposal would allow the Group Insurance Board to terminate the health-care insurance of an employee who falsely claims to not use tobacco. But the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, prohibits such penalties.

“Rather, those attesting falsely about their tobacco use must be allowed to re-file their attestation and the employer is permitted to recoup the unpaid surcharges,” the fiscal bureau report states. It appears the termination provision will be removed from the bill. The fiscal bureau recommends the Legislature modify the bill to allow the insurance board to recoup surcharge payments of false claimants “to the extent allowable under law.”

Walker’s 2013-15 budget proposal appears to count on the surcharge. The fiscal bureau notes that “estimated reductions in state fringe benefits costs associated with the proposed tobacco-user surcharge were factored into the calculation of the compensation reserves for most state agencies and the amounts appropriated separately to the University of Wisconsin System for increased unbudgeted compensation and fringe benefit costs.”

If the finance committee should decide to delete the surcharge provision, that unrealized revenue would increase fringe benefit costs from the levels projected for the compensation reserves and the UW System, the fiscal bureau warns.

Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

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MADISON — Federal health bureaucrats know applying for health insurance through the federal health care exchanges won’t be easy.

If it were, there wouldn’t be the need for tens of thousands of taxpaye- backed “navigators,” new positions that soon will be created to help steer consumers through the rough waters of Obamacare.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will provide Wisconsin with $829,300 in navigator grant funds as part of the $54 million HHS set aside nationally for one year’s worth of navigators. There is $1.7 million more available for community health centers through HHS.

Republicans on the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee want to make sure that not just any schlub who passes 30 hours of HHS-administered training, and navigates through the host of other regulations set by the federal government in its 63 pages of rules, gets to be an Affordable Care Act navigator.

“Basically what you’re looking at (with the JFC regulations) is a focus on Wisconsin-based issues, which the federal regulations for the exchange is not going to do,”J.P. Wieske, spokesman at the state Office of the Commissioner of Insurance, said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got a consumer coming in and they’re vulnerable. We need to make sure (the navigators) know what they’re talking about and are acting appropriately.”

Where is due north with Obamacare? Tens of thousands of ‘navigators’ costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, will try to help consumers find their way through the Affordable Care Act.

State oversight would include an additional 16 hours of pre-licensing training and completion of a written examination that passes muster with the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. The commissioner also can set testing requirements and fees for the tests, if the JFC’s motion passes through the House and Senate and survives the governor’s pen.

In addition to testing fees, the JFC set the initial license fee for a navigator at $75, with an annual license renewal of $35, which can be changed by the commissioner. The fees are $100 for entities that hire navigators.

Navigators, or their sponsoring entities, also will have to furnish a bond of at least $100,000 to protect “against the wrongful acts, misrepresentations, errors, omissions, or negligence of the navigator.”

These Obamacare Sherpas will, after all, have access to Social Security numbers, a host of patient financial and medical information and other sensitive data.

But some in the nonprofit community say the regulations are excessive and not about protecting consumers.

“It’s people trying to protect their turfs,” said Bobby Peterson, executive director of ABC for Health, a Madison-based nonprofit public interest law firm that links families to health care benefits. “A lot of brokers are alarmed. Their association is alarmed. A lot of what health care navigators will be doing is outside the scope of what an agent or a broker would be doing. It’s a bit of a tempest in a teapot.”

After the motion passed, two health insurance associations put out news releases championing the finance committee’s decision to protect consumers. The American Cancer Society put out a release blasting the “potentially onerous regulations.”

Peterson said navigators will be doing a lot more than comparing health care plans in Wisconsin. For example, he said, the removal of a projected 87,000 adults on BadgerCare who will become eligible for insurance on the federal exchange under Gov. Scott Walker’s Medicaid proposal adds to the already confusing seascape of the new federal health law.

“Those are issues that brokers are not going to want to deal with. So it’s a little ridiculous at some level,” he said.

Misha Lee, a lobbyist at the Independent Insurance Agents of Wisconsin, acknowledged that some level of protectionism is built into the proposed regulations.

“There is a factor in terms of trying to have somewhat of a level playing field,” he said. “Agents already today have to go through a number of different hurdles, but from our perspective, primarily this is about protecting consumers.”

Matt Banaszynski, executive vice president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Wisconsin, said in a statement that the regulations “will also help preserve the role of the health insurance agent and the viability of the health insurance market in Wisconsin.”

Health insurance agents, or any insurance agent who receives compensation from a health insurance company, will not be allowed to become navigators under the federal rules. However, other insurance agents such as property and casualty agents will be eligible to become navigators and receive federal grants.

Lee said health insurers are “feeling their livelihoods targeted because of the Affordable Care Act.”

“I think we sympathize with (critics) and understand their concern that dealing with a whole new health care delivery system is a challenge,” he said. “I think saying that (the regulations) are a barrier for people to gain access to the exchanges or to become navigators is misguided. From our perspective, the barrier is the whole new world order of the Affordable Care Act.”

Contact Ryan Ekvall at rekvall@wisconsinreporter.com.

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MADISON — You are probably a criminal.

You just may not know it.

With some 4,500 federal crimes on the books and, by conservative estimates, more than 300,000 regulations that carry a criminal penalty, law experts say the chances of an average American unwittingly committing a federal crime in his lifetime are pretty good.

Harvey Silverglate, author, lawyer and civil liberties advocate, asserts in his bombshell book, “Three Felonies a Day,” that average citizens routinely break federal law without any knowledge they are committing a crime.

“Given the enormity of the code, it is no wonder that the Ninth Circuit’s Chief Judge, Alex Kozinski, believes ‘You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal,’” notes the Federalist Society in a policy study titled, “The Explosion of the Criminal Law and Its Cost to Individuals, Economic Opportunity, and Society.”

If you haven’t unknowingly committed a crime yet, give it time. A law-hungry Congress continues to criminalize at an average rate of one new crime for every week of every year — including when its members are not in session, according to a 2011 report by the conservative Heritage Foundation titled, “Overcriminalization: An Explosion of Federal Criminal Law.”

“We are a far more heavily regulated society than we ever have been. Regulations are popping up like weeds,” said John Malcolm, Rule of Law Programs policy director and senior legal fellow at Heritage.

LOCKED UP: The federal government’s massive criminal code and its plethora of regulations have turned the Land of the Free into an overcriminalized nation, say reformers.

While Malcolm and other criminal code reform advocates don’t dispute the necessity of upholding the U.S. standard of being a nation of laws, the Founding Fathers, they say, would have been floored by the voluminous stack of federal code created in the 226 years since the drafting of the Constitution.

With so many laws and regulations, many of which are vague and widely open to interpretation, perhaps it’s no wonder that nearly 1.6 million Americans were locked up in state and federal prisons in 2011, or about 492 inmates per 100,000 residents, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Admissions to federal prisons increased 12 percent.

“You have average people, perfectly fine people, now being branded as criminals,” Malcolm said.

There are no good estimates on the cost of administering the federal criminal code, mainly because enforcement of those laws are spread out over so many agencies.

The cost to liberty is inestimable, reform advocates insist.

Scrubbing the code clean

A House Judiciary Committee task force aims to take on the Herculean task of reviewing Title 18 – the federal government’s big book of criminal and penal code – and coming up with recommendations to modernize criminal code.

U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, will serve as co-chair of the Over-Criminalization Task Force.

“We will examine the extent of the problem, eliminate some of the most egregious examples from the code and establish guiding principles for future Congresses to foster better uniformity and consistency in criminalization,” the Menomonee Falls Republican wrote in his weekly column.

It has been more than 50 years since the criminal code was last reviewed. There’s a lot of duplication between federal and state laws in there. But more so, Sensenbrenner said, there are too many laws lacking adequate mens rea — the intent to commit a crime.

To illustrate the problem, Sensenbrenner recently reintroduced the Criminal Code Modernization and Simplification Act , a 1,200-page bill, massive by the very nature of the subject matter. The bill cuts more than one-third of the existing criminal code and consolidates criminal offenses from other titles so that Title 18 includes all major criminal provisions.

“It’s time to scrub it clean and reduce federal spending by eliminating unnecessary criminal laws,” Sensenbrenner said, telling Wisconsin Reporter that the task force hopes to come up with some cost estimates on the scope of criminal code.

“Criminalization is the bluntest tool Congress wields.  And over-criminalization is a threat to personal liberty and an expensive and inefficient way to deal with a lot of our nation’s problems,” he said.

‘Astonishing proportions’

Sensenbrenner said the federal government’s role must be limited so state and local offenses are not subsumed within an ever-expanding criminal code.

But in recent decades there has been an explosion of criminal offenses.

The U.S. Constitution notes three federal crimes by citizens — treason, piracy and counterfeiting. As the Wall Street Journal noted in a 2011 examination of federal code, the number of criminal statutes numbered in the dozens at the turn of the 20th century.

Others have attempted to count and categorize federal offenses in recent years. They have failed.

The American Bar Association in a 1998 report concluded that the “amount of individual citizen behavior now potentially subject to federal criminal control has increased in astonishing proportions in the last few decades.”

Why? The War on Drugs in large part, say code reform advocates, and knee-jerk reactions by lawmakers to high-profile news stories in the rapidly moving Information Age.

“Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold increase,” wrote Fareed Zakaria, in a Time column headlined “Incarceration Nation.”

“More than half of America’s federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession,” Zakaria added.

America’s gun war, too, has criminalized law-abiding citizens, said Charles Heller, executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Heller points to federal law that criminalizes anyone without a concealed-weapons permit who happens to be driving within 1,000 feet of a school, with only a handful of exceptions.

The Second Amendment advocate faced a federal entanglement of his own. He said he was invited on a private tour of the USS Constitution in Boston, even given permission to fire the cannon. When federal officials inspected his car on site, they found he had guns lawfully locked up, Heller said. He was arrested, handcuffed and his guns confiscated, on charges of possessing weapons on a federal site.

Heller argued the law grants exceptions to those who are on federal grounds for a reason, and he contends his personal invitation by Old Ironsides curators was reason enough. He ended up pleading no contest to a petty offense, which remains on his record. Federal officers also took his “gorgeous” 1 1/2-inch pocketknife and his Leatherman tool.

“There’s more danger to liberty in United States from agencies like TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) than ever will be from Al Qaeda,” Heller said.

To save a woodpecker

And then there’s the case of woodpecker justice Fredericksburg, Va.

Skylar Capo saved a baby woodpecker from the family cat.

“She was just going to take care of it for a day or two, make sure it was safe and uninjured, and then she was going to let it go,” Alison Capo, mother of the then 11-year-old girl told WUSA TV in August 2011.

But a chance encounter with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent resulted in a $535 fine for Alison Capo, whose kind-hearted daughter apparently was in violation of the Federal Migratory Bird Act. Turns out the woodpecker was a protected species. The Capos said they had no idea.

The feds eventually canceled the citation, saying the matter was cleared up and that the ticket was mistakenly processed.

Others were not so lucky.

Florida seafood importer Abner Schoenwetter spent years in U.S. federal prison for violating Honduran law, even though the Honduran government said he did nothing wrong. His crime: He imported smaller lobster tails in plastic rather than cardboard, the Heritage Foundation’s John Malcolm said. Heritage has made Schoenwetter the poster-child of its campaign against overcriminalization.

Sensenbrenner said  criminal code reform is arguably the clearest bipartisan issue in a deeply divided Congress today.

“I’ve been on this for three Congresses now,” the Wisconsin congressman said. “This is the time to get it done.”

Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

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MADISON — Thank goodness the Dalai Lama stopped by.

There was so much scandal and nastiness in Washington, D.C., this week that it was nice to get a little peace in Madison, when Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, paid a call on the city, the Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker.

HELLO, DALAI: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, paid a call on Madison and state politicians this week.

It was a brief respite. The divided Legislature finished off a furious floor period of activity and heated debate this week, including passage of a bill that stripped the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors of much of its power.

IRS, AP and the letters of scandal

As he prepared for his meeting Tuesday morning with the peaceful Dalai Lama in Madison, Walker packed a rhetorical punch in a letter he and fellow Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana penned demanding President Obama call for a special prosecutor to investigate the Internal Revenue Service scandal.

Jindal, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, and Walker, vice chair, said they were disturbed after learning the IRS has been “unfairly targeting and applying added scrutiny” to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

“To be blunt, this is Big Brother come to life and a witch hunt to prevent Americans from exercising their First Amendment rights,” the governors wrote.

As the White House expressed consternation at the latest news from the scandal and Obama pledged to hold wrongdoers “fully accountable” if they acted in “anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way,” Walker and Jindal called the IRS’ actions “un-American.”

“The actions of the IRS are an attempt to gag the voices of Americans who may disagree with the policies and left-leaning ideology of your administration,” the governors wrote to Obama. “This is a subversion of American liberty and a secret but direct attack against the U.S. Constitution. Immediate action must be taken to ensure this never happens again.”

On Thursday, the president declared a special prosecutor would not be necessary.

The second Obama administration scandal, raising serious questions about the real freedom of the press, brought a long-serving Wisconsin congressman to the national spotlight.

U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin sees a sequel playing out with Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice.

“It’s just like with ‘Fast and Furious’. He’s dodging who is really responsible in the Justice Department,” Sensenbrenner told Wisconsin Reporter Wednesday after grilling Holder about what he knew and when he knew it in The Associated Press phone records scandal.

Sensenbrenner, a Menomonee Falls Republican, peppered Holder with questions during the attorney general’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee. Holder testified on an array of issues, including growing bipartisan questions and concerns about federal investigators who secretly seized phone records of AP editors and reporters.

The congressman charged that Holder’s agency has lacked credibility and accountability since its investigation of the ATF’s Fast and Furious scandal , a botched federal operation that moved — and lost — weapons from the U.S. to suspected gun smugglers in pursuit of Mexican drug kingpins. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was fatally shot in December 2010.

“Mr. Attorney General, I think this committee has been frustrated from at least the last two-and-a-half years… (T)here doesn’t seem to be any acceptance of responsibility in the Justice Department for the things that have gone wrong,” said Sensenbrenner, a long-time member of the Judiciary Committee.

Supervising the supervisors

The Legislature this week passed a bill that significantly diminishes the power and pay of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, a government body critics demand is overpaid, underworked and fiscally challenged.

The bill would shave two-thirds of the board’s budget, and sets up an April 2014 referendum that could result in a pay cut, to about $24,000 for supervisors — turning the job, in essence, into a part-time position. Supervisors’ terms would be halved from four years to two years, beginning in 2016.

Ultimately, the board’s power over county business, such as labor contracts, would be limited. The bill picked up support from some reluctant lawmakers after a flap involving County Board Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic and unauthorized negotiations, or discussions with a decertified union.

Opponents called the bill just more anti-Milwaukee legislation from a Republican-controlled Legislature with an ax to grind. Republicans countered that pairing back the board is about accountability and taxpayers rights.

The Senate approved the bill 19-14, with Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, the one Democrat joining Republicans in support. Walker, a former Milwaukee county executive, has said he supports the measure.

Freeze

With Republican indignation still ringing over legislative discovery that the University of Wisconsin System has hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves, Walker this week cut his proposed budget increase in system funding from $181 million to $87 million in the 2013-15 state budget. Walker also wants a two-year tuition freeze.

So do Wisconsin voters. A new Marquette Law School poll finds voters are overwhelmingly in support of a two-year tuition freeze – 76 percent, to be precise, according to the poll. A little more than one-fifth, 21 percent, of respondents, are opposed.

The Marquette poll also found 32 percent of respondents favor expanding the voucher program statewide, while 16 percent support expansion to larger school districts only, as Walker has proposed. Another 29 percent want to end the state’s limited voucher program entirely, while 15 percent oppose expansion beyond existing voucher cities, in Milwaukee and Racine.

Sentiments haven’t changed much since March, when 37 percent of respondents favored statewide expansion, and 28 percent wanted to scrap vouchers altogether. Then, 14 percent were in favor of expansion in the largest districts, with 14 percent opposed to expansion.

The poll interviewed 717 registered Wisconsin voters by both landline and cell phone May 6-9, 2013. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

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