Progressive Thinking

Senator Smith discusses recent developments in the fight for fair maps and how we can approach redistricting with an eye to incorporating public comment and lessons learned from other states.

MADISON - The most common question I get as a state legislator is "Can't you all just work together?" In this terribly divided country we're living in, that's a big ask. But it's abundantly clear that people want their elected officials to work things out together.

Last week we were treated to the perfect illustration of why we aren't working together. The Republican Speaker of the Assembly, Robin Vos (R-Burlington) called a press conference in the middle of a floor session on Tuesday for an important announcement. Of course we were all curious what the import ant announcement might be, so I went to the room to find out. As it turned out, Speaker Vos announced he had come to the realization that Wisconsin needed to adopt a redistricting plan like what Iowa had. He wanted us to know that he had been thinking about this over the weekend.

After over a decade of continual opposition, the Speaker's epiphany was shocking to say the least. Wisconsin has gerrymandered political maps that heavily favor Republicans. Only a reformed system of redistricting where legislators don't approve their own maps would cure this problem, and this isn't it.

The Iowa redistricting law was the standard-bearer back when I joined Representative Spencer Black to introduce redistricting reform in 2009. As the Assembly Committee on Elections Chair at the time, I was there when we held our first and only public hearing on the bill. It's common for legislation to take a couple tries and plenty of public input before it becomes law. But sadly, after Republicans took control of the Governor's office and both houses of the Legislature and approved maps heavily lopsided in favor of Republicans, there was zero chance of redistricting reform.

While Speaker Vos has been conjuring a path to redistricting reform, he was issuing threats to impeach Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she takes any action on the court. Now the Speaker is convening a secret panel of former justices to help justify his decision to start an impeachment proceeding of Justice Protasiewicz, who was elected by an 11% margin (a landslide in Wisconsin politics).

Speaker Vos is using an outdated version of the bill from 2013 for a reason. The bill I authored in 2021 would draw maps and approve them in the most nonpartisan way allowed under current law. If the Speaker and other Republicans cared about redistricting, they could have made a good-faith effort to reach out to those of us who have been working on this issue for years. If they had done so, they would've known that in response to public input and other states' innovations, we are seeking to further update the bill in preparation for 2030. My co-author, Representative Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish B ay) and I are engaging good-government stakeholders to create a new Wisconsin model of redistricting modeled from all the other states that have passe d redistricting reform.

Those constituents who ask why we can't work together might be best answered by pointing out that the powerful majority party isn't interested in what the minority party has to offer. There have been no public hearings and no inclusion or consideration of ideas from anyone else. We used to hold in-person executive sessions during the committee process, a time to introduce amendments and learn about the motivation each senator had for attempting t o fix or change a bill. Now committee chairs send members a paper ballot fo r us to vote either yes or no on bills they choose are worthy in their mind to move forward. You may wonder why we can't work together, but we aren't even given a chance to work together in committee. We hardly know each other.

What you are seeing in the news these days is a direct result of unaccountable legislators who are gerrymandered into power with no concern that they must answer to you. The Speaker's ultimatum - adopt his unvetted bill continuing his Party's control or he will impeach Justice Janet Protasiewicz - leaves Wisconsin in a "Vos-tage" situation.

Senator Smith represents District 31 in the Wisconsin State Senate. The 31st Senate District includes all of Buffalo, Pepin and Trempealeau counties and portions of Pierce, Dunn, Eau Claire, Jackson and St. Croix counties.

Republican politicians in Madison are ready once again to ignore the will of the People and impeach duly-elected Justice Protasiewicz to maintain their grip on power.

MADISON - Impeachment proceedings have become commonplace in our country's political landscape nowadays. I think we all can assume the founders of our country knew human nature – they know people and politicians can be flawed and impeachment was the check they needed to prevent individuals from abusing power. What our founders failed to imagine was the cheap and weaponized way that impeachment would be used to topple democracy and our institution of government.

Early Americans fought so hard to create our democratic republic and furnish it with the kind of protections they thought would best protect the liberty and the voice of the American public. It’s unlikely that they envisioned that impeachment could be used to undo the results of fair and free elections.

We are witnessing the denigration of our democracy with talk of impeaching Justice Janet Protasiewicz. It’s simple: voters overwhelmingly turned out in April to elect a justice who they believed would reaffirm the right for women to choose to have an abortion. Speaker Robin Vos and Republicans are using impeachment to deny women the ruling they need and deserve.

Robin Vos understands that both his Party and the Republican agenda are aging rapidly. Conservatives’ ability to use tricks and tradecraft to serve their fringe ideologies is fading against the inevitability of the People’s will, and so their sleight of hand grows more risky and more desperate.

Removing duly-elected Justice Protasiewicz would be a coup. Justice Protasiewicz was elected by an 11% landslide. As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, a coup is a “sudden, violent seizure of power from a government.” Justice Protasiewicz has only been serving for 1 month and hasn’t even taken any action yet – sudden is certainly the case. The violence in this agenda may be a little harder to see, but the January 6^th insurrection showed just how far Republicans will go for a political win.

When a political party does not have the People's will on their side, their last resort is to use any and all means to stretch the law. Republicans have determined that their best strategy is to have the Assembly impeach Justice Protasiewicz, then have Senate Republican Leader Devin LeMahieu refuse to hold a hearing. This would leave our Supreme Court in a 3-3 limbo, neutralizing one of the three branches meant to impose checks and balances that protect the People.

Republicans don’t care if they break Wisconsin for the rest of us. They would rather burn it all to the ground than relinquish control.

Republicans are finally paying the piper, and now they’re running scared to grasp at whatever ephemeral strands of power they can grab. Those who have been defrauding Wisconsin’s voters fear that proper oversight will curtail the extrajudicial powers they have accumulated.

The ball, as always, is in the majority’s court. They have the opportunity to run up the score – until they inevitably lose the game when voters show up again next fall.

If Republicans use procedural hijinks to subvert the will of Wisconsin voters for yet another election cycle, Republicans will pay the price at the ballot box again in 2024. Despite what the numbers in the Wisconsin Legislature may tell you, Republicans’ agenda is supported by a deep minority of voters.

It’s not too late for those elected to represent the People to do so. Now is the time to demonstrate that their priorities align with those of their constituents.

Ball’s in their court.

Senator Smith represents District 31 in the Wisconsin State Senate. The 31st Senate District includes all of Buffalo, Pepin and Trempealeau counties and portions of Pierce, Dunn, Eau Claire, Jackson and St. Croix counties.

Sen. Smith writes about how Legislative Republicans chose to cut the UW System’s budget by $32 million, leaving universities almost half a billion dollars short.

MADISON - Ever hear the term gaslighting? It’s an odd term, but the practice has become too common in politics these days. It comes from a play written by Patrick Hamilton called “Gaslight.” In the play, a husband manipulates his wife into thinking she is having a mental breakdown by gradually changing the intensity of the gaslamps in their home.

A contemporary example is the rhetoric surrounding our college campuses. Republicans claim college students are being indoctrinated by liberal educators and institutions. It’s the latest futile effort to make our younger generations second-guess their educational experience.

This has been a coordinated effort by the Republican Party in every state across the nation. Republicans have come to realize they have nothing left to offer young voters. Republicans haven’t quite given up yet, but their last chance is to gaslight our next generation, or at the very least discredit their thoughts and opinions. Their hardline opposition to abortion and innate desire to cut government into nothing is too entrenched within their ranks. The philosophical divide between outdated conservative principles doesn’t jive with new and progressive desire for change favored by most in our next generation.

College students have turned out in droves in recent elections, overcoming continual attempts by Republicans to suppress their vote over the past 13 years. Republicans shortened the early voting period, passed a voter ID law that doesn’t allow certain college IDs and gerrymandered campuses to limit students’ ability to elect candidates of their choice.

Republicans aren’t shy about it either. At a recent Republican National Convention event, Cleta Mitchell from the Bradley Foundation said, “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”

The Republicans’ next best strategy to prevent college students from voting is to gaslight them into thinking they are being brainwashed by our educators and universities. It’s how they’ve justified their devastating cuts to the UW System and endless attempts to depress voter turnout in college communities.

As a father, I’ve learned to listen to our younger generation. Young people want to shape our society and make their own decisions. After all, they will be the ones who inherit the world we build today. Our job as the current leaders of our society is to give them every best chance to succeed by listening to them now.

Republicans can do better by listening and appealing to young voters. If we choose to listen, there’s so much to learn about how a bright-eyed generation perceives the world our older generations created. These fresh perspectives can help us understand that our society and institutions unfairly favor certain races over others, or that gender identity and sexual orientation are more complex than what many people thought. We will understand how hard it is for young people to flourish in our current economy.

Underlying all of these ailments to our society, we will understand that our cardinal sin has been ignoring problems until they become crises. It’s not indoctrination that’s driving the conversation in education. It’s a different perspective and a new, clear view of our current problems. We should encourage young people choosing to address rather than ignore the problems in our society.

I didn’t have the opportunity to go to college; I learned my trade as a window cleaner from my dad and developed it into a successful business. It’s ironic that I’m now the only State Senator in Wisconsin to represent two four-year UW schools. Like so many in our state, I have great respect for the “Wisconsin Idea” that education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom. I learned by listening to everyone, separating the facts from the BS, making more than my fair share of mistakes and volunteering every bit of my free time to supporting our community’s schools.

I call it like I see it. Right now, I see Republicans giving up on our next generation and telling young people that they can’t think for themselves. It doesn’t take a college education to see through this last-ditch effort to keep a generation down.

Senator Smith represents District 31 in the Wisconsin State Senate. The 31st Senate District includes all of Buffalo, Pepin and Trempealeau counties and portions of Pierce, Dunn, Eau Claire, Jackson and St. Croix counties.

Sen. Smith celebrates Labor Day in commemoration of the contribution workers and organized labor have made to our society. Going forward, it’s imperative that we continue to safeguard these protections.

BRUNSWICK, WI - For Americans, Labor Day has come to signify the end of summer, but the Labor Day holiday is meant to honor and recognize the essential role workers have played in our nation’s history.

Prior to the 1930s, labor conditions were dire. Muckraking journalists like William B. Hard and Upton Sinclair wrote shocking exposés of workers killed and maimed on the job. The resulting groundswell of outrage led to action, and in 1911 Wisconsin became the first state with a successful workers’ compensation program, with most states soon following suit.

In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which gave workers the right to form unions and required employers to bargain collectively with those unions on issues of pay, hours and other conditions of employment.

1935 was also the year John L. Lewis founded the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which later became the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The CIO became the umbrella organization for the United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers of America and eventually merged with the American Federation of Labor to become the AFL-CIO.

Three years later, labor unions succeeded in advocating for the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), which set the first federal minimum wage, banned child labor, required overtime pay and set the eight-hour work day.

During World War II, labor unions pledged not to strike for the duration of the war. With wages frozen during the war effort, workers were instead afforded other benefits such as paid vacation, cost-of-living allowances, employer-paid health plans and grievance arbitration.

After the war, when employers attempted to turn the clock back on these benefits, unions organized strikes to protect their hard-won gains. Once new benefits became a staple of union contracts, even nonunion employers were obliged to include them to stay competitive in recruiting workers.

Through the decades, labor unions continued to fight. In 1964, labor unions pushed to add Title VII to the Civil Rights Act, banning employees and applicants from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

In January of 1968, President Lyndon Johnson called it the “shame of a modern industrial nation” that despite these hard-fought protections, each year over 14,000 workers were killed and 2.2 million injured on the job. The patchwork of state law was not enough – federal action was needed.

While Johnson did not get this proposal through during his presidency, President Richard Nixon (not the biggest fan of unions himself) nevertheless helped pass the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970. OSHA set safety and health standards and provided training and enforcement to back up those standards.

Child labor protections, safety standards and collective bargaining are all important protections that have helped ensure the well-being of workers. But to this day, there are forces that work against these protections in the guise of free market capitalism.

This session, Republican legislators introduced a bill to allow children as young as 14 to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants (current law says you have to be 18). If passed, Wisconsin would have the lowest such limit nationwide. Underage access to alcohol is nothing to be cavalier about, and I question the safety of such a proposal.

Republican legislators have also circulated a bill to remove the requirement that 14- and 15-year-olds get work permits – a measure put in place to ensure students remember their first job is to excel in the classroom.

They couch these provisions as ways to address workplace staffing issues, but in reality it’s part of Republicans’ long fight to peel back protections for workers and allow businesses to pay their employees less.

Our children are the future of our economy. We should be encouraging them to apply themselves in the classroom before entering the workforce so that they can build the skills they need to be prepared for their careers.

The long road to a safer workplace is an inspiring story, but we’re not done yet. Labor Day reminds us there are still victories to win. We can’t let worker protections fall by the wayside, especially when it comes to our children.

Senator Smith represents District 31 in the Wisconsin State Senate. The 31st Senate District includes all of Buffalo, Pepin and Trempealeau counties and portions of Pierce, Dunn, Eau Claire, Jackson and St. Croix counties.

Senator Smith outlines legislation that would standardize Wisconsin’s laws on alcoholic beverages and explains the importance of bringing alcohol regulation up to date.

MADISON - Rules and regulations often get a bad rap. They can be onerous, outdated, or both. But at their best, regulations are put into place to ensure the safety of our communities, often in response to new technologies or evolving economies.

Occasionally regulations are implemented with foresight, but it’s not easy to predict how our society will change in advance. Regulations are oftentimes put in place because accidents occurred, or unscrupulous people cheated others.

I have the honor of serving on the Senate Committee on Universities and Revenue. At a public hearing last week, my colleagues and I heard from the public on two bills which propose changes to the way our state regulates alcoholic beverages and related industries.

Wisconsin’s system for regulating alcoholic beverages is called the three-tier system. It governs how manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of alcoholic beverages can relate to each other. The three-tier system prevents members of one category from having business interests related to the other categories, as well as preventing monopolistic practices.

This system evolved in the wake of Prohibition, when states were charged with developing alcohol regulations from scratch. As the industry has evolved since then, many exceptions have been made to the system, such as tap rooms and distilleries.

Because of the patchwork nature of this system, the three-tier system needs updates. Some of these changes are an effort to keep up with evolving technologies, while some are closing loopholes people have found to skirt the law.

We heard about new machines that turn alcohol into mist that is then inhaled. Ingesting alcohol in this way introduces it to the bloodstream faster, leading to concerns that consumers will inadvertently give themselves alcohol poisoning.

Another very different technology allows businesses to evade taxes. This software, referred to as an automated sales suppression device, or “zapper,” falsifies records of transactions in order to misrepresent sales.

The legislation considered even touched on eliminating loopholes in lottery regulation. Some lottery winners have attempted to transfer their winnings to someone else, sometimes for altruistic reasons. But we’ve also seen winners transfer their earnings in an effort to avoid paying back taxes or child support. The passage of this legislation would make this kind of evasion a felony.

But the largest piece of legislation brought to the committee would overhaul the regulations overseeing the three-tier system. These changes are meant to create clarity by standardizing the hodgepodge of alcohol regulations put in place over the last century.

New innovations within the industry such as wineries and tap rooms spurred these changes. The current three-tier system does not easily accommodate these types of businesses.

Wedding or event barns are another type of establishment where regulation has lacked standardization and predictability. Currently these seasonal event venues are not licensed to sell alcohol and don’t fit easily into the laws as written.

We heard from many event barn proprietors who are already doing the right thing by contracting with licensed alcoholic beverage suppliers and servers. This legislation is aimed at the bad actors who do not already abide by industry standards of safe serving and age restrictions on alcohol consumption.

There are a lot of stakeholders interested in the outcome of this legislation, intended to level the playing field. It has been very difficult to bring everyone to the table and get them on board. Between the taverns, wineries, craft brewers, distillers and wholesalers, there has been a lot of give and take involved in these negotiations.

These solutions are not perfect, and nobody is completely satisfied. The commonality among all these groups is their recognition that alcohol should be regulated to protect the consumer, and these regulations should be clear enough for manufacturers, distributors and retailers to abide by the rules.

Creating new and accurate definitions and fitting them into a comprehensive and comprehendible set of rules without unduly burdening Wisconsin businesses should be the goal. The process of negotiating this bill is an example of what can be accomplished when we come together and compromise. As a legislature, we should continue to push for solutions that work for and advance the safety of all Wisconsinites.

Senator Smith represents District 31 in the Wisconsin State Senate. The 31st Senate District includes all of Buffalo, Pepin and Trempealeau counties and portions of Pierce, Dunn, Eau Claire, Jackson and St. Croix counties.