APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers began his statewide budget listening tour with a stop in Appleton Monday night.
At Einstein Middle School, community members voiced their budget priorities to Evers. He sat in on six breakout groups relating to climate change, the economy, infrastructure, education, healthcare and communities.
One member in a listening session said, “I am concerned about private school vouchers taking more and more money, funding, from public schools.”
Evers said with an over $4 billion surplus, the state can begin investing in long list of standing priorities.
“Expanding Badger Care, legalizing marijuana, protecting access to reproductive healthcare, enacting common sense gun safety reform, moving forward on evidence based justice reform, protecting our environment and investing in our kids and schools at every level,” Evers said.
On the other side of the aisle, Republican Rep. Ron Tusler said the focus should not be on spending the state’s budget surplus.
“We took too much of your money,” Tusler said. “So we’ve got over $5 billion that we took as taxation that we didn’t give back, so I think my biggest concern this upcoming budget is, we need to give this money back.”
Tusler told FOX 11 it’s great to know what Evers is thinking for the budget, and hopes his message to the governor is clear.
“We need to give this money back. It isn’t ours, it was our taxpayers,” he explained. “People are suffering from inflation, they’ve got high gas prices, high groceries. There’s good things we can do with this money by giving it back.”
Evers says there’s still a ways to go before a final decision is made on what happens with the surplus.
“I know that they have priorities, but there’s lots of priorities that, in addition to lowering your taxes, we’re one of the lowest tax states in the nation,” he said. “I think the information came out a little bit ago. But we’ll see.”
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