Walker’s point: Jobs

Press Club: A member of your transition team, speaking for himself, recently suggested shifting the tax burden by increasing the sales tax. You took that idea off the table. Do you envision any scenario under which Wisconsin taxpayers will face an increase in taxes or fees?

Walker: “In terms of taxes, no. In terms of fees, to me I look at a fee, if everybody has to pay it, that’s a tax. If everybody in town has garbage and you have to pay for that, that’s a tax. If somebody pays a user fee for a specific area, to me that’s different, and I haven’t moved that off the table. In terms of overall taxes, the sales tax, the income tax, the corporate tax, certainly we’re going to do our best to ensure that local governments keep property taxes under control.

“We’re going to surround ourselves with talented and gifted people to take on specific duties within our administration. The bottom line is the buck stops with me. I’m going to put in people regardless of just ideological belief, I’m going to put in people based on their ability to be competent in moving forward, get the state working, get a state agency working, but ultimately they know going in they’re going to have to carry out my agenda and the agenda I got elected on, not something that someone else is bringing in there.”

Press Club: Gov. Jim Doyle talked about how the state government eliminated about 10 percent of its staff in the course of his administration. Do you think there are going to be more cuts going forward, in addition to what you’ve already talked about with pensions, benefits and so on?

Walker: “Yes, but not new layoffs. What we’re looking at specifically is roughly about 4,000 positions today that are vacant and are still funded. The funding is still in those state agencies. So even though there’s not bodies in the state agencies, there’s still money in the stage agencies. If you permanently eliminate those positions, and remember they’ve been vacant for almost a year and a half, and someone else has found a way to provide those services, if we were able to get by, that’s probably a prime spot to start with as opposed to taking out other positions where people would be out  of a job and on unemployment. That would be something we’d use to balance not only the next budget, but long term it helps you because it lowers your legacy costs and reduces your structural deficit.”

Press Club: You might have to go beyond that 4,000?

Walker: “It’s possible. We’ll have to look at things as we get through the details. We’ve gone through about half the briefings, and we have a few more. I haven’t ruled that out.”

Press Club: Many government jobs are middle-class income producers. What importance do you place on these jobs for state economic development?

Walker: “I was frustrated a year ago when the data came out that showed there were officially government jobs than manufacturing jobs for the first time in our state’s history. That’s just not sustainable. You can’t have more people working here than the people that are paying the bills that provide those services. There’s got to be a balance. There are rightful places for public employees, particularly public safety. But we’re going to look in as many ways possible at whatever alternatives we have both to provide services and more importantly to stimulate the economy.”

Press Club: President Obama is similar to yourself in terms of having a big agenda when he was elected. He’s been stumbling a bit. Do you worry that you might stumble by over-reaching?

Walker: “I think the focal point has got to be on jobs and on the budget. Without being a political pundit, part of the president’s challenge is he took on more issues before fully resolving the economy. If you remember the beginning of the stimulus, the argument was we had to pass the stimulus to keep unemployment from going above eight percent. It ultimately creeped up close to 10 percent.  People who looked at the stimulus package and were left unemployed said,  ‘What did this do?’ You can argue whether it would have been worse or not had it not happened, but I don’t think when you have an economic crisis of that proportion around the globe and in this country particularly, you can stop keeping your eye on that ball.

“And I think a lot of people, similar to the mistake President Bush made when he went on the U.S.S. Lincoln under the banner that said ‘Mission Accomplished’ left a lot of people wondering what was going on in both cases. You’ve got to focus, you’ve got to priority, you’ve got to stay on it. From our standpoint, I told people repeatedly, I’ve told people in my transition team and I’ve told others who will listen, for the next four years, there are two priorities as to what will come across my desk and what we’re going to focus in on. What will this do to help existing businesses in this state stay here, grow here or expand here? Or, secondarily, what will this do to help attract businesses who aren’t currently in the state to come and add jobs to the state of Wisconsin? If it’s not one of those two issues, it’s not a priority. We’re just not going to focus in on it. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to do anything else, but to me in terms of our focus, our priority, our agenda, is going to be driven by those things.”

Press Club: What kind of priority will you place on Wisconsin’s tourism industry?

Walker: “It’s about a $12 billion business in this state. Manufacturing, agricultural and tourism are the three largest core industries. They have been for the last 162 years. I think they’re going to be core to getting us out of the state’s recession. Tourism, as much as anything, has been challenged. The good news is we have incredible assets all across the state. Right here in Milwaukee, the largest tourist attraction in the state is Miller Park. You think about Summerfest, State Fair and other attractions like that. And you think about bringing up people from our largest market, which is Chicago, one of the great things is you can bring them into great attractions here and then attract them even further up to the Dells or to Minocqua or to Door County.

“We’ve got to be aggressive in that. I think we need to be a bit more aggressive in public-private partnership and there are different ways of looking at that. We’d like to do more to partner with the tourism industry to find greater ways to promote that. And I think in terms of the budget, we need to make sure the vast overwhelming amount of dollars that are in the Department of Tourism are money spent directly on promotions, not just on staff.

“Whether it’s on Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, we’ve got 15,000 inland lakes, 5,000 more than Minnesota. And all of ours have fish in them. When you look at the waterways in this state and the rivers – we’re the only state in the union surrounded by the greatest river in the U.S. and two Great Lakes. We’ve got all of these assets out there and all of these reasons that draw people in, that make it ultimately a great place to visit, to swim to canoe, to boat, to ski, you name it. That’s what people come to Wisconsin for. I remember when I was a kid, ‘Escape to Wisconsin’ was a great slogan. Why do people come up from the major markets? They come to get away from it all. We have something that most of those places don’t have. We need to do a better, more aggressive job of marketing that.”