Taking a fresh look at Evers’ promises
It’s been two and a half years since Democratic Gov. Tony Evers first took office in Wisconsin.
Having signed his second state budget into law earlier this month, Evers has had his final shot of his first term at assigning budget dollars to some of his priorities.
Politifact Wisconsin has been monitoring 27 promises Evers made on the campaign trail using the Evers-O-Meter. The $87.3 billion two-year spending plan — plus money pouring in from the federal government for coronavirus relief — addressed some of them, but not all.
Here’s a look at where four of those promises stand today.
Create tax credits and other programs to boost lead abatement efforts
On the campaign trail, Evers said he would expand the state’s lead abatement efforts through tax credits and other programs.
In Wisconsin, children under 6 are considered the most vulnerable to the effects of lead exposure, according to the state Department of Health Services. In 2018, 4.5% of Wisconsin children under 6 had blood lead levels of 5 mcg/dL or above, the state’s most recent data show.
During his first years in office, Evers established a lead pollution czar to lead a statewide push to eradicate lead contamination, and state Republicans approved a smaller share of the dollars he’d asked for in his first budget — $14 million — to fund lead abatement in homes occupied by low-income children and pregnant people who are eligible for government assistance.
Evers also proposed in his first budget using state funds to cover costs of replacing lead service lines, a provision Republicans removed.
In his 2021-23 budget, Evers tried again to dedicate $40 million to covering costs of replacing those lines. Republicans rejected it again.
But the governor has signaled that he will send federal stimulus money to the effort. That includes in Milwaukee, where leaders are planning to chip in American Rescue Plan Act money to continue replacing the nearly 70,000 lead service lines still left in the city.
Though Evers has largely been unsuccessful at state-funded efforts to boost lead abatement, federal dollars could help advance the state’s work.
Because this is the final budget of Evers’ term, and because the governor is instead looking to stimulus money to help address the issue, we rate this Compromise.
Create an Office of Inspector General to serve as an independent watchdog
About two years ago, we rated Evers’ pledge to create an independent Office of the Inspector General “Stalled.”
When he ran for governor, his campaign website said he would create the office “to ensure families have an independent, nonpartisan watchdog keeping an eye on our Wisconsin government.”
It could have been created with an executive order, but nine months into his term, we wrote, he had yet to do so.
Today, 30 months into his term, Evers still hasn’t created the office. And there is no indication any action is forthcoming.
Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback said in an email that his most recent biennial budget was “primarily aimed at addressing the immediate needs of the state and (supporting) our state’s economic recovery in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.”
He is hopeful that his next biennial budget could include a proposal for the office, Cudaback said.
But that, of course, depends on a future term. And the promise was for his first term.
We rate this Promise Broken.
Increase spending on local road maintenance
In the second budget of his term, Evers once again moved to increase spending on local road maintenance.
Evers’ first budget included nearly $400 million in new money for road maintenance, money that flowed from a GOP-backed plan to raise title fees people pay when they buy their vehicles.
He did not try this time for long-term transportation funding methods like raising the gas tax, which he campaigned on and Republicans rejected in his previous budget.
But when he signed the $87.3 billion Republican-written budget on July 8, it included $100 million for a one-time local road improvement program. It also included a 2% increase in each year for the general transportation aids program that helps municipalities offset the costs of road construction and maintenance.
We leave our rating Promise Kept.
Dissolve and replace state economic development agency
We wrote in 2019 that the governor had flipped his position on dissolving and replacing the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a public-private partnership that oversees grants and loans given to businesses in exchange for the promise of new jobs.
On the campaign trail, Evers had been critical of WEDC, created by former Gov. Scott Walker, calling the agency “a constant source of controversy, inefficiency and ineffectiveness” in a 2018 interview.
By November of that year, he had announced plans to replace it with a state agency.
State Republicans blocked him from taking action by giving themselves control over WEDC for the first nine months of his term in 2019.
Nearly two years after he regained control, however, those plans have not materialized and WEDC is still up and running.
Cudaback said the agency has entered “a new era of transparency and accountability” under the governor and WEDC Secretary and CEO Missy Hughes.
Maybe so. But that was not the promise made.
We rate this Promise Broken.