This is a guest opinion column by Barbara Dittrich.
On the Wisconsin August referendum times 2: With billions of your hard-earned dollars on the line, shouldn’t you have some idea where they are being spent? Shouldn’t you have a voice in your state government that can influence how those dollars are allocated? VOTE YES to give yourself a voice.
It’s election season, and in addition to being out campaigning for my own reelection to the Wisconsin State Assembly, I am out educating voters to say “YES” to their own best interests on the August 13th primary ballot.
Two Wisconsin August referendum ballot questions appear on the second side of your ballot that are key to restoring our state’s constitutional foundations as originally intended. With absentee ballots already in the hands of those who choose to vote by mail, I have also had several people reach out to me asking what the questions mean and how they should vote.
I urge you to restore your own voice and best interests by voting “Yes” to both Wisconsin August referendum ballot questions on your August 13th ballot.
Question 1 reads, “Delegation of appropriation power. Shall section 35 (1) of Article IV of
the Constitution be created to provide that the legislature may not delegate its sole
power to determine how moneys shall be appropriated?” Shall section 35 (1) of article
IV of the constitution be created to provide that the legislature may not delegate its sole
power to determine how moneys shall be appropriated?”
Question 2 reads, “Allocation of federal money. Shall section 35 (2) of Article IV of the
constitution be created to prohibit the governor from allocating any federal moneys to the
governor accepts on behalf of the state without the approval of the legislature by joint
resolution or as provided by legislative rule?”
I am encouraging every voter I communicate with to vote “YES” on each of these two
questions.
Why?
Let’s look back to the genesis of these questions on your ballot. When the COVID-19 nightmare came to visit us all, the federal government, first under President Trump, then under President Biden, sent enormous amounts of money to the states for “COVID Relief,” intended to mitigate the spread of the illness and prop up an economy devastated by widespread shut down of schools and businesses. While some of those funds were restricted in how they could be spent, much of the money was not.
That was not necessarily a problem for most states, but it became a big problem for
Wisconsin.
Back in the 1930’s, Wisconsin’s legislature relinquished its constitutional power of the purse when it came to federal funds directed to our state. This put our governor in a position to have his slush fund to spend billions of YOUR federal tax dollars any way he wished when it came to those COVID relief funds that were unrestricted. Today’s legislature quickly noted this problem and tried to restore our state’s spending and allocating authority to where they belong. Unfortunately, today’s governor didn’t want that level of accountability.
Now lest I sound too partisan, note that the non-partisan legislative audit bureau found
in 2022 that our governor was not being very transparent with the way he was spending
those dollars. (See Decisions About the Use of Supplemental Federal Funds Report 22-
23 | December 2022.)
With billions of your hard-earned dollars on the line, shouldn’t you have some idea where they are being spent? Shouldn’t you have a voice in your state government that can influence how those dollars are allocated?
After hearing frustrations from citizens and even special interests, in addition to my own beliefs on how good governance should work, my answer is a resounding yes! During the COVID debacle of Tony Evers’ spending spree, we saw millions of your dollars being directed to his buddies at Planned Parenthood, which I will note, were never shut down as your local churches and schools were.
Look at the ridiculous amount of money spent on a field hospital at State Fair Park that never housed patients. Even people in the telecommunications industry were privately telling me that Evers did not properly direct monies meant to help with rural broadband to the areas where they were most needed. That is bound to happen when a governor doesn’t have good input from the legislature, who should be making those decisions.
Our government is not intended to be a monarchy. It’s time to correct this decision our predecessors made at a different point in history when speedy travel and the internet didn’t exist. I urge you to restore your own voice and best interests by voting “Yes” to both ballot questions on your August 13th ballot.
