In the first of a series of "Your Voice, Your Wisconsin" meetings around the state, requesting voter support to run against Scott Walker in the pending recall election for governor, Kathleen Falk firmly committed to restoring and expanding local voter choice in making public transit decisions, and in selecting the means to fund any regional transit authority voters may approve.
"What could be more fair?" Falk observed, "than to let voters decide." Addressing an overflow crowd at Milwaukee Area Technical College Tuesday February 7, she noted that local regional transit authorities already granted by the legislature to the people of Chippewa Falls, Chequamagon Bay and Dane County, were one of the first things that Scott Walker and new Republican majorities in the legislature rescinded.
Falk also acknowledged that local demand for improved transit systems, and taking transit funding off the property tax levy, were one of the reasons that over one million Wisconsin voters signed petitions to recall Governor Walker.
Walker's predecessor, Governor James Doyle, and Democratic leadership in the previous legislature, denied requests from Milwaukee, the Fox Cities, Green Bay, and other areas for local RTA authority, and past leadership in both the Democratic and Republican parties has declined to vote on a standardized process for local referenda, without the need to go hat in hand to the legislature for each new decision.
Promising a "transparent campaign," Falk charged that Walker's performance in office was "not what he campaigned on." She also highlighted her record as Dane County executive, balancing 14 budgets without "tearing us apart" as most of those in attendance agreed Walker had done. During a tight budget year, Falk recalled, she had sat down to negotiate with eight unions and worked out $10 million in savings for taxpayers, while "everyone kept their jobs."
Although public transit has broad appeal and is a concern in communities statewide, one of the citizens who came to offer Falk their concerns asked how she would appeal to the central areas of the state, having been born in Milwaukee, then living in Waukesha and Dane counties. Falk agreed this is a valid concern, but observed "I was in Ashland two weeks ago, in thirteen below zero weather at the Black Cat Cafe; people said 'we remember how you helped protect the Fish Creek Slough years ago'."
A concern was also raised about the $12 million Walker has already raised on out-of-state trips to Texas, Missouri, and elsewhere. One person pointed out that "money wins elections: the more you repeat something, the more true it becomes." Falk responded that "None of us has the amount of money Walker has now, but we have over one million people who did this extraordinary thing" signing recall petitions. "Once you have lost the people's trust, no amount of money buys it back."
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