Welcome to the Wisconsin Way! You are joining thousands of citizens across Wisconsin in a continuing public conversation about modernizing and refining taxes and government in Wisconsin.
It’s been a busy and stressful year for peoples and governments everywhere. The collapse of major financial institutions and the resulting decline in consumer confidence and consumption accompanied by staggering increases in unemployment have played havoc with public and private sector finances. On the public side of the equation, the unprecedented decline in revenue collections, prompted by what most experts now describe as the worst economic times since the Great Depression, has led to a massive increase in public debt and the ballooning of deficits at both the national and the state levels.
In the private sector, individuals and families from Sheboygan to Singapore and Saskatchewan to Sao Paulo are grappling with devastating job losses and reductions in household income. For many of these families, these hard times are likely to coincide with significant cuts in the funding for key elements of many of the services that have served as a social safety-net in previously difficult times and in the educational and work force training capacity upon which they have relied as a response to earlier job dislocations.
These momentous and troubling events affected everyone’s 2009 plans, including those of the Wisconsin Way — the Wisconsin Counties Association, the Wisconsin REALTORS® Association, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association, the Wisconsin Transportation Development Association, the League of Wisconsin Municipalities and Wood Communications Group. As many of you may remember, after issuing the Wisconsin Way Draft Blueprint for Change at the end of last year, we had planned to host full-day conferences on each of the three major strategic areas which have emerged as the central focal points of the effort — i.e., economic development, tax reform and modernization, and governmental spending and management reform and modernization.
However, in early January as the state’s financial status continued to worsen, the Wisconsin Way concluded that we needed to make an effort to alert elected officials and the media to the fact that how they responded, or failed to respond, to the state’s immediate fiscal crisis could have a profound effect upon Wisconsin’s long-term economic prospects. To that end, in February, the Wisconsin Way and a number of other organizations, including the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Wisconsin Coalition of Aging Groups, hosted a conference on the relationship between Wisconsin’s long-term visions and its short-term needs. Gov. Doyle and legislative leaders of both parties attended and spoke at the gathering, as did leaders from Wisconsin’s business and academic communities. Shortly thereafter, in April, the Wisconsin Way convened a conference on Economic Development, the first of its three full-day conferences. Both of these conferences are available by selecting 2009 Conferences on the left navigation menu. In addition, the conferences were also covered by WisconsinEye and are available at www.wiseye.org.
Unfortunately, by late April it was apparent that the state’s financial situation had worsened considerably and that crafting Wisconsin’s 2009-11 state budget was going to be considerably more difficult than even the most pessimistic of us had thought just a few months earlier. It was also apparent that given their need to deal with the state budget, it would be nearly impossible to engage the local officials, educators, business leaders and policy-makers we were persuaded needed to be a part of our conferences on tax and governmental reform. For that reason, the Wisconsin Way decided to postpone the conferences until later in the year.
In the meantime, the Wisconsin Way has continued its aggressive outreach efforts meeting with individual local elected, civic and business leaders around the state and with numerous organizations and associations to discuss and get their input on the Draft Blueprint for Change. At a number of these meetings, individuals have suggested that it would be a good idea to provide our thousands of Wisconsin Way participants and supporters with a brief overview of what we’ve accomplished thus far, where we find ourselves at the moment and what’s coming next. We are happy to respond to this excellent advice.
The Wisconsin Way: October 2007 – August 2009
The Wisconsin Way held its first public forum in La Crosse, Wisconsin on October 10, 2007. More than 350 citizens attended that first discussion about what sort of future we wanted for our state and what we thought we needed, and were prepared to do, to make a brighter future a reality.
Since that auspicious and fascinating first gathering, the Wisconsin Way has made significant positive progress in two critical areas. First, the Wisconsin Way has helped raised public and media awareness of the issues that prompted the initiation of the Wisconsin Way initiative. The Wisconsin Way has, for example, hosted 28 public forums, engaged in more than 150 organizational meetings, met with the news media in every major market in the state, and briefed state and local elected officials on an on-going basis. More than 7,000 people have attended and/or participated in these meetings, which, in turn, have generated more than 70 print and broadcast news stories. In addition, the Wisconsin Way has developed, and continues to build, a robust Web site that has already been visited by thousands of citizens statewide.
Second, the Wisconsin Way has identified possible long-term approaches to Wisconsin challenges and opportunities and begun the process of focusing a public conversation on the long-term solutions identified by the public and experts. The initial Wisconsin Way public forums generated more than 800 pages of ideas, concerns and recommendations. Based on that input, discussions with dozens of organizational leaders, meetings with a variety of experts, the Wisconsin Way hosted a second round of public forums and organizational discussions. The Wisconsin Way then produced the Draft Blueprint for Change which focuses on three specific strategic needs — economic development, tax reform and modernization, and government spending and management reform and modernization.
The Draft Blueprint identifies strategic initiatives in each of the three areas and lists possible action options under each of the initiatives. In all, the Draft Blueprint contains 15 strategic initiatives and more than 70 action options and has served as a focal point for ongoing discussions with citizens, experts, policy-makers and organizations. The Draft Blueprint was released to the news media at the end of 2008. Since then the document has been distributed either in print or electronically to more than 200,000 citizens.
In addition, since the beginning of 2009, the Wisconsin Way has hosted two major conferences, both of which highlighted the approaches discussed in the Draft Blueprint for Change and encouraged elected officials, citizens and experts to comment on the strategic and action options included in the document.
The Wisconsin Way: September 2009 – January 2010
The Wisconsin Way remains committed to producing its Blueprint for Change by the end of 2009. To that end, we have embarked on an ambitious multi-layered effort focused on three specific initiatives. First, we are engaged in discussions with institutional leaders, academic experts and Wisconsin Way sponsors and supporters designed to help further refine the strategic initiatives and action options laid out in the Draft Blueprint. Our goal in this undertaking is to test and enhance the practicality of Draft Blueprint ideas by bringing three questions to each of the major initiatives and action options, including:
1) What exactly are we trying to accomplish with this idea/proposal/recommendation?
2) How exactly would we (i.e., government, business, academia, etc.) accomplish the recommendation legislatively and/or administratively and/or managerially?
3) How do we protect the public interest in terms of oversight and/or quality control in the implementation of this idea/proposal/recommendation?
These meetings have already begun and will continue through the year.
Second, we are planning to engage as many different public groups as possible with the refined version of the Draft Blueprint in order to get even more input before finalizing the Blueprint. To this end, we are hoping to reach out to most of the communities we visited during the first round of Wisconsin Way forums through meetings and briefings with business, governmental, civic, labor, educational and media leaders.
Third, as the Blueprint for Change evolves from option analysis to recommendations for discussion, the Wisconsin Way will undertake an aggressive effort to brief members of the Doyle Administration and the Wisconsin State Legislature. We would expect this effort to begin later this year. The Wisconsin Way will also be working on a plan to maximize distribution of the document to organizations and their members and to ensure that the Blueprint for Change receives maximum statewide media coverage when it is released. In addition, the Wisconsin Way is developing plans for a major grassroots effort in 2010 in support of the Blueprint for Change.
In short, the Wisconsin Way has come a very long way from that first enthusiastic forum in La Crosse. There is now widespread public and media recognition of the fundamental economic dislocations that prompted the initial effort. Thousands of citizens and hundreds of organizations have had an opportunity to participate in and shape a serious discussion about what Wisconsin might do to secure a much brighter future. And, that discussion has generated an actual Draft Blueprint for Change which is now helping refine and energize discussions that we believe will lead to the next generation of the Blueprint for Change.
Much, however, remains to be done. Citizens must be given an opportunity to engage with the latest version of the Draft Blueprint for Change. Policy-makers must be briefed on, and engaged in, these discussions. And, the widespread interest in, and support for, this public initiative must be energized and focused on translating our aspirations into state and local policies that serve our citizens as they strive to meet the demands of this very challenging 21st century.
