|
November 5, 2021
School Spending Transparency will be Signed Into Law
Timber Threshold Bill
Reminder: Daylight Savings
WILL Lawsuit on OSHA Mandate
|
School Spending Transparency
will be Signed Into Law
Today, Governor Evers will be signing my school spending transparency bill into law. This legislation aims to make it easier for the public to track exactly how their school district is spending the funding they receive. The end result of this bill will be an easy-to-access school expenditure portal that the Department of Public Instruction maintains on their website. Any member of the public, parent, or teacher can look up their school district and see what funding their school is receiving and where the money is going.
At its core- this bill is about transparency and access, and about every taxpayer, parent, teacher, reporter, and school board member who has at one point or another found our school funding data difficult to comprehend. Every member of the public should have the opportunity for an informed discussion about school spending with their school’s leadership.
I thank Governor Evers for seeing the wisdom in signing this bill despite the disappointing lack of support from my Legislative Democrat colleagues.
|
Timber Threshold Bill
Last week, my bill pertaining to timber thresholds was unanimously passed out of the Senate Committee on Insurance, Licensing and Forestry. On Monday, this important legislation will be brought up for a vote on the Senate Floor.
Under current statutes, the ‘direct sale limit’ allows state, county, and community forest land managers to sell smaller amounts of timber directly to a contractor without advertising- enabling the process to move quickly and efficiently. The direct sale limit currently rests at $3,000. This bill would raise the direct sale limit to $10,000, or the 500 cord equivalent, whichever is lesser.
With the recent closure of the Verso mill in Wisconsin Rapids, the wood markets are more tumultuous now than they have ever been. It is essential to provide land managers with the flexibility to sell timber readily, ensuring continued management of our vast and valuable forests. When last revised in 1999, the average sale value on our public lands was $18,118. The direct sale limit of $3,000 was 16.6% of that figure. In 2020, the average sale value on state and county lands is over $63,000. A proposed increase of the direct sale limit to $10,000 would be 15.8% of the current average sale value.
Reminder: Daylight Savings
With Daylight Savings Time coming to an end, don't forget to set your clocks back on Saturday night.
WILL Lawsuit on OSHA Mandate
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) sued the Biden administration in federal court, on behalf of two Wisconsin businesses, challenging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) sweeping new vaccine-or-test mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees. OSHA’s emergency rule, published November 4, requires businesses of a certain size to require proof of vaccination or regular COVID-19 tests for their employees. Companies that do not comply face penalties of over $13,000 per violation, or over $136,000 for a willful violation.
The lawsuit was filed in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Federal law requires lawsuits that challenge OSHA emergency rules to be filed in the Court of Appeals, rather than in a federal district court, where lawsuits typically originate.
WILL President and General Counsel, Rick Esenberg, said, “This new rule is illegal and unconstitutional. It circumvents the normal legal process, along with Congress, to claim emergency powers to impose a mandate on American business. However you feel about the COVID vaccine or even the very different question of a vaccine mandate, the Biden administration is claiming an extraordinary power to rule by decree that could be used in the future in almost unlimited and unforeseeable ways.”
Steve Fettig, Secretary and Treasurer of Tankcraft and Plasticraft, said, "The order is unconscionable. OSHA does not know how to run our companies. We do. OSHA does not know how to keep our employees safe. We do. And we have done so successfully since the start of the pandemic without the interference of a federal bureaucracy. We respect our employees’ fundamental right to make their own private, difficult medical choices."
|
|
|