By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer
DE PERE – In his first year in the Wisconsin Assembly, 2nd District State Rep. Shae Sortwell heard from about a dozen of his constituents on hand Friday, April 26, for a listening session at the Kress Family Library.
Sortwell, who served as a town supervisor in Gibson in Manitowoc County before being elected to a two-year term in the Assembly last November, said being part of the Republican majority and representing portions of Brown and Manitowoc counties in Madison so far has gone well overall.
“I guess the only frustrating part to me at all, to date, is sometimes I get surprised when people even from my own party get caught up in ideas that they think are good, rather than whether they think that this is something the government should really be doing,” he said. “For me, it’s not about what I think. It really shouldn’t be what other legislators think are good ideas. It’s about what is the proper role of government in people’s lives. That is something I’m doing my best to protect down in Madison, and take my personal view out of it, and really make sure I’m defending the liberty of the people.”
Sortwell said he is “not your typical Republican” and has “some Libertarian streaks.”
“To spend money on an issue that we’re fixing is quite another (matter) than just simply throwing money at it and make us all feel good that we’re doing something,” he said. “All that does it make politicians feel good about themselves and make them look good so they can put out press releases and say, ‘Oh look, I spent money, I dealt with this problem.’ Did you deal with the problem, or did you just make yourself look good?”
Sortwell, who now holds the Assembly seat Andre Jacque vacated after Jacque won a four-year term to the State Senate last year, was on hand for more than an hour to field questions on a variety of issues before heading to Denmark High School later that afternoon for another listening session.
When asked about fixing roads in Wisconsin, Sortwell said transportation funding in the proposed biennial state budget of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has roughly the same amount of an increase that former Republican Gov. Scott Walker included in the last budget.
“It’s kind of continuing the trend of putting more money into it, but not putting a ton more money into it,” Sortwell said. “So what he did, he changed how it’s funded. So in his proposal, he is moving away from borrowing, which I agree with that… Then he is shifting general revenue away from it. General revenue is your sales tax, your income tax – that goes into your general revenue. And so he raises the gas tax by 8 cents (per gallon) on the first year and he reinstitutes basically an inflation increase every year, so the second year of the budget it will go up another 2 cents and then it will be a 10-cent increase.”
Though there is a consensus from Republicans and Democrats to put more money into transportation funding, Sortwell said Evers is changing how roads are being funded.
Sortwell said he favors shifting transportation money away from major road projects to other work.
“I’ve been in local government, too, and worked on local roads, and it’s so much more expensive to do these large projects per mile, because not only are they obviously a bigger road, there’s a whole lot more stipulations in how you build,” he said.
When asked about the possibility of legalizing marijuana in Wisconsin for medical use, Sortwell said he is not convinced it is the government’s role to decide what people should and should not use for medication, in general.
“For too long, we have been relying on the government telling us what is the good and the bad thing to use, rather than allowing the free market, rather than allowing people individually to make these decisions for themselves in conjunction with their medical professionals to decide what is going to work for them,” he said. “And so, while there may be bad results from it in some instances, is it really the government’s role to come in and say, ‘This is never right for you to use for medical purposes?’ And quite honestly, you can apply that to a whole lot of things.”
Sortwell said it is “a slippery slope, long-term, if we say that the government is the source of deciding what is good and not good medicine, because they screw up a lot.”
However, though he supports allowing marijuana to be used for medical purposes, Sortwell said he doesn’t believe a provision to do that belongs in the state budget.
“I tend to agree with Sen. (Robert) Cowles, and he’s been a long, hard champion for saying, ‘Significant policy changes don’t belong in the budget,’” Sortwell said. “If we deal with this in the budget, it gets tucked away in a 1,000-page document, rather than actually really being discussed, and we look into it and decide is this really the direction that the state wants to move in general.”
It was noted during the listening session that a non-binding referendum in favor of legalizing marijuana for medical use was supported last November in Brown County with about 75 percent voting “yes.”
When asked about public funding for education, Sortwell said “by and large we do better when people have more choices in education.”
“I support school choice, I support home schooling, I support vouchers, I support open enrollment for public schools…,” he said. “It’s up to the parents to decide what they want to do with their children… I’m going to trust (parents) first and foremost, and sometimes that’s going to have bad results from certain kids, just like we have bad results for certain kids in certain schools, because they are some schools that are bad and have bad teachers.”
When asked about standards in education, Sortwell said he doesn’t agree with a lot of the state and federal standards.
“I don’t really believe that it’s any of my business at the state level as far as what the education is being done in Green Bay, Wisconsin, or De Pere, Wisconsin, or Two Rivers or Denmark,” he said. “I believe that should be, if you’re dealing with the public school… I believe that really should be (the role of) the local school board, and if they suck at their jobs, and aren’t doing a good job of making sure the kids are learning under their care, then they should be removed from office. That is what we have local elections for.”
Sortwell said state and federal educational mandates are “stupid and a bad idea” in part because “every community and every school is different and has different needs.”