By Ben Rodgers
Editor
It’s a good question, the role of our state treasurer, and one I honestly couldn’t have answered.
Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, or chief financial officer for Wisconsin, visited The Press Times office recently before her speech at a Lambeau Field tech summit, and the short answer is more than you’d think.
As part of her job, Godlewski chairs the School Trust Fund.
It’s a $1.2 billion fund, which provides textbooks and technology to public schools, while at the same time bolstering development across Wisconsin.
The fund dates back to Wisconsin’s founding. When selling federal land to individuals, the state decided to invest that money into public education.
It has evolved over the past 171 years, but Wisconsin remains the only state in the nation with a tool like this.
“One of the unique aspects of this fund,” Godlewski said, “in order to provide that sort of return, we have to have investment, and one of the investment programs we have is the State Trust Fund Loan Program.”
As part of this program, which is part of the School Trust Fund, the state provides low-interest loans to municipalities, to everything from bridge financing to major infrastructure projects.
City Deck in downtown Green Bay is one example of a project to benefit from the program.
“We’ve built homeless shelters, with a lot of the climate change with flooding going on, people needed money, and they couldn’t wait for state or federal aid, so they came to us to help with infrastructure,” she said. “It’s really the gamut of what these municipalities need and that’s what I think is so unique about this program, we are the only state in the country that has this State Trust Fund Loan Program and it was started in 1870. There’s never been a default and it’s a constant return for us to ensure public school funding.”
School districts look at funds from the School Trust Fund like a revenue line item.
This last year it provided $32.6 million to Wisconsin schools, including $1 million to the Green Bay school district for textbooks and technology.
“(Our state founders) believed so strongly in funding public schools, they wrote this fund into the Constitution and they wanted it separate from the Legislature and the governor to ensure it always was protected and that money was well managed to go to public schools,” Godlewski said.
The fund was never intended to be a cure-all for public education, because each district has its own needs it can address through property taxes, she said.
Godlewski compared it to Social Security, something to help supplement retirement, but not something to live on.
How does the state keep the fund healthy into the next 171 years? Investment diversification.
Godlewski said she never had a dream to become state treasurer, but her background in investing and the School Trust Fund piqued her interest.
“I kind of stumbled upon this because, prior to this role, I ran an impact investment firm, early staging for socially responsible businesses,” she said.
She discovered Wisconsin sees as much startup capital in one year as Silicon Valley sees in 24 hours.
“You got to balance risk and reward,” Godlewski said. “Startups have higher risk, but they have higher reward. Is our portfolio going to be all startups? No. But should part of it be startups? Absolutely.”
This, of course, is just part of her job. Godlewski said she is also working on the creation of a user-friendly budget document so the public can see exactly how money is being spent, among other things.
After chatting face-to-face with Treasurer Godlewski, it’s clear what the state treasurer does: An important job for the betterment of Wisconsin that requires financial expertise and support from citizens.