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Dear Editor;
Two weeks ago, Wisconsin's nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau just announced that the state will have a $3.8 billion budget surplus. That's about $2.9 billion more than what was expected this year. What great news!
As you might expect, there will be elected politicians of every stripe-conservative, liberal, Republican, and Democrat, the Legislature, the Governor-rushing to take credit for the bonus. Ignore them. As the saying goes: Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.
What really matters is how our elected leaders in Madison are proposing to deploy these funds. As a taxpayer, I would be extremely upset to see one penny of this surplus be hoarded by the state in a "rainy day" fund or wasted on a tax cut to the rich or on corporate welfare, as has happened with every state budget of the past 10 years.
Instead, to our legislators in Madison, I'd say this: Bet big on rural Wisconsin.
This surplus is a once and a lifetime opportunity to guarantee our small town way of life stays strong for another generation. If it were up to me, I would use this surplus as a downpayment on rural Wisconsin's future. Invest in housing, mental health services, build child care capacity, fix our roads, clean our water, and keep our rural school districts alive and thriving.
There's no other investment that will get more bang for your taxpayer bucks than investing in rural communities. The state government should go all in for rural Wisconsin.
Tripp Stroud
Candidate for Wisconsin's
17th Senate District