Police officers and firefighters are the latest to chime-in on Wisconsin’s debate over roads. First responders in the state were at the Capitol yesterday to press lawmakers to find money to build new roads. State Trooper Brandon Ferrell was one of them. He says some of the roads in Wisconsin are in bad shape, and that can delay police or firefighters in an emergency situation. The first responders didn’t weigh-in on where to find the money to build new roads. Lawmakers in Madison will vote tomorrow on whether or not to raise the gas tax by eight-cents to pay for road construction.
Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are ready to spend just over one-and-a-half-billion dollars more on healthcare in the state, and Democrats say that’s not enough. The state’s budget writing panel, the Joint Finance Committee, yesterday approved a one-point-six billion-dollar increase for the state’s Department of Health Services. Almost 600-million-dollars of that is new state funding. But, Democrats at the Capitol say that’s not enough because Republicans are not expanding Medicaid like Governor Evers proposed in his budget. That, the Democrats say, could bring in another billion-dollars in money from Washington D.C.
