Democrat Louis Molepske, the state Assembly Representative from Stevens Point, gets my “Sconnie of the Week” award today — and deservedly so. It’s these little quirks in Wisconsinites that make the snow, the sleet and the cold all worthwhile.

Molepske’s Sconnie cred was on full display this afternoon when, in an interview with me on some legislation he’s drafting, he referred to a Chicago native as being “from Down South.” It made my day, because I do the same damn thing.

If you’re interested, Molepske is drafting a bill that would create more uniformity between the state’s drunken driving laws and drunken sporting laws. The DUI reform recently signed into law was a good step in tightening down on a flagrant problem, but Molepske wants to close what’s basically a blatant loophole.

If you’re convicted of DUI in Wisconsin, you’re written a traffic ticket — the first time. On second and subsequent offenses, you’ll face mounting misdemeanor and then felony charges, along with growing jail or prison sentences.

However, right now, if you’re caught driving a boat, a snowmobile or an ATV, even if you’re so drunk you can hardly sit upright, it’s just a ticket — every time. Those tickets are not counted against your driving record, they won’t get your driver’s license suspended and they don’t stop anyone from offending again.

Molepske wants to change that. Watch for this bill.

Snarlin’ Marlin made no bones about his feelings toward members of the media at a press conference today.

“It’s hard for me because you guys jerk me around all the time,” said the Democratic state Rep from Wisconsin Rapids, Marlin Schneider,  “Some days I hate your guts.”

Don’t feel bad, Marlin. There are plenty of days the feeling’s mutual, especially in a broad sense. You clod.

But while it’s obvious that neither side in the age-old battle between policymakers and the watchdog media shies away from trading verbal barbs, it’s just as clear that the numbers on one side of the fight are dwindling. And while Schneider didn’t resist taking the cheap shots where he could, the press conference he was conducting was actually intended to announce a move that could bolster the declining newspaper business.

It’s a decline that was painfully on display today. In something of an ironic twist, there wasn’t a single newspaper reporter at the very presser intended to herald newspapers’ salvation.

That’s awkward.

Granted, the term “salvation” is a bit of an exaggeration. Schneider apparently has plans to introduce legislation exempting buildings owned by newspapers from property taxes. It could certainly end up being a move that infuses some life into the business, though it’s unlikely to staunch the bleeding entirely. There are also questions as to the impact it would have on the already gaunt property tax revenues of budget-crunched municipalities, why radio or television stations shouldn’t also qualify and whether newspapers are even interested in that kind of special treatment.

Most importantly, I would like to see any kind of tax break or other financial package offered as an incentive, not a handout. The corporate overlords at newspapers are interested in the same thing as the corporate overlords at soda giants or automakers or petrol concerns — profit. Without some strings attached to the proposed property tax exemption, there’s nothing to keep them from pocketing that extra revenue and continuing to cut newsroom personnel.

If you don’t believe it, look no further than Madison’s own “two” newspapers, which I’m told have been profitable for some time now, but have been forced to endure further cuts to widen the margins, regardless.

A clause that disqualifies papers that undergo mergers from the tax credit could get Madison’s publications moving on a different track than they have been for the last decade. A minimum staffing level based on circulation could reverse the recent hiring (or firing) trends in Wisconsin’s markets. And a stipulation that only daily publications qualify for the tax exemption could even get the Capital Times eying a return to its former glory as an afternoon paper instead of a weekly.

These are just a couple of unresearched ideas I came up with in 5 minutes at my desk, going on midnight on a Tuesday. Whether they have any value, or whether Schneider’s proposal even warrants the paper a bill would be printed on, is certainly up for debate.

But the important thing is, even though reporters get in his hair in the course of doing their jobs, Schneider recognizes their necessity as facilitators of a broader conversation that society needs to have. While other lawmakers and opinion columnists and windbags will eventually decide whether his proposal has merit, he’s trying to get them to have that conversation. Schneider wants Wisconsinites to sit down and think about what the state would be without their newspapers, whether that’s a state they would want to live in, and what they can do to bring them back strong.

So, I guess, thanks Marlin, for your concern about the slow implosion of the American discourse’s staple for more than three centuries. You big jerk.

When the Madison School Board passed its budget this spring, there were none of the furrowed brows, exasperated sighs or economy-sized bottles of anti-depressants you would normally see at a budget hearing. There were only a few members of the public who exercised their right to speak at the board, and most of them were fairly low-key, as there weren’t really any notable programs or services on the chopping block.

Afterward, I spoke briefly with board member Marj Passman, a vivacious retired schoolteacher with a New York accent that flares up when she’s excited or angry. She described the budgeting process as a “dream” made possible by a 13-million dollar multi-year referendum passed overwhelmingly by voters to stave off further cuts on top of the 35-million slashed from the budget in five years. She kept saying it was surreal, and she expected someone to tell her it wasn’t going to be that easy at any moment.

Then last month, the state legislature told Passman and hundreds of school districts statewide, “Nope, it ain’t gonna be that easy.”

Facing an unprecedented 6.6-billion dollar budget shortfall courtesy of a recession that’s ruining everone’s friggin’ decade, state lawmakers carved their spending plan up like a Thanksgiving turkey, looking for the quickest, most painless ways to make the cuts. Doing much of their work behind closed doors so the concerned parties couldn’t get a clear picture of what was in store for them, they opted to cut drastically from what’s known as “shared revenue” funds, basically a big pot of state tax money that gets passed on to counties, cities and school districts to help them foot their bills.

School districts get money from the state in two main chunks — a flat per-student dollar amount, as well as a piece of general shared revenue that’s calculated based in part on the district’s expenditures and tax revenue. When districts got wise to the impending cuts to their already carefully constructed budgets, they were told the per student fee would be cut slightly, and they could expect up to a ten percent cut to their general shared revenue — dire news to be sure. They began to plan for the worst.

And then, when the governor finally signed the budget, they got worse than the worst as the state meted out 15 percent general shared revenue cuts to around 100 districts, according to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad, marking the second time in as many months many of those districts had the fiscal carpet yanked out from under them.

Nerad presented the Madison school board with a finely-calculated assessment of their financial predicament for the first time at a committee meeting tonight, and he made it apparent why most of his colleagues call him “Doctor Nerad.” Watching him deliver the news was like watching an oncologist give a patient his biopsy results. The district will be losing out on about 3-million dollars in per-student funding, and a colon-socking 9-million in general aid.

The biggest kicker of the evening was learning what prompted the 15 percent cut in general state aid when Madison and so many schools had been told not to expect any worse than 10. It turns out, the paper-pusher who calculated those estimates had been using data that was a year old. Since Madison tried last year to minimize the referendum’s impact on taxpayers by cashing in on several million dollars of TIF money (a complicated process that allowed them to infuse the money into the budget in a one-time deal), both their revenues and expenditures were bumped into a higher Department of Public Instruction bracket for the year, resulting in the aid cut.

With bombshells like that dropping, it’s not surprising the mood in the room tonight was 180-degrees different from last spring’s budgeting session.

“I know and I appreciate that you and (Superintendent) Dan (Nerad) have to be calm and deliberative and patient,” Passman told Assistant Superintendent Erik Kass with a pained grin, “but I’m angry. I’m very angry. Our government has once again helped to destroy education in this state. Our children are going to suffer. They’ve been suffering all along anyway, and I am just plain angry about this… it’s apalling, and coming from a Democratic legislature and a Democratic governor, it’s even more apalling.”

Passman’s outrage is nothing new or alien, as she and many of her colleagues have long been pushing for the state legislature to re-imagine the one-two death punch funding mechanisms of revenue caps and the qualified economic offer. But it was a little shocking to see her turn her guns on the state’s Democrats. Then again, I’d be a little miffed too if somebody handed me the fiscal equivalent of a donkey punch after I’d settled comfortably into a well-planned budget.

As Nerad, Passman, Arlene Silveira, Lucy Mathiak, Johnny Winston Junior, Beth Moss, Ed Hughes and Maya Cole see it, the state government is trying to get away with the biggest case of passing the buck this century. Faced with the unpopular choices of raising taxes or cutting services, lawmakers chose to cut a source of funding that many schools count on, knowing full well there are provisions in state law that allow schools to raise property taxes beyond their revenue caps when a state funding source is cut.

So now it’s up to the schools to be the bad guys. Nerad says his office is working on a plan to dig out of the hole, and with the options of fiscal finagling, furloughs, program cuts and tax increases in front of him, the only thing that isn’t on the table is firing staff. Apparently, while state lawmakers were taking their own sweet time with their budget, the contractual deadline for layoffs in the Madison School District elapsed.

In other words, like most budget plans, it’s sure to piss plenty of people off. So much for Marj Passman’s dream.

One of the more frustrating parts of my job is that my schedule is often at the mercy of politicians and policymakers, and they are NOT notorious for being punctual. Most of the time that’s okay, because I’m not notorious for being punctual either.

As a great man once wrote, and then I bastardized, “A reporter is never late. Nor is he early. Instead, he arrives precisely when he means to.”

However, when a city council debate has stretched on for hours and everybody wants their turn to talk, but nobody’s really saying anything and it’s getting on toward my bed time, I can occasionally get a little peeved. As much as I would sometimes like to, I can’t bail out when the policymakers get long-winded, because then we don’t get the story. And so, I’m stuck.

But I would rather be stuck in a sixteen hour budget hearing than be stood up by my elected officials. Unfortunately, it seems Wisconsin’s state lawmakers have opted to combine both approaches, and it’s more than just an annoyance for reporters. It’s bad for every Wisconsin citizen.

I’ve only been the direct victim of our state legislature’s heel-dragging once this year, and it made me want to pick a legislator at random and punch them in the face. I was assigned to cover a portion of the Joint Finance Committee’s hearings on the budget. The hearing was scheduled to begin at 10:00 in the morning. I figured given the legislature’s record of late, I could show up at 2:00 and catch plenty of action.

I was wrong. The JFC had not yet convened at 2:00. I spent two hours of my afternoon sitting in their chambers waiting for them to get underway before uttering a string of cusswords a nearby lobbyist thought was directed at him and storming out of the capitol.

That hearing didn’t happen on that particular day. It was rescheduled for noon the next day. It finally got underway at 5:30 that evening. I didn’t care. Our news director had decided to rely on secondhand sources for the remainder of our state budget coverage. With only two bodies in the newsroom on afternoons, I think she made the right call too. It certainly wouldn’t have been a good call to halve our news coverage strength and wrack up overtime to cover one story that might not have even happened.

The problem is that if pulling coverage on the state budget proceedings was the right call for our newsroom, it was the right call for a lot of other newsrooms as well.

And the delays in addressing the budget aren’t because State Sen. Fred Risser has gotten turned around wandering in the wrong wing of the capitol. Every minute the start of these meetings is delayed is a minute lawmakers are caucusing, doing the nitty-gritty work of negotiating a budget behind closed doors instead of in open session where the public and their watchdogs can follow along with every step.

How did Wisconsin’s state budget wind up with plans to allow illegal immigrants to get proxy driver’s licenses attached to it? How did a 75-cent monthly fee on cell phone users get the thumbs up, and how did it become okay for oil companies to pass on some of their tax burden to regular folks at the pump? Gosh, I really wish I could tell you, but those decisions were made without public or media oversight in a closed caucus.

That leaves 132 grown-up children unsupervised in a $62.2 billion candy store, and that should be enough to alarm any Wisconsin citizen, politically ambivalent or not.

And if by chance a member of the public had wanted to sound off on a particular budget item, they’d have had to hang around the state capitol for a couple of days straight, waiting for the body to convene at its own leisure. That’s no way to involve the citizenry in government.

There’s a reason lawmakers are required to give the public notice listing exact start times well in advance of any kind of meeting. Wisconsin’s closed caucus system violated the spirit of those laws, and it needs to go.

First, I start losing my hair. Now, for the first time in my life as a semi-political-animal, I find myself in agreement with Wisconsin State Senator Alan Lasee (R – De Pere). My God. I’m only 23, but it looks like I’m on pace to be drinking prune juice and bopping about in Depends by the time I’m 30.

Don’t worry, it’s not on some politically-charged right-wing issue like abortion or voter ID or dismantling the University of Wisconsin system that I find myself coming to this chance concurrence with Sen. Lasee. Unfortunately, it is an issue that makes me look every bit the dinosaur I’m afraid I’ll turn into some day: those damn kids and their text messaging.

It seems the people in my phone book have dragged me, somewhat unwittingly, into the text message revolution. I fought the trend as long as I could. I went on a couple dates with a girl this summer who, it seems, was uncomfortable with any means of communication besides text messaging. Needless to say, we are no longer in regular contact.

Excepting situations where a telephone conversation is impossible (loud concerts, busy days at work, city government meetings), I see no reason to even bother with a text message – an exchange that would take thirty seconds via voice call is slowed to a ten minute button frenzy, sans the subtleties of a phone conversation. But it got to the point where someone would send me a text and then act surprised when I called them instead of testing, or annoyed that I didn’t message them back within minutes.

So even though I now send the occasional text, I’m still with Sen. Lasee when it comes to the whole phenomenon, though I’m not nearly as crotchety about it as he is yet. “My attitude is, if you want to talk to somebody, it’s bad enough to talk on the cell phone,” Lasee told me.

Neither Lasee nor I take it as a personal affront when someone texts in our immediate vicinity, but I find it just as alarming as he does to see someone cruising down the interstate at 75 miles an hour, eyes down, phone up, keys a’clicking. That’s why Lasee has been a leader in the state legislature in pushing for a texting while driving ban in the state of Wisconsin.

Early in the text message era, when I had maybe a grand total of half a dozen text messages under my belt PERIOD, I chanced to visit St. Louis with my buddy Clinton in our most recent blitzkrieg tour of the Midwest. We stayed with a friend of his there, who was an all around decent guy, and was even good enough to drive us around the city.

Yet after a near miss on the outbound I-55 while the guy was literally engaged in a full-out text message conversation with his girlfriend, I opted to drive myself for the rest of the trip. Maybe I’m high-strung, but just riding with the guy was a white-knuckled experience as I spent more time watching the road than he did.

I guess I’m just not talented enough to safely drive and text… I wouldn’t know, actually, because I’ve never worked up the nerve to try it – and I’m the guy who once perfected the art of downshifting around a corner while talking on a cell phone, eating a taco and balancing a Big Gulp on the steering wheel.

But at the beginning of the month, our simple neighbors to the northwest took one small step for a legislative body, but one giant leap for safety’s sake…and this may be the first time I’ve EVER advocated something “for safety’s sake.” Minnesota’s texting while driving ban went into effect August 1, meaning they beat us at something for the first time EVER.

This is in spite of Sen. Lasee’s best efforts to push a similar ban through our state legislature during the last session, which, in his defense, wasn’t exactly noted as their most productive session ever. But Lasee says the leadership in both the Republican-controlled Assembly and the Democrat-controlled Senate wanted nothing to do with a texting while driving ban – and he has some good theories as to why.

“There’s support there, on both sides,” he said. “It’s just the leadership doesn’t want to deal with it. I think they do it. They text message and drive.”

And while I couldn’t get Lasee to name names, he promised me he will bring the issue back up during the next session. Which is good, because until there’s a law against it, I’m just going to sound like a prematurely aged old coot every time I rave about someone I see committing what I consider to be a more heinous offense than speeding in a school zone.

Now get the hell off my lawn!

…PS…This post hasn’t been proofed yet, because I’m told this coffee shop is closing in two minutes. I’m about to enter my second week without an internet connection. I will continue posting this week via work and coffee shops, and then it’s off to Canada for a week. After that, I’ll consider getting my own internets again. Thanks for bearing with me.