Here is the update from the Wisconsin Coalition Against Homelessness. This is an initiative both the city and county have given a couple thousands of dollars a year to.
Local advocates aren’t exactly on board with these efforts and the Dane County Homeless Services Consortium withdrew from this group, because they don’t practice Housing First philosophies are not current with the direction HUD is going. I searched the 1,000 plus county budget but I didn’t find funding for WCAH this year, but that doesn’t mean anything, it might still be in there. I also didn’t find funding in the mayor’s budget either. Hopefully that is correct and we’re no longer wasting our money on billboards to advertise homelessness! For what it’s worth, here is the update.
The bills they are talking about were blogged about back in February with the details with a great deal of skepticism.
WISCONSIN COALITION AGAINST HOMELESSNESS ADVOCACY UPDATE
Hello all. We wanted to give all a quick update as to where we are on the homeless bills and the history of how we got here. Also attached is the latest editorial from the Wisconsin State Journal on the subject.
First thank you for all of you who made the call to Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald’s office. We know from our sources in the Capitol that his office was deluged with calls for most of the day. Unfortunately, our efforts did not result in the homeless bills going to the floor meaning there will be no vote in the Senate until January.
Here is how we got here:
- In 2017 Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, a republican, authored a bill to statutorily create the Inter Agency Council on Homelessness. The bill which included funding for a full-time staff person for the council, passed the assembly and senate and was signed into law by Governor Walker. Lt Governor Kleefisch agreed to chair the council.
- All throughout 2018 the council worked to create a state plan for addressing homelessness. That plan was released in fall of 2018 and it contained eight fiscal program recommendations to be considered the next budget.
- With the change in the Governorship the republicans in the assembly decided to take the fiscal program recommendations and codify them into eight bills we are dealing with today. Nevertheless Gov. Evers decided to include the fiscal recommendations in his budget proposal.
- It is important to note that what was in the Governor’s budget was exactly the same thing as the eight republican bills
- At Joint Finance, when taking up the Governor’s homeless recommendation the republican majority, led by republican senators on the committee, voted to set aside the funding, $4 million annually, but not to allocate such funding to the specific programs contained in the eight bills. The explanation was that the Senate needed more time to consider the what the funding would be used for. Thus, the funding to this day is in the budget, set aside for homeless programming but not allocated to any programs.
- The republican led assembly in June passed all eight bills.
- In the republican led Senate republican senators were found for all eight the bills.
- In September and October, we pushed hard to get hearings on the bills in senate committees. All but one had a public hearing. The bill not heard has no dollars attached to it.
- As we waited for the Senate to act in its last floor session of the year, we were assured by republican assembly leadership that there had been conversation with the senate leadership and that the bills would be sent to the senate floor for a vote. In fairness we should say that the assembly republican leadership was as distressed as we were when the homeless bills were not put on the senate floor agenda.
- We learned that the problem senators were Kapenga, Nass, and Craig. But here were still enough votes to pass the bills in the senate with a mixture of republican and democratic senators. But Fitzgerald has this informal rule of 17. Basically 17 votes are needed to pass a bill in the senate. Republicans hold a majority in the senate but the informal rule says there must be 17 republican votes to move a bill forward. If it going to take a mix and republican and democratic votes it does not move forward. This was a bill has to have a majority of the senate republican caucus not simply a majority of the senate.
- The democrats in the senate, on the floor, made a motion to at least vote on the increase in emergency shelter funding citing the upcoming winter but the republicans turned that attempt back.
- We are aware that Fitzgerald’s office was giving callers misleading information. First the one homeless bill that did make it to floor had to do with nurses being able to work at free health clinics for the homeless-there was know money attached to it and it was not one the bills comprising the homeless package. Second Fitzgerald did have the ability to move these bills to floor if he chose to do so.
- Governor Evers has stated publicly that he will sign these bills if they reach his desk.
At this point we are not sure what our strategy will be going forward. We are in the process of gathering information on what should be the best strategy moving forward and are working with the Governor’s office and republican assembly leadership to bring this package over the finish line As always, we value your suggestions and perspectives. Please let us know your thoughts at Joseph.Volk01@gmail.com
