Wisconsin Legislature Research Articles

Evaluation of survival and cost to harvestable age of stocked fall fingerling walleye (Sander vitreus) in Northern Wisconsin Lakes

Walleye Sander vitreus are culturally and recreationally important in Wisconsin, USA and have experienced population declines in some lakes due to reduced natural recruitment. In 2013, the Wisconsin legislature implemented the Wisconsin Walleye Stocking Initiative, a statewide rehabilitation effort to help declining walleye populations through increased stockings of fall fingerling walleye (150–250 mm). Our objectives were to: (1) test for differences in natural mortality (M) of stocked walleye among stocking densities (12.4, 24.7, 37.1 fish/ha), lake recruitment status (some natural recruitment or no natural recruitment), and lake conductivity (surrogate for lake productivity); (2) estimate cost to harvestable age (i.e., age-4); and (3) compare predicted adult walleye abundance among lakes across various stocking densities in relation to Wisconsin walleye adult abundance standards (i.e., naturally reproducing population ≥7.4 adults/ha, “fishable” population ≥ 3.7 adults/ha). Fall fingerling stocked walleye M was lowest in lakes with some natural recruitment, with medium-low and high conductivities, and stocked at 24.7 and 37.1 fish/ha, respectively. Using a mixed-effects model, fall fingerling M was negatively related to stocking density but not lake recruitment status or conductivity. No conditions resulted in the naturally reproducing population density standard to be met after multiple stockings. Two to four stocking events were required to achieve the “fishable” population standard, depending on lake conditions. When estimating cost to harvestable age, lakes stocked at 24.7 fish/ha generally had the best survival resulting in the lowest cost to age-4 ($17.70 - $35.41/fish). Lakes stocked at 12.4 fish/ha had the highest cost to age-4 ($91.17 - $182.34/fish). Juvenile walleye survival from age-0 to age-1 was dependent on lake conductivity and recruitment status, with lakes stocked at 24.7 fish/ha providing the lowest cost to age-4. Our results may inform science-based decision making and best-case scenario stocking rates to increase the probability of reestablishing walleye natural recruitment.

The Golden Age of Pragmatic Socialism: Wisconsin Socialists at the State Level, 1919–37

AbstractThroughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Socialists in Wisconsin experienced a “golden age” of political successes in the state legislature. Whereas the 1920s are commonly seen as a period of socialist decline, Wisconsin Socialists entered the decade with a renewed sense of optimism. Following World War I, the Wisconsin Democratic Party collapsed as a viable political option and the Wisconsin Socialist Party found itself the second most powerful party behind the Republican Party. Wisconsin Socialists took a pragmatic approach to legislative debates and allied with progressive Republicans to defeat conservative opposition. Socialists were vital to progressive reform prior to World War I; however, the Socialist-Progressive alliance reached its full potential in the 1920s. From 1919–31, the Wisconsin legislature passed 295 Socialist-authored pieces of legislation ranging from labor demands, public utilities, and criminal justice reform. Many of the proposals resulted from negotiations between the Socialist and Progressive caucuses. The success of the Wisconsin Socialists—and their alliance with progressive Republicans—suggests that at least in some places the Progressive Era extended into the 1920s.

Divided Unions: The Wagner Act, Federalism, and Organized Labor

Divided Unions: The Wagner Act, Federalism, and Organized Labor

When Is It Democratic to Postpone an Election? Elections During Natural Disasters, COVID-19, and Emergency Situations

Holding regular elections is an essential feature of democratic practices. The case for postponing elections is often made during emergency situations, however. Despite the critical nature of the i...

U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Brief of Professor D. Theodore Rave in Support of Appellees, Gill v. Whitford, No. 16-1161

As this Court, the Framers, and foundational political theory have recognized, elected officials, such as legislators, are fiduciaries who have a duty to loyally serve the interests of the people they represent, not their own interests. This commitment to fiduciary government is embedded deep in the constitutional structure. When fiduciaries act in the face of a conflict of interest—like by drawing the electoral districts in which they will run for reelection—they bear the burden of showing that their actions are fair and in the best interest of those they represent. Appellants did not meet that burden here. As the district court found, Appellants acted with the intent to entrench themselves, benefit their political allies, and frustrate potential challengers when they drew electoral districts for the Wisconsin legislature. And the maps they drew had that effect. As Appellees and their amici have shown, the Wisconsin legislature acted unconstitutionally in gerrymandering its own districts. In Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004), several members of this Court raised legitimate concerns about whether the federal courts are well suited to police such an inherently political process. But reaffirming the justiciability of political gerrymandering claims and affirming the district court in this case will not inevitably involve the federal courts in supervising every redistricting decision. The purpose of this brief is to explain how the Court can create incentives for state legislatures to adopt independent redistricting processes to which the federal courts can safely defer. Courts are no better at reviewing business judgments than political ones. But when faced with the analogous problem of self-dealing directors in corporate law, courts do not just throw up their hands and declare the whole matter nonjusticiable. Instead, corporate law creates a two-track system of judicial review. Decisions made by conflicted fiduciaries are subjected to exacting scrutiny, but corporate law creates a safe harbor for decisions made or ratified through independent processes. When conflicted directors run their decisions through an independent process, the taint of self-dealing is cleansed, and reviewing courts can safely defer to the substantive outcome so long as they ensure that the process was independent. Finding an unconstitutional political gerrymander in this case will not plunge the federal courts into the political thicket if this Court creates a safe harbor for redistricting decisions made through independent processes, like the independent redistricting commissions in Arizona and California. Instead, the threat of litigation and skeptical judicial review of districts drawn by conflicted state legislatures will create a powerful incentive for those legislatures to adopt independent processes to engage in the complex and delicate task of redistricting without the overwhelming temptation to manipulate district lines to their own advantage. Courts can safely defer to the substantive redistricting decisions of these institutions and confine their review to ensuring that the process was fair and independent—a task for which courts are well suited.

Extreme Vehicle Loads on Bridges: Evaluating and Regulating Farm Equipment in Wisconsin

In May 2014, the Wisconsin legislature passed Act 377. Among other things, the act creates an increased weight allowance for vehicles classified as implements of husbandry (IoH), known to most simply as farm vehicles. These vehicles, which are both large and heavy, were designed for use in the field, but in today’s modern infrastructure, they must sometimes navigate roads and bridges as well. The increased weight allowance is a modification of the federal bridge formula (FBF). It allows IoH to operate at 15% above FBF limitations for both axle and gross weights. The act includes partial exemptions for certain implements and creates a permitting structure for implements that exceed the stated limits. The act attempts to strike a balance between the needs of the farming community in Wisconsin and the effects of heavy vehicles on the inventory bridges in the state. In this paper, the work done by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Structures to render a structural recommendation concerning operation of IoH on the Wisconsin bridge inventory is documented. Both analysis work to assess risk to the inventory as a whole and permitting processes and procedures to address IoH on a more local level are included. The intent is that other state departments of transportation and infrastructure owners benefit from Wisconsin’s experiences.

Wisconsin Supreme Court and Legislative History

Legislative history has been directly mentioned more than 1,800 times in the body of Wisconsin Supreme Court opinions. In 1927, the Wisconsin Legislature established the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) to maintain files of drafting records for each proposed bill. Since the late 1990s, the files have been available electronically to make the information more accessible to lawyers appearing in Wisconsin courts.

Vision, Grit, and Collaboration: How the Wisconsin Center for Nursing Achieved Both Sustainable Funding and Established Itself as a State Health Care Workforce Leader

In 2001, a dedicated group of nurses from across Wisconsin came together to discuss how to create a state center of expertise on key nursing workforce issues. The result was the establishment of the Wisconsin Center for Nursing (WCN) in 2005. Since that time, through its statewide Board of Directors, WCN has clarified and targeted specific state workforce needs and identified gaps that exist in addressing those needs. During its five-year existence, WCN has received funding from a variety of sources, and volunteers have spent hundreds of hours working on behalf of the organization. Finding a sustainable base of funding for WCN has been a priority in order to ensure that the organization can hire permanent staff and invest in ongoing initiatives. In 2009, WCN was involved in developing a strategy that resolved both the issue of sustainability and the need to collect and analyze data on the nursing profession. A bill was passed by the Wisconsin legislature that required RNs and LPNs to complete a comprehensive survey every two years when they renew their state licenses. In addition, the legislature raised the licensure fee for RNs and LPNs and dedicated a portion to WCN to assist in the analysis of the newly-collected nursing workforce data and to develop a state-wide plan addressing the future of the Wisconsin nursing workforce. This article will include the history of the WCN and the details of its journey toward sustainability including accomplishments and lessons learned.

Creating a Perfect Storm to Increase Consumer Demand for Wisconsin's Tobacco Quitline

Telephone quitlines are a clinically proven and cost-effective population-wide tobacco-dependence treatment, and this option is now available in all 50 states. Yet, only 1% of the smoking population accesses these services annually. This report describes a series of policy, programmatic, and communication initiatives recently implemented in Wisconsin that resulted in a dramatic increase in consumer demand for the Wisconsin Tobacco Quitline (WTQL). In 2007, the Wisconsin legislature voted to increase the state cigarette excise tax rate by $1.00, from $0.77/pack to $1.77/pack effective January 1, 2008. In preparation for the tax increase, the Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, which manages the WTQL, and the state's quitline service provider, Free & Clear, Inc., collaborated to enhance quitline knowledge, availability, and services with the goal of increasing consumer demand for services. The enhancements included for the first time, a free 2-week supply of over-the-counter nicotine replacement medication for tobacco users who agreed to receive multi-session quitline counseling. A successful statewide earned media campaign intensified the impact of these activities, which were timed to coincide with temporal smoking-cessation behavioral patterns (i.e., New Year's resolutions). As a result, the WTQL fielded a record 27,000 calls during the first 3 months of 2008, reaching nearly 3% of adult Wisconsin smokers. This experience demonstrates that consumer demand for quitline services can be markedly enhanced through policy and communication initiatives to increase the population reach of this evidence-based treatment.

A Clerk’s View

A Clerk’s View CLIFF SLOAN One enduring challenge ofbeing a law clerk for Justice Stevens was trying to prove, at least to yourself, that the Justice actually needed a clerk. He could do it all himself—and he frequently did. It wasn’tjust the fact that he drafted his own opinions, although that was definitely part ofit. (What exactly do you say as a young, recent lawschool graduate when he gives you his polished and carefully conceived draft? “Good effort, Justice, I think you’re coming along nicely”?) And it wasn’t just the fact that he would read the same mountain of briefs as you and then come up with an insight that nobody had seen and that irrevocably turned the case on its side for all concerned, including the lawyers and the other Justices. It was also the fact that he already pos­ sessed a vast, intimate, and easy knowledge of seemingly all legal subjects, including, of course, the decisions ofthe Supreme Court. In his modest, genial manner, he always assumed that everybody shared that same familiarity. I remember him commenting collegially that it was redundant to include the year of the decision in Supreme Court case citations. If you knew the reporter volume number, then, of course, you already knew the year. My co­ clerk and I nodded sagely. Justice Stevens’ profound and lasting con­ tributions to the Court’s jurisprudence have been chronicled elsewhere,1 and they will en­ dure for generations. He is the “rule of law” Justice, and he blazed trails on issues rang­ ing from civil liberties and national security2 to the presidency,3 the right to liberty,4 the First Amendment in cyberspace,5 and numer­ ous other areas.6 From a former clerk’s per­ spective, he stands for all ofthat and for some­ thing more—an example about how to live a life. Justice Stevens taught us to do the right thing. Not in a preachy, self-righteous way, but rather through his own habits and practices. Every case is important—because that’s the right thing to do. A judge gives every case a fair hearing, with his or her all—because that’s the right thing to do. You come to your own views carefully and honestly, and then you lay them out for the world to see—because that’s the right thing to do. Justice Stevens frequently tells a story from his time on the Seventh Circuit in the early 1970s. Father James Groppi, an an­ tipoverty protestor, led a group that disrupted A CLERK’S VIEW 199 Members of the Supreme Court posed underneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the East Room of the White House in 1985 with Ronald Reagan. Justice Stevens is at left wearing his signature bow tie. Justice Stevens and Chief Justice Roberts were photographed on the day of Roberts' investiture in 2005. Stevens had sworn in Roberts at a White House ceremony several days earlier. 200 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Justice Stevens served on the Supreme Court for almost thirty-five years, having been appointed by Gerald Ford in 1975. Only William 0. Douglas and Stephen J. Field had longer tenures. the Wisconsin legislature by occupying the floor of the Assembly. Groppi was cited for contempt and jailed, without any procedu­ ral safeguards. Then-Judge Stevens dissented from the Seventh Circuit’s en banc decision to uphold the contempt punishment, and he wrote extensively on the lack ofdue process.7 At the time, he felt certain that his dissent meant that he was giving up any chance of going on the Supreme Court. This was the height of ten­ sions over unlawful and disruptive protests, after all, and President Nixon was in office. Dissenting on behalf of a notorious protestor was no way to advance a judicial career. But Justice Stevens knew what he had to do. In the end, Justice Stevens’ position was unani­ mously approved by the Supreme Court,8 and his courageous dissent was hailed as one of his important contributions when he was nom­ inated to the Court. I know more than one clerk who has made a life decision to follow his...

Juvenile Justice in Milwaukee

Historically, there have been several attempts made to address issues surrounding juvenile delinquency. The Wisconsin Legislature outlines the objectives of the juvenile justice system in the Juvenile Justice Code in s. 939.01, “to promote a juvenile justice system capable of dealing with the problem of juvenile delinquency, a system which will protect the community, impose accountability for violations of law and equip juvenile offenders with competencies to live responsibly and productively.” From this definition alone, one can predict how complex and contradictory strategies to prevent juvenile crime have become. For example, how is delinquency or delinquent behavior described? Who needs protecting the most in communities and what happens when juveniles are waived to adult court? Who is to blame for past and current policies that have been unsuccessful in addressing this issue? More importantly, is society equipping children and youth with competencies to live responsibly and productively or are urban youth targeted in an effort to remove and exclude them physically and mentally from society? This article answers these questions.

Challenges and Opportunities for Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions at the State, Regional and Local Level

ABSTRACT Addressing climate change is one of the great challenges of our age. While the current president has signaled that this will be a top priority under his administration, previous administrations have not pursued a comprehensive regulatory or diplomatic strategy to counteract the causes and consequences of climate change. Until recently, the federal government's efforts in this area have been limited almost exclusively to climate-related research, energy research, and voluntary emission reduction programs to curb greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, states such as Wisconsin--as well as tribes and local governments--have taken the lead to explore solutions to the challenges posed by global warming. Wisconsin, in particular, boasts a nationally recognized, utility funded, statewide energy efficiency program; a renewable portfolio standard; and mandatory carbon dioxide emission reporting. Governor Jim Doyle's Global Warming Task Force has recommended dozens of additional steps to further address climate change at the state level, and Wisconsin's legislature is poised to act on that package of proposals during its current session. Other states around the country are also active in adopting proposals of their own, and several regional efforts are underway, in various stages, to design and implement regional cap-and-trade programs. With new leadership in Washington, national climate change policy appears poised to catch up with what has already been happening in states like Wisconsin. This emerging federal policy will present new challenges and opportunities for states. Because of the progress it already has made, Wisconsin is in a very good position to help inform the federal debate, and ultimately, decide for itself how best to craft state initiatives going forward in a way that complements a comprehensive and national approach to the challenge of climate change. This Article highlights some of the actions Wisconsin has taken and how we can move forward alongside a more engaged federal government in the area of climate change policy. I. INTRODUCTION II. WISCONSIN'S POLICY RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE A. Focus on Energy: Wisconsin's Statewide Energy Efficiency Program B. Promoting Renewable Energy C. Governor's Task Force on Global Warming D. Merging Clean Energy with Economic Development & Energy Security E. Wisconsin's Role in Regional, National and International Climate Change Initiatives and Cooperative Efforts III. AN EMERGING ROLE FOR STATES IN THE FACE OF FEDERAL ACTION A. The Role of States in Designing a Federal Cap-and-Trade Program B. States Should Innovate on Complementary Policies C. States Should Play a Role in Investing Cap-and-Trade Program Revenues D. States Should Share Lessons Learned IV. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION The challenge of climate change remains a global problem requiring a global solution. While President Obama has signaled his desire to lead on this issue, the previous administration failed to develop a comprehensive regulatory or diplomatic strategy to counteract its causes and consequences. As a result, states have for years been adopting their own climate change measures. Wisconsin has been one of those states. We have one of the most well-established and successful energy efficiency programs in the country, a renewable portfolio standard that has been on the books since 2006, and mandatory, carbon dioxide emissions reporting that has been required for over fifteen years. My Global Warming Task Force last year recommended a package of over fifty additional policy measures that garnered broad support from a variety of sectors, and I look forward to our Legislature acting on that reasonable package this year. Though progress at the state level is important, federal action is needed--specifically, the enactment of a nationwide, multisector cap-and-trade program. …

Future Challenges: Changing Health Care Delivery and Advancing Patient Care

Our current health care system involves multidisciplinary groups of practitioners who function as freestanding silos and in which a “team” approach means an awareness and tolerance of other disciplines as patients are handed from one practitioner to another. Pharmacy has advanced from clinical pharmacy through pharmaceutical care to the dawning of medication therapy management services. With each step pharmacy has become more focused on direct patient care. As technology and technicians improve the dispensing process and as electronic databases evolve, the pharmacist will increasingly be positioned to be more available and better equipped to provide direct patient care and medication therapy management services. Over the next decade, I see pharmacy and other health care providers moving to an interdisciplinary team approach in which decisions are made by consensus and through which each discipline has an equal opportunity for input.1 To accommodate such a change, I envision a new health care delivery model based on the following components: n Wellness and prevention services as the entry point into the system. n An interdisciplinary delivery model with providers having shared borders (a model in which our professional boundaries become blurred or overlap, and health care professionals share a common knowledge base, a common professional interest, and an instinct to help the patient). n “Physician extenders” providing disease and medication management services using evidenced-based medicine. n Systems that are outcomes driven and outcomes justified. n A broader acceptance and use of complementary and alternative medicine within the delivery model. All of the above components are evolving or already exist in the current environment. The challenge to the system is to integrate them into successful delivery models. The challenge to the pharmacist is to identify, embrace, Future Challenges: Changing Health Care Delivery and Advancing Patient Care and drive their evolving roles within this new health care delivery model.

LOOKING AT THE POLITICS–ADMINISTRATION DICHOTOMY FROM THE OTHER DIRECTION: PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION BY A STATE SENATOR

The politics–administration dichotomy has been a durable concept in political science and public administration. Many effective critiques of the doctrine, first suggested by Woodrow Wilson in 1887, have not diminished the longevity of the approach it suggests for policy making in government. Yet, most of the literature has been written from the point of view of either academics or public administration practitioners. Little has been presented from the point of the view of the other participants in the dichotomy, the elected officials. Based on participant observation in the Wisconsin Legislature from 1977 to 1989, the author reviews how the politicians with whom he served behaved regarding their relations with administrators. He suggests that elected officials make decisions based on political rationality rather than a comprehensive norm defining their relationship with administrators. The political decision making he observed implicitly viewed administrators as subordinate to politicians rather than equal partners, roughly comparable to the discredited original meaning of the politics–administration dichotomy.

Revising Child Support Orders: The Wisconsin Experience

In an effort to make Wisconsin's child support cases more equitable and up-to-date, old child support orders were reviewed. Only 21% of the cases were revised. he amount of revised orders increased substantially, a mean of $116/month (77%). An alternative method of keeping orders current is to express them as a percentage of the noncustodial parent's income; these orders are kept up-to-date automatically without a revision process. One of the factors driving the current welfare reform debate is the idea that taxpayers are being asked to support children in poor singleparent families because parents who do not live with their children (generally fathers) are not providing them with adequate financial support. This linkage between the provision of private support for children (child support) and the public provision of this support (primarily Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC) has had a long history, with the first legislation that attempted to increase child support among AFDC recipients occurring in 1950. Over the next four decades, the link has been strengthened and formalized, particularly with the creation of the federal Child Support Enforcement (IV-D) agency in 1974, a public agency designed to help all custodial parents receiving AFDC and any other custodial parent who requested child support services. The child support and welfare systems are again receiving attention as policymakers search for ways to shift responsibility for the economic support of single-parent families from the government to the noncustodial parent. As the child support system has been examined, most observers have concluded that it has significant problems (Garfinkel, 1992, for example). One problem is that noncustodial parents are not paying the amounts that they are ordered to pay: total child support payments in 1991 were $11.9 billion, compared to $17.7 billion due (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995). However, a larger problem is that many custodial parents do not have child support orders, and the orders that exist are often low and are seldom updated and, thus, do not reflect the current ability of the noncustodial parent to pay. Sorensen (1995) estimates that about $50 billion of child support could be collected if orders reflected current circumstances and were fully paid, in contrast to the $17.7 billion of current child support orders. Some policies have been aimed at increasing the proportion of custodial parents who have child support orders. Other policies have been directed at ensuring that orders are kept up-to-date; the latter policies are the focus of this article. The 1988 Family Support Act (FSA; Public Law 100-485) contained the following provisions: At least every 3 years, states must review each AFDC case with a child support order to see if the order should be revised. The FSA also required that states contact any non-AFDC case in the child support system (IV-D cases) to obtain permission to review and potentially revise the order amount. State plans on how these provisions were to be accomplished were required by October, 1990, with full implementation required by October, 1993. At about the same time, the Wisconsin legislature authorized the Wisconsin Order Revision Project, a pilot project designed to systematically review and revise old child support orders to ensure their adequacy. The Wisconsin legislation, like the federal legislation, required child support staff to review AFDC cases and to offer reviews to non-AFDC cases. Child support staff in 13 of Wisconsin's 72 counties reviewed old orders to determine if they needed to be revised; if the orders were found to be out-of date, the staff attempted to secure revisions. The Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) collected data on all cases considered for revision by child support staff. This article reviews the results of these efforts. Prior to the FSA deadline for implementation, two other projects also tested the method of periodically reviewing child support orders. …

The Economic Impact of Diverting Substance-Abusing Offenders into Treatment

Recognizing the relationship between substance abuse and criminal behavior, the Wisconsin legislature in 1989 mandated the establishment of the Treatment Alternative Programs (TAP) modeled after the national Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime (TASC) program. This study evaluates the economic impact of TAP by examining the benefits and costs and cost-effectiveness of diverting offenders from the criminal justice system into substance abuse treatment. The results suggest that the benefits of TAP outweigh its costs in the short run and TAP costs less than incarcerating offenders.

To Remember the Faces of the Dead: The Plentitude of Memory in Southwestern New Britain

David Obey has in his nearly forty years in the U.S. House of Representatives worked to bring economic and social justice to America s working families. In 2007 he assumed the chair of the Appropriations Committee and is positioned to pursue his priority concerns for affordable health care, education, environmental protection, and a foreign policy consistent with American democratic ideals. Here, in his autobiography, Obey looks back on his journey in politics beginning with his early years in the Wisconsin Legislature, when Wisconsin moved through eras of shifting balance between Republicans and Democrats. On a national level Obey traces, as few others have done, the dramatic changes in the workings of the U.S. Congress since his first election to the House in 1969. He discusses his own central role in the evolution of Congress and ethics reforms and his view of the recent Bush presidency crucial chapters in our democracy, of interest to all who observe politics and modern U.S. history.Best Books for Regional General Audiences, selected by the American of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association

Using a Special Purpose Unit of Government to Manage Lakes

ABSTRACT In 1974, the Wisconsin Legislature recognized that many lakes needed more intensive management than could be provided by either the state's general pollution control efforts or the voluntary efforts of property owners' associations. The Legislature passed legislation enabling property owners to form a special purpose unit of government to manage a local lake. This article describes the history and activities of Wisconsin lake districts. Particular attention is paid to the differentiation of function between federal, state, and county/municipal governments – general purpose units – and the special purpose lake district. Data from a recent survey of 79 lake districts showed the most popular activities are mechanically harvesting aquatic vegetation, 57 percent; stocking fish, 48 percent; promoting boating and skiing regulations, 37 percent; chemically controlling macrophytes, 34 percent; controlling algae, 33 percent; patrolling water safety, 28 percent; promoting zoning, 25 percent; inspecting sept...

Patterns of Influence and Choice in the Wisconsin Budgetary Process

Many observers note that state legislatures have been taking more policy leadership lately, and this study of budget making in Wisconsin lends empirical support to that observation. It suggests that the Wisconsin Legislature shapes the most important part of the state budget, by amending or deleting executive initiatives as well as by initiating its own policy proposals. It also suggests that the legislative participants selectively delegate their choice to other participants in the Wisconsin budgetary process and that there is a pattern to their delegation.

The evaluation and monitoring of a medicaid second surgical opinion program

The evaluation of newly implemented and controversial programs often present real problems for the evaluator. When a program is accompanied by a legislatively mandated evaluation, the issues become even more acute. The evaluator, wanting to impact on policy, must strike a balance between the adherence to principles of scientific inquiry, yet be responsive to the needs of policymakers. This paper describes the evaluation and follow-up monitoring of a recently established second opinion program for Medicaid recipients. The program was to terminate in 17 months unless extended by the Wisconsin Legislature. The evaluation found, among other things, marked reductions in the use of surgical services after implementation of the second opinion program. Based in large part on the evaluation, the program was extended with a provision for continued monitoring. The paper discusses the factors that contributed to the evaluation having a major impact on the decision to extend the program.