| 9/3/2009 11:01:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Hilgenberg has early opposition in the 51st
Tere Dunlap
MONROE - Job creation and open debates on policy issues sit at the core of Howard Marklein, Spring Green, candidacy for Wisconsin Assembly.
Marklein announced in July his run against incumbent Rep. Steve Hilgenberg, D-Dodgeville, for the 51st Assembly District seat.
The district covers the southern half of Sauk and Iowa counties, a majority of Lafayette County and a small portion of Richland County.
Marklein said he decided to run for assembly when he started "seeing the legislation being passed in the last several months."
"Steve Hilgenberg is not doing a good job fighting for people here," he said.
Marklein noted Hilgenberg is one of several representatives sponsoring Assembly Bill 35, relating to the use of race-based names, nicknames, logos, and mascots by school boards, requiring the exercise of rule-making authority, and providing a penalty.
"How many jobs does that create? Until we have jobs and the economy is doing well, I don't care about mascots," Marklein said.
Hilgenberg said he has not been thinking yet about the next state election which is still more than a year away. He's focusing on the remainder of his term
"What I'm trying to do is my job," Hilgenberg said.
The problem with two-year terms is that "you don't know if you're doing your job or campaigning," he said.
"I'm glad he is running," Hilgenberg said about Marklein's candidacy announcement. "The best thing, we would create competition in the district so incumbents wouldn't feel so comfortable.
Hilgenberg said he would continue to work for the people of his district as long as he believed he could "help solve the problem."
Marklein is a 1972 graduate of River Valley High School and earned a degree in accounting at UW-Whitewater. Marklein and his wife, Peggy, a registered nurse, live in Wilson Creek near Spring Green, near the dairy farm where he was raised.
People in his district are not happy with the level of state spending and with the pork in the state budget, Marklein said.
"And I agree with them," he said.
Marklein is also against policy issues being embedded in the state budget.
"Policy in the state budget has nothing to do with spending and taxes," he said. "The reason they are in there is because hey wouldn't pass on their own."
He pointed to law enforcement agencies keeping track of the ethnicity in arrests and citations; the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO); and prevailing wage requirements as examples of policies that do not belong in the budget.
Prevailing wage requirements cause dissension among workers, drives up property taxes and keeps small local contractors out of the bidding process, he added.
"All these things need to be debated out in the open. If they are good policy, debate it, let them make their points and pass it," he said.
Marklein would also like to see a different distribution of funds for schools.
"The state spends an incredible amount of money for MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools), and it's a failure. Almost 50 percent do not graduate, and (those students) have two choices: A: welfare, or B: crime, Guess who pays for both of those?" he said.
Marklein believes the money spent on Milwaukee's school system "dries up resources for the rest of the state" and available money for smaller schools.
In his own school district, River Valley School District, Marklein said the school tax levy increased 16 percent, and over 15 percent in Sauk Prairie.
"Meanwhile, Milwaukee got taken care of pretty well," he said.
Besides school funding, Marklein would "love to see" school enrollments stop declining.
"Why do we have declining enrollments? Because families are not staying here," he said.
"Once we've got jobs, we can sustain schools, hospitals, libraries and parks," he said.
Marklein will be in Benton and Gratiot Sept. 7 for their Labor Day celebrations.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Thursday, September 03, 2009
Article comment by:
murry
Howard Markein makes alot of sense and we have lost alot of jobs here in WI. He is the man to get us back on track with fiscal responsibility and job creation. Go Mark!
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