Our Fall Agenda: Speaker's Briefing for October 25, 2013

I’m State Representative Robin Vos and this is the Speaker’s Briefing.

Governor Walker was in Burlington this week to sign $100 million dollars in property tax relief, adding to the major income tax cut passed earlier this session. We are bringing certainty through our reforms, and we have more reforms coming this fall.

Assembly Republicans are spearheading many workforce training initiatives to ensure that we have a workforce that’s ready for the jobs of today and tomorrow.  For example, Wisconsin Workers Win is an exciting program that helps unemployed workers get training on the job, something that could lead to a full-time position. It was tested as a pilot in a few counties and was extremely successful. I’m glad we can finally expand it statewide.

In November we’re going to take up several bills that came out of the Speaker’s bipartisan Task Force on Mental Health. Representatives Steineke and Krug have a bill that will establish a Child Psychiatric Access Line; something that will help doctors deal with younger patients. There are several others that expand access to mental health care to help everybody, all across Wisconsin.

Lastly, we all know that our elections system doesn’t work anywhere near as well as it should.  That’s why the Assembly will work on some very important reforms. One idea is to make sure everyone statewide has the same access to early voting opportunities. I also want to fix our recall system, which should be used to punish malfeasance in office and not just settle political disagreements.

It’s going to be a busy fall in the Assembly, but everything we do is designed to help the people of Wisconsin. I’m proud of what we have already done and promise to continue working to make our state the very best it can be to live, work and retire.

Download the movie