Representing Wisconsin State Assembly District 93

As the snow begins to melt, and we start seeing signs of spring, the legislature has already been busy working on passing its annual agenda to help continue to move our state forward. I wanted to take this week’s column to talk about a few of the areas that the legislature has been working on so far this year.

Workforce shortage

I’ve talked a lot about the workforce shortage in our state, and for good reason. With everyone throughout our state feeling the effects of a constrained supply chain causing issues at our local main street businesses, gas stations, grocery stores, and restaurants, we need to continue to do what we can to help eliminate this issue for everyone. This last week the Senate passed my Reemployment Assistance Act to give additional workforce resources to people on unemployment insurance to help them find their next job. The Senate also passed a number of other bills to help people on other assistance programs, like food stamps, connect with available jobs in our state.

Education On top of the record funding that the legislature provided to our schools in the budget, we continue to work to increase transparency and accountability to ensure that the interests of our children and parents are protected. This is why the Assembly passed my gifted and talented legislation to provide additional information for parents to access their local gifted and talented program while gathering important data on pupil identification, participation in gifted and advanced programs, the types of services schools provide, and how much time a school district dedicates to this important issue.

In addition, the Assembly passed several bills including a Parental Bill of Rights. This bill would establish various rights for parents including the right to have access to educational materials, expand the ability of parents to opt-out of, or be notified about, certain educational topics, and the right to visit a child during school hours. The package of bills also creates a uniform standard for the school accountability report cards to help parents compare changes to schools year after year.

Election reforms

It is incredibly important to me that each and every voter has confidence that the electoral process is reliable and transparent. That is why the Assembly passed several common- sense election bills this last week. One of the bills would prohibit private funding, such as funds from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, from being used for election administration and codifying voter ID in Wisconsin. The legislature also passed a number of provisions recommended by the non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau. Another provision includes if a voter waited longer than one hour to cast their ballot on Election Day, the municipality must take corrective action before the next election to reduce wait times.

As always, if there is a piece of legislation that you are especially interested in learning more about, please do not hesitate to reach out to my office at (608) 266-0660 or [email protected] ov.

State Rep. Warren Petryk