Republican candidate for governor Josh Schoemann said he would decentralize the state government as Wisconsin’s chief executive.
His laid out his plan Dec. 12 during a news conference at the Republican Party of Brown County’s headquarters in Bellevue. It would require all state employees to return to a physical office for work. It would also relocate eight agencies across the state pending “deliberation and negotiation” with the Legislature, according to an email from Schoemann’s campaign.
Specifically, Schoemann suggested:
Running in a field of gubernatorial hopefuls and directly against U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, so far the only other Republican candidate, Schoemann’s announcement added to his list of policy ideas that has swelled in recent weeks. He has announced his support of dismantling the state’s elections agency in favor of an elected official in charge of election oversight, as well as freezing tuition for Wisconsin students and eliminating professors’ tenure protections.
“I think campaigns should be about ideas, and they should be about the people. This is an idea that I think demonstrably changes the way we think about government,” Schoemann said. “I think that’s exactly what needs to happen in Wisconsin, is a totally new way of thinking.”
His plan to relocate offices would take decades due to the scale of change – about 25 to 50 years, Schoemann said.
He anticipated, for example, that all 141 employees of the Department of Financial Institutions would relocate without a hitch to Green Bay. The city’s history and host to firms like Nicolet Bank and Associated Bank made the area a natural fit in Schoemann’s mind for the DFI. Hiring new workers from the area would be easy because there were “a lot of well-qualified people here in the Green Bay area,” he said, but stressed the need for new employees would be evaluated.
The proposed initiative borrowed heavily from groundwork already laid.
Schoemann said his initiative was a larger version of the consolidation happening in Washington County under his watch as county executive. Downsizing is also occurring at the federal level and in Wisconsin under Gov. Tony Evers.
Schoemann elaborated that his plan would expand on Evers’ Vision 2030, an initiative to modernize the state government and right-size its property footprint that’s already been in motion since May 2021, according to the Department of Administration. Plans to occupy a new office building on Milwaukee’s near west side with a litany of state employees, for example, moved forward in 2024 after some years of delay. The proposed list of tenants would relocate employees responsible for everything from the Capitol Police to state revenues to transportation, among others.
Schoemann said his proposal would not replace Evers’ Vision 2030.
Both the Vision 2030 document and Schoemann on the campaign trail stressed that their goals kept in mind a need for the government to be responsive to the public, acknowledged a changing workplace, and the concern of saving taxpayer dollars.
“I think it’s important to acknowledge that not 100% of everything Gov. Evers has done I disagree with,” Schoemann said. “I think there’s pieces of it that we can build upon … but we can do it much better, much more responsive.”
Schoemann still considered his plan to be different in calling for a “much smaller, more focused” state government. He made the distinction between his Reagan-like ideal against his view of Evers and the Democratic gubernatorial candidates “growing government exponentially.”
He drew further contrasts and at the same time partially agreed with the governor on a bill that would have required most of the state’s 30,000 employees to work in a physical office for at least 80% of their monthly work hours.
The bill, Assembly Bill 39, passed the Republican-controlled Assembly along party lines, and was vetoed by Evers on grounds that the Legislature was “encroaching on the executive branch … and the ability of state government agencies to develop and implement employee telework policies that work best to meet the needs of the Wisconsinites they serve,” according to the governor’s veto message. Evers further said that the bill “will come at great cost to Wisconsin taxpayers.”
Schoemann agreed on principle with Evers’ reasoning, saying that he didn’t believe “state laws dictating how the executive branch needs to work is the best idea.” However, Schoemann questioned that working remotely was best. Administrating SNAP benefits, he said, was an example of county-level work that made sense to do remotely. Other positions needed to be evaluated given the loss of productivity that comes with working from home, Schoemann said.
Should Schoemann be elected, he said he would sign an executive order the first day in office to force employees back into physical offices, saying the Assembly bill wouldn’t need to be passed. He would still sign the bill if it came across his desk, Schoemann said.
“I’m an ideas machine, it’s who I am, but a problem-solver first,” said Schoemann. “And I think this is one of the ways to help start changing that culture” in government.
Jesse Lin is a reporter covering the community of Green Bay and its surroundings, as well as politics in northeastern Wisconsin. He also writes a weekly column answering reader questions about Green Bay. Contact and send him questions at 920-834-4250 or jlin@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: In Bellevue, Schoemann pledges to decentralize state government as governor
Reporting by Jesse Lin, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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