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1/21/2011
Monday meeting on WI budget – with the best teacher possible
Bob Lang, Director of Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, knows his stuff. Earning a BA in History from Beloit College in 1965 and a Masters in Political Science and Education from UW-Madison, Bob has served as the highly respected boss of the LFB since 1977.
The LFB works for the Wisconsin State Assembly and the State Senate, Republicans and Democrats, majority and minority leaders and the governor.
Steven Walters, long time Journal Sentinel Capitol Bureau Chief and now a senior producer for the nonprofit public affairs channel WisconsinEye, wrote a great piece in 2008 for the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). He captured well the admiration folks in Madison and around the country have for Wisconsin’s dean of number crunchers.
As director of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, and the nation’s longest-serving senior budget adviser to legislators, Lang has seen it all: New leaders with new priorities when party control flips. Recessions that turn tax collection forecasts into guesstimates. The inability of elected officials to close a chronic budget gap. A Legislature growing more partisan by the day.
But Lang, who turns 65 in August and has no plans to retire, has more than survived.
Bob is a Capitol institution, like the badger statue outside the governor’s office whose nose is shiny from school children rubbing it for good luck.
If you’ve so much as peeked at FoxPolitics News in the last year or two or three, you know Wisconsin’s budget is a mess. (If you’ve been on the moon the last several months, here’s a recent, quick and thorough report on the situation from Todd Berry, President of Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.)
Monday night will also be a good time to learn the workings of the Fiscal Bureau and about the myriad of publications its analysts make available. Navigating your way around all that’s available at the site takes a little fiddling, but whatever you want to know about the budget, for example, you’ll be able to find there. The number of analyses produced for each budget biennium is huge – learn your way around all those fiscal papers and you’ll be an expert in almost any area. All that information is there for us, Wisconsin voters and taxpayers. After hearing Bob Lang Monday night, use your legislator’s office often to help find your way around all that’s available.
Many thanks to Fox Valley Initiative for sending out a reminder of Monday night's meeting. And many thanks to our Fox Valley legislators who talked Bob into heading our way (well, I’m sure Bob was very willing!). Make sure you take advantage of it.
Monday, January 24, 6:30 PM
D.J. Bordini Center, 5 Systems Drive, Appleton (across the street, east, of Fox Valley Technical College)
Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net
COMMENTS
Thanks for the links, Jo. Good to have. They're marked as "favorites".
C. R. Stevenson (Fri Jan 21 11:45:48 2011)
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