Dear Friends, Great news! The five-county Miller Park tax is coming to an end. For many years, I have fought to eliminate that sales tax and it's finally happening! I will be voting in favor of getting rid of the sales tax if the State Senate takes up the legislation next week. Good luck to Grafton, Homestead, and Menomonee Falls High Schools as they survived round one of the WIAA football playoffs. Homestead and Menomonee Falls will face off tonight in round two in the Falls. Grafton will play West DePere. As always, if you have any concerns or ideas on how to improve our great state, please do not hesitate to contact me by phone at 608-266-5830 or by email at Sen.Darling@legis.wisconsin.gov. On, Wisconsin!

Slowing the Growth of Government

Over the years, I have worked to make your state government smaller, more efficient, and more affordable. We've cut taxes by more than $8 billion and soon that number will top $13 billion. We aren't going back now. This week, Representative John Nygren and I sent a letter to Governor Evers' administration making it clear we won't approve new positions without eliminating already existing vacancies. Recently, Governor Evers' administration requested more than 60 new positions. There are currently more than 4,000 vacancies in state government and that doesn't even include UW-System. More than 600 positions have been vacant for more than one year. We are willing to work with the governor if the new positions are truly needed but first, we should eliminate jobs that aren't being filled. Creating new positions when there are so many vacant spots doesn't make sense. This isn't the first time we've had to stop Governor Evers' attempts to grow government and raise your taxes to pay for it. In his budget, the governor tried to raise taxes by more than $1 billion and create more than 700 new jobs for bureaucrats. His plan would have dug a $2 billion structural deficit and left taxpayers on the hook for the bill. We stopped his plan and delivered a middle-class tax cut to boot.

Assembly Committee Approves Suicide Prevention Bill

This week, the Assembly Education Committee approved my bill to help prevent suicides among young people. Tragically, suicide is the 9th leading cause of death in our state. For kids between the ages of 10 and 18, it's the second leading cause of death. My bill will help fund peer-to-peer suicide prevention programs for our schools. Peer-to-peer programs like Hope Squad and Sources of Strength are making a real difference in preventing suicides. The programs help change the way kids talk about mental health, train peers to identify signs of crisis and seek help, and train student leaders for kids to contact when they need additional support.  Peer-to-Peer programs will help kids see a support network in their school and help them understand that they are not alone. The bill is now available for a vote in the full Assembly.

Putting More Money in Classrooms

The Assembly Education Committee approved two bills that I am working on with State Representative Mary Felzkowski which will help put more money directly into our classrooms. The bills are ideas that grew from the Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding, which I served on last summer. The commission was a bipartisan task force that received input from educators, superintendents, and administrators from throughout Wisconsin. I am pleased to author these common-sense ways to help school districts save money. Administration and IT costs often mean less money for the classrooms. The committee approved our bill to create incentives for school districts to streamline their administrative costs by sharing those services with other units of government or school districts.  The committee also approved our bill that will allow school districts to engage in "whole grade sharing." Some school districts find they don't have enough students to fill a class for a grade level. Our bill will encourage different districts to swap grade levels when needed by creating a financial incentive of $150 per student.  We hope that school districts in both rural and urban areas can benefit from these changes and make sure more money goes directly to teaching children. Both bills are now available for a vote in the State Assembly.

Daylight Savings Times Begins This Weekend

Blue Books Available

Fall Color Report

Click the picture above for the full fall color report of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is Still Winning!

Did you know? Wisconsin is ranked in the top ten in the nation for female entrepreneurs. Our last budget started with a surplus of more than $1 billion. By 2021, we will have cut taxes by more than $13 billion since 2011. Wisconsin is finally out of the top ten highest taxed states in the nation. Wisconsin’s GDP was 2.9% for the first quarter of 2019. That’s higher than Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Michigan. For all of 2018, Wisconsin’s economy grew 2.5%, the best year of growth for the state since 2010. The property tax bill on a median valued home is lower now than it was back in 2010.  Our labor force participation rate is five points higher than the national average. WalletHub ranks Wisconsin as the 6th best state to live in. Wisconsin ranks number one in the Midwest for Health Care Access and Patient Safety. CNBC ranks Wisconsin as the 17th best state in the nation for business. According to the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy, the income for a median family of four in Wisconsin grew 13.1% since 2010. Nationally, incomes grew 10.7%.

Around the 8th...

Please take a moment to watch this powerful and moving video from students at Grafton High School on the dangers of drunken and distracted driving.

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