Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) said he is willing to veto the Wisconsin state budget if a return-to-work policy for state employees is included.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican who is frequently at odds with Evers, said he wants to require state employees to work multiple days per week. Evers argued that the remote-work policy benefits rural communities, as they do not have to relocate to the state’s capital, Madison.
“It’s working. We’ve heard for years the idea that someone — it’s not fair that so many of the people that work for the state of Wisconsin came from Madison, Milwaukee area,” Evers said in an interview on WISN’s UPFRONT on Sunday.
He said that in response to those complaints, state agencies “went out of our way” during and after COVID-19 to hire people from “all sorts of different places in the state because we knew they can work from home or work from an office that’s remote from Madison.”
“I think it’s important for us to say, ‘We want to get the best people working for the state of Wisconsin possible,’ and sometimes that will mean that they will work from home, part-time, full-time,” he said. “We can work that out. It’s working fine.”
Last month, Vos said he wants to have state employees working in the office “at least three to four days a week.”
“A lot of employees aren’t working, or they’re working only from home and not doing it very well with little supervision,” Vos said.
Both chambers of the Wisconsin state legislature are some of the most inactive in the country, with their legislative calendars being in session less than half the year. In 2020, WisPolitics found the Wisconsin legislature to be the “least active full-time state legislative body in the country.” Democrats responded to Vos’s interview by pointing out this fact.
“Rich stuff from a guy who adjourned the Assembly last February yet continues to draw a full-time salary,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Communications Director Joe Oslund said on social media.
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Evers argued that “the fact of the matter is I think it’s important for the state to be open to having people working from home, especially in parts of the state that we haven’t had a chance,” Evers said.
“Not all the good workers are in the Madison and Milwaukee area,” Evers said.