Here & Now; 115

April 18, 2003

Here and Now, Qualified Economic Offer, or QEO. governor's budget proposal to repeal a state law that allows school boards to limit teacher pay increases. It's called the Qualified Economic Offer, or QEO. It allows school boards to avoid arbitration with teachers unions by offering pay and benefit increases of 3.8 percent each year. property tax freeze, Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated a 13 percent two-year increase in property taxes for Wisconsinites. The estimate was based on the assumption that any dollar lost to shared revenue cuts to cities would be made up by a dollar hike in property taxes. The report was requested by republican senator Bob Welch, who along with other republicans, proposed a bill that creates a property tax freeze to stave off the threat of increases. Republican state senator Dave Zien is one of the sponsors of the bill. Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, Rich Eggleston says the fear of rising property taxes is political, not fiscal. recall of Gary George, Senator Gary George has become synonymous with the Milwaukee district he's represented through good times and bad since 1980. But now, a number of his constituents say they've had enough of his representation. A committee to recall the senator has gathered 12, 000 signatures. That is 4, 000 more than required to file for a recall election. The committee lists 18 reasons to send the senator packing. We go over a few of those now with the leader of the recall movement, Leon Todd. state waters management, group of environmentalists and business leaders draft a new plan to uniformly manage the health of Wisconsin waters. The project is spearheaded by the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters. Curt Meine is one of the study's authors.