(Beaver Dam) On a recent WBEV Community Comment program, State Representative Mark Born of Beaver Dam discussed some of the accomplishments during the last legislative session. Born says there was an increase in shared revenue that was the largest since the creation of the program.
“The second part of that is we changed the way the formula works,” says Born. “So, the old formulas in place with the old funding, but with the new funding we have a new formula that focuses more on rural areas, because the old, shared revenue formula focuses very heavily on the big cities.”
Born says when money would be put into shared revenue, it would go towards the larger cities such as Madison, Milwaukee and Eau Claire. Another accomplishment Born highlighted was the increase to the state school voucher program.
“It was part of a grand compromise with the governor,” Born says. “We also put a lot of money into public education [because] that’s what he wanted for the deal. For some of us, it was probably even a higher level of spending than we would normally be comfortable with. But it was part of a grand bargain that was really important to get the largest of that voucher program since it was created.”
The representative says that the new program will now be available to all families who are struggling, not just those in the city of Milwaukee.
