Funding Power Gives GOP Victory in DEI Fight

Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, is seen during a convening of the Assembly at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Jan. 25, 2020 in Madison, Wis. Coburn Dukehart/Wisconsin Watch

Call it the power of the purse.

Why did Republican legislators win their fight with the UW System, which was backed by Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic legislators, to scale back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs by denying pay raises to employees across the universities and refusing to build critical new campus buildings?

Start with Article 8, Section 5, of the state Constitution: “The Legislature shall provide for an annual tax sufficient to defray the estimated expenses of the state for each year … as well as the estimated expenses for each ensuing year.”

Then add a contextual comment from former state Sen. Bob Jauch — “This building is about money!” — describing the Capitol where the longtime Democrat served for 32 years, including decades on the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee.

This year, Republicans who control the Legislature weren’t content to keep killing programs advocated by the Democratic governor and firing his appointees to state boards and commissions. Led by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Republicans this year added a new target: DEI programs throughout the universities in the state system, which have a budget of $7.5 billion.

Vos was a student member of the Board of Regents, which governs the universities when he attended UW–Whitewater. Vos said this summer he was “embarrassed” to be a UW System grad. “DEI is the new religion to the left,” he charged. “They don’t go to church on Sunday, but they have no problem using taxpayer dollars to evangelize on every college campus across the state. We have to stop, put our foot down and not allow it to continue.”

Republican legislators estimated that 43 employees had DEI-related jobs on all campuses, and those programs cost $32 million a year. So that amount was subtracted from the $1.2 billion in state aid provided to the universities in the budget Republicans passed last summer.

As noted earlier, the state Constitution gives the Legislature exclusive spending authority over state government.

Here’s how it works: Governors give lawmakers a wish-list budget in the winter, but legislators pass their own budget by July 1, and the governor can veto the whole budget or individual spending items. Two-thirds votes in both houses of the Legislature can override a budget veto, but that hasn’t happened in 51 years.

To get the universities’ attention, Republican lawmakers withheld 6% pay raises for almost 35,000 employees, who live in legislators’ districts statewide, until DEI programs were eliminated or dismantled. It was not an idle threat.

For months, as university employees protested, some two-year campuses closed, and chancellors laid off and threatened to lay off faculty and staff employees, Vos-led Republicans held firm. Manufacturing company CEOs signed a full-page ad pleading for a new UW–Madison engineering building.

Regents first voted 9-7 to reject a deal that UW System President Jay Rothman had negotiated with Vos, who refused to compromise further. On Dec. 14, the Regents voted 11-6 to accept the deal.

The Wisconsin State Journal summarized what both sides got in the deal:

-Vos got promises that one-third of DEI employees will become “student success” workers, a three-year ban on more DEI workers, the elimination of a “diversity statement” on admission applications, a UW–Madison professor specializing in conservative theories, and guaranteed admission for 5% of top high school graduates to UW–Madison and 10% of top high school grads to other four-year campuses.

-University employees got 6% pay raises retroactive to July 1, $32 million for programs in high-demand career fields, and $740 million for new and remodeled buildings, including the UW-Madison engineering building.

Democratic Rep. Dora Drake, of Milwaukee, chair of the Legislature’s Black Caucus, called the Republicans’ demands a “systematic, racist deal.”

Regent Dana Wachs, a former Democratic legislator, said the deal set a dangerous precedent of Republicans’ micromanaging the universities. “What’s it going to be next year? What will happen in the next budget?”

In a newsletter, Vos explained his motives: “Martin Luther King had a dream that one day we would all be judged on the content of our character and not the color of our skin. Unfortunately, some in our state want to focus on what divides us versus what makes us united. We’ve gone from trying to see who they are based on their God-given abilities to some wanting to see everyone only through a racial or gender lens.”

What old axiom summarizes lessons learned? You might call it the golden rule. “They who have the gold make the rules.”

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com