Marketplace Today Blog

Construction equipment and orange signs and barrels may make earlier-than-expected appearances in Wisconsin.

Gov. Jim Doyle said at the New North Summit Monday that President Obama plans to introduce “a very major stimulus package, and it’s going to be focused on infrastructure, and the New North is very well positioned.”

The first group of infrastructure projects likely to be part of a stimulus package are projects where “all the engineering’s done, the projects are waiting to go,” and the state is “waiting to start digging dirt,” because Obama wants to “get jobs immediately.” A second group would “naturally move all of the projects up,” where engineering and design work needs to be finished.

Major Northeast Wisconsin road projects scheduled for the next few years include:

• U.S. 41 from Oshkosh to Neenah, scheduled now for 2010 to 2014.
• U.S. 41 from De Pere to Suamico, scheduled now for 2011 to 2015.
• The Wisconsin 96 Wrightstown Bridge, scheduled for 2012 and 2013.
• Wisconsin 23 from Fond du Lac to Plymouth, scheduled for 2013 and 2014.
• Further work on the U.S. 151 Fond du Lac Bypass, with alternatives to be chosen in 2009 and 2010.
• Wisconsin 15 from New London to Appleton, scheduled to be placed on the state’s road construction schedule in 2010.
• Wisconsin 21 from Omro to Oshkosh.

Doyle said he is also pushing for water-related projects, including improvements to Great Lakes ports and water treatment systems. He also is seeking projects based on “new forms of transportation,” including passenger rail, commercial rail, harbor and airport improvements, and “new jobs in green energy.”

Doyle said Obama’s infrastructure plans are the “biggest since Dwight Eisenhower focused the country on building the Interstate System.”

Doyle’s idea of economic stimulus is the Accelerate Wisconsin plan, which would give tax breaks for capital gains that are reinvested, as well as companies that “expand their research and development.” He also said the state’s early-seed-stage tax break program “needs to be reinvented and modernized in a number of ways.”

Doyle said the economic downturn affects states in both taxes and spending — at the same time that revenues from state income and sales taxes are dropping, the demand for “a lot of services that people rely on,” such as unemployment insurance, increases. He added, however, that businesses taxes are now “in the lowest one-third in the U.S., and we better make sure we stay there.”

In comments at the New North Summit earlier Monday, Doyle said that steep budget cuts will be needed to close the state’s $5.4 billion budget deficit, but “we cannot put ourselves in a position where we cut the lifeblood of the state,” including education, health care, and investing in the economy.

“I need business leaders in our state to stand up and say we need a good educational system for four-year-old kindergarten through high school,” plus technical colleges and the University of Wisconsin System, he said.

Doyle said the “crisis in the national economy … may be as bad as what we saw in the 1930s,” affecting “families in Wisconsin, businesses in Wisconsin, and it certainly is affecting state government.”

What Doyle called “very, very deep cuts” in state government include not filling the 10 percent of state government jobs that are vacant, selling 500 state-owned vehicles, and not giving discretionary raises to state employees.

“It’s what families are doing, it’s what businesses are doing, it’s what the entire country is doing right now,” he said.

Doyle praised the New North regional effort, saying, “In these tough times, we need the New North more than ever” so that “Wisconsin will be part of the expansion that will come. We have in these difficult times great opportunities. The saying is ‘you can’t let a crisis go to waste,’ and that’s how I see it and that’s how the New North sees it.”