| In the two short years that she has been in the state senate, representing the Fourth Senate District out of Milwaukee, Taylor has quickly risen through the ranks. During the upcoming session, she will be on the powerful Joint Finance Committee and will chair the Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition, Taylor sits on the WHEDA board, all appointments that place her in a strategic spot to do something good for the people of her district. At the top of Taylor's "Things to Do" list is funding for Wisconsin's public schools. "I don't think it's something we are going to deal with last like we did last session at 3 a.m.," Taylor said during an interview with The Capital City Hues in her fourth floor capitol office. "It was the last budget item we dealt with. I anticipate that we are going to place health care, the education of our children, and jobs in the forefront of what we do." Taylor can recite a litany off the top of her head of things endemic to the plight of Milwaukee's African American community -- from violence to high school dropouts -- that are affected by public education. And as a member of the Joint Finance Committee, she is in a position to do something about it. "We have to figure out how we can do some things differently so that we can get different results," Taylor emphasized. "That's my hope that we are going to do things different in this committee than what was done before. The Finance Committee I was on this past session tried to take all of the funding out for education, $440 million, and the Governor put it back in. At least I don't believe we'll have that kind of issue because we have some different competing perspectives going on than before and that's exciting. "If the issue of Affirmative Action comes up this session, more than likely, it would be referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Taylor chairs. Proposals coming out of the Special Committee on Affirmative Action would not be "rubber stamped" by her committee. "I'm not pleased with the perspective of [Chairman Grothman] as he has gone forward,"Taylor confided. "The committee was supposed to be there to analyze what we are doing related to Affirmative Action, to do an assessment. What should we do? Should we tweak it? Where should we tweak it? The only perspective he seems to be taking on is the ability to eliminate it. That's like going in and deciding you don't want to fix anything. It's like you're coming to figure out how to tear down the house. Wait a minute. Don't tear down the house yet. Can't we just fix the toilet seat? So I've not been pleased with that concept from the chair. But I'm excited that the chair is no longer in a position to set the agenda for legislation." Any legislation seeking to enact the results of the advisory referendum supporting the reenactment of the death penalty, which passed 55.5 percent last November, would also likely come before Taylor's Judiciary Committee. While she would give due diligence to any proposed legislation that came before her committee, clearly she would strongly oppose any death penalty legislation. "The death penalty does not reduce crime and it costs more," Taylor observed. "Last I checked, we didn't have a lot of money to throw away. We're not trying to do things that aren't effective. As a matter of fact, we're doing audits to try and figure out how we do programs that are effective and implement those things and not continue to do things just because. It seems that based on statistics I've looked at, it is a reality that African Americans are disproportionately represented. The people who do the most heinous crimes are not necessarily the same individuals who are on death row. It's not that some of the individuals on death row didn't deserve to be. But clearly we have seen individuals who are completely innocent also being on death row. There are some problems in this area." Taylor is not pleased with the level of business that minority business enterprises (MBEs) do with state government. "A state audit showed that as a state, we've not done well in this area," Taylor observed. "Shining a light on the state doing business with minority-owned businesses and figure out what we can do to address those issues by listening to the audit bureau is something that I want to explore, at the very least, through a forum. I'm hoping to see the Governor explore it in his overall package and initiatives in what he does for the state. I hope he has some creative ideas in how to address this problem." However, Taylor does feel that the Wis. Dept. of Transportation (WisDOT) has made some strides with the Marquette Interchange project in Milwaukee. "When I looked at the statistics very closely, I saw that the level of WisDOT contracting with minority-owned businesses on the Marquette Interchange did have an impact on the Black community in Milwaukee," Taylor said. "Good faith waivers were hardly given out at all. That was a different way that things had been done and I actually think we should look at those examples. I think Secretary Frank Busalacchi did an excellent job in trying to address this issue. I would have liked to have seen more growth in the Marquette Interchange in the skilled trades. But those are not fields that you get into in a few weeks." Taylor hopes to see the same level of determination in other state departments and agencies for contracting with MBEs. "We're not taking no for an answer," Taylor emphasized. "There's a way for us to do this and get this done." Taylor hopes to get a lot accomplished in the upcoming session of the legislature. And she is ready to play her part in helping the process along. "When I first came to the legislature, there was a piece of legislation on predatory lending," Taylor recalled. "The sides were not talking to each other. They were talking at each other. The bankers, the Republicans, the advocates were all together and it was awesome to be able to bring them together on a consensus. I think got 11 out of the 13 things. I thought 'Wow that is what I would like to see in this session, us getting things done.' And of course, that means that no person gets everything they want. I'm optimistic that we'll see results. That's my goal." Taylor is excited and ready for the action. |
| Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor heads the Judiciary Committee A new voice for a New Day Part 2 of 2 By Jonathan Gramling |
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| Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor is a force to be reckoned with. At the hearing of the Special Committee on Affirmative Action last December when Ward Connerly, the anti-Affirmative Action advocate, was the featured speaker, Taylor's skills as an advocate, lawyer, and public speaker were much in evidence. While Senator Glenn Grothman was the chair, by the end of the hearing, it was Taylor who was in charge. Taylor went head to head with Connerly, grilling him on every point of his philosophy. Taylor's constituents from Milwaukee were not a part of the post-Affirmative Action world that Connerly championed and Taylor was not about to give him any quarter. After the hearing, Connerly was overheard complaining that Taylor had been "grandstanding to the audience." To the students in the audience, Taylor was a heroine. |
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