Lori Compas' is back with Wisconsin's real business group!

WBA Executive Director Lori Compas is circulating the letter (below) with the intent of hand-delivering it to state legislators on their very own day, Wisconsin Business Alliance Lobby Day, April 17, 2013.

What Compas has done is set up a better and more nimble business group that focuses on the essentials of making our state economy work.

WMC is a lumbering dinosaur, whose strictly conservative predator special interests have successfully smothered the little guy to the point where it’s almost impossible to start or maintain a small business.

Lori Compas’ agenda targets the basics, the very elements big corporate donors pushed aside long ago for the bottom line. Behold the kind of future we should be leaving our kids, and not the austere baron agenda pushed by Walker:

PUBLIC EDUCATION      
Our public schools are the heart and soul of our communities. If our schools fail, our communities — and our businesses — suffer the consequences.

Please remove all privatization proposals (vouchers and private charter schools) from the state budget.

Please provide all Wisconsin schoolchildren with a $250 increase in per-pupil funding.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

As a business owner and utility customer, I support policies that expand opportunities to access renewable energy. More than 20 states (including Illinois, Michigan, California, Colorado, Missouri and New Jersey) expressly allow third-party ownership of renewable energy systems on a customer’s premises. Clean Energy Choice embraces the virtues of customer choice, fiscal responsibility, property rights and social responsibility. It is a policy tool that allows citizens to exercise their preferences for renewable energy at no extra cost to ratepayers and taxpayers. Please support the Clean Energy Choice initiative.

BROADBAND ACCESS

Decades ago, our state’s leaders literally paved the way for the Wisconsin dairy industry’s success by paving nearly every road that led to a dairy farm. This was a tremendous government investment and it paid off not only for dairy farmers, but also for their communities and our state as a whole. Today, you have a similar opportunity to help businesses in Wisconsin’s small towns and rural areas form connections to the larger world.

Please protect and expand WiscNet, the low-cost internet service provider that has reliably served our small-town schools, hospitals, libraries, and universities for more than 20 years.

In areas where WiscNet isn’t available, I encourage the state to work with private internet service providers to ensure reliable access at fair prices.  Please register here.