Tom Tiffany details affordability, accountability plans in governor’s race
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Tom Tiffany started his political career at the state Capitol. Now he's seeking to be the state's next governor. He says his biggest focus if elected will be affordability and accountability.
One aspect of affordability he says he is focused on is lowering property taxes. He says as he has traveled the state, he's been hearing from people who are on fixed incomes that are struggling to keep up with their growing property tax bills.
“State government can help by reducing that burden on people,” Congressman Tom Tiffany, Republican candidate for governor, said.
“How do you plan on reducing that burden?” asked Capitol Correspondent Meredith Hackler.
“Will end the 400-year property tax. I will propose that on day one,” Tiffany said. “The accountability part of it, we will audit all of state government. We are going to do that on day one.”
Tiffany says healthcare is another area of affordability he plans to focus on. Unlike Democrats running, he doesn’t want to expand eligibility for state-run healthcare programs but rather create more competition in the market.
“We need to offer more options,” Tiffany said. “More choices, more options for people rather than restricting them, because that is what is happening at this point, we are ending up with fewer options."
“Do you think breaking up some of the monopolies is a solution when it comes to healthcare coverage and health insurance?” asked Meredith Hackler.
“Choice, competition, and transparency. Competition is always healthy and we should have more competition,” Tiffany said.
The sitting congressman also has a plan for data centers -- one similar to his Democratic competitors.
“No data centers should be built unless they meet a series of conditions,” Tiffany said. “One of them is we should remove the tax incentive that was signed by Governor Evers a couple of years ago. These are very wealthy companies. They do not need subsidizes from the taxpayers of Wisconsin.”
Tom Tiffany says rooting out fraud would be a major focus of his administration, including expanded audits of state agencies, even though the Legislative Audit Bureau already does that work.
“I want to do a deep-dive, work in coordination with those federal agencies that deal with Medicaid and other federal programs like that, and let's make sure that we root out all the fraud,” Tiffany said. “The appropriate amount of fraud here in Wisconsin.”
On education, Tiffany says he wants to see more money going into classrooms and paying good teachers, and less to administrative costs. He also claims the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction lowered standards, which he says he will change if he is governor. He also wants to make sure colleges are preparing future teachers with the skills they need to better reading outcomes for kids.
“We need to make sure our colleges of instruction are teaching the next generation of teachers the right way the science of reading,” Tiffany said. “We need to make sure that happens and then we may need to have remediation with some of the teachers around the state to make sure we are doing the science of reading correctly.”
We've reached out to each candidate running for governor. As we gather those interviews, we'll bring them to you on air and online.
If you'd like to watch our full interview with Tom Tiffany, you can find it below. You can find our interview with Francesca Hong by clicking here and our interview with Kelda Roys by clicking here.