City of Madison
Peter Welch and Jim Steineke address the Madison Common Council.
Jim Steineke, at the podium, with Peter Welch, expects a 'very difficult [legislative] session.'
Madison's new lobbyists doled out some advice when they addressed alders for the first time at a March 25 city council meeting.
"Focus always wins," said Peter Welch, managing partner of the Welch Group. Speak with “one voice,” lean on other statewide allies, and narrow down priorities, he also advised.
Jim Steineke, also a firm partner and former Republican Assembly Majority speaker, doubled down on that advice. “Having been in the Capitol for almost 12 years, we saw it a lot,” said Steineke. “Groups would come in, they'd have a list of three, four or five priorities, and the lawmakers would look at them and say, ‘But which one is the most important?’”
In the months leading up to approval by voters of a $22 million operating budget referendum in November, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway pledged to expand the city’s state-level lobbying effort. In late February, the city hired Madison-based lobbying firm The Welch Group, signing a one-year, $72,000 contract with optional renewals.
Steineke and Welch’s 45-minute presentation was part legislative outlook, part lobbying guide, and part question-and-answer session.
Some alders have expressed interest in helping the city lobby for changes at the state Capitol. Welch said his group would “definitely need” engagement from alders but Steineke cautioned that there are “ways that you can be unhelpful.”
The lobbyists said alders will need to be “strategically deployed.”
“You need to trust us and our counsel on when does that need to happen, and in what manner does it need to happen,” Welch said.
Republican legislators, who hold majorities in the Assembly and Senate, have long resisted providing Madison — one of the state’s most Democratic-leaning municipalities — any increases in state funding. In a shared revenue deal approved by lawmakers in 2023, Madison received the lowest per-capita increase of any municipality in the state, which remains a sore spot for the city.
Though the state budget is the most important piece of legislation passed in a biennium, said Steineke, the firm would lobby for “anything that the city directs us to lobby on.”
Ald. Marsha Rummel noted that alders have diverse interests, and asked for advice on how to home in on a set of priorities. Steineke advised that the council discuss that internally, something he acknowledged is difficult.
“Funding is generally at the top, because funding helps you do all those other things a little bit easier and more efficiently, right?” Steineke said. “So you just got to kind of work through [those priorities] as a council.”
Ald. Tag Evers asked whether the firm would advocate for a regional transit authority (RTA) as a way for municipalities to raise revenue, a prospect Steineke said would be “incredibly difficult.”
“The current [Assembly] speaker — not a big fan of RTAs,” Steineke said, though he noted that the firm can, at minimum, start a conversation around the topic.
Welch encouraged alders and city officials to work with “allies” in Madison and statewide who want to improve the relationship between the state and its municipalities. Those allies, Welch noted, will likely “have less baggage, frankly, than the city of Madison does with the Legislature.”
Steineke pointed to the city of Waukesha’s support for increased funding to the state’s municipal services payments program as one example of what Madison’s “best allies” may look like. Despite Waukesha County’s strong red leaning — it voted 59% for President Donald Trump in November — city of Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly told Isthmus in February that the program’s underfunding has long been a point of frustration.
“There are going to be some times where the city of Madison might not be the best one to be the tip of the spear in going to the Legislature,” said Steineke. “That’s why it’s important to build those coalitions.”
Despite the hope that smaller Republican majorities in the Legislature would force bipartisan cooperation, it’s been a “slow start” to the session, Steineke said, adding that it may be a struggle for the city to secure any of its priorities this session. He said Republican legislators are signaling “it might be difficult for them to even pass the budget this year.”
“I am working very hard to convince them that that would be a bad idea, because I don’t want to see Wisconsin start operating like Washington, D.C.,” Steineke said. “We have to avoid that as much as possible. We have to keep some semblance of normalcy going.”
Steineke said some of the delay at the Capitol may be due to the April elections for the state Supreme Court and Department of Public Instruction.
“If you look at what Republicans have put on the agenda for their floor session days, it's first education bills and then crime bills,” Steineke said. “So [it’s] pretty transparent with what they're focusing on going into the April elections.” Once the election is over, Steineke said, “we'll have a better idea what the rest of the session is going to look like.”
Items relevant to local governments already introduced this session, Steineke said, include some funding increases in Gov. Tony Evers’ budget, an affordable housing package by Rep. Robert Brooks (R-Saukville), and a proposed budget motion from Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) to fully fund the municipal services program.
Referencing reporting from Isthmus in February, Steineke said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has not completely ruled out expanding funding for the program, but came “close” to doing so.
It’s one example of a promising prospect for the city of Madison that may fall victim to what Steineke calls a “very difficult session.” The 2025-27 legislative session will end Jan. 4, 2027.
“I’m not giving up the ghost yet on municipal services payments, because there are a bunch of people interested,” Steineke said. “But I think in this short window that we have, with the dynamics we have going on, it’s going to be a little bit more difficult this session.”
