Evers praises trade careers, offers little clarity on roads (VIDEO)

Gov.-elect Tony Evers speaks to hundreds of high school students considering a future in the construction trades at the Wisconsin Operating Engineers Training Center in Coloma on Wednesday. (Staff photos by Rick Benedict)

In one of his first public appearances since Election Day, Gov.-elect Tony Evers stopped in Coloma on Wednesday to tout trade careers and greet union leaders who helped him get elected to high office.

The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 139 welcomed nearly 600 students from 50 high schools around the state to the union’s training center in Coloma. The “externship” event drew them in for a daylong series of seminars and hands-on demonstrations about how to become an operator.

The event was also among the first post-election stops for Evers since he earned a narrow victory over Gov. Scott Walker on Nov. 6. Among his most vocal backers in the race was Local 139, which gave $86,000 to the Evers campaign and started a group called Safe Transportation Over Politics that spent hundreds of thousands more on ads lambasting Walker for letting the state’s infrastructure crumble.

Terry McGowan, president of Local 139, beamed as Evers addressed a crowd of would-be operators. Introducing the governor-elect, McGowan told the crowd of high-school kids that Evers would protect work for those who chose to enter the trades.

Heavy equipment sits inside the Operating Engineers Local 139 Training Center in Coloma on Wednesday. Local 139 held an externship day on Wednesday in conjunction with National Apprenticeship Week. The day included a talk by Gov.-elect Tony Evers, a tour of the 400-acre training center and equipment, an overview of the Destinations Career Academy Pre-Apprenticeship Program, an apprentice and contractor panel and hands-on experience with simulators.

“He’s a man that is going to see to it that there is a lot of work in the industry that you are considering,” McGowan said.

Unions like Local 139 have suffered years of union-busting policies under Walker, who enacted right to work, repealed the state’s prevailing-wage laws and rose to national fame after Act 10 stripped public employees of bargaining powers. Early in Walker’s tenure, Local 139 and other prominent unions endorsed Walker. But by the 2018 governor’s race, they had soured on him and were pouring money into the Evers campaign.

McGowan said his group is also hopeful that the Evers administration could shepherd a road-building plan that would put more of his members to work.

But Evers enters the governor’s office faced with a Republican-held Legislature that could frustrate some of his promises on the campaign trail. GOP lawmakers have floated enacting measures that would limit the governor’s power during a coming lame-duck session before Evers takes office in January.

Evers has also made few concrete commitments on roads, indicating he’d work across the aisle to assemble a road-funding plan. On the campaign trail, he said, “everything is on the table” to fix Wisconsin’s roads, including increases in the gas tax and vehicle registration fees.

On Wednesday, Evers said he would seek a “collective” solution on how to pay for Wisconsin’s roads, the condition of which have slipped to among the worst in the country. He said a tax increase to pay for roads is “not my preference,” but did not offer further details on how he would pay for improved infrastructure.

“I have no clarity on what it’s going to look like at the end of the day,” Evers said. “But I do know what we’re doing, it’s not working.”