A Republican lawmaker from Green Bay is looking to move the state elections commission to Wausau.
Representative David Steffen says that the days of keeping offices in Madison for the sake of being in Madison are over.
“It made sense 173 years ago to have everything together when a person like myself had to get on a pony, put on a powdered wig to walk over, to get over to someone else’s office, to sit by whale-oil light to make a decision but that’s no longer the situation.”
He says Wausau is a central location in the state on two major highways, and rent would be much cheaper than in Madison.
“Their lease is expiring at the end of the year for office space that cost twice that of almost every other community in the state.”
This is not the first attempt to start moving state agencies out of Madison. There’s been an effort to move the DNR farther north for many years.