Legislative Report - August 2025

Steve Panten

Did You See It?

Did you see the “Call to Action” that came out on June 18th regarding AB161, our “preventing government restrictions on the energy source of new vehicles or device” bill? Did you get a chance to respond to it? Did you forward it on to your family and friends?

These are the little things that members can do to help move our legislative agenda in Madison and Washington DC, and it takes less than 30 seconds to do. You don’t even need to know who your legislator is since it does that for you! And, it even has a prewritten letter for you to send! If you did not see it, there are a few ways to learn about it.

1. Your Region Rep or Legislative Officer should be discussing this at every regional meeting.

2. Sign up for Legislative Alerts on the ABATE of Wisconsin website – abatewis.org – then on the home page scroll down to the contact us section and complete the short form.

3. Watch our social media pages. The ABATE of Wisconsin State Home Page will have all the information that you will need. Alerts and Call to Actions should be on all of the Region pages as well.

OK Steve, why is this important? The Wisconsin State Senate voted on the Senate version of our Bill, SB184 and it passed on the floor of the Senate without any Democrat support, so we need to push our State Assembly members support SB184/AB161 when it goes to the floor for a vote. Again, this is a very simple way for you to help us be successful and you don’t need to be an ABATE member to do it, so send it to everyone that you think this impacts and ask them to take the 30 seconds to complete it. We need everyone’s help with this, members or not. The one requirement is that you must have an email address to complete it unless you do the “call” link but then you are calling the office so all you need to do is read the request that is included in the link.

Do these Call to Actions actually work? Sometimes…..if we can get enough people to do it, we can influence a legislator, like we did this time. This is the second time that we are trying to get this piece of legislation passed with the Governor vetoing last year’s bill, which passed out of the Legislature, but we did not have any Democrat support with it. Well, after this Call to Action we have a Democrat that signed on to AB161! Congratulations to Milwaukee County, Region 1A for getting Representative Ortiz-Velez to sign on in support. If we all work together, we can get this done but we need everyone to take 30 seconds to complete the Call to Action when they come out. Let’s not rely on other people to do it but rather, let’s try to get other members and nonmembers to do it.

I know some of our members from across the State did this Call to Action because I received an email from the Assembly bill author, Representative Tucker, saying thank you for the help, and that this piece of legislation is important to leadership, so it should get voted on the Assembly floor this fall. THANK YOU to everyone that helped and especially the areas that have Democrats as their representatives. We are not done and there will be another Call to Action coming out soon, so please watch for it and be sure to act on it.

AB135/SB129 is our Right to Repair legislation, and we have finalized the language, so it is ready to move. The Legislature is taking a break to be in their districts shaking hands and talking to constituents at community events, so they will not have another floor session until after Labor Day. Since they are at events in the district, this is a great opportunity to talk to them and let them know that we will be watching how they vote on these issues.

Last month the State Supreme Court made a ruling on how an agency’s rules become law. Their decision to allow an agency to bypass the legislature and go right to the Governor for his signature, has just allowed non-elected employees of government agencies the ability to draft laws. All the agencies, like the DNR, DOT, Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and Department of Health Services, etc. have leadership that is appointed by the Governor, so basically, the Governor gets to decide law in the State.

The previous rule used to be that the agency would present the rule to the legislative committee to decide if it is within the boundaries of the agency, now that step has been eliminated. This is very concerning to us because a citizen is going to have little input on laws that are going to affect all of us. This is something that we are going to have to watch very closely.

I would like to finish the report with a huge thank you to everyone that made the Summer Hummer a huge success. Whether you were involved in the planning, volunteered to work at the event for a few hours, or just showed up, it was awesome! I had a great time meeting everyone and especially when it came time to judge the campsites. All the work some regions put in to impress the judges year after year is amazing. Sometimes it’s the little things they do, and sometimes a solid “bribe” is all you need to earn points. Thank you to the fun region participation because this is definitely the highlight of the event for me every year. It was a great weekend party.

That’s it

Steve