Reading Time: 3 minutes

Gov. Tony Evers just made proposed legislation designed to help local EMS — and therefore, the public — the law of the land. The move comes as EMS agencies across the state continue to feel the pressure from rising costs and an increasing number of 911 calls.

“Nobody should ever call for help in an emergency and have to wonder whether help is going to come,” Evers said in a news release. “We must continue to invest in and support Wisconsin’s EMS professionals.”

One provision requires the state’s technical college system to give grants to schools that offer EMS courses. It also provides for educational reimbursements to individual EMS students or the agencies that sponsor them.

“This is a huge step forward for emergency medical services,” wrote Alan DeYoung, executive director of the Wisconsin EMS Association, in a news release. The new law is “removing the financial barriers to entry into EMS and expanding the pipeline of professionals who want to advance their skills and knowledge.”

In another law, Evers signed off on an increase in the maximum reimbursement EMS agencies are allowed to receive when patients are treated but not transported. EMS agencies traditionally get most of their funding from calls involving patient transports and very little from non-transports. The same law removed a disincentive for areas that opt to form joint EMS or fire crews with neighboring communities.

The new legislation is a win for EMS and the communities that are served, DeYoung wrote.

Trouble in Wisconsin EMS industry

“In 10 years, I don’t know where the fire, police and EMS service is going to be.”

So says Christopher Garrison, Sun Prairie’s fire and EMS chief.  

Fewer volunteers, more 911 calls and the rising costs of medical care are stressing EMS agencies statewide.

“It’s a vital service,” said Tyler Byrnes of the Wisconsin Policy Forum about EMS. “More people are trying to use it, and the revenue to pay for it is not growing quite as quickly.” 

EMS activations in the U.S., which include 911 calls and events like scheduled ambulance transports, increased by about 25% between 2021 and 2023, according to data from the National Emergency Medical Services Information System.

Not addressing funding and staffing challenges may “soon have a real impact on public safety,” according to a report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum published in 2021. Recruitment, difficult for all departments, “is reaching a crisis point for many volunteer and combination departments.”

DeYoung, representing the Wisconsin EMS Association, has received reports of some EMS agencies in Wisconsin not responding to as many as 80% of their calls. 

When an agency can’t respond, ambulances stationed farther away usually take the call. It stresses the system and can slow response times for everyone. 

A lot of it has to do with volunteers, who have historically made up the bulk of EMS staffing. About 65% of Wisconsin EMS agencies, many of them rural, still employ volunteers, according to a report from the Wisconsin Office of Rural Health.

Volunteers have subsidized the taxpayers for years, DeYoung said. But declining volunteer rates mean something has to give.

That probably means higher taxes to pay for professional EMS responders, or worse EMS service than you used to get, experts say.

The “biggest issue” is the availability of volunteer and part-time staff, Garrison said. It’s a generational difference, he continued. Younger generations simply place a higher premium on work-life balance and family.

The job is demanding and intense, and the schooling required for paramedics is “ridiculous,” he continued. “We see death every day. It’s hard on people.” 

Ideas exist to relieve some pressure. 

Some of them include charging repeat 911 users a “utilization fee,” promoting EMS as a profitable career with benefits and paying volunteers.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signs bills bolstering EMS workforce, funding is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

“You look familiar,” state Rep. Lee Snodgrass recalled a customer saying while she was bartending at a restaurant in her district.

“Well, I’m probably your state representative,” she replied.

Snodgrass, a Democrat from Appleton, is one among many of her colleagues to also work a job outside the state Capitol.

After the state budget passes in the summer of odd-numbered years, and with campaign season many months away, the pace in Madison usually slows until the fall. Lawmakers will dial up their side gigs in the meantime.

Some own businesses, rental properties or maintain law licenses. For example, state Rep. Ryan Clancy, a Democrat from Milwaukee, is a gig driver; state Rep. Travis Tranel, a Republican from Cuba City, owns a dairy farm; and state Sen. Sarah Keyeski, a Democrat from Lodi, is a professional counselor and operates a private practice.

State Rep. Shae Sortwell, a Republican from northeastern Wisconsin, sits behind a big wheel most Fridays.

“I think they find it a little bit amusing that a politician or whatever is driving the freight trucks,” Sortwell said of his employer. But “it’s been fun.”

He left a full-time factory job when he was elected to the Assembly in 2018, he said, but after a few years of working solely as a legislator, the married father of six began looking for more work to earn some extra cash. Having another job also “gives you better perspective when dealing with policy decisions,” Sortwell wrote in an email.

Sortwell had experience operating larger vehicles from his time in the military, so he now steers a rig the size of a U-Haul for a small company in Green Bay. He typically works one 12-hour shift on Fridays but grabs extra hours in the summer, around Christmas and during hunting season, he said.

The position has helped him stay mindful of where Republicans are in 2025, he said.

“We picked up a lot of plumbers and steam fitters and carpenters and former union Democrats,” Sortwell said of the 2024 election. “I think that is certainly a perspective that we want to make sure is not lost. And I do find myself at times having to remind colleagues that, ‘Hey, don’t forget, this is actually affecting regular working class folks.’”

A ‘full-time lite’ legislature

Wisconsin’s statehouse is one step down from being considered full-time by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Wisconsin lawmakers are not as busy as those in higher-population states that have longer sessions and larger districts.

In Wisconsin, state senators and representatives will earn a salary of about $61,000 in 2025. State legislators can also claim a per diem allowance for cash spent on food and lodging when they travel to Madison. The median household income in Wisconsin is about $78,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The statehouses in Illinois, Ohio and Alaska are in the same “full-time lite” category as Wisconsin. But Illinois lawmakers’ base salary in 2024 was about $90,000. In Ohio, it was about $70,000, and about $84,000 in Alaska.

“People assume our salaries are much higher than they are,” said Snodgrass. “To be able to make ends meet, maybe have a tiny bit extra, in this economy, it really does take having another job.”

When she’s not doing the people’s work in Madison, Snodgrass is a part-time bartender and server at a restaurant on the Fox River. Snodgrass, who is single and has two adult chidren, lives in Appleton and was first elected in 2020. She started picking up hours at the restaurant last year when she found herself needing a little more cash.

“To be honest, they raised my rent,” Snodgrass said. 

The gardening, bartending legislator

Snodgrass has a background in professional communications. She didn’t tend bar or wait tables in her twenties. Now she usually picks up weekend shifts at the restaurant. 

In the spring, you can also find her moving tomato flats and ringing out customers at the garden center in Appleton’sNorthside True Value. Between both jobs, she’s learned never to serve white wine in a warm glass and that the Latin name for Black-eyed Susan is Rudbeckia hirta.

“It demystifies who I am,” Snodgrass said about her other jobs. “When I’m there, I really do forget. I take off that hat.”

There were times in May when she’d spend eight hours at the garden center, pick up a couple shifts behind the bar and attend her legislative meetings during the regular work week.

It was a “juggling act,” she said. 

After the legislature passes the state budget, it’s “adult field trip time,” Snodgrass said. She schedules meetings and tours with organizations in her district with a goal of learning more about her community.

Snodgrass tries to leave politics at the door, but sometimes customers or coworkers recognize her. Once at the garden center, an employee who works for the hardware store approached her. She knew he wasn’t a Democrat, she explained.

“I hear you’re a politician,” he said.

“I just said, ‘You know, I don’t like to talk politics in front of the plants, it’s not good for their growth.’ He started laughing,” she said. 

“The people that come into the garden center, the people that come into the restaurant, their politics may not be the same as mine,” Snodgrass continued. “But it’s a really good thing for me to interact with them and have casual conversation and just learn what’s top of mind for them.”

‘Tethered to reality’

Sortwell believes the Assembly’s Republican Caucus represents a breadth of experience. Snodgrass, however, acknowledged that the compensation of state representatives virtually ensures that only a select few can afford to run for office.

“We are never going to be able to recruit a real variety of people and working-class people to do this job if we don’t find a way to make it affordable” for people to support themselves, she said. 

Many of her colleagues, Snodgrass said, have a spouse or partner with a lucrative profession.

There are also dozens of business owners, multiple attorneys and a handful of realtors between the state Assembly and state Senate, according to a review by The Badger Project. Dozens more do not list any other employment on their bios.

State Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) runs a land development business that builds single-family homes in Brown County. He also secures book deals and speaker engagements as the business manager for Immaculée Ilibagiza, an American author and motivational speaker from Rwanda.  

“I’ve been able to manage that effectively for a decade, and I’ve had two or more jobs for almost my entire life, so it feels very normal for me,” Steffen said. “I think it’s something that benefits, not detracts from my ability and output as a legislator.”

He understands the issues of small business owners personally, he said. And when he’s in the business mindset, the political hat comes off. 

“I’m just a normal small business owner in those times,” Steffen said. “And I like that.”

The list goes on. 

State Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere) — yes, that’s his real name — is the director of operations for Papa John’s Pizza in Wisconsin. State Rep. Karen Hurd (D-Withee) is a nutritionist, and state Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) is a chiropractor. State Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) helps large companies prepare their taxes. State Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) is an interim police chief in Chippewa County. State Rep. Chanz Green (R-Grand View) owns a northwoods tavern.

It “informs us and keeps us very closely tethered to reality,” Steffen said. 

Sortwell echoed the sentiment: “It’s an important perspective that people who are representing the people of Wisconsin … are still employed and still feeling the same pressure in the job market that every other Wisconsinite is feeling. I actually think it brings strength to the Legislature.”

Her “number one priority is obviously the legislature,” Snodgrass said. But at other moments, it’s simply time to start “pouring wine.”

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

An Uber driver, a dairy farmer and a therapist walk into the Capitol: Many Wisconsin lawmakers have side gigs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.