Throughout the month of June, we’re celebrating “Dairy Month” here in Wisconsin. The dairy industry is the largest segment of Wisconsin agriculture and contributes $43.4 billion to our economy every year.

Did you know that each Wisconsin dairy cow typically generates over $34,000 every year in economic activity? Most of that money stays within Wisconsin’s local communities to support businesses and schools in the area.

Our dairy industry also employs 78,900 people throughout the state through career opportunities in production, animal science, biotechnology, equipment engineering and manufacturing, marketing, and business. 

Last Tuesday, we traveled to Elmwood to hold our 34th listening session. These listening sessions are part of my “2020 Vision Project,” and give us a chance to hear from you – the hard working taxpayers of Wisconsin – about what we’re doing right, where we can improve, and where you think our state should head in the next two decades.

Here’s what one of the participants had to say about our conversation at the listening session in Elmwood:

“Yesterday’s listening session with Gov. Walker was the first in my 64 years that the one listening was the governor and the ones speaking were the constituents. Amazing. Out of the 90 minutes, Gov. Walker only spoke approximately 10 minutes. The rest of the time he was writing down suggestions and ‘listening’ to the attendees. I don’t always agree with the governor, but I feel it is very important to keep the communication open because we both care about the state of Wisconsin.”

We are continually looking for new ways to improve state government and its services for the people of Wisconsin.

In March, we launched a new tool to help us make government more effective, efficient, and transparent. Our Agency Performance Dashboards website reports on each cabinet agency’s performance in important areas identified by the agencies.

We asked our state agencies to set aggressive goals with their performance measures, even if those goals are not met immediately.

The website is updated quarterly. Recent improvements include highlighting top performance measures and adding an archive feature so users can better track agency performance.

The Agency Performance Dashboards website gives Wisconsinites a user-friendly and transparent resource to measure our ongoing efforts as we continue to move Wisconsin forward.