Switching focus: one man’s journey across Wisconsin

By Kim McDarison

Wisconsin Railroad Commissioner and former State Rep. Don Vruwink has been keeping track of the safety of crossings. 

Since his appointment to the position by Gov. Tony Evers, which became effective in March, two railroad-related fatalities, one in Burlington and one in Junction City, and a train derailment in De Soto, which left two cars in the Mississippi River, have occurred, he said. 

Among his duties as railroad commissioner, he cited assessing the state’s 4,200 railroad crossing and keeping the public safe. 

For Vruwink, journeying across the state of Wisconsin is not new. His travels have taken him from his farming roots in rural central Wisconsin, to careers in teaching and coaching, along with public service experiences as a councilman and school board member, in the Rock County community of Milton, to legislative service as a three-term representative of Assembly District 43. He lost his bid for reelection last November when he ran — after legislative redistricting in April of 2022 — against Rep. Scott Johnson for a seat in Assemble District 33. 

With his recent appointment, Vruwink, who will turn 71 this month, said, he’s on board to continue in public service. 

His six-year term ends in 2029. 

As a younger man, Vruwink noted, his life’s path wasn’t immediately clear, and often, he found, it was guided by sports.   

Farming, baseball and teaching  

Vruwink is among Wisconsinites who share agrarian roots. 

He recalled fondly his childhood in Auburndale, a community with a population of little more than 700 people, where, along with his parents, Don, Sr., and Helen, and his five siblings, he worked the family farm. 

Among his family members, he described himself and his mother as “the cattle people,” noting that they most often milked the family’s 45 Holsteins and assisted, with the rest of the family, in the fields. 

His father also worked a construction job, Vruwink said, and credited him with having a hand in building dormitories in the 1960s and 1970s at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. 

After graduating from Auburndale High School in 1970, Vruwink said his path forward was not apparent. He had made plans to work for a local well company, but his high school baseball coach encouraged him to consider continuing his pitching career by enrolling at UW-Stevens Point. 

“I went there to play baseball and in the process I got interested in teaching and coaching,” Vruwink said. 

He graduated from the university in 1975 with a major in broad field social studies and minors in political science and coaching. 

While in college and after graduation, his connection with sports continued to lead him forward. 

“My college baseball coach got me my first teaching job in Bowler,” Vruwink said. The community, located in northern Wisconsin’s Shawano County has a population of 302 people. It was located near a Native American community, Vruwink recalled. 

Sports also played a role when Vruwink met his wife, Beth, he said, noting that he was pitching at a game in Bangor, in La Crosse County, one summer, and the game was rained out. Taking shelter in a nearby bowling alley, he met Beth and her sister, he said.

“I was the recreation director at Banger that summer,” Vruwink added, noting that he and Beth were married about a year before he was hired to work as a teacher at the Milton High School. 

While in Banger, he also served as a high school teacher, he said. 

Vruwink began teaching in Milton in 1979. His time was spent, while in the classroom, sharing his love of history, and through coaching, his passion for sports. Annually, he coached at least two sports over the course of his career, which, he said, added up to 90 high school teams. He retired from the district as a full-time teacher in 2011. 

While in Milton, Vruwink attended the UW-Whitewater, earning his master’s degree in history in 1986. 

His devotion to teaching and coaching did not go unnoticed: Vruwink was inducted into the Milton-Area Athletic Hall of Fame Class of 2011, recognized for his coaching prowess, and onto the Milton School District Wall of Honor, a distinction bestowed upon former alumni, students, and staff who have made artistic or athletic achievements or noteworthy contributions to their profession, in 2022, which also was the first year the wall was in place. He was inducted into the Wisconsin Fastpitch Coaches Hall of Fame in 2014. Also in 2011, Vruwink was a recipient of the Channel 3000 “Top Notch Teacher” award.

Following his full-time teacher career, he next served as the Milton parks and recreation director between 2011 and 2015. 

Local and state level politics 

Vruwink began political life at the local level, serving two terms, between 2011 and 2015, on the Milton City Council and one term, between 2016 and 2019, as a Milton School District Board of Education member. 

“I just wanted to be involved,” he said, adding that he had already served on the city’s recreation and history committees. 

Recalling his terms as a city council member, he said: “At the time, we needed a police station, a fire station and a city hall. And we needed a new library. I voted for the library because I was an educator.” 

Following his tenure on the city council, he won a seat on the Milton School District Board of Education. 

“I ran because I thought we needed a new high school,” he said, adding that the school district brought a referendum before its voters three times before the $59,9 million capital improvements referendum was approved in 2019. Referendums brought before voters to fund capital improvements in 2016, in the amount of $87 million, and in 2017, in the amount of $69.9 million were each voted down by the district’s constituents. 

After three tries, he said, “we didn’t get a new high school, but we got add-ons to all of our school buildings.”  

After serving his term, Vruwink decided against running for reelection.

Recounting his political decision-making steps, Vruwink said in 2012 and 2014, he was friends with another area resident, Andy Jorgensen, who was, in those years, campaigning and was elected to two terms, between 2013 and 2017, as the representative of Wisconsin Assembly District 43. 

“I helped him knock on doors when he was running,” Vruwink said. 

In 2016, Jorgensen announced that he would not seek another term in the Assembly, but instead planned to run for Rock County register of deeds. 

“I ran when he didn’t run,” Vruwink said, adding that in 2016, he won the Assembly seat.

Several events helped foster his interest in running for a state-level office, Vruwink said.

Included among them was time spent helping Jorgensen run for office. 

As he considered campaigning for the seat, he said, two of his former students, who were then working in the Capitol, suggested he should consider a run. 

“You’d be so good,” Vruwink said they told him. 

In addition, Vruwink said, a cousin, Amy Sue Vruwink, served in the Assembly representing District 70 between 2002 and 2015. She was defeated by Republican challenger Nancy VanderMeer in 2014, according to Ballotpedia,org. 

Don Vruwink alleged that gerrymandering played a role in his cousin’s defeat. 

As a teacher, Vruwink said, his thoughts also were impacted by the events surrounding the  2011 Wisconsin Act 10, also known as the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill” proposed by then-Gov. Scott Walker and approved by the Legislature to address the then-projected $3.6 billion state budget deficit. 

The Act 10 legislation imposed changes for public sector employees’ compensation packages, including teachers, affecting such areas as collective bargaining, retirement, health insurance and sick leave. 

Following Act 10, Vruwink said he was disappointed with the way teachers were treated. 

“We were made scape goats,” he said, noting that prior to Act 10, compensation for teachers was governed largely by the “QEO” or Qualified Economic Offer, put in place in 1993 by the Legislature serving with then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, and repealed, in 2009, by the Legislature serving with then-Gov. Jim Doyle. 

Among its provisions, the QEO allowed employers to raise teachers pay and benefits by a maximum annual increase of 3.8% without going to arbitration. 

While teachers felt unfairly singled out as compared with other public employees by the QEO, the new mandates brought about by Act 10 allowed public employers to change benefits without collective bargaining and stipulated that any increase in wages above the rate of inflation would need voter approval through the process of referendum.  

With Act 10 in place, Vruwink said, over the course of the last six years he taught, he received no raises and was happy just to keep his health insurance. 

“Teachers were vilified,” he said, adding, “that motivated me somewhat.”  

Vruwink served in the Assembly for three terms, between January of 2017 and January of 2023. 

In pursuit of the open seat in Assembly District 43, Vruwink, in 2016, ran in a primary election, winning Democratic nomination ballot placement against Milton’s Mayor Anissa Welch. He defeated Republican candidate Allison Hertz in the general election. 

Vruwink served as Assemblyman and a Milton school board member until his board term ended in 2019. He did not seek reelection. 

In 2018, Vruwink defeated Republican challenger Gabriel Szerlong, retaining his Assembly seat for a second term and in 2020, he faced another Milton resident, Beth Drew in the general election, successfully winning a third term. 

In 2022, after Legislative redistricting, Vruwink was faced with a new political landscape, he said. 

After legislative redistricting, and with his Milton residence no longer included within Assembly District 43, Vruwink announced his candidacy and ran within the newly drawn Assembly District 33, which is where he now resides.   

He ran against Republican candidate Scott Johnson, who won the seat last November by a margin of 246 votes.  

According to Vruwink, when the new maps were drawn, 60,000 residents were bounded within the new 33rd. The district, with its old boundaries had contained 57,000 people. When the new boundaries were drawn, only 10,000 people within the old boundaries were retained. Of those residents, about 6,000 lived in Milton. The rest, he said, lived in the southernmost towns in Jefferson County, areas that have traditionally, according to Vruwink, voted for Republican candidates. 

For Vruwink, he said, it meant he had to find a way to introduce himself to 50,000 new voters who didn’t know who he was. 

“About one-third of them were in Rock County, and about two-thirds of them were in Jefferson County. People didn’t know me,” he said.  

Vruwink said he was at Fredrick’s Supper Club in Milton when the results were tallied.  

He expressed disappointed with the results, but, he said: “I was a realist. I knew I had about a 25% chance to win.” 

Not eager to be idle, Vruwink made plans to go back to teaching, he said. 

“I was ready to go back to teaching. Within a week, I was back in the classroom in Oregon,” he said, serving as a substitute teacher.  

While serving in the Assembly, Vruwink was named a Wisconsin Property Taxpayers Champion and received the Wisconsin Educational Technology Leaders Education Technology Appreciation Award. Both accolades came in 2018. 

A new track 

Vruwink said that soon after returning to teaching as a substitute, he was contacted by the Milton School District and asked to consider a position as a longterm sub. He accepted the offer, he said, and decided to take a short vacation in Florida before beginning the new work. 

While on vacation, he said, he received a call from Evers, asking if he’d be interested in an appointment as railroad commissioner. 

At the time, Vruwink said, he didn’t know what the job entailed. 

After offering the Milton School District some transition time to find a new longterm sub, Vruwink said he officially started work as the commissioner on March 20. 

Describing the office as “the smallest state office,” Vruwink said he and his staff are located in the Hill Farms Building in Madison, along with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Public Service Commission, among others. 

Along with Vruwink, the railroad commissioner’s office is staffed with a legislative public policy analyst, an attorney, a legal secretary and a railroad safety analyst, according to the agency’s website. 

The agency focuses on issues of safety with its primary responsibility identified as “making determinations of the adequacy of warning devices at railroad crossings, along with other railroad-related regulations,” online information states. 

While Vruwink said he is still learning about his role, he sees himself as “the face of the office,” and he would like to make the agency more visible. 

With goals of safety and visibility in mind, he traveled recently to De Soto to better understand the derailment incident which occurred near the Lansing Bridge in April, and more recently he investigated two train-related fatalities, both of which occurred in late May. The first involved a 16-year-old boy who was killed in Burlington after he reportedly disregarding the flashing lights and arms at a railroad crossing, mrauvering his bike onto the tracks where he was hit by an oncoming train. Several days later, a 78-year-old man died in the hospital after sustaining injuries while riding his lawnmower near the railroad tracks in the Portage County community of Junction City.  

Incidents like like these must be reported to his office, Vruwink said, because his job is to understand what happened and make sure the railroad crossing equipment works. 

He has the authority to issue orders requiring changes made at crossings when merited, he said. 

With two investigators working out of his office, he would like to see his employment budget increased and he would like to hire additional investigators, he said. 

Vruwink said there are several ferry lines operating in Wisconsin, and his office also has some oversight there. 

As the commissioner, he said, he interacts with different railroad groups throughout the state to understand their needs. He also meets monthly with the DOT to upgrade a mutually developed five-year plan. 

According to the agency’s website, 13 railroad companies operate in Wisconsin, including Amtrak, BNSF Railroad Company, Canadian Pacific, Escanaba and Lake Superior Railroad, Fox Valley and Lake Superior Rail System, Metrarail, Mid-Continental Railway, Progressive Rail,  Tomahawk Railway, Union Pacific, Wisconsin and Southern Railroad, Wisconsin Central Ltd., and Wisconsin Great Northern. 

According to Vruwink, the office spends about $400,000 to cover the cost of its employees and has available another $4.5 million to pay for upgrades to railroad crossings. 

He noted that each crossing upgrade costs approximately $375,000, so his budget, he estimated, can theoretically upgrade approximately 13 crossings each year. 

He would like to see that budget increased, he said. 

In addition, he noted, that federal money is becoming available in Wisconsin for passenger rail, which, he said, means crossings will need more upgrades. He citing a need for more lights. 

He believed, he said, an improved understanding about the distribution of federal funds and planning for a passenger rail project would begin this year. 

The passenger rail could potentially run between Milwaukee and Madison, and between Minnesota and through the Fox Valley, Vruwink said. 

A story published by Wisconsin Public Radio earlier this year notes that Amtrak was “seeking $22 billion in federal funding for new passenger rail corridors,” further describing passenger rail  as “experiencing an infusion of fresh, government funding,” with federal lawmakers, in 2021,  “approving $66 billion over five years for passenger rail development as part of a broader infrastructure package. The full Wisconsin Public Radio story is here: https://www.wpr.org/amtrak-passenger-rail-corridors-federal-funding-arun-rao-trains#:~:text=Amtrak%20is%20seeking%20%2422%20billion%20in%20federal%20funding,in%20the%20company’s%20central%20region%20that%20includes%20Wisconsin.

As new trends and developments emerge, Vruwink said, he is talking with the railroads to better understand where they stand on increasing rail abilities from a perspective of both passenger and freight. 

Learning about Wisconsin’s railroad system, and its challenges, and identifying solutions are on his to-do list, he said. 

“I’m a people person,” he noted, adding, “I answer to the governor, and I’m not going to disappoint him. My goal as the railroad commissioner is to be visible, and make people feel that the government is working for them, and that public safety is our goal.”