A lecture was held Thursday in honor of Paul Offner, a Wisconsin politician and academic, who died of cancer in April 2004.
Offner served terms in both the Wisconsin State Assembly and the Wisconsin State Senate, and represented the La Crosse area. He later worked at the Ohio Department of Human Services and helped create Ohio's state health care plan.
John Norquist, former Milwaukee mayor and a colleague of Offner, delivered a lecture titled ""Urbanism and the Value of Cities."" He said Offner used his intellect to achieve his goals.
""Paul Offner was one of those unusual politicians who had both ambition and great insight—that doesn't happen very often,"" Norquist said.
Molly Offner, Paul Offner's wife, said Offner solved problems through academics. Offner studied economics and earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University.
""[Offner believed] solutions to society's toughest problems are within reach and creative ideas and good scholarship are the tools to find them,"" Molly Offner said.
Norquist said Offner was devoted to work in health-care policy and the concepts he developed could eventually be used throughout the nation to reform health care.
""His policy ideas were not just intellectual exercises,"" Norquist said. ""He affected the lives of ordinary people throughout this entire state and eventually, when we get the health care issue right, it will affect the whole country.""
The lecture was sponsored by the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Urban Institute in Washington D.C.
