Endorsements from nearly 50 current and former Wisconsin judges were listed on the campaign website of conservative Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar as of April 2.
At a debate April 2, Lazar’s opponent in the April 7 state Supreme Court election, liberal Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, said she knew of no judicial endorsements for Lazar.
Lazar said in early March: “If you look at my website, I don’t even list any of my endorsements yet; we may be posting some. I don’t think it’s necessarily important.”
Lazar’s endorsements include Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler. After this brief was initially published, Lazar’s campaign said two appellate judges have endorsed Lazar.
Taylor’s site lists endorsements from some 160 judges and former judges. They include four current justices, one former justice and 10 current appellate judges.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve written more extensively about this topic in a different article. You can read more about it here.
A possible billion-dollar data center in southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area would be built without any tax incentives and would produce more than $5 million annually in property tax revenue, according to a local economic development official involved in the discussions.
Ron Brisbois, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp., also told Wisconsin Watch he expects to learn this month whether a developer chooses Grant County over sites in Indiana and North Dakota.
Asked if progress has been made, Brisbois said: “I’ll use the word ‘promising’ because I’m about fostering economic development, and I see this project for being a quality project. So, yes, I think it looks promising, from my perspective.”
When the proposal first gained attention in February, Brisbois said little more than the data center is expected to be worth $1 billion. He is now offering more details:
Scope: The facility would cost $1 billion to $2 billion, span about 500 acres and employ about 50 people.
Tax breaks: Local governments would not have to provide any tax incentives, such as a tax incremental district — a common development tool that delays when municipalities and school districts receive additional property tax revenue from a project.
Tax revenue: Brisbois said his “conservative estimate” is that the data center would pay $5.6 million annually in property tax revenue to local governments and school districts.
Brisbois has refused to identify the company that is scouting sites, but said the data center would be run by one of the major tech companies. “People will recognize the name,” he said.
Brisbois would not identify the part of Grant County being considered, other than to say it’s near power transmission lines.
But talks have taken place with officials in the town of Cassville, population 400, where opposition has emerged.
Cassville town residents voted 54-3 last month to authorize “village powers.” The move is aimed at giving the township more control over matters such as zoning. It was sought by residents who want more control over any data center proposal.
The “No Data Centers in the Driftless” Facebook page has 2,700 members.
One of the Facebook group’s leaders, Grant County resident Pete Moris, said he was pleased that more information is being released but wants more.
“The more transparency we can have on this project, the better,” he said.
“If we’re going to embark on the largest project ever developed in Grant County, it would sure be nice for citizens to know who we’re inviting into our county.”
The use of a tax incremental district for a $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee, spurred backlash.
Data center opponents pushed a referendum that will be on ballots next Tuesday. If approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any tax incremental district worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center.
Hyperscale data centers are also under construction in Mount Pleasant, south of Milwaukee, and in Beaver Dam.
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Taylor’s opposition, while a Democratic state lawmaker, to the Republican-backed 2011 state law requiring identification to vote.
Her introduction of a 2017 bill, which did not become law. It would have provided driver’s licenses to unauthorized residents, but the licenses would have been labeled: “Not valid for voting purposes.”
Taylor’s opinion, in a 2024 appeals court ruling, which said absentee ballots count even if voters’ witnesses fail to give election clerks their full address. Citizenship is required to vote in Wisconsin, but Wisconsin election officials generally do not verify citizenship when a person registers.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve written more extensively about this topic in a different article. You can read more about it here.
The only Wisconsin Supreme Court debate between appellate judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor highlighted sharp contrasts between the candidates.
Lazar and Taylor sparred over their judicial philosophies and cast each other as extreme just five days before Election Day.
The candidates are running for a 10-year term. There is no court majority on the line, but a win by either Lazar or Taylor will still impact the court’s future.
Early voting runs through Sunday. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Find out what’s on your ballot, where to vote and more at myvote.wi.gov.
In the only debate between the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates, Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor each painted a picture of their opponent as an extreme figure who is unfit for the state’s high court.
The hour-long debate Thursday night, hosted by WISN in Milwaukee, arrived just five days ahead of Election Day on April 7. Lazar and Taylor are running for a 10-year term to replace conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who did not run for reelection.
While there is no court majority on the line in 2026, a win by either candidate will still affect the court’s future. A Lazar victory would maintain the court’s 4-3 liberal majority. A Taylor win would grow the liberal bloc to five justices.
The evening was peppered with attacks from Lazar that Taylor was “a radical, extreme legislator” and from Taylor that Lazar has brought an “extreme, right-wing political agenda to the bench.”
One of the more intense exchanges came during debate on abortion. Taylor criticized Lazar’s past comments about the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Lazar said she supported returning the decision to state governments. Taylor said it was “tragic” for a candidate to celebrate the case.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Court of Appeals Judges Maria Lazar participates in the Wisconsin Supreme Court debate hosted by WISN 12 News, April 2, 2026, at WISN-TV in Milwaukee. (Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / POOL)
“It’s not been very wise for victims of rape and incest who now live in states where abortion has been outlawed,” Taylor said. “It’s not very wise for women who have lost their lives in states because they couldn’t get help when a pregnancy went wrong.”
Lazar appeared to grow angry, shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Lazar said. “This is exactly what we’ve been doing in this campaign. It’s the same old political playbook. If you don’t have anything truthful to say about your opponent, then just lie and mislead. I have never wanted women injured, ever, ever, ever. I have always said that the health and life of the mother is the most important thing.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, right, responds to a question from WISN 12 News Political Director Matt Smith, left, during the Wisconsin Supreme Court debate hosted by WISN 12 News, April 2, 2026, at WISN-TV in Milwaukee.
The back-and-forth during the debate reflected the 2026 campaign and the opposing judicial philosophies and backgrounds of the candidates.
Lazar and Taylor are both Appeals Court judges, but represent opposing judicial philosophies and each took starkly different paths to the bench.
Lazar is a member of the conservative Federalist Society, served as an assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen and was elected to the Waukesha Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 prior to her 2022 election to the 2nd District Court of Appeals.
Taylor was the policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for eight years prior to serving as a Democrat in the Assembly where she represented a Madison-focused district. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020 and she ran unopposed for the 4th District Court of Appeals in 2023.
The debate was delayed a week after Taylor announced she had a kidney stone. More than 355,000 voters had already cast early ballots before Thursday. A Marquette Law School Poll released last week found 46% of likely voters said they hadn’t decided who to support.
Here’s what else you need to know about the debate.
How the judges view recusal rules
In 2010, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted rules that did not require a justice to recuse themself based on how much money a party in a case or an attorney spent supporting their campaign.
After the record-breaking 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, a member of the court’s liberal majority, said she was committed to holding public hearings about establishing stricter recusal rules.
Lazar and Taylor were both asked about whether they would support stricter recusal rules for Wisconsin Supreme Court justices.
Lazar said recusal is “a difficult situation,” because judges have to consider whether they are biased and whether the parties in the case believe they are receiving a fair opportunity before the court.
“The key thing that I think is important is recusal really is tied to the integrity of the judge or the justice,” Lazar said. “And I have spent the last 12 years as a judge showing that I have that integrity and that independence.”
Taylor said the court system should consider stricter recusal rules and get public input.
“It is so critically important that as judges, we have the confidence of the public,” she said.
Limited responses on redistricting, abortion
Both Lazar and Taylor received multiple questions about how they would have ruled on certain cases or hypothetical situations that could come before the court. Both candidates mostly declined to answer, saying that, as judges, they could not comment on pending cases that could reach them at the Appeals Court or on the state Supreme Court.
Lazar and Taylor were asked whether the current congressional maps are fair. One of two three-judge panels hearing legal complaints about Wisconsin’s congressional district maps this week dismissed a case brought by Democratic voters.
While both candidates said they could not comment on the maps, Taylor said she was “committed to making sure that every eligible voter in the state of Wisconsin has the ability to pick their elected representatives.” Lazar said she believed every “eligible vote should count.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates, Court of Appeals Judges Maria Lazar, left, shakes the hand of Chris Taylor, right, at the end of the Wisconsin Supreme Court debate hosted by WISN 12 News, April 2, 2026, at WISN-TV in Milwaukee. (Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / POOL)
Lazar and Taylor were also asked about how they would rule on the case challenging the state’s 1849 abortion ban. In 2025, the court reached a 4-3 ruling that invalidated the law. The decision broke along ideological lines.
Lazar declined comment on the 1849 abortion case but said that she would honor the state’s “20-week compromise,” an abortion restriction Republicans passed in 2015 without Democratic support. Taylor, who voted against the 20-week ban in the Legislature, said she would have ruled with the majority in overturning the 1849 abortion ban.
Taylor also emphasized at various points what she called her “values,” including support for workers over millionaires and billionaires when asked about a pending court challenge to 2011 Act 10, the Republican law that stripped most public sector workers of union rights.
Lazar characterized Taylor’s support for those issues as “legislative” values, rather than judicial ones.
“Values do not belong with the judge on the court,” Lazar said. “Values are not what’s supposed to be there. A good judge respects the law. An activist judge respects her causes.”
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The president of the 25-campus Universities of Wisconsin said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday that he’s been told to either resign or be fired, but has been given no reason and won’t step aside from the 165,000-student system.
Jay Rothman, president of the university system since 2022, said in the letter addressed to the head of the Board of Regents dated March 26 that he’s been given no reason why regents want him to leave.
Rothman said he’s been told that his options are to resign or retire and that if he doesn’t then the board “was prepared to terminate my employment despite all that has been accomplished.”
The Board of Regents held a closed emergency meeting on Wednesday night to discuss personnel matters.
“The Board is responsible for the leadership of the Universities of Wisconsin and is having discussions about its future,” Amy Bogost, board president, said in a statement to AP. “We don’t comment on personnel matters.”
Rothman declined to comment when reached via email on Thursday.
“I believe my letter speaks for itself,” he said.
Rothman’s tenure has been marked by his efforts to increase state funding amid federal cuts, debates over free speech on campus amid pro-Palestinian protests and declining enrollment leading to eight branch campus closures.
“Since to date you have not provided any substantive reason or reasons for the Board’s finding of no confidence in my leadership, I am not prepared, as a matter of principle, to submit my resignation,” Rothman said in the letter addressed to Bogost.
Rothman notes in the letter that “among so many other things,” the university will need to replace the chancellor of the flagship Madison campus this year. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin is leaving to take the job as president of Columbia University.
“I do not believe my resignation at this time is in the best interests of either the Universities of Wisconsin or the state of Wisconsin,” Rothman said.
Rothman said in the letter that he has devoted his “heart and soul to the mission of the Universities of Wisconsin” and that he was surprised when told “an unidentified majority of the Board of Regents had lost confidence” in his leadership.
“When I asked you to articulate reasons for the Board’s conclusion and apparent lack of confidence in me, you merely noted that each Regent has his or her own perspective on the matter,” Rothman wrote. “You did not provide any tangible reasons for the Board’s determination.”
Rothman, the former chair and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner law firm, was chosen as UW president in 2022. He had no prior experience administering higher education.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Betting on an election one is voting in is illegal in Wisconsin.
Politics betting has become popular on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Just this year, people have placed lucrative bets on the capture of the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and on the war with Iran, among other events.
On Kalshi, people have placed bets worth tens of thousands of dollars on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election on April 7 and the governor’s primary election on Aug. 11.
Ann Jacobs, Wisconsin’s Elections Commission chair, noted on X that voters’ ballots can be disqualified and thrown out if they were found to have bet on the election.
Wisconsin Statute 6.03(2) specifies that no one is allowed to vote in any election in which the person has placed “any bet or wager depending upon the result of the election.” The idea behind the law has existed since 1849.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
On a rainy Friday afternoon, I walked into the Manitowoc County Jail. I asked tentatively into the metal box at the door: “I’m here to see Randy Curtis?”
I was there to deliver a simple message. What I stumbled into was something much larger, a reality I had not previously fully understood.
Randy had missed a few shifts without calling in. His supervisor looked for him where we sometimes do when an employee disappears without a word: the inmate list at the county jail. Sure enough, there was his name.
Randy is a knockout pourer at Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, doing hard physical work for $27.53 an hour – good money, the kind that, if you’re careful and nothing goes wrong, can be the beginning of something. He had spent years rebuilding his life in Manitowoc after a troubled young adulthood in Milwaukee. He had a girlfriend. He was saving for a car. Then an old legal matter surfaced, along with a small claims debt.
It is not uncommon for our employees to find themselves in jail. Often it’s a DUI, delinquent child support or drugs. The ones who don’t have money for bail spend weeks or months awaiting resolution. Usually in these situations we let the employment relationship expire.
But Randy’s supervisor called me: “We have to keep his job for him.” Of course we would. But how would we let him know? I pictured him in that cell, cut off from the outside world, assuming he had lost his job and maybe his apartment and girlfriend too, watching his precarious new life crash down.
I went to tell him myself.
From left, Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, poses for a photo with Randy Curtis, a knockout pourer at the foundry. (Courtesy of Sachin Shivaram)
The corrections officer was polite but matter-of-fact. I could not see the inmate in person. To speak with him, I would need to create an account on a third-party video service, deposit money, schedule a window and wait.
I am a CEO. I work on computers all day. It still took me the better part of an hour to figure it all out.
The service was called CIDNET, operated by Encartele, a corporation in Nebraska. The site defaulted to a purchase of 150 megabytes at 30 cents per megabyte. That’s $45, before a “Data Security Token” fee and a 5% merchant surcharge on top. I put $10 on the account, enough for a few minutes. On Sunday evening I logged on, saw Randy on a small screen and quickly told him his job was waiting. He looked relieved.
I want to be fair. Someone has to pay for that infrastructure. The same logic applies to bank overdraft fees and payday loan rates. Even the $2.59 Snickers bar in our plant vending machine, nearly four times what my family pays at Costco, is bought by a worker without the time or transportation to shop elsewhere. Each of these charges is, on its own terms, defensible. Together they amount to something else: a compounding tax on not having enough.
Being poor, it turns out, is expensive.
Randy made it through. Another of our employees didn’t fare as well.
I’ll call him Michael. He had spent his entire life in America, brought here as a small child. He was a DACA recipient – a “Dreamer” – tantalizingly close to getting his papers in order for permanent residency, but first he had to navigate old speeding tickets, lawyer fees, court dates and filing costs. He had a newborn and two toddlers at home. He could not even afford a cellphone. Outside of work, he reached me through Facebook Messenger when he could find Wi-Fi.
The fees accumulated the way fees do: the lawyer, the filings, the court dates that cost him wages he couldn’t replace, the paid leave that drained away appointment by appointment. Everything was a small thing.
But Michael had no margin for small things.
The weight of it followed him onto the shop floor. He grew distracted, made mistakes — costly ones in a manufacturing environment — and we had to let him go. I think about that a lot.
The word I keep coming back to is margin. In business, margin is everything. The difference between a company that survives a bad few years and one that doesn’t is not always the size of the problem. It is the cushion beneath it.
Families have margins, too.
A salaried employee who gets a DUI posts bond and goes home. She takes a long lunch for a dental appointment and loses nothing. When life disrupts her, it disrupts her. When life disrupts Randy or Michael, there is no category called disruption. There is functioning, and there is collapse. A car breaks down, the flu strikes, child care closes unexpectedly — attendance points rack up, the job is suddenly in jeopardy, and the carefully assembled structure of a life starts to come apart.
What I find remarkable is not that Randy and Michael sometimes stumble. It’s that they hold everything together as long as they do, maintaining a level of daily discipline against a backdrop of distress that most of us will never be tested to match.
My 8-year-old and I have been reading about black holes. The closer you get, the more energy you need to escape – until escape becomes physically impossible. That is what I witnessed. Not a failure of will. A gravitational pull that compounds with every setback, every fee, every missed day.
There is a threshold, call it escape velocity, below which the system’s small relentless extractions become unsurvivable. My former college professor Lisa Dodson, who spent years embedded with low-income workers across the country, calls this the “house of cards” – the architecture of poverty where there is no redundancy, no reserve, no margin for the ordinary turbulence of a human life.
So what can we do? At Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, we’ve introduced daily pay so workers can access wages as they earn them rather than waiting two weeks. We offer $400 per month in child care reimbursement, structured specifically to help newer, younger employees.
Most traditional benefits – vacation time, tenure-based wage levels, pension plans – naturally favor workers already on solid footing. Our most expensive benefit, health care, is the one our youngest and lowest-paid employees use the least. We can design benefit structures with that reality in mind, and we are trying.
These are imperfect responses to a structural problem. They are what one employer can do.
On policy, cash bail reform deserves serious attention. In theory, judges already weigh risk when setting bail. In practice, a $500 bail amount means freedom for one person and months in jail for another. A system that makes that distinction irrelevant might have kept Randy’s life from nearly unraveling.
The full set of public policy answers is beyond my grasp. But what I do know is that the national conversation about affordability — housing, gas, airfares — is largely about the middle class. Randy and Michael aren’t worried about buying a house. They are fighting for the basic foothold that most of us take entirely for granted.
My parents came to this country with very little and found the American Dream to be real. I believe it can still be real. Randy believed in it enough to leave Milwaukee and start over in a city where no one knew him. Michael believed in it enough to show up every single day while his entire future hung on a bureaucratic decision somewhere.
Just this week, JPMorgan Chase announced its “American Dream Initiative” aimed at strengthening small businesses, homeownership and economic mobility – a recognition that the American Dream is not self-sustaining and requires constant effort from institutions large and small.
At our holiday party earlier this year, my wife and I spotted Randy across the room — arm around his girlfriend, at a table full of co-workers, dressed in his best, laughing.
Michael messaged me last week. He’s been out of work for two months, getting by on his wife’s income. He said he’s going to reapply at the foundry. When he does, we’ll take him back.
Neither story is finished yet. They haven’t reached escape velocity. But they are defying gravity, every single day.
Sachin Shivaram is the chief executive officer of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
Months before becoming one of the nearly 200 Madison voters in 2024 whose absentee ballots were never counted, Nathan Haimowitz did what he thought he was supposed to do.
As a journalist living in Spain and out of the habit of voting, the 26-year-old former poll worker said he wanted the 2024 presidential election to “be the thing that would spur me to vote more consistently.” To make sure everything was in order, he emailed Madison officials to confirm they had received his absentee ballot application. They told him they had, so he filled out his ballot, sent it in and assumed his vote would be counted.
“It was definitely a deterrence,” he said. “I didn’t know why my vote hadn’t been counted.”
Early signs suggest the error is already reshaping how many of the disenfranchised voters engage with elections — pushing some away from absentee voting and, in some cases, out of the electorate altogether. Interviews with affected voters also reveal a broader disconnect: Many say they are dissatisfied both with how the city handled the mistake and with the high-profile lawsuit filed in its wake to seek damages for the disenfranchised voters. The city, they say, has not been appropriately responsive, and the lawsuit does not reflect their values.
Until now, the public conversation has largely reflected the perspectives of the eight voters who joined the lawsuit as named plaintiffs. But others Votebeat spoke with described a different perspective — one that questions whether financial compensation is the right remedy at all.
Nathan Haimowitz (Courtesy of Nathan Haimowitz)
Mark Ediger, a recently retired chemistry professor at UW-Madison, for example, said he found the lawsuit “pretty bewildering,” adding that as a Madison taxpayer, it would be people like him footing the bill.
The 193 voters range from dozens of students who are only in Madison for a few years to some of their professors and other longtime city residents. Their responses to the error are just as varied.
Some, like Haimowitz, stopped voting entirely. Others, like Ediger, say the incident was a one-off mistake that hasn’t impacted their voting behavior. Notably, Ediger is the only voter among the disenfranchised group who has voted absentee in both of the two elections following the error, according to election data obtained by Votebeat.
“The incident has not diminished my trust in elections,” Ediger told Votebeat, adding that he’s satisfied the city has appropriately addressed its cause. “I don’t see how this should change my voting behavior moving forward.”
But other voters said their experience will change how they vote in future elections. “I’m definitely going to prioritize in-person voting,” Joanne Fairbotham, one of the disenfranchised voters, told Votebeat.
“There’s growing evidence that when someone tries to vote and they are prevented from doing so for one reason or another, it makes them less likely to vote in the future, and it can change their behavior,” said Kevin Morris, a senior research fellow and voting policy scholar with the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “You can lose a lot of trust very easily, and it can be very difficult to build that trust.”
All of the disenfranchised voters cast absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election. But, among the 22 who cast ballots in the February 2025 primary for state superintendent of public instruction and city council, nearly all did so in person. Two months later, two-thirds of the 132 who voted in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did so at the polls, a share similar to how the same group voted in previous April elections.
Disenfranchised voters question city follow-up
Shortly after learning that her ballot hadn’t been counted, Fairbotham — a 35-year-old medical coder who lives in Madison — wrote to City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, saying the error was “beyond devastating as an American who prides herself in voting in every election.”
“This is how people lose faith in their government that their rights will be protected,” she said in the letter, calling on Witzel-Behl to resign.
Fairbotham said she never received a response from Witzel-Behl, who has since resigned — or anyone else employed by the city.
“Not hearing a peep,” she said, is the most frustrating part. Fairbotham’s vote in the 2024 presidential election was the first time she cast an absentee ballot since the peak of the pandemic in 2020. She has only cast in-person votes since and said the incident still makes her angry.
Madison City Attorney Mike Haas disputed the characterization that the city didn’t communicate the seriousness of the error, pointing to a city and state investigation and a public apology from the mayor.
Still, some voters said the city’s outreach fell short after such a significant error. Haimowitz, for example, didn’t hear from the city when most of the voters did — a separate oversight by city officials meant overseas voters did not receive the same notice as those living locally. Until speaking with Votebeat, Haimowitz said, he didn’t know whether the mistake that kept his ballot from being counted was his or the city’s, nor what steps officials had taken to prevent it from happening again.
Election administration experts say direct, proactive communication can be critical in rebuilding trust. After a mistake like the one in Madison, jurisdictions should reach out to affected voters, review what went wrong and clearly explain how it will be prevented in the future, said Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group and a former Colorado election administrator.
The city has completed the first two steps, Morrell said, but it did not fully follow through on the third.
After sending an initial notice telling voters they could reach out with questions, the city held no further public hearings, said Haas, a longtime election lawyer and former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Few of the disenfranchised voters followed up, he added.
Some disenfranchised voters find lawsuit bewildering
The divide among disenfranchised voters extends to the lawsuit filed in the aftermath of the error.
In March 2025, the liberal group Law Forward filed a claim seeking $34 million from the city and Dane County over the error, later turning it into a lawsuit. In February, a circuit court judge ruled that the city could be held liable for monetary damages.
A small group of affected voters has joined the case, arguing it’s one of the only ways to hold the city accountable for failing to count their ballots.
But others see it differently. “In an era where the reliability of elections is being challenged by some groups in completely spurious ways, it seems to me that this lawsuit just adds to that noise,” Ediger said.
Lawsuits seeking monetary damages for disenfranchisement are now rare, but were more common in the late 1800s and 1900s, when Black voters were intentionally and repeatedly disenfranchised by election workers. Then, the fines forced the government to think twice, said Ediger. But there’s no similar pattern of errors or intentionality here in Madison, he added, which makes him doubt the lawsuit’s purpose.
Haimowitz said he also opposed the lawsuit, despite how much it has shaken his confidence.
“I’m not sure that the city should pay such a heavy price for this,” Haimowitz said, adding that at a time when some Republicans are peddling “Stop the Steal” narratives and casting doubt on election integrity, especially in battleground states like Wisconsin, the Law Forward letter unnerved him.
“That kind of money could be debilitating to a city elections board that is already under immense scrutiny and pressure to get it all right,” he said.
Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson pushed back on comparisons between the case and post-2020 lawsuits filed by Republicans, including one that sought to throw out over 200,000 absentee ballots in Wisconsin.
“That cavalier attitude towards votes that we saw in 2020 is simply unacceptable, and not compatible with democracy,” he said. “And so what do we do with that? Well, I can tell you what we will not do: We will not stand idly by if hundreds of people in a community lose the right to vote because their ballot simply wasn’t counted.”
He said that lawsuits often make people uneasy, but that their perspective may change when a fundamental right is taken away. He declined to directly comment on some of the disenfranchised voters’ issues with the case.
For some disenfranchised voters, financial damages are part of accountability. Precious Ayodabo, a named plaintiff, wrote in a Cap Times column that her disenfranchised absentee vote “is worth enough” to warrant compensation.
“It’s worth enough that I waited for hours in line to cast it. It’s worth enough that politicians spend millions of dollars to receive it. It’s worth enough that people have put their lives on the line and died to protect it,” she wrote.
Thompson declined to make Ayodabo and the other plaintiffs available for interviews. Of the 193 voters, eight are plaintiffs in the case, he said.
Others who support the lawsuit say it’s less about personal payment and more about forcing systemic change. Fairbotham said she’s grateful the case is pushing the city to take the error seriously, particularly after the Wisconsin Elections Commission found the city violated state law.
Thompson said the lawsuit isn’t about making sure the government knows “every single jot and tittle” of absentee voting procedure, but to ensure election officials count every vote, which he defined as “the absolute most basic obligation.”
“If we’re setting an unrealistic expectation that any mistake made by an election administrator opens you up to a lawsuit, that feels like an impossible situation to be in,” she said. “Election administrators take this so seriously and do everything they can to ensure mistakes don’t happen,” she added, “but they do.”
For Haimowitz — a voter who has helped others register to vote and served as a poll worker — the question isn’t just whether the city fixes the problem. It’s whether he can move past having his ballot go uncounted.
“It was something that made me think it’s clearly not that easy to vote,” he said.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin’s Open Records Law gives requesters the right to request records from their government. After all, as the law states, “a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate.”
But how to get started? Under the law, “any person” can make a request for records from any Wisconsin state or local government agency or official, verbally or in writing. You don’t have to start from square one: There are many tools available to help you make requests and ensure you get the records you want with minimal fuss.
The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Counsel has long posted a records request template on its website, wisfoic.org. It cites Wisconsin law and uses language to target your request and help you avoid surprise fees.
Many national groups also post letter generators online that can be used to make requests to state and local governments.
For example, the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting student journalists, posts a heavily used letter generator, which is available for free and can be used to make requests.
Christa Westerberg
An organization called MuckRock not only has a letter generator, but also allows users to post responsive records they receive on its website at muckrock.com. Here you can search through records others have received from all over the country.
Other groups post records they have received through their own open records and U.S. Freedom of Information Act requests.
For example, a group called Reclaim the Records posts genealogical and historical records on its website, reclaimtherecords.org. The website governmentattic.org provides a searchable collection of oddball federal government records and reports.
Of course, this is in addition to records the government proactively publishes or posts online itself. A wealth of information is already available on Wisconsin agency and local government websites, or in local libraries.
Federal agencies are even required to follow the “Rule of 3,” or make electronically available records that have been requested three or more times. The website data.gov contains more than 400,000 datasets, from what it describes as the home of the U.S. government’s open data.
In some cases, it may be easiest just to start with a phone call to the state or local agency that has the records you want. It may be able to send you the record on the spot, or help you understand available records to target your request.
If you’re looking to better understand the law, the Wisconsin Department of Justice Office of Open Government posts numerous resources online, including its Public Records Compliance Guide, which is helpful for requesters and records custodians alike.
A well-drafted records request is useful for everyone: It can help requesters get the records they want, in less time, and at a lower cost. It can also help custodians find records more easily, freeing them up to respond to others’ requests and carry out other duties.
But the most important tip is to not be intimidated by the process: There are no magic words required to trigger your right to get records, and the law must be interpreted broadly in favor of access.
Wisconsin’s Open Records Law, by design, makes it easy to get records, to fulfill its important objective of informing the electorate. Don’t hesitate to exercise your right to use it.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the group’s vice president and a partner at the law firm Pines Bach LLP.
A Wisconsin court has dismissed Democrats’ efforts to get the state to redraw its congressional maps.
The three-judge circuit court panel said it did not have jurisdiction to decide whether the state’s congressional districts have been gerrymandered along partisan lines, leaving the matter to the state’s Supreme Court.
“This Panel is not endorsing the current congressional map. Rather, we, as circuit court judges, do not have the authority to read into a Wisconsin Supreme Court case an analysis that it does not contain,” the judges wrote.
Wisconsin’s current district lines trace back to the 2011 congressional maps, which attorneys for the Democrats said were gerrymandered by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican-drawn 2021 maps, which then prompted the state Supreme Court to order new maps drawn that made the “least change” to the existing district lines from 2011.
This lawsuit was part of a wave of redistricting suits filed by Democratic-aligned groups across the country, but it’s unlikely to yield new maps before the midterm elections.
Republicans represent six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, though statewide partisan elections are often competitive and only won by a slim margin. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and a Democrat, respectively — won their most recent elections by a percentage point or less. Evers won reelection by more than 3 percentage points in 2022.
Attorneys in the redistricting case may appeal the panel judgment to the state Supreme Court. Another redistricting lawsuit, which argues that Wisconsin’s congressional maps favor incumbents, is pending before its own three-judge circuit court panel.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
For many families across the Midwest, discussing end-of-life planning is about as comfortable as a January blizzard on Highway 175. However, proactive planning is a final act of care that prevents legal headaches and ensures a legacy stays within the family. In Wisconsin, specific statutes — ranging from marital property laws to unique transfer-on-death rules — make it essential to use the right tools. Whether you are a young parent or assisting aging parents, these are the legal and financial cornerstones for a solid plan.
Write a will and consider a living trust
A last will and testament is the traditional bedrock of any plan. In Wisconsin, a will allows you to name an executor (the person who will manage your estate) and a guardian for minor children. Without a will, a state judge — not your family — decides who raises your kids and how your assets are split.
For many Wisconsin families, a revocable living trust is a powerful alternative or supplement.
Benefit: Unlike a will, which must go through the public, often costly probate court process, a trust allows assets to pass privately and immediately to heirs.
Midwest reality: If you own property in multiple states (like a cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or a farm in Iowa), a trust can prevent your family from having to open probate cases in every state where you own land.
Assign power of attorney: health care and finances
Control is often lost not at death, but during a period of incapacity. Wisconsin law recognizes two distinct roles:
Financial power of attorney: This grants a “trusted agent” the authority to pay your mortgage, manage your taxes and handle your bank accounts. Under Wisconsin Chapter 244, these are “durable” by default, meaning they remain valid even if you lose mental capacity.
Health care power of attorney: This allows someone to make medical decisions if you cannot. In Wisconsin, your spouse is not automatically authorized to make all medical decisions for you without this document. It requires two witnesses who are not related to you or responsible for your health care costs.
Create an advance directive (living will)
While a health care power of attorney names who makes decisions, an advance directive (often called a “declaration to physicians” in Wisconsin) tells them what those decisions should be. This document outlines your wishes regarding life-sustaining treatments, such as ventilators or feeding tubes, specifically if you are in a terminal condition or a persistent vegetative state.
For Wisconsin residents, the Department of Health Services provides standard forms that are legally recognized across all state health systems.
Name beneficiaries for accounts and insurance
One of the most common mistakes is assuming a will covers everything. In reality, beneficiary designations on life insurance policies, 401(k)s and IRAs “trump” what is written in a will. If your will says your estate goes to your children, but your 20-year-old life insurance policy still lists an ex-spouse, that money will likely go to the ex-spouse.
To keep things simple, many Wisconsin banks offer payable-on-death (POD) options for checking and savings accounts, which keeps that cash out of the probate court’s hands.
Transfer-on-death deeds
Wisconsin is one of the states that allow a transfer-on-death (TOD) deed for real estate. This is a game changer for the “family home.”
How it works: You file a TOD deed with your local register of deeds (such as the one in Juneau for Dodge County). It names who inherits your home, but it has no effect while you are alive. You can still sell the house or change your mind at any time.
The catch: Because Wisconsin is a marital property state, if you are married, your spouse generally must sign the TOD deed even if the spouse’s name isn’t on the original title.
Note: For small estates, Wisconsin offers a “transfer by affidavit” process for estates valued under $50,000. This allows heirs to collect assets without a full court proceeding, provided they follow strict notification rules for the state’s Medicaid Estate Recovery Program.
This story is published in collaboration with Multi-Media Channels. It originally appeared in Multi-Media Channels’ print “Dignity in Care” publication.
Hi, Wisconsin! Health reporter Addie Costello here.
I spent last Saturday with around 80 attendees of a senior breakfast in Merrill, and it was one of my best-spent weekends so far in 2026.
Northwoods residents packed a banquet hall to eat, talk with neighbors and list the biggest issues they face as older adults.
The Senior Empowerment Project, an organizing group focused on issues impacting older people in rural areas and small towns, organized the event and asked me to give a short presentation about my reporting on long-term care issues. The most exciting part? Once I finished talking, a microphone was passed from table to table as older adults shared the questions and issues they think about the most.
Where can they get transportation on the weekends? How can older adults afford to stay in their homes as property taxes increase? Where can they get nutritious food?
Wall decor is shown at the Northwoods Senior Breakfast at the Eagles Club in Merrill, Wis., March 28, 2026. (Addie Costello / Wisconsin Watch)
I left the event with a long list of questions I plan to answer in a new project. We’re calling it Q&Aging, a series of short stories where I interview experts to answer your questions about getting older in Wisconsin — whether about health care, housing or what comes next.
I reported this as part of our collaboration with several Multi-Media Channels, which cover swaths of northeast and central Wisconsin. Find the full Dignity in Care project here.
Choosing a long-term care provider is an important, expensive decision. Like test-driving a car, unannounced visits can provide helpful insight.
So what should someone do before a “walk-in” visit?
Wisconsin Watch asked two experts to weigh in:
Devon Christianson, director of the Aging and Disability Resource Center of Brown County.
Mike Pochowski, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association.
Here’s what they recommend:
Start with a scheduled tour. The person giving tours likely has important information about a facility’s care and costs. The state health department provides a guide for comparing assisted living providers, and the federal government has a similar guide for nursing homes. ADRCs can also help people prepare for tours.
Ask about “walk-in” visits. Facility staff might list certain times that are not ideal or explain security concerns, especially in a facility that offers memory care. But if the answer is an absolute no, that is something to consider when comparing providers.
Be transparent. The goal of drop-in visits is not to catch a provider doing something bad. Prospective residents or their family members should tell staff who they are and go through the normal guest registration process.
Be respectful. Nursing and assisted living facilities are people’s homes. Visit at a reasonable time and stay in common areas.
Ask residents and their families if they would be open to talking, Christianson said. Don’t base your decision around one resident’s experience. Use these conversations as a tool to help inform your decision.
This article was inspired by a reader sharing an experience touring facilities for a loved one. Do you have something to share? Please reach out.
Q&Aging
Aging comes with big questions — whether it’s about health care, housing or what comes next.
Wisconsin Watch is working to answer questions and share practical tips about aging in Wisconsin. To ask a question or offer a suggestion, fill out this form or contact reporter Addie Costello via email (acostello@wisconsinwatch.org) or phone (608-616-5239).
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service invites community members to submit opinion pieces of 500-800 words on topics of interest to central city Milwaukee. To send a submission for consideration, please email info@milwaukeenns.org. The views expressed are solely those of the authors.
There is a kind of pain that does not wait its turn. It crashes into your life, rearranges everything you thought you understood about safety, justice and faith, and then expects you to keep going.
This is not just about grief. This is about trauma and grief, intertwined, unfolding in real time in our homes, schools, workplaces and communities.
I know this kind of pain intimately.
My brother Sam
My siblings were my first friends. My brother Sam was my twin in every way that mattered. We shared a bunk bed, childhood routines and milestones. We grew up side by side, experiencing life in sync in a way only siblings that close can understand.
My brother was taken in a violent and publicly misunderstood way. While the investigation unfolded over months, narratives spread in hours. His life was debated in real time. People stepped into the roles of judge, jury and executioner before the facts had even begun to surface.
What I experienced was not just grief, but the added trauma of watching my brother’s humanity be debated and misrepresented in real time.
And then there is the part people do not talk about enough.
Reliving our tragedy
Residents release balloons during a memorial for Sam Sharpe Jr. at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Milwaukee. (Edgar Mendez / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
His death was broadcast and circulated repeatedly, forcing our family to relive a moment we were already struggling to survive. And even after the headlines fade, the process continues.
Legal cases, policy discussions, public commentary. Each step pulls you back into the trauma.
It follows you. In the news. In conversations. In the things you used to enjoy.
This is what navigating trauma and grief looks like in real time. It is not a single moment. It is ongoing.
I am a grown woman, well into my 40s, and nothing prepared me for this. And still, in the middle of that devastation, I was expected to show up to work, to function, to perform.
Three days
That is what we give people to grieve.
Three days to process a lifetime of connection. Three days to make arrangements, gather family and return as if something that significant can be contained and concluded.
Three days is not enough for natural loss.
So it is certainly not enough for loss that is sudden, violent or intentional.
And this is not exclusive to murder.
Trauma lives in all loss. Illness. Old age. Accidents. The loss of a child. Some loss we may anticipate, but none of it prepares us.
Yet the expectation remains the same: return to normal.
We have built systems that understand the need to bond with life, but not the need to grieve its loss. We offer time to welcome a child into the world, but minimal time to process losing one.
What kind of system measures productivity with more care than it measures pain?
We earn more time off to rest from work than we are given to recover from loss.
And it forces a deeper question:
How pro-life are we, really?
Because what we see does not reflect a culture that values life in a meaningful way. We see cruelty in comment sections, judgment attached to loss and a detachment that forgets every headline represents a real person and a real family.
Cycle of trauma continues
Residents place candles at the site of Sam Sharpe Jr.’s death during a vigil in Milwaukee on July 16, 2024. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Trauma does not end when the news cycle moves on.
It lives in the people who are still here.
It lives in individuals carrying invisible weight, in people one moment, one word, one interaction away from the edge.
And when that trauma goes unprocessed, we see the consequences.
People snap.
And then we ask children and teenagers to be resilient in environments where even adults are barely holding it together.
We expect them to focus, to behave, to perform, while ignoring a critical truth: Their brains are not fully developed. They do not yet have the tools to process trauma and grief at this level.
So when we see emotional outbursts, withdrawal, defiance or risky behavior, we rush to label it.
But what if what we are witnessing is not defiance but distress?
What if something has gone wrong emotionally, mentally, developmentally, and no one has stopped long enough to ask why?
And it may not always be loss. It could be trauma in all its forms.
When trauma goes unaddressed, it does not disappear. It shows up.
This is not a failure of character. This is the impact of unprocessed trauma and grief.
Hard questions and a simple truth
So we have to ask:
Who decided that three days was enough? Enough for who? Enough for what kind of loss?
Angelique Sharpe and Sam Sharpe Jr. (Courtesy of Angelique Sharpe)
Why are people forced to prove how close they were to someone in order to be granted the space to grieve?
What about chosen family? Do they matter less?
How do we expect people to return to life carrying something that has not even begun to settle?
Have we truly gone so far to the dark side that we no longer have compassion for people who have lost loved ones, regardless of how they left this place?
How do we continue to call ourselves compassionate while enforcing timelines on pain?
Because the truth is simple.
Three days ain’t enough.
Angelique Sharpe, known in the community as “MsLadyInc,” works at the intersection of broken systems and resilient people. She lifts their voice and helps organize solutions. You can visit her website here.
People cannot avoid death, but they often avoid talking about it. That’s why many people don’t receive as much — or any — hospice care they qualify for, experts say.
“There’s a real taboo in society that hospice equals death,” said Alisa Gerke, the board chair of Wisconsin Hospice and Palliative Care Collaborative and executive director at Unity Hospice and Palliative Care, a nonprofit provider that serves 14 northeast Wisconsin counties.
The goal of hospice isn’t to speed up the dying process; it’s to make people more comfortable — treating the symptoms of an illness instead of trying to cure it.
Once families enroll in hospice, Gerke said, they often ask: “How come nobody told us about this sooner?”
When to talk about hospice
Don’t wait for your provider to bring up hospice.
Patients and providers often wait for the other person to bring hospice up, said Angela Novas, an advanced certified hospice and palliative care nurse and consultant at the nonprofit Hospice Foundation of America. Let providers know that’s something you might be interested in.
Patients or their loved ones can also reach out to hospice providers directly and ask for an eligibility assessment, Novas said.
The basic requirements for adults to receive hospice care under Medicare include:
Verification from two physicians that a patient has a life expectancy of six months or less.
A patient’s willingness to pursue treatments to provide comfort instead of treatments aimed at extending life expectancy.
Clearing up misunderstandings about hospice
Some people may have misperceptions about hospice. Here is what it is not:
A place. Instead, it’s a model of care, Gerke said. While some providers may run facilities, hospice care can be provided at home and in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals and other settings.
Constant nursing care. Hospice is meant to supplement care from family or facility caregivers, Novas said. But providers should be readily accessible for questions and concerns.
Stopped if someone lives longer than six months. Instead, providers work to re-certify that someone is still likely to die within the next six months, Gerke said. Patients are no longer eligible for hospice if their life expectancy unexpectedly improves.
Permanent. Patients can decide to stop hospice and try curative treatment. If their outlook doesn’t improve, they can return to hospice, Gerke said. They can also freely switch providers.
So what’s palliative care?
Palliative care is a philosophy and medical speciality focused on alleviating suffering, according to Dr. Sara Johnson, a palliative care physician and University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor.
Hospice is a form of palliative care for people at the end of life. But people with a serious illness can access palliative care earlier in their diagnosis and while receiving curative treatments.
Palliative care services are becoming more accessible, Johnson said.
Palliative care specialists add a layer of support for patients and their families, Johnson said.
There is no harm in asking a provider about palliative care options, Johnson said. “If you’re thinking about it, just ask.”
How to find the right provider
Ask local providers for hospice care recommendations, Novas said. But don’t be afraid to shop around. Experts recommend asking these questions before choosing a provider:
How long have you served this area, and where are your staff located?
“Having staff that know that community, live in that community, are a part of that community is huge,” Gerke said.
What is your response time?
A patient’s condition can quickly change, making it important to know how quickly staff will answer calls or arrive in those cases.
What is your relationship with nearby providers?
If you know you want to use a particular nursing home, hospital or physician, it helps to know whether hospice providers have relationships and contracts with them.
What grief support do you offer?
Medicare requires hospice companies to provide families with bereavement services. But the level of those services can range widely.
What is your Medicare rating?
Medicare.gov offers a hospice look-up tool with quality care ratings. The federal agency provides comparative ratings based on family surveys and metrics like nursing visits in patients’ last days before death.
Are you for-profit or nonprofit?
Private equity and publicly traded companies are increasingly taking hold of the hospice industry. Those providers have been associated with lower quality of care, according to a Cornell University study.
For-profits face expectations around financial performance and typically have obligations to shareholders, Gerke said.
But a nonprofit status does not guarantee better care, Novas said. People should prioritize whether a provider fits their specific needs.
What services do your volunteers provide?
Medicare requires hospice providers to have a volunteer program. Do volunteers play games with patients? Provide pet therapy? Read to people? Some volunteer programs are more robust than others, Novas said.
What medications do you not cover?
Not all medications and supplies are covered under the Medicare hospice benefit, Novas said. It’s important to know what you might have to pay for out-of-pocket or with other health coverage.
Aging comes with big questions — whether it’s about health care, housing or what comes next.
Wisconsin Watch is working to answer questions and share practical tips about aging in Wisconsin. To ask a question or offer a suggestion, fill out this form or contact reporter Addie Costello via email (acostello@wisconsinwatch.org) or phone (608-616-5239).
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Gas prices in Wisconsin averaged above $5 a gallon in six southeastern counties in early June 2022.
According to the travel organization AAA’s page for Wisconsin, the statewide average gas price was $4.923 on June 12, 2022 – a record high that hasn’t been seen since.
Still, individual Wisconsin counties and metro areas exceeded $5 a gallon – a different measure than the statewide average.
A web archive of the same AAA page captured on June 16, 2022, showed the average price was above $5 in six counties, including Milwaukee County at $5.144.
Wisconsin’s Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, the state’s primary way of preserving green space and wetlands from development, is set to expire June 30 — but only after the Republican-controlled Legislature failed to form a consensus after months of negotiations and potential amendments to the initial bill.
Internal drafting documents obtained by Wisconsin Watch show that the Republican reauthorization bill — authored by Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, and Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point — went through at least 10 drafts between fall 2024 and when the bill was released in June 2025.
Despite the contentious negotiations over the program’s future, environmental advocates say there is still widespread popularity for Knowles-Nelson in Wisconsin.
“There is no controversy about the program outside of Capitol politics,” said Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives at Gathering Waters, Wisconsin’s Alliance for Land Trusts. “That kind of stunning gap between what the conversation about the program is inside the Capitol and what the conversation about the program is across the rest of the state is really startling.”
Kurtz and Testin did not respond to a request for comment.
A program built on compromise, now caught in a political fight
Knowles-Nelson was signed into law in 1989 by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and has survived both Republican and Democratic administrations, consistently drawing support from both parties. It funds everything from land acquisition by the DNR to grants for nonprofit conservation organizations and local governments.
“Knowles-Nelson is how we conserve land to protect environmentally sensitive areas. It’s how we provide access for hunters and anglers and silent sports recreationists,” Carlin said.
In the latest budget cycle, the bipartisan support unraveled after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a mechanism that had allowed members of the Joint Finance Committee to anonymously block individual DNR land purchases.
Conservation advocates cheered the ruling, but Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, who has tried to push for a compromise to save the program, warned advocates “they should be careful what they wish for.”
“I thought there was a good chance that that would be the end of the program,” Kitchens said. “So, you know, here we are.”
Why did the bill fall apart?
The Kurtz-Testin bill introduced in June 2024 would have funded the program at $28.25 million per year through 2030.
After failing to take action on Knowles-Nelson through the state budget process, Republicans in the Assembly passed an amended version of that bill funding the program until 2028 hoping to maintain existing land, not fund new projects.
Cody Kamrowski, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, said that his organization supported the initial version of the bill, even though it wasn’t an ideal starting place.
“And then some additional amendments were made. Some more amendments were made, and then it morphed into something that wasn’t Knowles-Nelson,” Kamrowski said. “I mean, Knowles-Nelson stewardship is a land acquisition program, and with all those amendments that were put in, it wasn’t a land acquisition program.”
The Kurtz-Testin bill would have required the full Legislature to specifically authorize any DNR land purchase with a grant award of $1 million or more — effectively meaning every significant land deal would need to pass as its own bill before any money could move.
Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, the author of a competing reauthorization bill, said the timeline alone makes that unworkable. “There is no real estate acquisition in history that could last over two years,” she said. “They’re very time-sensitive.”
Kamrowski emphasized that land acquisition opportunities don’t wait for political windows to reopen. “A lot of times it’s a once-in-a-generation or once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase a key piece of property,” he said.
The Republican bill would also have funded the program at roughly $28 million per year — less than the $33 million it had been receiving since 2021, and far below the $72 million Habush Sinykin proposed or the $100 million in Gov. Tony Evers’ version of the budget.
An angler casts a line near the Echo Lake Dam on Sept. 1, 2022, in Burlington, Wis. The Echo Lake Dam project tentatively received a grant for over $700,000 from the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund for development of gathering spaces adjacent to the lake and got a $10 million earmark in the state budget. (Angela Major / WPR)
Funding for Knowles-Nelson has fallen significantly since its peak in 2011. Program spending in 2018 was about a quarter of what it was in 2007, according to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The Kurtz-Testin bill never came to a vote. In February 2026, Senate Republican leaders pulled the bill from the floor schedule without explanation. When Habush Sinykin introduced an amendment to simply extend the program for one more year at its existing $33 million funding level, it got struck down along party lines.
“All it would have done was give the program one more year at $33.25 million, the exact same level since the 2021 budget,” Habush Sinykin said. “But it was rejected.”
Before the bill was introduced, internal drafting notes show that when Kurtz’s office took over the bill in February 2025, one of the listed priorities was to “shift focus from north to south, green space in urban areas” — removing a restriction that had prevented the program from funding parcels smaller than 10 acres.
Kitchens said the bill has been historically controversial in the northern parts of the state because the high proportion of publicly owned lands don’t contribute to the tax base.
“It’s a program that is viewed very differently in different parts of the state,” he said. “In the Northwoods, where they have less of a tax base, they really don’t like seeing property coming off the tax rolls. There’s always been more of a geographical split than it is really liberal, conservative.”
If the funding expires June 30, the program itself does not disappear from the statute books, but the program will no longer be funded, Carlin said. However, the practical consequences of this mean the planning landscape will be scrambled for land trusts.
The expiration also lands on top of an already strained conservation system. Carlin noted that Wisconsin has accumulated more than $1 billion in deferred maintenance at state properties and faces tens of millions of dollars in habitat management shortfalls. Letting Knowles-Nelson lapse, he said, doesn’t solve those problems.
“I think this is going to have to be a central conversation in the next state budget that can be as simple as appropriating money to the stewardship program in the short term,” Carlin said. “And then there’s a much broader conversation to be had about, how do we again get serious about taking care of our land and water so that our kids and grandkids inherit a better Wisconsin than we do.”
Evers’ office said he remains optimistic that Republicans and Democrats can reach a deal as legislative leadership and the governor’s office negotiate a potential K-12 funding increase from the projected $2.37 billion state surplus.
“The governor has been clear that he expects the Legislature to stay in session until they’ve finished the people’s work,” spokesperson Britt Cudaback said.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the top Republican running for governor in November, said his focus would be “on maintaining the lands we already own for future generations, while being fiscally responsible with the more than $500 million in outstanding debt taxpayers still owe.”
He also said that the stewardship program has helped protect some of our most special places. “Wisconsin’s outdoor traditions are part of who we are,” Tiffany said.
Habush Sinykin, meanwhile, said Democrats are looking to flip enough Senate seats to break the Republican supermajority on the Joint Finance Committee — turning the current 12-4 split to 8-8.
“That’ll make a big difference to allow us to reauthorize the program,” she said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Monday signed legislation that would give raises for the first time in a decade to permanently and totally disabled people receiving worker’s compensation.
The bill, which includes other changes to the worker’s comp system, was passed by the Assembly (97-0 vote) in January and by the Senate (32-1) in February. Both chambers are majority Republican.
The bill would help people like 65-year-old Bob Hurley, who suffered a back injury in 1982, at age 22. While helping build a car wash, he fell 15 feet from a forklift and “landed flat on my back in a concrete pit.”
Bob Hurley after his back injury in 1982 and pictured with his nephew, Chad Hurley. (Courtesy of Bob Hurley)
Through four surgeries, Hurley continued working for 17 years before being declared PTD.
Hurley, now living in Minnesota, said he receives $2,900 in monthly worker’s comp benefits. He said his only other income is $2,600 monthly in Social Security benefits. Without cost-of-living adjustments in his PTD payments, “it gets harder and harder every year,” he said.
Wisconsin Watch reported in September that more than 300 permanently and totally disabled recipients haven’t received a raise in their worker’s comp benefits since 2016.
The bill would also make these changes for PTD recipients:
Make an estimated 210 more PTD recipients eligible for raises. Currently, only PTD recipients injured before Jan. 1, 2003, are eligible for raises. The bill would change that date to Jan. 1, 2020.
Raise the maximum weekly benefit for PTD recipients by 57%, from $669 to $1,051.
Give PTD recipients annual raises, with the amounts set shortly before taking effect. The raise amounts would vary based on when the recipients were injured and their earnings at the time.
Jimmy Novy, seen at home on July 29, 2025, in Hillsboro, Wis., is one of more than 300 permanently and totally disabled individuals collecting worker’s comp checks from the state since his injury in his late 20s. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
One example, provided by the state Department of Workforce Development: A PTD recipient injured in 1985 and receiving $535 a week would get a 57% increase to $840. The increase would amount to nearly $16,000 per year.
Bill Watch takes a closer look at what’s notable about legislation grinding its way through the Capitol. Subscribe to our newsletters for more from Wisconsin Watch.
International migration to Wisconsin has dropped sharply since President Donald Trump’s return to office, mirroring a national slowdown as visa issuances and border crossings decline.
New U.S. Census Bureau data shows Wisconsin gained just over 7,200 residents through international migration between fiscal years 2024 and 2025, down from more than 22,000 over the previous year — a 67% decline.
Overall, Wisconsin added about 16,000 new residents in that period, increasing the state’s overall population by roughly 0.2%.
Nearly every Wisconsin county saw net international migration fall by double-digit percentages. Several counties lost more residents to international migration than they gained.
The few Wisconsin counties that saw net increases added only small numbers of new arrivals from outside the U.S. Shawano County, for instance, received 29 international migrants in fiscal year 2025, up from 24 the year before.
Not all international migration is immigration. The Census Bureau counts movements in and out of the country by citizens and noncitizens as international migration. That includes members of the armed forces and people moving between Puerto Rico and the rest of the U.S.
Federal immigration court records show a similar pattern. Only 198 immigrants with Wisconsin addresses made their first appearance in immigration court in February, down from a monthly peak of about 2,400 in March 2024.
Federal immigration courts, run by the U.S. Department of Justice, handle deportation cases and immigrants’ requests for asylum and other forms of relief.
More than 43,000 immigrants who entered the court system over the past decade listed addresses in Wisconsin.Three-quarters still await final rulings. New arrivals and removal cases slowed to a trickle after President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. Many immigrants detained in Wisconsin over the past year first entered the court system before Trump returned to office.
Even so, international migration accounted for nearly half of Wisconsin’s overall population growth between fiscal years 2024 and 2025, and a similar share over the past decade.
Nearly two dozen counties lost population last year, and another seven would have lost population without international migration.
In Milwaukee County, a scenario with no international migration in 2025 would have meant a net loss of more than 2,000 residents. Instead, the county shrunk by just over 100 residents. Natural growth outpaced international migration, but the county lost nearly 5,000 residents to domestic migration.
Even as international migration sharply declines, Republican voters in the state continue to express strong concern about immigration. In aMarquette University Law School poll conducted this month, 77% of Republicans said they were very concerned about illegal immigration and border security, compared with 54% who said the same about inflation and the cost of living — the top issue for Democrats and independents.
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