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People cannot send money to Wisconsin prisoners directly. They can instead transfer funds through a company called Access Corrections.
The private company’s website, app, phone and in-person delivery systems are no longer working across the state.
Access Corrections is part of the conglomerate that also runs the prison’s phone system, which has failed in recent months.
The online system Wisconsin prisoners rely on to receive money from loved ones recently crashed, leaving them unable to pay for items like extra food and hygiene products.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections contracts a private company, Access Corrections, to allow people outside of prison to transfer funds to those inside. Those transfers occur through the company’s app, website, phone system, mail and in-person options. But multiple people told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they could not make deposits beginning this week.
A screenshot of the Access Corrections website is shown on May 22, 2025. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections contracts with the private vendor to allow people to send money to prisoners, but the system is not working.
The Access Corrections website and app display nothing more than a white screen and the message: “Sorry, the service you’re looking for is currently unavailable.”
Those who dial an Access Corrections phone number hear a recorded message saying the company can’t take deposits online or over the phone and that it is working to resolve the issue.
In-person deposits at locations throughout Wisconsin are also unavailable, according to an affiliate’s website. It is unclear whether physical mail deposits still work.
A Department of Corrections spokesperson said she was working on a response, which did not arrive by this story’s deadline.
The Keefe Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Robin Guenterberg typically sends his daughter at Taycheedah Correctional Institution $300 a month, with Access Corrections collecting a fee.
His daughter, who he requested not be publicly named, uses most of that money to buy items from the prison’s commissary. She has a chronic health condition and relies on commissary chicken and tuna packets to supplement regularly provided meals, Guenterberg said.
The daughter has lost more than 20 pounds since entering prison late last year, Guenterberg said, adding that he and his wife purchase vending machine items during visits and make additional deposits to help their daughter maintain a healthy weight.
If Access Corrections fails to quickly restart deposits, she may lack funds to place a commissary order for next week, Guenterberg said.
Sarah Liebzeit successfully added funds to her incarcerated son’s account late Monday night. But issues with his prison-provided electronic tablet have prevented him from spending it at Stanley Correctional Institution, she said.
“This is now another issue because the tablets have been just horrible,” Liebzeit said.
Some incarcerated people work low-wage jobs inside their prison. Their pay falls short of covering phone calls, extra food, hygiene products and medical co-pays without outside deposits, multiple family members told WPR and Wisconsin Watch.
Nicole Johnson said her incarcerated boyfriend earns $20 every two weeks at his Dodge Correctional Institution job. Wisconsin’s typical copay charge of $7.50 per face-to-face medical visit is among the highest in the country — more than half of his weekly earnings.
Johnson said she tries to add $50 to her boyfriend’s account twice a month so he can purchase rice and beans to supplement regularly provided meals.
“It’s just how I take care of him right now,” she said.
The Access Corrections crash, she added, “makes me sad because I don’t want him to be hungry all freaking week.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Last week, our newsroom was intrigued by data in this Economist article showing that Wisconsin stands out nationally when it comes to its low vaccination rates for measles. It prompted a discussion about the many reasons for vaccine hesitancy and the complex challenges of maintaining trust in public health.
One thing is clear: Measles is a very infectious disease, and it’s spreading nationwide.
Officials in 2025 have tracked almost as many measles outbreaks (defined as three or more related cases) as they did in all of 2024. Three deaths this year have been linked to measles. They included two unvaccinated school-aged children in Texas and an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico.
The outbreaks come as vaccination rates decline nationwide, particularly in Wisconsin. The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine rate for Wisconsin kindergartners has plunged since 2019. But even before the COVID-19 pandemic, no county in Wisconsin had more than a 90% vaccination rate, which is traditionally associated with “herd immunity.”
Wisconsin, The Economist article noted, “is among the most permissive states for vaccine exceptions in schools, allowing opt-out for personal-conviction reasons (along with medical and religious exemptions, which most states have); parents only have to submit a written note.”
Still, Wisconsin has yet to see a measles outbreak this year. As we consider how to report on this issue, let us know what you think.
Do you have questions about measles, its vaccine or how to keep your family safe? Or do you have perspectives to share about prevention efforts in your community?
If so, fill out this brief form. Your submissions will shape the direction of our reporting and will not be shared publicly.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
ROTHSCHILD — Far from the liberal capital, Republicans gathered over the weekend to assess the state of a party in full control of the federal government, but showing signs of continued collapse in Wisconsin.
There were plenty of middle-aged white guys, one towing “Trump” the service dog and one in a Carhartt polo talking about conspiracist Alex Jones. Among the handful of African American attendees was a man sporting a “Black Guns Matter” T-shirt. An Appleton 25-year-old in a suit and tie talked up the need for more young people in leadership. A Dane County woman shared her thoughts on clamping down on illegal immigration and onshoring manufacturing jobs, as another attendee walked past in an American flag dress.
What many of these rank-and-file Republicans shared, as they gathered for the Wisconsin Republican Party’s annual convention, was applause for the sheer speed of President Donald Trump’s actions in office — and a desire for more moves to the right in the 2026 elections.
In purple Wisconsin, that film has played out before, and it didn’t go so well for Republicans. After Trump’s first election in 2016, the party lost control of the governor’s office and the state Supreme Court. April’s Supreme Court victory for Dane County Judge Susan Crawford means liberals will control the court through at least 2028 and could reshape the state’s congressional maps to help Democrats retake Congress in the midterms.
While there was some talk of blaming GOP state chair Brian Schimming for the poor April showing, none of that materialized in Rothschild. Instead, the party talked up the November victory and how to double down on the same Trumpian rhetoric heading into 2026.
Here’s how several of the 500 convention attendees at the Central Wisconsin Convention & Expo Center near Wausau assessed the first four months of Trump’s second term and what they want to see from GOP leaders going forward.
How state Republicans view Trump 2.0
Delegates were animated in their praise of Trump for keeping his campaign promises.
“It gets better every day,” said Rock County delegate Michael Mattus, accompanied by his Belgian service dog. “I’m happy every day. Wake up and thinking, what’s he gonna do today?”
Adams County GOP chair Pete Church, who was elected chair of the state party’s county chairs at the convention, said he only wishes the U.S. House and Senate picked up the pace.
“It would be great if we could get Congress to actually put some of these things into law,” he said. “None of us really wants to see a government run by executive order, but that’s where we’re at.”
Delegates lauded Trump’s visit last week to the Middle East and his crackdown on illegal immigration.
“I have uncles, I have aunts that came over here illegally. I don’t associate with them,” said Martin Ruiz Gomez, 39, a one-time Milwaukee-based MMA fighter attending his first state GOP convention. “It’s not nothing against them, but they’re not doing things right.”
The delegates even backed Trump initiatives that have less public support, such as tariffs. The on-again, off-again measures are viewed by some as making international trade fair and encouraging companies to create manufacturing jobs in the U.S., but recent polling has found more than 60% of Americans oppose them and worry they will raise prices. Rising prices was an issue that fueled Trump’s victory in November.
“Well, I was a little nervous about the tariffs when my (retirement savings account) went (down), but he’s doing what he set out to do,” said Calumet County delegate Linda Hoerth.
Portage County delegate Michael Zaremba agreed, saying the tariffs will eventually return more manufacturing jobs to the U.S.
“Just like with a pregnancy, you have to grow it, and then you have to experience the pain,” said Milwaukee County delegate Cindy Werner, who ran for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor in 2022. “But then there’s joy that comes after that.”
Delegates happy with Trump’s performance were mild with any criticism.
“Trump hasn’t always been a big supporter of the Second Amendment. I mean, he is, but he also isn’t super firm on that,” said 25-year-old Reive Pullen, a gun-rights supporter from Outagamie County.
Dane County delegate Tya Lichte could have done without Trump’s talk of taking control of Greenland or making Canada the 51st state.
“I understand he always likes to lead big and then heel back,” she said.
What more they want from GOP leaders
Soon, attention will turn to 2026 and the election for governor. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers hasn’t said whether he’ll seek a third term. His 2018 win over Republican Gov. Scott Walker marked the end of eight years of GOP rule in Wisconsin and came as Democrats flipped 41 seats to take back control of the U.S. House.
Hoerth, a board member of the Calumet County GOP, wants the next governor to “get rid of all this DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion)” and push for a state referendum on at what stage of pregnancy abortion should be legal in Wisconsin.
Hoerth likes the background of military veteran and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, the only announced Republican candidate for governor, based on Schoemann’s recent visit with her and other Calumet County Republicans.
“He got the entire group wound up looking at their phones, checking some different websites that he was telling us about,” she said. “It was great.”
Another Republican mentioned as a potential gubernatorial candidate, northern Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, sounded like one. He used much of his convention speech to criticize Evers, but not to make any big announcements.
Wisconsin Congressman Tom Tiffany addresses the audience in his speech during the Republican Party of Wisconsin state convention on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at the Central Wisconsin Convention & Expo Center in Rothschild, Wis. “Isn’t it great inflation is going down here in the United States of America and jobs are going up?” Tiffany said as he held up an egg carton and the audience applauded. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Lichte, of Dane County, said she wants the next governor to follow Trump’s lead on reshoring jobs and to try to make Milwaukee a technology hub.
Milwaukee County GOP chair Hilario Deleon said reducing crime, taxes and the size of state government are top priorities.
Rock County’s Mattus, who called abortion “pro-murder,” said he became more active because “this world (is) becoming more communist and I’m not for that.”
In the name of election integrity, Portage County’s Zaremba wants Republicans to get rid of the state Elections Commission and return to hand-counting paper ballots.
Some delegates expressed hope that their party can mend fences with nonprofits such as Turning Point USA in their efforts to elect Republicans. During the recent Supreme Court race there were disputes about how to campaign that went public and exposed rifts among conservatives.
“It’s all right that we don’t always agree, but when we’re taking those arguments to social media for the whole world to see, that’s where I don’t like it,” said Church, the new head of the county chairs. “The only way it can be fixed is through cooperation.”
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A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is pushing a fix to a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that hampered the public’s ability to obtain attorney fees in certain public records lawsuits against public officials — but the top Assembly Republican remains noncommittal about the bill.
The case, Friends of Frame Park v. City of Waukesha, involved a public records dispute between the city and a citizen group. Waukesha was working to bring a semi-professional baseball team to town. A group of concerned residents, Friends of Frame Park, submitted a public records request to the city seeking copies of any agreements the city had reached with the team’s owners or the semi-professional league.
The city partially denied the request and refused to produce a copy of a draft contract. Friends of Frame Park hired an attorney and sued. A day after the lawsuit was filed, and before the local circuit court took action, the city produced a copy of the draft contract.
The case eventually worked its way to the state Supreme Court, which determined that Friends of Frame Park was not entitled to attorney fees because it technically had not prevailed in court — the group received the record without action from the circuit court.
The ruling “actually incentivizes public officials to illegally withhold records because it forces requestors to incur legal costs that may never be recovered,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, during a public hearing about the bill.
Max Lenz, an attorney representing the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, said the state Supreme Court ruling incentivizes public officials to “effectively dare the public to sue.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling in Friends of Frame Park flipped the public records law presumption of openness on its head,” he said.
The legislation, spearheaded by state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, would supersede the high court’s ruling and allow a requestor to obtain attorney fees if a judge determines that the filing of a lawsuit “was a substantial factor contributing to that voluntary or unilateral release” of records, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
The bill has garnered support from an unusual coalition of organizations. Seven groups, some of which frequently lobby, have registered in support of the bill, including the liberal ACLU of Wisconsin and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
A similar version of the bill was approved by the state Senate last session but did not receive a vote in the Assembly. The legislation was approved by the state Senate last week.
The legislation’s path forward remains unclear. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters recently that “our caucus has never talked about it.”
“It’s certainly something we could discuss, but we don’t have a position on it at this time,” Vos added.
Are you interested in learning more about public records? Here’s a primer on what types of records should be accessible to you — and how to request them.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit news organization that uses journalism to make Wisconsin communities strong, informed and connected, seeks a data investigative reporter to expand our capacity to provide vital evidence and context to our reporting.
Working with other journalists in our statewide and Milwaukee newsrooms, you will use data to help us better understand Wisconsin communities and hold leaders to account. We believe that access to truthful local news is critical to a healthy democracy and to finding solutions to the most pressing problems of everyday life.
Job duties
Reporting to the managing editor, you will:
Find, compile and clean data that powers our journalism.
Plan and execute quantitative analyses — and interpret results — to support stories and visualizations.
Design and build creative static and interactive graphics to visualize findings.
Pitch and develop your own stories with support from editors.
Help other journalists advance their data journalism skills, teaching and encouraging best practices across the newsrooms.
At Wisconsin Watch we make sure that we are producing quality journalism and give our reporters the time they need to make sure the job is done well. Rather than chasing clicks, we measure success through the impact we deliver to those we serve.
Required qualifications: The ideal candidate will bring a public service mindset and a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisan journalism ethics, including a commitment to abide by Wisconsin Watch’s ethics policies. More specifically, we’re looking for a reporter who:
Has worked on data projects in a newsroom or has performed statistical analysis in a research setting.
Demonstrates ability to analyze data in Python, R, SQL or a similar high-level language.
Has experience with off-the-shelf data visualization tools like Datawrapper or Flourish.
Demonstrates ability to formulate compelling story pitches to editors.
Aches to report and support stories that explore solutions to challenges.
Has experience with or ideas about the many ways newsrooms can inform the public.
Has experience working with others. Wisconsin Watch is a deeply collaborative organization. Our journalists frequently team up with each other or with colleagues at other news outlets to maximize the potential impact of our reporting.
Bonus skills:
Familiarity with Wisconsin, its history and its politics.
Beat reporting experience.
Spanish-language proficiency.
Don’t check off every box in the requirements listed above? Please apply anyway! Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to building an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible workplace that fosters a sense of belonging – so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to still consider submitting an application. You may be just the right candidate for this role or another one of our openings!
Location: The reporter must be located in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Watch is a statewide news organization with staff based in Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay.
Salary and benefits: The salary range is $50,000-$70,000. Benefits include five weeks of vacation; paid sick leave and family and caregiver leave; 75% reimbursement for silver-tier health and dental insurance on the federal exchange; 100% vision insurance coverage; $100 per paycheck automatic employer contribution to a 403(b) retirement plan (no match required) after 90 days.
Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience.
Deadline: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. For best consideration, apply by June 2.
To apply: Please submit a single PDF of your resume and work samples and answer some brief questions in this application form. If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Managing Editor Jim Malewitz at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. We are an equal-opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.
About Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Founded in 2009, Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing independent, nonpartisan journalism that makes the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. We believe that access to truthful local news is critical to a healthy democracy and to finding solutions to the most pressing problems of everyday life. Under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella, we have multiple news departments including a statewide investigative and explanatory projects team, a Capitol bureau, a regional collaboration in northeast Wisconsin called the NEW News Lab, and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS).
NNS was founded in 2011 as a mission-driven newsroom that reports on and celebrates Milwaukee’s central city neighborhoods. Through its reporting, website, e-newsletters and News414 texting service, NNS covers ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connects readers with resources and serves as a watchdog for their neighbors. Together, Wisconsin Watch’s state team and NNS reporters collaborate to produce solutions-oriented investigative and explanatory stories highlighting issues affecting communities in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin Watch journalists have been recognized for their work at the state and national level in recent months.
The Religion News Association awarded Phoebe Petrovic first place in its Award for Excellence in Religion Reporting — Online-only News Outlets category for her stories on radical Wisconsin pastor Matthew Trewhella and a visually stunning explainer on the origins of Christian nationalism. Both were done as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network fellowship.
Petrovic also was named among the finalists for the Toner Prize in national political reporting for her stories on Trewhella and Christian nationalism. And her Trewhella story received a second place Award of Excellence in the Wilbur Awards, which recognize national reporting on religious issues in public media.
The RNA also awarded former Wisconsin Watch intern Rachel Hale first place for the Chandler Award for Excellence in Student Religion Reporting for her coverage about the strain of the Israel-Hamas war on Wisconsin’s Jewish community. Her entry included her Wisconsin Watch fact brief that debunked a viral story about a pro-Palestinian protest chant.
The North American Agricultural Journalists awarded Bennet Goldstein a first place award in news for his story on how AI and satellites are being used to detect illegal manure spills in Wisconsin. He was also part of a team of journalists who received second place in special projects for their coverage of the Mississippi River Basin, including Goldstein’s story on whether a Chesapeake Bay conservation strategy could help.
Wisconsin has just one nuclear power plant. Republican legislation, along with an initiative from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, could move the state toward more nuclear power.
The GOP-led Senate Bill 125, introduced in March, would require the state Public Service Commission, which regulates electric and gas utilities in Wisconsin, to conduct a nuclear power siting study.
The study would identify nuclear power generation opportunities on existing power generation sites, as well as on sites not now used for power generation.
It would help Wisconsin “catch up with other states that have already made important strides in exploring new nuclear energy,” said Paul Wilson, chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
State Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, who introduced the bill, did not respond to requests for comment.
Groups registered in favor of the legislation include the Wisconsin Utilities Association and several employee unions. The PSC also supports the bill, noting that an amendment to the bill keeps the current timeline for the commission to review applications for such electricity generation.
Opponents include Sierra Club Wisconsin, which says nuclear power “poses significant risks due to its high costs, long construction timelines, unresolved radioactive waste issues and the potential for catastrophic accidents.”
The environmental group Clean Wisconsin says the nuclear industry, not taxpayers, should fund siting studies.
The effort to explore more nuclear energy is bipartisan in that, separately, Evers proposed in his 2025-27 state budget spending $1 million to do a nuclear power plant feasibility study.
Evers, calling nuclear energy clean, said in a statement to Wisconsin Watch that “with new advanced nuclear technology and the increasing need for energy across Wisconsin, it is long past time that we invest in new, innovative industries and technologies.”
Wisconsin’s only operating nuclear power plant, Point Beach, is near the Manitowoc County community of Two Rivers.
Just six months ago, the Wisconsin Republican Party was flying pretty high.
Despite an unsuccessful attempt to jettison U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the GOP held its Wisconsin seats in the U.S. House and its majorities (albeit smaller) in the state Legislature. Donald Trump’s win in the Badger State put him over the top for a second term in the White House.
Soon after, Brian Schimming was re-elected to a second two-year term as the party’s state chairman.
But, like a sudden drop in cabin pressure, things in politics can change quickly.
There is unrest among some Republicans as they prepare to gather for the state party’s annual convention on Saturday.
The meeting comes some six weeks after a stinging loss in the state Supreme Court election, in which Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeated GOP-backed Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel by 10 points, cementing a liberal court majority until at least 2028.
A few vocal critics blamed Schimming, who has promised an ”investigation” into what went wrong. Schimming declined an interview request.
The party will meet in Rothschild, a village south of Wausau in Marathon County. One of the county’s leading Republicans, state Rep. Brent Jacobson of Mosinee, doesn’t blame Schimming for Schimel’s loss.
“That Supreme Court race was a reaction to Trump’s victory in November,” said Jacobson, who was elected to his first term last fall. “Democrats were super energized, and they simply turned out in far greater numbers than Republicans did.”
Jacobson said he is satisfied with Schimming’s performance and wants his fellow Republicans to turn the page. He credited Schimming with encouraging Republicans to embrace early voting during the November election, which Jacobson called “a difference maker,” and getting Trump to visit Dane County during the campaign.
“In politics, you have to have a short memory about losses,” he said.
Rep. Brent Jacobson, R-Mosinee, leaves the 2025 state budget address Feb. 18, 2025, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Julia Azari, a political science professor at Marquette University, said Schimming has a difficult job because Wisconsin “has a very unclear relationship with Trump and Trumpism.”
On the one hand, she said, Wisconsin helped Trump to victory in 2016 as well as 2024, but policies such as tariffs in his second term have met with pushback.
Azari also pointed to factors other than Schimming’s leadership for the Supreme Court outcome. She cited the involvement of billionaire Elon Musk in pushing Schimel’s candidacy as more important.
“A lot of it is related to resentment about Musk coming in from on high,” Azari said of Schimel’s loss. “I think Wisconsin voters are resistant to nationalization, and that the nationalization of party politics has had a limited impact here.”
For his part, Jacobson is looking ahead to the governor’s race in 2026, hoping for party unity.
Democrat Tony Evers has not said whether he will seek a third term; so far one Republican, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, is in the race.
Jacobson said he expects more Republican candidates, but hopes not to see a repeat of 2022. He said that year’s GOP primary battle between businessman Tim Michels, who defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch for the nomination, left the party hobbled against Evers.
“We can always learn from history and I would hope that we did that from 2022, so that we can not only be united but come out of the primary process with a lot more resources” in 2026, Jacobson said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee used its first working meeting on the state’s next two-year budget to scrap Gov. Tony Evers’ recommended spending plan — but it offered clues to which of the public’s priorities remain in the mix and which are DOA.
Using committee rules, Republicans put a prohibition on committee members discussing certain ideas put forth by the governor — including proposals relating to some of the public’s top priorities: education funding, health care and child care — but left the door open to discussing some of his ideas even as they struck them from the budget document.
The Joint Finance Committee’s action marks the fourth time in four budget cycles that it has scrapped hundreds of the Democratic governor’s proposals — though some of them can return to the budget, in some form or another. GOP lawmakers on the committee have gotten used to “the way we have to manage Gov. Evers’ budgets,” committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, told reporters, adding that the governor’s plan called for too much state spending.
Democrats on the committee denounced their GOP colleagues for tossing Evers’ budget.
“People are struggling, and it’s a challenging world,” said Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha. “The one thing we should not be doing, the one thing that nobody votes for their legislator to do, is to make their life harder.”
Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, panned the idea that Evers’ proposals were the only way to address certain issues in the state.
“This idea that the door is closed on all these things is pretty ridiculous,” he said during the committee’s meeting.
There is more than “one way to address issues and those will all be debated and built over the next couple of months,” Born added.
Here are issues legislators will and won’t be able to discuss as the committee crafts a spending plan over the next two months.
Education funding
The committee closed the book on a number of education issues. That includes a $148 million proposal from Evers to make school meals free to all K-12 students in Wisconsin regardless of income. The program would have taken effect for the 2026-27 school year.
The committee also shut down a $500,000 proposal to fund a grant program for peer-to-peer suicide prevention programs, $5 million in funding to help school districts encourage people to pursue a career in teaching and $1 million to pay for feminine hygiene products that can be distributed to Wisconsin students at school.
Though the committee voted to scrap scores of other Evers proposals, it did not vote to end the discussion on certain issues that were priorities for the governor and raised by the public at committee hearings.
One thing scrapped by the committee but left open for discussion was Evers’ $1.13 billion request to have the state pay for 60% of Wisconsin school districts’ special education costs. The state currently covers a third of such costs for public schools and upwards of 90% of costs for some private voucher schools. Multiple public hearing attendees said their public school districts have transferred thousands of dollars from their general funds to their special education funds to cover costs that have not been reimbursed.
The committee also tossed out a $212 million proposal to increase general per pupil aid and a $168 million request to fund school-based mental health services, but left the door open for future discussion on both topics.
The committee’s decision to definitively shut down some proposals but leave open others suggests lawmakers could increase spending for certain programs funded by Evers, just in different ways or amounts.
Health care
As it has throughout Evers’ time in office, the committee rejected a proposal to accept federal Medicaid expansion and used committee rules to block further discussion of the topic. Medicaid expansion has been a top priority for the governor during his six-plus years in office, but Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to expand the program.
Wisconsin is one of 10 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has defended that decision as insulating the state from the federal government scaling back Medicaid reimbursements.
Republicans on the committee also closed the door on a $100 million proposal from Evers to fund a program focused on lead hazard remediation. The funds would have been used to help low-income families remediate lead in homes built before 1950.
The committee also clipped a $1.4 million request from Evers to pay for a study to assess so-called “forever chemicals” and identify potential methods for limiting further human exposure. PFAS, as the chemicals are commonly known, have contaminated water sources across Wisconsin. Two years ago, the Legislature approved $125 million to help address PFAS contamination in the state. The funds have so far not been released, with Evers and Republicans at odds with how the money should be spent.
One key item lawmakers threw out but did not block future consideration of is postpartum Medicaid expansion. Wisconsin is one of two states that have turned down a federal expansion of Medicaid coverage for up to 12 months for new moms. Wisconsin’s coverage currently lasts 60 days after birth, far shorter than what health experts recommend. Evers’ proposal would have expanded coverage to one year.
A stand-alone bill that would provide Medicaid coverage to new moms for 12 months is currently working its way through the Legislature. It is co-sponsored by a majority of the Legislature’s 132 members. All six Senate Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee voted in favor of the stand-alone bill last month. Including it in the state budget could provide lawmakers a way to circumvent opposition from Vos, who has criticized the bill as welfare expansion.
Child care
Among the Evers provisions discarded by the committee without a possibility of future consideration were programs that would provide financial assistance to child care providers, assist workers with licensing and certification and pay down debt associated with child care accrued by certain qualifying families.
Child Care Counts was established in 2020 using federal funds to provide monthly stipends to child care providers to cover costs of their services and support the recruitment and retention efforts of child care workers in Wisconsin. But funding for the program is set to expire at the end of June.
Evers’ budget proposal would have allocated $442 million over the next two years to make the program permanent, funding annual payments to child care providers. The recommendation would also fund four new positions at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to oversee the program.
Without continued state support for the program, around 25% of child care centers in Wisconsin face the threat of closing once current funding runs out.
Another program removed from the budget would have provided a $4.5 million grant to Wonderschool — an organization aimed at meeting the demands of child care — to continue expanding child care in Wisconsin. The program also would provide $5.5 million to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association to support child care workers in the state, including assistance with the licensing and certification process.
Another cut program would have used federal funds to reduce child care debt for qualifying parents.
Child care access and affordability have been a persistent problem in Wisconsin, with some families expressing concern over how they will cover the costs of child care without state support.
The Joint Finance Committee will continue its work on the budget throughout May and June. The state’s current fiscal year expires on June 30, but if a new budget isn’t yet in place, funding will continue at existing levels.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom that uses journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected, seeks a senior reporter to lead our newsroom’s state government coverage.
The successful candidate will be responsible for producing regular coverage of state government policy and politics with a premium on explaining how they affect the public and how citizens can stay in charge of their government. Coverage will include regular stories that provide context and deepen understanding about state government activities, explain what elected representatives are up to for areas of the state with no Capitol coverage, and deliver high-impact investigative and explanatory solutions. A top-tier candidate will already have a following on social media and be comfortable discussing Wisconsin politics on radio, TV and podcasts and in other web-based formats. Our aim is to deliver important state government news and knowledge to people through their preferred format and channels, whether that’s shared social videos, concise newsletter summaries or compelling narratives.
Job duties
The statehouse reporter will:
Produce weekly news and analysis content for the Monday newsletter Forward.
Produce substantive investigations that examine societal problems and explore solutions.
Participate in weekly planning meetings to map out short- and long-term coverage plans.
Mentor interns and other reporters in state government reporting.
Engage in opportunities to share reporting with media partners.
Report to state editor Matthew DeFour as part of a team with two other reporters and interns.
Required qualifications: The ideal candidate will bring a public service mindset and a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisan journalism ethics, including a commitment to abide by Wisconsin Watch’s ethics policies.
More specifically, we’re looking for a reporter who:
Has covered government and shown the ability to develop sources, find important stories and inform the public about what their elected representatives are up to.
Brings a nimble, innovative mindset — Wisconsin Watch is exploring the frontiers of nonprofit journalism, and we want reporters who bring ideas about how to grow our audience and deliver meaningful information to the people who need it most.
Is committed to nonpartisan reporting focused on identifying problems as well as best-practice solutions.
Key bonus skills:
Data reporting expertise.
Spanish language fluency.
Experience with audio and video storytelling.
Location: The reporter will be based in Madison with desks in both the Capitol press room and our Wisconsin Watch newsroom in Madison.
Salary and benefits: The annual salary range is $60,000-$80,000. Benefits include five weeks of vacation; paid sick leave and family and caregiver leave; 75% reimbursement for silver-tier health and dental insurance on the federal exchange; 100% vision insurance coverage; $100 per paycheck automatic employer contribution to a 403(b) retirement plan (no match required).
Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience.
Deadline: May 30, 2025
To apply: Please submit a PDF of your resume, work samples and answer some brief questions in this application form. If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Hiring Manager Matthew DeFour at mdefour@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We are an equal-opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.
About Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Founded in 2009, Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing independent, nonpartisan journalism that makes the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. We believe that access to truthful local news is critical to a healthy democracy and to finding solutions to the most pressing problems of everyday life. Under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella, we have multiple news departments including a statewide investigative and explanatory projects team, a Capitol bureau, a regional collaboration in northeast Wisconsin called the NEW News Lab, and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS).
NNS was founded in 2011 as a mission-driven newsroom that reports on and celebrates Milwaukee’s central city neighborhoods. Through its reporting, website, e-newsletters and News414 texting service, NNS covers ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connects readers with resources and serves as a watchdog for their neighbors. Together, Wisconsin Watch’s state team and NNS reporters collaborate to produce solutions-oriented investigative and explanatory stories highlighting issues affecting communities in Milwaukee.
Reading Time: 5minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
We spoke to more than 25 people who reported problems connecting via phone calls in Wisconsin prisons. The problems began intermittently after prisons began distributing free electronic tablets in March 2024, and they have worsened more recently.
Tablets were supposed to improve communication and give prisoners more flexibility to call loved ones, but the private contractor who runs the prison’s communication system has failed to keep up with increased call volume.
Wisconsin prisoners have struggled to connect with loved ones for weeks and even months as a state contractor fails to keep up with increasing demand for its call and messaging services.
The Department of Corrections last year began working with Texas-based ICSolutions, the prison system’s phone provider, to make electronic tablets free for every state prisoner. The state allocated $2.5 million to cover some of the cost. The program aims to boost quality of life behind bars by making it easier for incarcerated people to connect with their loved ones and access resources.
Intermittent problems began after some prisons began distributing the tablets in March 2024. The issues worsened this spring, prisoners and their family members say, spreading across institutions that imprison more than 23,000.
WPR and Wisconsin Watch heard from more than 25 people experiencing connection difficulties at multiple prisons. Incarcerated people described dialing a number multiple times before getting through and waiting more than an hour for calls to connect. Family members described hearing their phones ring but receiving no option to connect with the caller; some calls have dropped mid-conversation.
Family members are airing frustrations in a nearly 300-member Facebook forum launched specifically to discuss the phone problems.
Brenda McIntyre, incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, traditionally calls her grandchildren every weekend. But the overwhelmed system blocked a recent check-in.
“‘Grandma, why didn’t you call me? You said you’re going to call me,’” McIntyre recalled one grandchild asking when they finally connected.
Phone services somewhat improved late last week, McIntyre said. But she worries about missing updates about her sister’s cancer treatment.
“It’s been a living hell,” she said.
(Photo: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch, Audio: Addie Costello / WPR and Wisconsin Watch)
Neither ICSolutions nor its parent company responded to requests for comment. But in an undated statement on its website, the company promised improvements in the “coming weeks,” with “significant optimization coming this summer.” The statement recommended shifting calls to “off-peak hours” — before 5 p.m. or after 9 p.m. But family members say they are not always available at such hours.
Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke squarely blamed ICSolutions, saying state-run infrastructure and Wi-Fi access played no role in the issue.
“To be very clear, the quality of service that ICSolutions is providing is not acceptable to the department. If reliability and customer service do not improve, the department will be forced to reevaluate our contract,” Hardtke wrote in an email.
The statement from ICSolutions blamed “unexpected challenges” from increased demand for calls. But Hardtke said the company previously assured the department it could handle higher call volume during the rollout.
Prisoners in nine of Wisconsin’s 36 adult institutions — including all three women’s facilities — still lack tablets. The glitches affect them, too, because ICSolutions services the entire phone system, not just tablets.
The corrections department is pausing tablet distribution while trying to fix the reliability problems, Hardtke said.
Tablets mean more calls
Emily Curtis said she was cautiously excited when her incarcerated fiance gained access to a tablet at Stanley Correctional Institution.
Emily Curtis, director of advocacy and programming for the prisoner advocacy group Ladies of SCI, is shown with her fiance Martell and teenage son Brian. (Courtesy of Emily Curtis)
He previously could call only from the prison’s landlines and during limited hours. The tablet enabled calls most anytime, even during lockdowns. For about two months, the two talked daily — right before Curtis fell asleep and right after she woke up.
“It was great,” Curtis said. “Until everything kind of hit the fan.”
Wisconsin is not the only state prison system that has issued tablets.
Unlike some states, however, Wisconsin allows people to make calls from their cells and doesn’t limit the number of calls they can make, Hartdke said via email. That policy, which the department communicated to ICSolutions during contract negotiations, naturally increased call volume, she added.
Calls from Green Bay Correctional Institution, for instance, increased by nearly 200% after the tablet rollout, Hardtke wrote.
Curtis now hears from her fiance just once daily, usually very early in the morning. Their 14-year-old son has gone weeks without talking to his dad, Curtis said, because the phone lines are too jammed once he’s home from school.
Prison phone calls: costly for families, profitable for providers
ICSolutions and the prison system make millions each year from phone calls. The company charges six cents a minute and shares revenue with the state, adding nearly $4 million to its general fund in recent years.
Curtis said she spends roughly $250 a month on calls.
Tablets present new revenue opportunities for prison contractors. An ICSolutions affiliate sold them to incarcerated Wisconsinites before the state made them free. And even with free tablets, prisoners pay for calls, messaging and other applications.
The high cost of phone calls has long burdened the incarcerated and their families. The Federal Communications Commission last year responded by capping fees. Apps for TV and music aren’t subject to the same regulations. That makes tablets a safer investment for prison telecommunication companies, said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, which focuses on solutions to mass incarceration.
Incarcerated people often greet the rollout of tablets with excitement, Bertram said. But the attempt to improve virtual communication comes as Wisconsin, like other states, has restricted other communication — like physical mail.
In December 2021, the corrections department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The controversial effort aims to reduce the flow of drugs into prisons.
The change delays access to mail and boosts reliance on tablets. As a result, technology glitches have bigger consequences, Betram said.
‘We’re helpless’: Blocked calls mean lonely holidays
Charles Gill is incarcerated at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. His fiance lives in New York, and his adult son lives in New Jersey, too far to visit in person. Gill relies largely on his tablet for communication. But online texts have been delayed by two to three days, Gill said.
“We’re helpless,” Gill said.“To be a father, not knowing what’s going on with your child, to be in a relationship with someone and not knowing what’s going on with them. God forbid something happens and somebody goes to the hospital, somebody gets hurt. We don’t know about it, and we can’t reach out to nobody and talk about it.”
Gill felt particularly helpless on Easter weekend, the anniversary of his brother’s death. He couldn’t reach any family members.
“The phones were just destroyed on (Easter) weekend, ” he said. “You could really feel the tension in the air because people weren’t able to call their families.”
He worries about a repeat around Mother’s Day.
“Having that ability to speak to someone who still sees you as a human being and not a number is vital,” said Marianne Oleson, the operations director for Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing of Wisconsin.
Shawnda Schultz, left, is shown with her mother Marcella Trimble, who has been incarcerated for about nine years. Schultz said glitches in the state prison phone system have brought her to tears. (Courtesy of Shawnda Schultz)
That’s especially the case for mothers who are incarcerated. The majority of women in prisons nationally have children under the age of 18, according to a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report. Phone calls offer incarcerated women their only chance to act as parent, wife or daughter — ensuring their loved ones are safe, Oleson said.
The faulty phone system leaves incarcerated people with tough choices.
“We even have to choose to try the phone over going to meals,” Christa Williams, who is incarcerated at Ellsworth prison, wrote in an email.
Shawnda Schultz said phone failures have left her incarcerated mother in tears during recent calls.
“It bothers me because their phone calls are the one thing that (prisoners) have to keep them going in there, and it keeps us going too, because that’s our mother,” Schultz said.
Schultz’s sister recently delivered her first baby. If the phones don’t improve, she worries her mother will miss hearing updates, like when her grandchild says his first word.
“I found myself actually in tears because I’m just like, ‘what if something happens to my mom?’” Schultz said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin Watch seeks a resourceful and ambitious philanthropy officer to support our fund development work in southeastern Wisconsin and the greater Milwaukee area.
The philanthropy officer will be a key member of the philanthropy team, responsible for cultivating and expanding our charitable support. This role will focus on donor cultivation and growing a regionally based portfolio. The right candidate will be effective in building and maintaining relationships with individual donors, foundations and corporate foundations and collaborating with the philanthropy team on fundraising campaigns and stewardship events. The philanthropy officer will play a critical role in ensuring our organization can continue producing excellent nonpartisan, solutions-oriented journalism that strengthens the communities we serve.
Duties and responsibilities
Relationship and portfolio development:
Build and manage a regionally based portfolio of donors.
Prospect identification: Research and identify potential major donors who have a passion for our work and have the capacity to make significant gifts.
Relationship building: Collaborate with the director of philanthropy, CEO and Milwaukee NNS executive director to craft funder outreach, write personalized communication and conduct in-person meetings. Steward donors and maintain relationships.
Gift solicitation: Approach qualified donors to solicit gifts, effectively articulating the impact of our work and how it overlaps with the donor’s passions.
Collaborate internally with business and editorial staff to craft meaningful donor interactions and proposals.
Act as an ambassador to southeastern Wisc0nsin, attending relevant community events and networking opportunities.
Meet established fundraising goals to support organizational needs.
Systems:
Maintain best practice standards when it comes to record keeping, including logging contact reports to the donor database/CRM.
Collaborate with the associate director of philanthropy to analyze weekly gift reports, customize acknowledgement copy and route letters for approvals and signatures.
Draft acknowledgment letter templates and refresh/update content on a biannual basis.
Partner with the business team on database policies and best practices in record keeping.
Other duties:
Track key initiatives, monitor deadlines and coordinate with teams to ensure the timely execution of goals.
Perform other major donor/development activities as may be required (i.e. tours, public speaking or spokesperson activities).
Collaborate with the philanthropy team on stewardship event execution.
Serve as a community ambassador/spokesperson as needed.
Support proposal development and grant writing as needed.
Qualifications
Excels at relationship building and connecting impact-driven missions with individual passions.
Has experience with high-touch fundraising and gift solicitation.
Displays a desire to work with culturally diverse populations using a compassionate, collaborative and respectful approach.
Responsive, tactful and professional, possessing a relationship-centric mindset.
Thrives in high-pressure environments and remains adaptable amid changing priorities.
Demonstrates a proactive, creative, problem-solving mindset with a focus on outcomes. Demonstrates a commitment to looking for solutions and opportunities for collaboration.
Is highly organized, detail-oriented and capable of juggling multiple priorities.
Is familiar and comfortable with various technologies, from Google Workspace (Sheets, Docs, etc.) and CRMs to social platforms, ensuring smooth execution of tasks and communication across different tools.
Preferred qualifications:
5+ years’ experience in nonprofit fundraising, stewardship, donor relations, project management and/or a related area.
Proficient in Google Suite, MS Office, Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Passion for journalism, local news, media, and/or civic engagement.
Location: The philanthropy officer will be located in southeastern Wisconsin, preferably the greater Milwaukee area.
Status, salary and benefits:
Full time, hybrid position.
Salary: $60,000 – $80,000. Final salary offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise and location.
5 weeks of vacation, retirement fund contribution, paid sick days, paid family and caregiver leave, subsidized medical and dental premiums, vision coverage, and more.
Deadline: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. For best consideration, apply by May 30, 2025.
To apply: Please submit your resume in this application form and answer each of these three questions in 50 words or less.
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. We are an equal opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.
About Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Founded in 2009, Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing nonpartisan journalism that makes the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. We believe that access to local representative news is critical to a healthy democracy and to finding solutions to the most pressing problems of everyday life. Under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella, we have three independent news divisions, a statewide investigative newsroom, a regional collaboration in northeast Wisconsin called the NEW News Lab, and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS). All three divisions maintain their unique reporting areas and together are positioned to grow and serve our communities with greater efficiency and impact.
NNS was founded in 2011 as a mission-driven newsroom that reports on and celebrates Milwaukee’s central city neighborhoods, specifically the city’s Black and Latinx communities. Through NNS’ reporting, website, e-newsletters and News414 texting service, we cover the ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connect readers with resources and serve as a watchdog for our audience. NNS, formerly a part of Marquette University, and Wisconsin Watch have a long history of collaboration. In 2024, NNS moved its administrative home and merged under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella. Together, Wisconsin Watch’s statewide team and NNS’ reporters collaborate to produce statewide investigative stories while highlighting issues impacting communities in Milwaukee.
A Democratic bill seeks to bring down house prices in Wisconsin by blocking hedge funds from buying single-family homes in the state.
“We know that there’s an access and affordability crisis in housing right now,” lead bill sponsor Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, told Wisconsin Watch in an interview, calling it a nationwide problem. “And as a state legislator, I want to see if I can do something about that crisis locally.”
Hedge funds pool money, generally from wealthy investors, and invest it in a range of markets seeking to make a profit, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That sizable pool of cash “really gives them almost unlimited power to buy what they would like at prices that are often out of reach for a typical purchaser,” Keyeski said.
Hedge funds’ ability to outbid other prospective home buyers, especially individuals, increases housing costs and prices out middle class families, Keyeski argued.
While the Democratic lawmaker acknowledged the practice of investor-backed groups gobbling up houses isn’t widespread in Wisconsin, she noted that groups with deep pockets bought more than a thousand houses in the Milwaukee area beginning around 2018.
Three companies, VineBrook Homes, SFR3 and Highgrove Holdings, owned about 1,500 homes as of the end of 2022, according to a 2023 analysis from John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.
VineBrook and SFR3 together owned almost 1,200 homes, deploying a “buy-to-rent” business model, Johnson said. However, in some instances, they were willing to flip their recently purchased homes. SFR3 paid about $2 million for 23 properties, Johnson found, later selling them for a total of $4.2 million.
Vinebrook now owns 703 properties, and SFR3 is down to 188, Johnson told Wisconsin Watch in an email.
There was an increase in investor-backed groups buying single-family homes in 2024, though still at a lower rate than before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from RedFin, a real estate brokerage and mortgage company. In the fourth quarter of 2024, for example, investor-backed groups bought 17% of the American homes sold in those three months.
The share of homes owned by large investment groups in the Milwaukee area was 14.9% in the last three months of last year, RedFin found, lower than the national average.
The increase in investor purchases was focused on single-family homes, RedFin found, as interest from deep-pocketed groups waned for townhouses, condos and multifamily properties.
Keyeski sees her bill as “a preemptive move” to protect other Wisconsin communities, she said.
The legislation also fits into a larger package of bills from Democratic lawmakers seeking to bring down costs for Wisconsin residents, Keyeski said.
The bill currently has 42 cosponsors — 41 Democrats and one Republican. But she said she has heard a positive response from both Democratic and Republican voters about the bill and is hopeful the legislation could get a hearing this session.
Legislative Republicans have so far not introduced any bills seeking to curb housing costs, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of legislative proposals. Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, who chairs the Senate Committee on Insurance, Housing, Rural Issues and Forestry, did not respond to questions about whether Keyeski’s legislation would get a hearing this session.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Joint Finance Committee has wrapped up its budget listening sessions around the state, and lawmakers will soon begin writing their own two-year budget for 2025-27, likely after throwing out Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ budget recommendations.
The public hearings — held in Hayward, West Allis, Wausau and Kaukauna — were attended by hundreds of residents who voiced their budget concerns and requests to the Republican-controlled committee.
Here are three of the budget-related issues that attendees raised most frequently.
Education funding
Education was the top concern at all four hearings, with many attendees voicing support for more higher education and K-12 school funding. Many residents also called for increased special education funding.
The Legislature reimbursed a third of Wisconsin school districts’ special education costs in the 2023-25 state budget. Private voucher schools receive up to 90% reimbursement of special education costs through a special program. Evers has proposed a more than $1 billion increase in special education reimbursements to meet a 60% coverage level in this year’s budget.
Multiple attendees said their public school districts have transferred thousands of dollars from their general funds to their special education funds to cover costs that have not been reimbursed. Others urged lawmakers to raise the special education reimbursement level to either 60% or 90%.
“Special education is mandated, it is regulated, and more than that it is important to our students and our staff,” Josh Viegut, assistant superintendent of the Wausau School District, told lawmakers in Wausau. “This year, our district will transfer over $10 million from our general education fund to our special education fund. By increasing the reimbursement rate to 60%, you would have a great impact on all students.”
A record number of public school referendums were held statewide last year, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, largely because inflation has exceeded the Legislature’s increases in per pupil revenue limits. Of the 94 questions on the ballot in February and April alone — the most in an odd-numbered election year since 2007 — 62 were operating referendums that asked taxpayers to raise their own property taxes to pay for daily school operations like utilities, routine maintenance and staff salaries.
“The state’s chronic underfunding of our public schools led Wauwatosa to recently pass its first operating referendum — the only way to prevent devastating cuts to our beloved teaching staff and programming,” a parent told the committee in West Allis. “Other school districts haven’t been so lucky.”
Last month, the state Supreme Court upheld Evers’ line item veto used in the 2023-25 state budget, in which he set in state law an annual increase of $325 in public school spending per student for the next 400 years. Republicans have criticized the decision and may seek ways to sidestep the governor’s veto power in this year’s budget.
As the federal government cuts funding to higher education, Republican lawmakers have pushed back on Evers’ $856 million budget request for the UW system. Wisconsin currently ranks 43rd out of 50 in state spending on public universities.
“This underfunding puts us at a disadvantage in the war for talent to retain and attract new students, faculty and future innovators,” Rocco Paulson, a student at UW-Superior, told the committee in Hayward. “This funding will directly support affordability — ensuring tuition remains stable … and making sure the possibility of raising our tuition doesn’t fall upon me and my fellow students.”
Health care
Other attendees raised concerns about federal threats to Medicaid, telling lawmakers how even a small cut to funding could greatly affect their respite care centers, disability care centers, in-home care programs and more.
“If anything would happen to any part of the Medicaid program, we would probably end up closing our doors, and we have 55 participants that come there every single day,” an attendee from the Balsam Lake Endeavors Adult Development Center told the committee in Hayward.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives last month passed a revised budget resolution that would require the committee that oversees Medicaid to cut spending by $880 million over the next 10 years. Medicaid programs like BadgerCare, Family Care and IRIS provide coverage to 20% of Wisconsin residents, 38% of the state’s children and 60% of nursing home patients, according to the Department of Health Services.
An attendee from Washburn providing in-home care for a disabled individual expressed concerns that the Family Care program will face federal cuts.
“Any reduction of support for this program will make it impossible for me to continue providing care for this person … the person will once again become homeless and without care,” he told the committee. “Is the state prepared to house and care for these individuals?”
Evers’ budget request would accept federal Medicaid expansion and would add 897,000 low-income people to the state’s program. Wisconsin is one of 10 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has defended that decision as insulating the state from the federal government scaling back Medicaid reimbursements.
Child care
Residents also used the public hearings to express concerns regarding child care access in Wisconsin, with many supporting Evers’ $480 million funding request for Child Care Counts — a pandemic-era program that helps providers cover costs.
Affordable and accessible child care has been a persistent issue across the state. Wisconsin is losing hundreds of child care providers every year, according to the Department of Children and Families.
In 2023, the JFC voted to end state funding for Child Care Counts. With the program set to run out of funding at the end of June, 25% of child care providers may close without continued Child Care Counts funding, according to a recent DCF survey. Many others say they would have to raise their tuition rates.
Chris Phernetton told the committee in Hayward that she owns one of only two licensed child care centers in Burnett County. She said her center’s small margin of profit last year was only possible because of the Child Care Counts program.
“We raised our tuition rates in January to try to make up for the 50% cut to Child Care Counts, but as we feared, enrollment quickly dropped. Families in Burnett County can’t afford the new rates,” she said. “When families can’t find care, they can’t work.”
A mother of two young kids told the committee the cost of child care is overwhelming. Her children’s care center often closes early due to lack of staff “because it’s hard to find teachers to work for less than a livable wage,” she said.
“If we lose state support for child care, I don’t know what families like mine will do,” she said. “Like so many others, we face tuition hikes when we can barely afford unexpected early pickups … all because there simply aren’t enough teachers to stay open.”
Reading Time: 6minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Wisconsin has seen a handful of new data center proposals, including projects in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin Rapids, Port Washington and Kenosha. Microsoft broke ground in 2023 on a 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus in Mount Pleasant at the former Foxconn site — a project that has twice paused.
Data centers use lots of electricity — accounting for nearly 4.5% of U.S. electricity consumption in 2023.
Wisconsin is among states that have offered tax breaks and power rate discounts to tech companies building data centers.
Tech companies promise billion-dollar investments, high-tech jobs and property tax revenue — arguing communities would be passed over if not for the incentives.
A build-out of new data centers — the often-gargantuan warehouses of power-gobbling microchips that power cloud computing, artificial intelligence and social media — is capturing the attention of utilities and states, which, anticipating potential profits, are compelled to satisfy the energy needs of tech companies.
Giants like Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are contracting nationally with utilities, which face a resulting boom in power demand. In 2023, data centers accounted for nearly 4.5% of U.S. electricity consumption, a figure that is expected to balloon up to 12% by 2028.
Wisconsin has seen a handful of new data center proposals, including projects in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin Rapids, Port Washington and Kenosha. Microsoft broke ground in 2023 on a 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus in Mount Pleasant at the former Foxconn site, although work on the data center has since paused twice.
Utilities generally operate under state-granted monopolies that enable the companies to cover service costs and earn a return on their infrastructure investments. The public is a “captive ratepayer,” meaning they lack other options.
Normally, this ensures utilities grow in line with societal energy demands, but when a few choice customers add significant load to the grid, priorities can change.
To attract investment, states compete to woo Big Tech with competitive incentives, including discounted power rates. More than 30 states, including Wisconsin, exempt data centers from the sales tax on information technology equipment.
But the courtship can become a race to the bottom.
Companies often promise billion-dollar investments, high-tech jobs and property tax revenue,marketed as zero-cost to states — arguing communities would be passed over if not for the incentives.
Less discussed, however, are the impacts of the new electric loads and the ways utilities can spread energy costs to the public.
At worst, construction of new power facilities could prove unneeded if a data center project fails to come to fruition or its power needs change, potentially leaving the public to foot the bill.
Those are some of the issues discussed in a recent white paper produced by Harvard University researchers, who express skepticism that consumers won’t absorb data center energy costs.
Ari Peskoe, who directs Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative, and legal fellow Eliza Martin reviewed almost 50 utility proceedings, documenting how utilities can subsidize the electricity demands of trillion-dollar corporations and simultaneously capture a profit by passing on costs to ratepayers.
Wisconsin Watch environmental reporter Bennet Goldstein recently spoke to Peskoe. Their interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where is the United States headed with respect to electricity use?
Our electricity use had been basically flat for the past 15 years, and now suddenly that’s projected to change pretty dramatically and pretty quickly. And it’s data center growth that’s really leading that charge.
These data centers are just massive, massive energy users. A single facility can use as much energy as a large city. There’s a facility in Louisiana that’s being built now that may be as much as two gigawatts. The city of New Orleans is one gigawatt. The rate-setting process just isn’t designed for these massive new facilities.
Can you describe the ways in which data center companies receive subsidies to site a project?
The simplest way that this can happen is just that the utility builds a piece of infrastructure — a new power line, a new power plant — and it’s designed primarily to meet the needs of one of these large data centers, and the utility would spread the costs across to all consumers.
But we think that doesn’t really make sense when, in some cases, there are billions of dollars of infrastructure being built for a single wealthy consumer. Utilities benefit from it a lot.
Your paper noted that utility contracts with data centers are treated as confidential agreements, not subject to public evaluation. Why does this matter and what other trends did you notice in the proceedings you reviewed?
A rate case is how the utility sets rates for everyone, and that’s a very public process.
Most of the proceedings we looked at were about these, sort of, “side deals” between a data center and a utility. Very few parties participate in these proceedings, so that’s a problem for regulators because regulators have to make decisions based on the evidence that’s before them. Here, there’s often only one party. It’s the utility, and it makes it very hard for regulators to rule against the utility when there’s not any competing evidence.
In some states, regulators are supposed to evaluate, for example, whether there are economic development benefits of the contract that make it in the public interest even if it is shifting some costs to other ratepayers. In some states, regulators do have to find that their contract does not burden other ratepayers.
These sorts of issues about cost allocation are generally heavily disputed when there are other parties participating, so we don’t put a lot of stock in the claims that these secret contracts are not burdening other ratepayers.
A Microsoft data center is built on land once slated for development by Foxconn in Mount Pleasant, Wis. Work on the 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus, seen here on May 8, 2024, has paused twice since workers broke ground in 2023. (Angela Major / WPR)
Are new data centers and accompanying infrastructure to power them good investments for the public?
When you hear one of these facilities being announced, sometimes they are being announced with great fanfare. Elected officials like to announce big projects. Some of these facilities get big press releases and press conferences, and the governor is up there smiling about it.
But, there ought to be some mechanism to ensure that the potentially very expensive infrastructure being built for these facilities is not being paid for by the public, but by the data center. We can’t make a specific claim about a confidential deal, but we’re skeptical that these deals are not shifting costs.
They’re a bad deal for ratepayers, looking at electricity costs — not considering the wider societal effects of these facilities and the construction jobs.
What are alternatives that would spare customers these costs?
These confidential contracts: Let’s get rid of them. Let’s do a more public, transparent process that encourages and allows for more participation. Let’s include these data centers in rate cases and figure out what terms and conditions make sense for them.
Allow the data centers to contract for infrastructure with developers who are not the utility. You have companies that are not utilities competing in markets to build power plants to sell that power. If you can have a contract just between a data center and a power plant developer, the utility is not part of it, and therefore, there’s no danger that those costs might somehow trickle through to other consumers’ bills.
How can ratepayers advocate for themselves?
Public utility commissions do have some public processes, particularly for the construction of new projects. Even if that contract is secret, if they’re going to build a new power plant, there’s typically a public process around that. Those processes can often attract attention and have public hearings and opportunities for the public to weigh in.
How about creating special rates for very large customers like a recent southeast Wisconsin proposal from We Energies for “very large customers”?
It makes a lot of sense to establish separate terms and conditions for utility service for these very, very large energy consumers. It’s billions of dollars of costs, and it makes sense to put some contractual system or a tariff system in place that makes sure those entities are responsible for those costs.
There’s a risk that the utility starts to build this infrastructure and potentially invest hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars. The market changes — as maybe we’re seeing right now — and suddenly that data center developer doesn’t want to complete their facility for any number of reasons. Now who’s going to be left bearing the billion-dollar cost that the utility just spent? You want to make sure it’s on the data center.
What does the construction of more data centers mean for curbing greenhouse gas emissions?
A lot of the new growth is going to be met by natural gas power plants. We’re seeing that in Louisiana, for example. A lot of states have strong clean energy goals. About 20 or so states have committed to 100% clean power by some future date. (Wisconsin’s goal: that all electricity consumed within the state be 100% carbon-free by 2050.) Those goals are premised on how much energy is going to be sold in that state. If there’s more energy sold, that means we have to build more clean energy to meet those goals. It’s already a challenge to meet the goals as it is.
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Wisconsin is no exception to national trends when it comes to courting Big Tech.
The state has seen a handful of new data center proposals, including projects in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin Rapids, Port Washington and Kenosha. Microsoft broke ground in 2023 on a 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus in Mount Pleasant at the former Foxconn site, although work on the data center has since paused twice.
Wisconsin lawmakers on the state’s finance committee included a sales tax exemption in the 2023-25 state budget based on a standalone bill that received bipartisan support.
The tax exemption, subject to approval by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., includes land, site improvements, IT and cooling equipment and electricity. The agency has approved three data centers to date.
Other states have enacted the model legislation at the urging of utilities and industry groups like NetChoice and the Data Center Coalition. NetChoice’s president noted at a legislative hearing that Wisconsin has long provided exemptions on agricultural and manufacturing equipment and asked lawmakers why they couldn’t do the same for America’s capital investment leaders.
Madison-headquartered Alliant Energy helped pay for a study that determined Wisconsin was at a competitive disadvantage to neighboring states.
The paper estimated that a hyperscale data center developed in the Milwaukee-Waukesha metro region could create 300 jobs, generate $3 million in annual state and local tax revenue and provide more than $87 million in annual economic output.
In a June 2023 hearing, the sales tax exemption bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, R-River Falls, said attracting data centers would actually have a “positive effect” on ratepayers’ electric bills from the “consumption and contribution of companies that will build these.”
To qualify for the exemption, a developer must invest at least $50 million to $150 million within five years, depending on the county population.
The state estimated that a typical data center would decrease tax collections by $8.5 million during the initial construction phase, followed by an annual reduction of $735,000. Additionally, if equipment is replaced on a five-year schedule, the sales tax would decrease by an additional $1.6 million on an annualized basis.
Microsoft’s data center campus has inherited additional perks initially designated for Foxconn: discounted electricity rates for Microsoft buildings located within a designated information technology zone. In future phases of Microsoft’s project, the company may purchase Lake Michigan water via the city of Racine, a rare arrangement in light of the Great Lakes Compact, which regulates the use and withdrawal of lake water.
We Energies intends to construct more than $2 billion in natural gas infrastructure, including two new plants and a pipeline, to meet the power demands of Microsoft’s data center, which is its largest anticipated electric load. This prompted concerns that ratepayers will be saddled with the new, fossil-fuel plants if the data center project is scaled back or canceled.
The utility has objected to such concerns, noting that the infrastructure is necessary to increase “reliability, resiliency, and dispatchability” of natural gas for its current customers.
Additionally, it has proposed a new rate structure, known as a tariff, for “very large customers,” which the company developed to meet the Microsoft and Port Washington data centers’ electric needs.
The rate would assign costs that result from new or expanded power plants and transmission lines along with electricity proportional to data center use, thereby protecting We Energies’ “customers and shareholders from harm.”
Wisconsin’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, is reviewing the proposal. We Energies has requested approval by the year’s end.
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A new analysis of the formula the state used to distribute new aid to municipalities last session finds a statistically significant benefit to Republican communities.
Municipalities of fewer than 5,000 people received on average a 202% increase in shared revenue, compared with 25% for cities between 50,000 and 110,000. The state’s smallest communities have increasingly voted Republican in statewide elections while the state’s mid-sized cities have more consistently supported Democrats.
As Republicans drafted the legislation that would be signed into law as Act 12 by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, they adjusted the formula based on population in ways that benefited smaller communities.
Though Act 12 was hailed as a historic turning point, many municipalities continue to ask voters for permission to exceed the state’s strict limits on raising property taxes.
It was a big win for Wisconsin’s small towns.
Soon after the Legislature overhauled local government funding in 2023, reports surfaced of huge increases in state aid for tiny places.
Shared revenue, the state’s primary local aid program, jumped thousands of percentage points for towns and villages with less than 100 residents, while percentage increases were far more modest for the largest cities.
On Wisconsin’s political map, the biggest cities are also the bluest, and those Democratic strongholds are frequently the targets of scorn from the Legislature’s Republican majority. By contrast, small towns are growing ever more red, particularly in rural areas.
An analysis for Wisconsin Watch finds a statistically significant correlation between how a community votes and how much its shared revenue increased under the legislation known as Act 12.
An excerpt from Wisconsin 2023 Act 12, which increased state aid for local municipalities. (Via Wisconsin.gov)
On average, each percentage point of GOP vote share corresponds to a 2.1% increase in shared revenue, according to calculations by Phil Rocco, associate professor of political science at Marquette University.
To swing aid payments toward those small red towns, Republicans broke with the first century of shared revenue history and adopted a complex formula that divides Wisconsin communities into five tiers by their 2022 populations. Rocco found that formula resulted in average increases of 202% for communities of less than 5,000 people, but just 25% for cities with 50,000 to 110,000 residents and 35% for cities larger than 110,000.
Dale Knapp, research director for the Wisconsin Counties Association, drafted the formula using parameters set by lawmakers. Knapp said the initial goal was to give “a bigger bump” to communities that were getting less aid per capita under the old shared revenue formula, but as Republicans saw how specific communities would be affected by different versions of the new formula, they asked for more tweaks based on population size.
Only once before had the state used such an approach. In 2012, when the GOP controlled all of state government, Gov. Scott Walker’s budget also split communities into population tiers, slashing shared revenue more deeply for most big cities than for the smallest towns.
In a state where Republicans notoriously gerrymandered legislative districts by tweaking the lines to lock in their majority, was shared revenue gerrymandered too?
Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, responded with a terse “no” when asked if she and her Act 12 co-author, Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, had any partisan motive. They said they were correcting an imbalance that had shortchanged small communities.
Wisconsin state Sen. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, speaks during a Republican press conference on June 8, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol to announce a tentative agreement between legislative Republicans and Gov. Tony Evers on a shared revenue bill. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
“The new formula is trying to close these gaps between the communities who had done really well under the old formula and those who did poorly,” Kurtz testified at a committee hearing on the legislation. “The old shared revenue formula directed money at larger municipalities, so the new formula aims more funding at smaller municipalities to try to distribute aid a little better.”
But Democratic lawmakers have no doubt the formula was politically biased, said Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison.
“Clearly the way it was developed advantages Republican areas of the state and disadvantages larger urban areas like Milwaukee and Madison,” Roys said. “This Legislature has a history of punishing the biggest cities in the state.”
Democrats introduced several amendments that would have changed the formula to distribute shared revenue increases more evenly among communities of different sizes. All were defeated. That part of the debate received little public attention, overshadowed by clashes over other Act 12 provisions that granted new sales tax power to Milwaukee and Milwaukee County while sharply limiting how they and other local governments could spend taxpayer dollars.
Yet the debate over state aid to local governments didn’t end with Act 12’s passage. Although the legislation was hailed as a historic turning point in public funding, many municipalities are still struggling with tight budgets more than a year later. Dozens appealed to voters to approve property tax increases over the past year.
Instead of revisiting the shared revenue formula or the property tax levy limits that force communities to call those referendums, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is recommending a different approach in his 2025-27 state budget: For any county or municipality that freezes or cuts property taxes, Evers proposes a new state aid payment equaling a 3% levy increase.
How we got here
All that is a long way from how shared revenue started in 1911. Right after adopting the nation’s first state income tax, the Legislature decided to distribute most of its proceeds to local governments, based on how much income tax their residents paid.
Starting in 1972, lawmakers switched to the first of a series of formulas that used factors such as population, equalized value and local property tax levies. The goal of those formulas was to ensure that all local governments could afford “minimum levels of public services, regardless of their ability to finance those services through their property tax base,” according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau paper. Because the formulas directed more money to larger cities and to communities with lower property values, the Legislature added an extra boost for municipalities with populations under 5,000, starting in 1994. Similar formulas were used to cut shared revenue in 2004 and 2010, with payments frozen in between.
Back then, the size of a community’s population wasn’t strongly related to its partisan preferences, according to data compiled by John D. Johnson, research fellow at the Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. Democrats like President Barack Obama, Gov. Jim Doyle and Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold regularly carried many smaller communities.
Then-Gov. Scott Walker speaks at the State of the State address in Madison, Wis., at the State Capitol on Jan. 10, 2017. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
But in the “red wave” election of 2010, an overwhelming majority of communities with populations under 50,000 swung Republican to elect Walker as governor. That pattern has held for every gubernatorial election since then, and for most presidential and senatorial elections as well, Johnson’s data show.
Walker’s first budget, for the 2011-13 biennium, again cut shared revenue, but used population tiers that favored the smaller places that had fueled his victory. At the time, he linked the move to his controversial Act 10, which all but eliminated the power of most public employee unions to bargain for wages and benefits. Walker and his aides argued that Act 10 gave larger cities the “tools” to absorb the cuts through such tactics as shifting more health care costs to employees, while smaller communities with fewer workers couldn’t save as much that way.
However, the formula for the 2012 cut still retained some of the old formula’s factors. That allowed Milwaukee to escape with only a 4% trim to its shared revenue. By contrast, Madison’s shared revenue was chopped 25%, and reductions averaged 10% for the next 10 largest cities.
After that, shared revenue was frozen at 2012 levels. Without adjustments for changes in population and property values since 2003, disparities grew, while inflation ate away at the buying power of the stagnant allocations, said Knapp and Jerry Deschane, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.
Walker’s 2011-13 budget also tightened the state’s limits on property taxes, blocking local governing bodies from approving tax hikes in most communities without new construction. That forced local officials to seek voter approval for any increases beyond the state limits.
Caught between limited taxing authority, frozen shared revenue and rising costs, Milwaukee and Milwaukee County found themselves careening toward a “fiscal cliff” that would force deep cuts in services. At the same time, Felzkowski said, town officials in her district were warning her that they and their counterparts across Wisconsin were having trouble paying for emergency medical service for rural residents.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley forged a coalition with other local governments to seek changes to the funding system. Evers responded by proposing a $576 million increase to the $753 million shared revenue program in his 2023-25 budget. Republicans shot down that plan, but started work on the legislation that became Act 12.
In discussions with local government leaders, GOP lawmakers made it clear they didn’t want to change the existing shared revenue formula, Deschane and Knapp said. Felzkowski said other Republican legislators with experience in local government told her the existing formula was “broken,” and they didn’t want to create the kind of “tweaked mess” that resulted from years of incremental changes to the state’s school aid formula.
Instead, Act 12 created a new formula to distribute increases, called “supplemental aid,” in addition to the shared revenue base payments that had been frozen since 2012.
A thumb on the scale?
To analyze the legislation, Rocco developed a database of how much revenue each community would receive, compared with the Evers plan. Separately, Marquette’s Johnson had compiled a database of how every community in Wisconsin has voted in major statewide elections since 2000.
Wisconsin Watch asked the two scholars to merge their databases to determine whether Act 12 was politically neutral in distributing shared revenue increases of $206.9 million to municipalities and $68 million to counties.
Using Johnson’s data for gubernatorial races from 2010 through 2022, Rocco found a consistent and statistically significant bias toward Republican-voting communities in the percentage increases authorized by Act 12. The formula for counties — which didn’t include population tiers — showed no such bias, he said.
The largest proportional boost in municipal shared revenue was 5,748% for Rusk County’s town of Cedar Rapids, which at 36 residents is Wisconsin’s smallest community. The state’s second-smallest community, the town of Popple River in Forest County, scored a 5,070% increase for its 43 inhabitants.
By contrast, the smallest percentage increase, 10%, went to Milwaukee, although the legislation also authorized Wisconsin’s largest city to levy a new 2% sales tax. Shared revenue rose 56% for Madison, with no new sales tax power. Those two cities are the state’s biggest sources of Democratic votes.
Shared revenue increased around 20% for 10 predominantly blue cities with 2022 populations between 50,000 and 110,000, but a 67% boost went to Waukesha, the only red city of that size. Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, said he didn’t think the formula was engineered to favor Waukesha, although he expressed frustration that similarly sized cities like Janesville didn’t get more.
Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, shown during a press conference on Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., says he’s frustrated mid-sized cities like Janesville didn’t get more state aid in Act 12. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Drafting notes show the original version of the legislation would have given even lower increases to most cities between 50,000 and 110,000, before negotiations with the governor’s office and others. However, the increases of 22% for Janesville and 67% for Waukesha remained the same in the original and final versions.
Spreitzer said Assembly Republicans, led by Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, “drew that line” between cities above and below 50,000 in population, directing the smallest increases to the bluest cities. A Vos spokesperson did not respond to emails requesting an interview.
Deschane, Knapp, Felzkowski and Spreitzer said percentage increases could be misleading because many smaller towns and villages were receiving such tiny sums to begin with that a gigantic percentage increase still would result in relatively modest dollar amounts. They said per capita figures and total allocations could be more telling.
However, Rocco’s findings for pro-Republican bias in Act 12 are almost identical when looking at the shared revenue increase per capita instead of the percentage increase.
A separate analysis by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum highlighted striking variations in per capita allocations among communities of different sizes, based on 2023 populations.
Milwaukee saw the smallest percentage increase in shared revenue under Act 12, although the legislation also authorized Wisconsin’s largest city to levy a new 2% sales tax. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Before Act 12, per capita payments averaged $87 both for communities with less than 1,000 residents and for those with more than 20,000, except for Milwaukee, the Policy Forum found. But with the Act 12 increases, the smallest communities shot up to an average of $157, compared with $114 for the largest, again excluding Milwaukee, the Policy Forum calculated.
While Milwaukee’s per capita payment was $416, Madison’s $28 was the state’s third-lowest, compared with $34 for Waukesha, $76 for Janesville and more than $100 for each of Wisconsin’s seven other largest cities, the Policy Forum said. By contrast, the state’s smallest incorporated municipality, the village of Big Falls in Waupaca County, ended up with the largest total per capita aid: $1,040 for each of its 58 residents.
Rocco’s analysis cites research by other scholars who found that federal aid formulas “offer lawmakers a means of concealing bias” by using “ostensibly neutral” factors to “move aid toward communities they represent,” benefiting similar communities as well.
While Felzkowski denied trying to help red areas, she said her goal was to send more money to rural areas that can’t generate much property tax revenue, yet still must provide services to more remote locations than cities do.
“I’m a rural legislator,” Felzkowski said. “My largest community at the time was 9,000 people, and I represented my district.”
Overall, Act 12 boosted total shared revenue dollars for communities under 5,000 by 64%, compared with a 14% increase for cities of more than 50,000. Shared revenue payments to Wisconsin’s 13 largest cities dropped from 53% of the municipal total to 45%, while the slice for communities under 5,000 rose from 21% to 27%. One-third of the state’s population lives in those small communities, compared with 28% in the largest cities.
Rocco also found evidence of bias toward Democratic-voting cities in the per capita increases in shared revenue that Evers proposed in his 2023-25 budget. Unlike Act 12, the same bias wasn’t consistently statistically significant in percentage increases.
The Evers plan didn’t use population tiers. Instead, it revised the original shared revenue formula, with its per capita and equalized valuation factors, and added a boost based on local public safety spending. That would have benefited larger cities with bigger police and fire departments — the same kinds of cities that typically vote Democratic.
“The partisan affiliation of Wisconsinites impacted or benefited is not a factor the governor or our office consider in making policy decisions,” Evers’ spokesperson said in an email. “The governor proposed more funds be distributed to local communities and consistently pushed for a fairer distribution to mid-major communities while continuing to invest in all towns, cities, and counties across the state.”
Unfinished business
Cities large and small applauded the financial lift they received from Act 12. Milwaukee pulled back from its fiscal cliff, keeping its services and workforce intact. Monona was able to cover inflationary cost increases and hand out 3% raises to its employees, said the Madison suburb’s former Mayor Mary O’Connor.
But it didn’t take long before those cities and others were again facing tough choices. Milwaukee officials said the city had to raise property taxes, fees, fines and borrowing for 2025 to avoid service cuts and layoffs while meeting the public safety spending requirements of Act 12. Monona found itself short of what it needed to keep up with inflation and to pay employees enough to keep other cities from luring them away, O’Connor said.
And even though the Act 12 increases were earmarked for public safety and transportation, multiple communities still needed more to pay for emergency medical, fire and police services. Yet their leaders lacked authority to raise property taxes enough to cover those costs.
“Wisconsin has the strictest property tax limits in the country, and that is an ongoing challenge,” Deschane said.
Because property tax increases are tied to new construction, Monona officials estimate the city would need to attract a $20 million project every year to justify levy hikes sufficient to keep up with its costs, O’Connor said. That’s not realistic for a community with less than 9,000 residents and no vacant land, she added. The city along Lake Monona is hemmed in on all sides by Madison.
Snow falls on the Wisconsin State Capitol before the State of the State address Jan. 22, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Monona, Madison and 40 other municipalities decided to ask permission for higher tax increases. Wisconsin voters last year approved 21 municipal tax referendums, including those in Madison and Monona, and rejected 15. That includes two communities that went to a second referendum after losing on their first try. Another nine such questions were on the April ballot, including a second bid for one community that lost on its first attempt in 2024. Voters approved four and rejected five.
“Were it not for (Act 12), the number of municipal and county referenda in 2024 might have been even greater — and it is notable that even with Act 12, these referenda still reached near-record levels,” the Policy Forum observed.
Act 12 provides for shared revenue to grow as state sales tax collections grow, Deschane noted. Evers is seeking some additional sweeteners in his 2025-27 budget, including a 90% increase in a fund that compensates local governments for providing municipal services to tax-exempt state buildings.
But the governor didn’t propose changing the Act 12 formula to address the inequities that larger cities cited. And the Legislature rejected his 2023-25 budget recommendation to ease the levy limits as many local officials are pleading. Instead, his latest budget calls for $339.8 million over two years in new incentive payments for frozen or reduced levies. Still, many local referendums are seeking larger increases than the 3% boosts that communities could receive from that incentive program.
Evers’ office called Act 12 “a bipartisan compromise” that “delivered a generational increase for shared revenue,” but acknowledged “more is needed to continue to support the sustainability and strength of our communities across the state.” The budget plan represents an attempt to address local concerns about levy limits “while holding the line on property taxes,” the statement said.
Felzkowski and Deschane said they don’t know if the Legislature would support revisiting these issues in the next budget. Both see Act 12 as a major accomplishment, but they agree local government finance reform will continue to be an issue in the future.
“It’s not done,” Felzkowski said. “It’s never going to be done.”
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As local governments across Wisconsin continue to wrestle with tight budgets, $300 million in state aid remains unspent.
That money could have provided a major boost to the $275 million in shared revenue increases that the Legislature approved in a historic overhaul of local government funding.
Instead, lawmakers deposited the $300 million in an “innovation fund” to reward cities, villages, towns and counties that cut expenses by consolidating or privatizing services.
It’s an approach championed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who at one point wanted to reserve $1 billion for the incentive payments, legislative records show. Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, says she expects the state’s smallest communities will benefit most from the plan.
But Democrats say the money could have been better used as part of the main shared revenue distribution than in what Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, calls “a set-aside slush fund.”
Act 12, the landmark 2023 local government legislation, increased shared revenue allocations to counties and municipalities throughout the state. Yet even though that cash infusion helped many communities, dozens are still calling referendums to seek voter approval to raise property taxes beyond state levy limits.
Under Act 12, the innovation fund will pay financial incentives to cities, villages, towns, counties and Native American tribes that successfully present proposals to contract with each other to share services or to hand them off to a business or nonprofit organization. Each agreement needs to cut costs by at least 10%, and the state Department of Revenue will give top priority to plans that save money on law enforcement, firefighting and emergency medical response, without jeopardizing service.
The Revenue Department expects applications for those grants will be available in July.
A related $3 million program provides planning grants to communities of less than 5,000 residents to prepare their proposals for the main innovation grants. To date, $1.7 million has been distributed in three rounds to 58 local governments, many of which received more than one of the 98 grants. With nearly half the allocation unspent, the application deadline was extended to April 30, adding two more rounds.
Proposals to combine fire departments and emergency medical services dominate the planning grants awarded so far. Others focus on sharing police, public works and administrative services.
A Vos spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for an interview. But legislative drafting notes indicate he championed the innovation fund — and even wanted it to be more than triple its final size.
“I just talked to the Speaker. He wants to put the whole billion in the first year” of the state’s fiscal biennium, says an email from an aide to Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, who co-authored Act 12, to legislative staff working on the bill.
During the discussions that led to Act 12 — and for years beforehand — Vos repeatedly questioned whether the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County were spending taxpayer money wisely. He urged them to do more to share and privatize services.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson and County Executive David Crowley responded with lengthy lists of how much their governments already had done to cut expenses and share services. The city’s list included establishing a joint recycling center with Waukesha County; reaching mutual aid agreements with suburban fire departments; contracting to take over fire and emergency medical protection for West Milwaukee; and privatizing snow removal at bus stops.
But none of that qualifies for an innovation grant. Act 12 specifies the grants are only for deals taking effect after Nov. 13, 2024, not for any previous moves by local governments.
Felzkowski said she thought the innovation fund would help small rural towns and villages consolidate services. In addition to merging fire departments, she suggested they might find efficiencies by sharing human resources and information technology staff. Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, said larger communities might benefit as well.
But Spreitzer questioned the fund’s emphasis on reducing overall costs instead of improving services. For example, if two or more communities wanted to share a fire chief and use the money saved to hire more firefighters, the state should encourage them to do that, he said.
Gov. Tony Evers’ office did not respond directly when asked what the governor thought of the fund.
While Roys said she is a “big believer in efficiency,” she also believes local governments should consolidate services only if it’s the right thing to do, not because they’re coerced into doing it.
The innovation fund is “kind of holding them over a barrel and forcing them to compete,” Roys said.
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March marked three years since Paula Jolly opened Amanda’s House, a long-term, sober living home for women and their children in Green Bay.
Within four days of the opening of the home she named to memorialize her daughter, its six bedrooms were full. For the last year and a half, 40 or more people have sat on a wait list, Jolly said.
“It’s hard because a lot of times, they don’t have anywhere else to go,” Jolly said. “There’s other female sober living and male sober living (homes) in town but still not enough. They all have wait lists.”
Jolly, who grew up in Niagara, Wisconsin, has called Green Bay home since the 1990s. She has two degrees from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, where she studied medical office management and human services and substance use counseling. Jolly said she “could have gone to be a substance abuse counselor but I decided this was my path because I can help more people this way.”
Founder Paula Jolly stands on the sidewalk outside of Amanda’s House.
The structure Jolly has built within Amanda’s House allowed her to escape what she described as rigid confines of typical counseling, where the state determines the terms of client services. She also made Amanda’s House a place where people could stay as long as they needed. While some may stay for just a couple of weeks, others have stayed for about two years.
Staff at Amanda’s House provides them with life skills training, mental health support, substance use support and connections to community resources.
While working at another sober living home in Green Bay, Jolly saw the need for this type of program firsthand. She watched as women left treatment prematurely to reunite with their kids — only to fall back into their previous harmful cycles.
“We’re trying to break the cycle,” she said.
Laurie Doxtator, a resident at Amanda’s House, closes her eyes during a recovery program meeting, Feb. 16, 2025.
Laurie Doxtator, 60, grew up west of Green Bay on the Oneida Reservation and returned to Wisconsin after living in California, where she said she used practically every drug you could think of and attempted suicide at one point. She said she began drinking alcohol at age 8 and experienced trauma over the decades, including the deaths of two of her children and a miscarriage.
“But then I learned, you have a life and you have better things going for you,” Doxtator said.
After 50 years of drinking, “it ain’t giving me nothing in life. It ain’t gonna bring my children back, it ain’t gonna bring my mom back,” she said.
Doxtator previously spent four months in a 30-day rehabilitation program but knew she needed more structure and more time to learn how to heal.
She has lived at Amanda’s House for more than two years.
After more than a year and a half of sobriety, aided by support from other women in the program and classes that help her heal, Doxtator said she feels safe there. “Me moving out from here into society, it’s scary for me,” Doxtator said. “I have to journey on one day but I have support here and support all over.”
Jolly has told Doxtator: “You can stay here until the wheels fall off.”
Jolly believes such assurance would have helped her daughter.
Angel decorations and a bulletin board memorializing Amanda Marcouiller hang on the wall in Paula Jolly’s Amanda’s House office on Dec. 17, 2024. Someone who attended drug court with Marcouiller made the board.
An angel statue stands outside Amanda’s House, Dec. 17, 2024. The building previously housed the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. The Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin sold the building for $1 to the Mandolin Foundation for Amanda’s House, founder Paula Jolly says.
Amanda Marcouiller was 13 months into recovery when she died in 2020 at age 37. She spent part of her final week at her mother’s house, where Jolly could tell something was wrong.
“You’re acting like you did before, can I help you?” Jolly recalled asking her daughter, referring to Marcouiller’s previous period using substances. Marcouiller replied that she simply had a migraine. “So the last time I saw her was when she was probably under the influence, and I just couldn’t prove it or do anything about it,” Jolly recalled.
Many people in the region and state face similar challenges. United Way of Wisconsin’s 211 helpline in the past year has fielded more requests from Brown County residents for housing and shelter and mental health and addiction resources than any other broad categories.
Before lightly declining in 2023, drug overdose deaths in Wisconsin increased each year since 2016, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Marcouiller helped Jolly launch the Mandolin Foundation, the nonprofit organization operating Amanda’s House, just a month before she died. “I wasn’t gonna continue on,” Jolly said. “But I felt like she would have wanted me to.”
Stained glass art hangs in the window at Amanda’s House, Dec. 17, 2024. An Amanda’s House volunteer made the piece and gifted it to founder Paula Jolly, who recalls “crying like a little baby” upon receiving it.
The next step for Jolly and her small staff at Amanda’s House: fundraise for a renovation to add five bedrooms. Jolly secured federal funds in January that give her a good start on that expansion.
“There’s a lot of states that are way ahead of us in recovery and substance use disorder type recovery, like eons,” Jolly said. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
Need help for yourself or a loved one?
If you are looking for local information on substance use, call 211 or reach the Wisconsin Addiction Recovery Helpline at 833-944-4673. Additional information is available at addictionhelpwi.org or findtreatment.gov.
Want to understand the levers of power in Wisconsin? Our statehouse team writes a weekly preview of what’s on the agenda in state politics and why it matters. It’s called Forward. The analysis below is an example of what you can expect in your inbox every Monday if you subscribe here. (Our newsletters are free, like all of our journalism).
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested on Friday for allegedly helping a man living in the United States without legal status evade federal immigration authorities. Dugan faces two federal felony counts — obstruction and concealing an individual.
Dugan’s case is similar to a 2019 case brought by federal prosecutors against Massachusetts Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph. In that case, Joseph was accused of helping an unauthorized immigrant avoid an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after a court appearance.
In both cases, federal officials alleged the state judges allowed the defendants to exit their courtrooms through alternative routes to avoid federal immigration officials waiting outside the courtrooms in publicly accessible areas.
In a criminal complaint filed last week, federal officials alleged that Dugan confronted immigration enforcement officials outside of her courtroom as they waited for a defendant who was scheduled to appear before her finished his court business. Witnesses reported that Dugan “was visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor,” according to the complaint. Dugan asked to see the warrant the immigration officials were acting upon and then referred them to see the county’s chief judge.
After returning to the courtroom, Dugan then escorted the man and his attorney through a door that leads to a “nonpublic area” of the courthouse, the complaint states.
A similar series of events unfolded in the Massachusetts case. After learning that an ICE agent was waiting to arrest a defendant, Joseph eventually had the man exit the courtroom through a nonpublic exit, federal authorities alleged in a 2019 indictment. A separate court official then helped him exit the building through a back door.
The Massachusetts case was dismissed in 2022. In exchange, Joseph referred herself to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, per The New York Times.
One key difference between the two cases: Joseph was indicted. Dugan was served a criminal complaint. To secure an indictment, prosecutors have to present evidence to a panel of everyday Wisconsin residents and convince them there is probable cause a crime has been committed. For criminal complaints, officials only have to get the sign-off of a federal judge, but then later have to secure an indictment from a grand jury, two former federal prosecutors told Wisconsin Watch.
Now, the federal government has 21 days to seek an indictment, according to Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former federal prosecutor.
“It is unusual that this happened with an arrest and complaint because there really is no indication that the Judge was a flight risk or danger to the community,” she told Wisconsin Watch in an email. “They easily could have gone to the grand jury first and summoned her in IF the grand jury wanted to indict.”
Stephen Kravit, a Milwaukee area attorney and former federal prosecutor, said criminal complaints are rare in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and are usually reserved for “an exigent situation where the defendant’s whereabouts aren’t specifically known or the presence in this area is temporary.”
“None of that applies to a sitting Circuit Court Judge,” he added in an email.
Instead, Kravit said, “this was done in a hurry to make a political point.” He added, “Normally, a person charged even with felonies aged 60+ with no record and no chance of fleeing would be summoned to show up at an appointed time for booking and arraignment. Not here. And that was the point.”
🚘 Budget road trip. The Joint Finance Committee will hold a pair of hearings on Monday and Tuesday this week, stepping away from the Capitol in Madison to hear from Wisconsin residents in Hayward and Wausau about what they want included in the state’s next two-year budget.
It will be the third and fourth time so far that the committee has heard from the public on the spending plan. But as the GOP-controlled committee continues to go through the motions of crafting the budget, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, indicated last week that Republican lawmakers could punt on passing a new budget altogether.
Vos was reacting to a Wisconsin Supreme Courtdecision that left intact a move from Gov. Tony Evers that provided for annual public school funding increases for the next 400 years. “It’s certainly a possibility if we can’t find a way for us to get to a common middle ground,” Vos said of spiking the funding plan last week on the “Jay Weber Show.” “But that’s not the goal.”
“It’s something we’re talking about, but it wouldn’t be the first go-to,” Vos added, noting that it has never happened before. The state has passed a budget every two years since 1931, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
But even if the Legislature were to pass on sending a new spending plan to Evers, things in the state wouldn’t shut down. In Wisconsin, the state continues operating at the existing spending levels until a new budget is approved.
📈 Student homelessness rising. Homelessness among K-12 Wisconsin students reached a new high in 2024, increasing 9% over the previous year despite total enrollment declining slightly.
That’s according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which found that a little more than 20,000 Wisconsin students were homeless in 2023-24. If that figure seems high, it’s because it is. Homelessness among students is counted using a definition that is more expansive than the one employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children and youth as those “who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”
It’s the third straight year that student homelessness increased in Wisconsin, the report found, reaching a new high since the state Department of Public Instruction started keeping data in 2019.
“The number of students affected by homelessness has grown and is likely to continue to remain high in the near future as an insufficient supply of affordable housing remains a lingering problem throughout the state,” the report concludes. “Addressing the needs of this high-risk group of students could benefit not only them but also Wisconsin’s educational outcomes overall.”
Wisconsin Watch’s Hallie Claflin has been documenting the state’s rural homelessness crisis, including in her latest report about police departments transporting homeless people outside their jurisdiction. We’ll be watching the budget process closely to see if lawmakers address this issue or similarly treat it as out of sight, out of mind.
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