Gov. Tony Evers implementing pay raises for state employees that were approved in the state budget without additional approval from the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Employment Relations. Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers is implementing pay raises for state employees without additional approval from the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Employment Relations, citing a recent state Supreme Court ruling.

The state budget, which was passed by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by Evers last month, included about $385 million to provide state and University of Wisconsin employees with a 3% pay increase in the first year of the budget and a 2% increase in the second year.

“I fought hard in our bipartisan budget negotiations to secure much deserved pay increases for our talented state workers,” Evers wrote in a letter to state employees on Monday, adding that he was proud to sign the budget last month and it was important to him that state workers receive the wage adjustment as soon as possible.

Eligible employees will receive the 3% base pay adjustment to their current pay rate with their Sept. 4 paychecks, including a lump sum back pay from June 29. The second year of raises is supposed to be implemented June 28, 2026.

“The work that we do together every day on behalf of the people of Wisconsin is so important — perhaps never more so than it is today,” Evers wrote. “With Washington creating continued uncertainty through devastating cuts to investments and programs that so many across our state rely on, Wisconsinites will continue looking to us to lead, support them and build upon the work we’ve done together over the last six years. There is, as always, much hard work ahead of us. Having committed and exceptional partners like you in this good work will make all the difference.” 

The Joint Committee on Employment Relations has been tasked by state law with holding hearings on changes to state employee compensation and approving those changes. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) and Co-chairs of the Joint Committee of Employment Relations have not responded to requests for comment on Evers’ announcement. 

In a bulletin about the raises, the Department of Administration cited the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in the case Tony Evers v. Howard Marklein, which addressed the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program and the ability of the Joint Finance Committee to hold up already appropriated funds. The Evers administration asserted that the decision clarified its authority to implement the raises without the additional approval of the committee.

The Court ruled 6-1 in July 2024 that the ability for the committee to withhold funds was unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of powers. 

Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority that a statute that authorizes lawmakers to “exercise core powers of the executive branch violates the constitutional separation of powers and cannot be enforced under any circumstances.” 

“While the constitution gives the legislature the power to appropriate funds, the power to spend the funds the legislature has appropriated for a specific project belongs to the executive branch,” Bradley wrote. “While the legislature has the power to create an agency, define its powers, and appropriate funds to fulfill the purpose for which the legislature established it, the power to spend appropriated funds in accordance with the law enacted by the legislature lies solely within the core power of the executive to ensure the laws are faithfully executed. We conclude these statutes interfere with the executive branch’s core function to carry out the law by permitting a legislative committee, rather than an executive branch agency, to make spending decisions for which the legislature has already appropriated funds and defined the parameters by which those funds may be spent.”

The original lawsuit filed by Evers in October 2023 included the Knowles-Nelson program and two other issues: JOCER’s ability to withhold raises approved in the budget and the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules’s block on administrative rules related to conversion therapy. At the time, JOCER was withholding pay raises approved in the budget for University of Wisconsin employees, so the raises could be used as a bargaining chip in Republican lawmakers’ efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the system. The pay raises, approved in the budget in July, were released by JOCER in December 2023. 

The majority decided in February 2024 that it would only take up the Knowles-Nelson issue and leave the other two “held in abeyance pending further order of the court.” Conservative justices were critical of the majority allowing original action in the case and separating the issues from each other at the time.

Justice Annette Zeigler wrote in her dissenting opinion in the case that taking all of the issues at once could have produced consistency. 

“Selecting an issue that only impacts the Republican-controlled legislature and the longstanding Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program should raise eyebrows,” Zeigler wrote. “Determining all issues at the same time could serve to hold my colleagues to application of the same principles in the same way, even when it comes to a Democratic-controlled branch of government. Unfortunately, we will wait to see if that consistency will be forthcoming, as the majority handpicked and now limits only the legislative branch’s longstanding, statutorily authorized practice.”

The Court dismissed the compensation and Joint Committee on Employment Relations issue in October 2024 when it decided to take up the conversion therapy and Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules issue. The Court issued a ruling in July limiting the committee’s ability to block administrative rules.

The University of Wisconsin system will also be implementing the general wage raises. 

“We are grateful to Governor Tony Evers and the Wisconsin State Legislature for their continued support of our workforce and recognition of the vital role our faculty and staff play in education, research, and public service,” UW President Jay Rothman wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. 

The implementation of the raises is not the first time the administration has moved ahead with releasing funds following the ruling. The administration announced funding for 12 Department of Natural Resources projects under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program in October of 2024.

White House budget director Russ Vought speaks with reporters inside the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The White House budget office has until Friday to republish a website detailing the pace at which it plans to spend money approved by Congress, following a federal court ruling. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in an opinion filed Saturday denied the Trump administration’s request to halt a lower court’s ruling that required it to once again post information about spending decisions called apportionments.

The 27-page opinion, written by Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, said that to “grant the Executive a stay pending appeal in this separation-of-powers standoff would effectively cut the Congress’s purse strings.”

“No President would allow a usurper to command our armed forces. And no Congress should be made to wait while the Executive intrudes on its plenary power over appropriations and disclosure thereof,” Henderson wrote. “The public interest is best served by maintaining the separation-of-powers balance struck by the Constitution and especially so if the challenged statutes keep the citizenry abreast regarding duly appropriated expenditures.”

Henderson was nominated to the Circuit Court in 1990 by then-President George H.W. Bush, a few years after then-President Ronald Reagan nominated her as a federal district judge in 1986.

Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy Project, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit, released a statement cheering the Circuit Court’s decision.

“Restoration of this website could not have come at a more important time — over the last two weeks journalists have broken story after story of OMB holding back funds using apportionment footnotes — and once this website goes back online we should all have a chance to learn where else OMB has been holding up money that — under law — should be spent,” Lindgrensavage wrote.

The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom on Monday. The Department of Justice replied “no comment” when asked if they planned to appeal the Circuit Court’s decision.

OMB pulled down website

Congress began requiring OMB to publicly post information about how quickly, or how slowly, the executive branch was spending taxpayer dollars during the Biden administration.

White House budget director Russell Vought opted to pull down that website in March, leading to two separate lawsuits — one from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, and one from Protect Democracy Project.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in late July that OMB must republish the website, writing that Congress “has sweeping authority” to require the president to detail how his administration doles out taxpayer dollars throughout the year.

“As explained in this Memorandum Opinion, there is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money,” he wrote. “Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!”

The Trump administration appealed that ruling and asked for the district court’s decision to be put on hold while the case played out in the circuit court.

The weekend ruling from Henderson denied that request. 

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, speaks at a rally on Friday, March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C, protesting the U.S. Education Department’s mass layoffs and President Donald Trump’s plans to dismantle the agency. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON  — The U.S. Department of Education has emerged as central in the struggle over control of the power of the purse in the nation’s capital.

Democrats in Congress are pushing back hard on the Trump administration’s freeze of $6.8 billion in funds for after-school programs and more at public schools, some of which open their doors a few weeks from now. California alone lost access to $939 million and every state is seeing millions of dollars frozen.

At the same time, the Supreme Court on Monday slammed the door on judicial orders that blocked the dismantling of the 45-year-old agency that Congress created and funds.

The nation’s highest court cleared the way for the administration to proceed, for now, with mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Department of Education that President Donald Trump ordered earlier this year.

In her scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “the majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the president “must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them.”

“That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers,” she wrote. “Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief.”

Just a day after the Supreme Court’s decision, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at a Tuesday press conference that while he hasn’t had a chance to digest the Supreme Court’s order, he also knows that “since its creation, the Department of Education has been wielded by the executive branch.”

“I think that was the intent of Congress, as I understood it back then. We have a large say in that, but we’re going to coordinate that with the White House,” the Louisiana Republican said.

“If we see that the separation of powers is being breached in some way, we’ll act, but I haven’t seen that yet,” he added.

Letters from Democrats on frozen funds

Two letters from Senate and House Democrats demanding the administration release the $6.8 billion in federal funds for various education initiatives also depict the Education Department as a key part of the tussle between the executive branch and Congress.

Just a day ahead of the July 1 date when these funds are typically sent out as educators plan for the coming school year, the department informed states that it would be withholding funding for programs, including before- and after-school programs, migrant education, English-language learning and adult education and literacy, among other initiatives.

Thirty-two senators and 150 House Democrats wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought last week asking to immediately unfreeze those dollars they say are being withheld “illegally.”

“It is unacceptable that the administration is picking and choosing what parts of the appropriations law to follow, and you must immediately implement the entire law as Congress intended and as the oaths you swore require you to do,” the senators wrote in their letter.

The respective top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee overseeing Education Department funding, Sens. Patty Murray of Washington state and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, led the letter, alongside Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

In the lower chamber, House Democrats wrote that “without these funds, schools are facing difficult and unnecessary decisions on programs for students and teachers.”

“No more excuses — follow the law and release the funding meant for our schools, teachers, and families,” they added.

Georgia’s Rep. Lucy McBath led the letter, along with the respective top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, its subcommittee on early childhood, elementary and secondary education and its panel on higher education and workforce development: Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon and Alma Adams of North Carolina.

Democratic attorneys general, governors file suit

Meanwhile, a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday over those withheld funds, again arguing that Congress has the power to direct funding.

The states suing include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, both Democrats, also signed onto the suit filed in a Rhode Island federal court.

“Not only does Congress require that Defendants make funds available for obligation to the States, Congress, in conjunction with (Education Department) regulations, also directs the timing of when those funds should be made available,” the coalition wrote.

An analysis earlier in July by New America, a left-leaning think tank, found that the top five school districts with the greatest total funding risk per pupil include those in at least two red states: Montana’s Cleveland Elementary School District, Kester Elementary School District and Grant Elementary School District, along with Oregon’s Yoncalla School District 32 and Texas’ Boles Independent School District.

The think tank notes that program finance data was not available for Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Wisconsin.