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Legislation is being introduced that would, for the first time in a decade, increase benefits for the most severely injured workers in Wisconsin. 

The bill, if adopted by the Republican-majority Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, would make a number of changes to the state’s worker’s compensation system. 

In particular, it would give raises to people declared permanently and totally disabled such as 77-year-old Jimmy Novy and paraplegic Scott Meyer.

They were featured in a September Wisconsin Watch article. It reported that more than 300 PTD recipients haven’t gotten a raise in their worker’s compensation benefits since 2016.

Novy, who lives in southwest Wisconsin, receives a worker’s comp check of $1,575 per month. Had his benefit kept pace with inflation, which rose 34%, he would have received nearly $21,000 more over the past nine years.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin employers have seen their premiums for worker’s compensation insurance decrease 10 years in a row, saving them $206 million in the past year and over $1 billion since 2017.

Unlike most workers injured on the job, who get temporary worker’s compensation benefits before returning to the job, Wisconsin PTD recipients get worker’s comp checks for life. Twenty-three states provide automatic cost-of-living raises for PTD recipients. But Wisconsin PTD recipients get raises only if worker’s comp legislation proposed every two years, known as an “agreed bill,” becomes law. 

The new agreed bill was proposed by employers and labor leaders on the state Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council. The Assembly Workforce Development, Labor and Integrated Employment Committee will hold a hearing on the bill Thursday. 

The bill would make these changes for PTD recipients:

• Make an estimated 210 more PTD recipients eligible for raises, known as supplementary benefits. Currently, only PTD recipients injured before Jan. 1, 2003, are eligible for raises. The bill would change that date to Jan. 1, 2020.
• Raise the maximum weekly benefit for PTD recipients by 57%, from $669 to $1,051, effective Jan. 1, 2026.
• Give PTD recipients annual raises, with the amounts set shortly before taking effect. The raise amounts would vary based on when the recipients were injured and their earnings at the time. 

One example, provided by the state Department of Workforce Development when the agreed bill was proposed: A PTD recipient injured in 1985 and receiving $535 a week would get a 57% increase to $840. The increase would amount to nearly $16,000 per year.

Spokespersons for the Assembly committee chair, Rep. Paul Melotik, R-Grafton, and for Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development, said the lawmakers had not yet reviewed the bill.

Novy, while in his late 20s, learned he had been exposed to manganese, a key component in batteries, from working in a battery manufacturing plant. He suffered neurological problems that affected his left leg, severely limiting his ability to walk or even maintain his balance.

The bill would raise Novy’s monthly worker’s comp check to about $2,450 from $1,575, an annual increase of about $10,000.

“That’s about time,” Novy said Friday about the bill, eager to hear when he might see a raise in his check.

The money for worker’s compensation checks comes from worker’s compensation insurance companies and from employers who are self-insured for worker’s comp. No tax dollars are involved.

Agreement among employer and labor members on the Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council on the bill was reached after a “fee schedule” for worker’s compensation medical services was included in the 2025-27 state budget adopted in July. 

The schedule limits how much health care providers can charge for worker’s comp care.

Meyer, who lost both legs following a workplace accident in 1993 and now lives in Colorado, said he hopes that for PTD recipients on fixed incomes, the proposed raises make “a meaningful impact on their day-to-day lives.”

Appleton lawyer John Edmondson, who represents worker’s comp recipients, said the raises would be “a very nice step in the right direction, albeit coming far too late for those PTD workers who economically suffered and some who simply died waiting.”

Wisconsin worker’s comp bill would raise benefit for permanently disabled is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

President Donald Trump speaks as FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi look on during a press conference in the Oval Office on Oct. 15, 2025. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said late Tuesday he is personally owed a massive payment from the Department of Justice and would have the authority to approve it, saying he was “damaged very greatly” during the government’s investigations into his alleged hoarding of classified documents and Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Responding to a question about reports that he was seeking up to $230 million in compensation from the Justice Department, Trump replied, “I don’t know what the numbers are. I don’t even talk to them about it. All I know is that they would owe me a lot of money, but I’m not looking for money.” 

“I’d give it to charity or something. I would give it to charity, any money. But look what they did. They rigged the election,” Trump said, apparently referring to his false claim that President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results, including sparking the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, was the subject of a separate federal criminal investigation.

The situation shines a spotlight on ethical concerns that Trump’s former defense attorneys, who now occupy top positions at the Justice Department, would presumably play a role in deciding whether the president receives the money. 

Trump claimed he would make the final call on whether to pay himself the damages.

“It’s interesting because I’m the one that makes the decision, right? And you know that decision would have to go across my desk, and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself,” Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday evening after a White House Diwali celebration.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Trump submitted claims in 2023 and 2024 seeking compensation for violations to his rights during a special counsel probe into whether his 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia, and violations to his privacy when federal agents searched his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022 for classified documents.

“But I was damaged very greatly, and any money that I would get, I would give to charity,” he added.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the status of Trump’s claims.

“In any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials,” department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has been a vocal advocate and legal adviser for Trump on multiple probes, including the handling of the 2016 Russian meddling inquiry. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche defended Trump during the government’s investigation into classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago following the president’s first term. 

Stanley Woodward, the former defense lawyer for Trump’s co-defendent in the classified documents probe, now heads the Justice Department’s civil division, which reviews compensation claims, according to the Times.

When asked Wednesday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he was not aware of the details, but largely defended Trump.

“I didn’t talk with him about that. I know that he believes he’s owed that reimbursement. What I heard yesterday was if he receives it, he was going to consider giving it to charity. I mean, he doesn’t need those proceeds. But we’re for the rule of law, we’re for what is just and right. And it’s just absurd. As has been noted here several times this morning, they attack him for everything he does. It doesn’t matter what it is,” the Louisiana Republican said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, slammed Trump’s request for compensation as the president trying to “rob taxpayers of $230 million to continue to line his pockets.”

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

David Bintz, who was wrongly incarcerated, stands outside Mountains of Hope, the nonprofit where he finally found temporary housing after trying local shelters. | Photo courtesy Jarrett Adams Law

David and Robert Bintz’s release last fall drew attention to a Wisconsin law about compensation for people wrongly convicted of crimes. Wisconsin law allows less compensation for wrongly convicted people than many other states, unless the state passes a bill awarding additional money to a specific wrongly convicted person. 

In decisions released last week, the Wisconsin Claims Board decided the Bintz brothers, now 69 and 70, will each be awarded $25,000 and attorney fees. The board recommended an additional $1 million for each brother to the Wisconsin Legislature. Two of the board’s five members dissented from the majority’s decision on David Bintz’s compensation. 

“We are thankful for the board’s recommendation and pray that [legislators] vote to approve the recommendation in expedited fashion,” Jarrett Adams, an attorney advocating for the brothers, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email. 

Over two decades after their convictions in a 1987 murder case, the brothers were released from prison. In April, the Examiner reported on challenges the brothers have experienced, as well as gaps in support for people who reenter society after being wrongly convicted of crimes in Wisconsin. The compensation claims that the brothers submitted included mention of medical expenses, housing needs, additional neurological testing and day-to-day needs.

“Increasing the annual cap and adding a robust layer of services would be beneficial to exonerees who are trying to reestablish themselves in their communities,” Rachel Burg, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, told the Examiner over email in March. 

The board’s decisions state that both brothers sought the maximum compensation under the statute — $25,000 — and attorney fees, as well as recommendations that the Legislature award $2 million for each brother. 

Under Wisconsin’s law, the board decides whether the evidence of the petitioner’s innocence of the crime for which they were imprisoned is “clear and convincing.” If they find the petitioner was innocent and that they did not contribute to bring about their conviction and imprisonment by action or inaction, the board decides how much money the petitioner should receive. 

A three-member majority of the board found David met the requirement about not contributing to his conviction and imprisonment. 

“Nonwithstanding any contradictory statements, David maintained his innocence and was willing to go to trial to defend his innocence,” the decision states. 

The Examiner has reported on how in his request for compensation, David Bintz argued that he was interrogated for several hours and coerced into a confession, and on Brown County District Attorney David Lasee’s disagreement with that argument. Bintz’s request also said he was intellectually disabled.

Over a quarter of 375 DNA exonerations between 1989 and 2020 were cases that involved false confessions, according to the Innocence Project. 

State Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and state Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan) disagreed with the other three board members regarding David Bintz. Both legislators are part of the finance committees in the Assembly and the Senate, respectively, and on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee. 

According to Fox 11 News, Wimberger said that “it had everything to do with the fact that David Bintz’s conviction was really his own fault and not anything the state did wrong” in reference to a conversation David had with a cellmate. David Bintz’s cellmate Gary Swendby said David talked about committing the crime in his sleep and also admitted his involvement while he was serving time for a different crime. 

“I think on the Robert Bintz side of things, there’s a lot of sympathy and perhaps there should’ve been a better investigation done,” Wimberger said.

A research project took up the question of how much money states pay exonerees per each year lost, specifically for exonerees who were paid. For Wisconsin, they found an average of $4,947 per year lost. The research was by the National Registry of Exonerations and Professor Jeffrey Gutman of the George Washington University Law School.  

Gutman analyzed wrongful convictions compensation in Wisconsin in the 2022 publication “Compensation Under the Microscope: Wisconsin,” which was updated in July 2023. 

Gutman wrote about Wisconsin exonerees wrongly convicted in state courts and  recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations, going back to 1989. Of the exonerees awarded compensation, he wrote that only one appeared to have been provided additional compensation from the Legislature following a claims board recommendation. 

In 2014, then-Gov. Scott Walker awarded an additional $90,000 to Robert Lee Stinson, after the claims board had awarded $25,000. Stinson had requested reimbursement for 23 years in prison at the rate of $5,000 per year.

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Click here to read highlights from the story

• In Wisconsin, permanently and totally disabled workers haven’t seen a raise to their worker’s compensation benefits in nine years, despite prices increasing 34% and the Legislature granting companies premium cuts worth more than $1 billion.

• There’s a chance the raise will finally happen now that the state budget includes the creation of a worker’s comp fee schedule for medical services, which was a sticking point in past worker’s comp bill negotiations.

• The proposed bill would make an estimated 210 more people eligible for raises and increase the maximum weekly benefit to $1,051 from $669 effective Jan. 1, 2026. It still must pass the Legislature and be signed by the governor.

Jimmy Novy grew up on a farm with corn, cattle and chickens in Wisconsin’s smallest municipality. Yuba, in the Driftless Area northwest of Madison, covers a third of a square mile. Novy correctly quotes its population in the last census: 53.

In 1967, at age 19, married with a child, Novy got a job at the Rayovac plant in nearby Wonewoc. It made batteries used in walkie-talkies in the Vietnam War. 

In his late 20s, Novy learned he had been exposed to manganese, a key component in batteries. He suffered neurological problems that affected his left leg, severely limiting his ability to walk or even maintain his balance. 

“The nerves from the brain to my leg, they can’t do nothing about that,” he said.

With four children to raise, Novy turned to Wisconsin’s first-in-the-nation worker’s compensation system. After three years of legal back-and-forth, the state agreed that Novy was permanently and totally disabled (PTD), meaning he was among the worst-off of Wisconsin workers injured on the job. As a result, he qualified for worker’s comp checks for life.

But there was no guarantee of how often those checks would increase.

Now 77, widowed, remarried and using hearing aids and a cane, Novy hasn’t seen an increase in his $1,575 monthly worker’s compensation check — nor have the other more than 300 other PTD recipients — since 2016.

“I can’t make it,” Novy told Wisconsin Watch in mid-July. “I got $8 left in my checkbook right now to last me through the last week of the month.”

“The wife buys food and stuff, otherwise I’d be starving to death,” he added.

Had Novy’s worker’s comp payment kept pace with inflation, which rose 34%, he would have received nearly $21,000 more over the past nine years, according to calculations by University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Menzie Chinn.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin employers have seen their premiums for worker’s compensation insurance decrease 10 years in a row, saving them $206 million in the past year and over $1 billion since 2017, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association, which is part of the state Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council.

Twenty-three states, including Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, provide automatic cost-of-living raises for PTD recipients. In Wisconsin, raises have been provided only when they are included in a wide-ranging worker’s compensation “agreed bill,” proposed every two years, and only if the bill becomes law.

That moment might be at hand.

The advisory council has recommended raises for PTD recipients in the next agreed bill, which is being drafted. 

The bill still has to be approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

Making history, creating PTD raises

In 1911, Wisconsin became the first state to adopt a comprehensive worker’s compensation law that was upheld as constitutional. Before that, the burden was on the worker to prove that a job injury was the employer’s fault. Now it’s a no-fault system. Workers injured on the job can receive regular payments based on their salary, plus coverage of medical bills to treat their injuries. 

Wisconsin’s system has received high marks for getting injured workers back on the job quickly and for worker satisfaction in health care for their injuries.

The money for worker’s compensation checks comes from worker’s compensation insurance companies and from employers who are self-insured for worker’s comp. No tax dollars are involved. 

About 21,000 people annually receive Wisconsin worker’s comp checks, the vast majority of them for a temporary period. Only about 500 people receive PTD benefits, and only 300 of them, like Novy, are eligible for raises. 

That’s because the 2016 agreed bill limits raises, known as supplementary benefits, only to PTD recipients injured before Jan. 1, 2003. 

How PTD raises are decided

The process that determines whether PTD raises are granted is not unlike the bargaining that an employer and a union do to reach a contract. Both sides have priorities, and there is horse trading and eventually compromise, at least on some issues.

The Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council is composed mainly of five representatives from management and five from organized labor, though it also includes nonvoting members representing insurance, health care and the Legislature. 

Every odd year, the council develops a bill proposing multiple changes to worker’s comp. The process typically takes months of negotiations, said John Dipko, the council’s non-voting chair and administrator of worker’s compensation for the state Department of Workforce Development.

If approved by the Legislature and the governor, the bill becomes law the next year. 

That process has produced 11 PTD raises since 1972. The 2016 raise put the maximum PTD payment at $669 per week. 

‘The most severely changed’

Circumstances have left PTD recipient Scott Meyer better off financially than Novy, but delays in raises have forced Meyer to dip into savings and, as his health conditions worsen, worry about the future.

Meyer grew up outside of Milwaukee, playing in the woods and farm fields of rural Washington County. He was a member of the hockey team at West Bend West High School. 

In 1993, at age 19, Meyer was working on a loading dock when a co-worker backing a semi-trailer pinned Meyer between the trailer and the dock. Meyer closed his eyes and tried to remain calm, thinking his right leg was broken.

“One of the paramedics in the ambulance thought that I was unconscious and said to the other paramedic that this was going to be his first fatality call,” Meyer recalled. “And I immediately then knew that something more major had happened.”

Meyer underwent multiple surgeries, spent more than a year in the hospital and dropped to under 100 pounds. He was left a paraplegic. 

Though unable to work, Meyer became an Alpine skier in Colorado, where he now lives, competing in the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi, Russia.

Meyer, 51, said he receives about $2,300 per month from worker’s compensation – nearly $370 per month less than what he was paid on the job in 1993. 

Meyer, who owns a condominium with his wife, a mental health therapist, said he has been able to live comfortably only by preserving savings, including from a one-time payout he received from his former employer for his injury. But with no raises in nine years, he has had to dip into savings to get by. 

Earlier this year, both Novy in an email and Meyer in a video asked the Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council to recommend raises for PTD recipients. 

“These are people whose lives are the most severely changed and are legitimately dependent upon these funds,” Meyer told Wisconsin Watch. “We’re talking about pennies on the dollar to the kind of money that is in the system.”

The process that results in PTD raises involves negotiations on a variety of worker’s compensation issues. That has made the road to another raise rocky in recent years.

Delayed raises and a possible breakthrough

The Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council’s agreed bill for 2018 would have raised the maximum weekly PTD payment to $711 from $669 and made more PTD people eligible for raises. But the bill also proposed a “fee schedule,” generally opposed by health care organizations, to limit how much health care providers can charge for worker’s comp care. The bill did not pass the Legislature.

Since then, the labor side of the advisory council continued to propose PTD raises, while the management side continued to seek a fee schedule. Wisconsin is one of only a handful of states without one. The two sides did not agree to include PTD raises in their 2020, 2022 and 2024 agreed bills. 

A key barrier was cleared when a fee schedule for worker’s comp was included in the 2025-27 state budget adopted in July. 

Days later, the advisory council proposed raises for current PTD recipients and made more PTD recipients eligible for raises. 

Under the 2026 agreed bill, the injury date for PTD recipients to be eligible for raises would change from Jan. 1, 2003, to Jan. 1, 2020 — making an estimated 210 more people eligible for raises. 

The bill would also raise the maximum weekly benefit for PTD recipients to $1,051 from $669 effective Jan. 1, 2026. 

And it would add raises each Jan. 1, though those amounts would not be set until shortly before they become effective. 

For individuals, the raise amounts would vary based on when they were injured. 

For example, a PTD recipient injured in 1985 and receiving $535 a week would get a 57% increase to $840. The increase would amount to nearly $16,000 per year.

Once it’s drafted, the new agreed bill would need a final vote from the advisory council, which is expected in September. Then the bill would be submitted to the labor committees of the state Senate and Assembly. 

Council management representatives didn’t reply to calls and emails requesting comment. Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Stephanie Bloomingdale, the lead labor representative, said she understands the frustration over delayed raises. But she said the advisory council system, with management and labor hashing out worker’s compensation issues, provides stability.

Without it, “it would be up to the Legislature, and the whims of the political winds would determine the policy,” she said.

Dipko, the DWD administrator, said the department is sympathetic. 

“We agreed that an increase is overdue,” he said.

After waiting this long, Novy isn’t sure what to think. He’s happy he and wife share a $125,000 brick house they own “with the bank,” as he puts it, and for his monthly $1,635 Social Security check, which increases each year. But he has filed for bankruptcy three times, most recently in 2020. He feels that at this stage of his life, he should be more secure, and a raise in worker’s comp would help.

“The Legislature should be — forget Republican, Democrat — just vote for what’s good,” he said.

“I can’t see how come they can’t give us a little raise every year,” he added.

As Wisconsin companies saved $1 billion in rate cuts, severely injured workers haven’t had a raise in 9 years is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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In 2023, the average S&P 500 CEO earned $17.1 million in total compensation compared with $63,800 earned by the average worker in an S&P 500 company. For the CEO that works out to $46,849 a day.

Because average compensation rates include extreme outliers, it’s notable that median pay differences between CEOs and workers in 2023 also yielded similar results. 

The median S&P 500 CEO earned $16.3 million in 2023 while the median worker for those companies earned around $81,400. Outliers notwithstanding, CEOs still earned their workers’ annual pay in a little less than two days.

This phenomenon continued in 2024 as the median S&P 500 CEO pay jumped nearly 10% and worker compensation increased by less than 1.05%.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• AFL-CIO: Company Pay Ratios
• Equilar | Associated Press: CEO Pay Study
• PBS News: CEO pay jumped nearly 10% in 2024 as profits and stock prices soared

Did the average S&P 500 CEOs earn in less than two days what their typical worker earned in all of 2023? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.