On Monday morning with a couple of strokes of his pen, Gov. Tony Evers signed an increase in Wisconsin’s workers compensation into law and repurposed $250,000 per year in state funds that have been going unused for years.

The second action would not have been possible, however, if there hadn’t been another measure — one that had actually died before reaching him.

Three bills in all were involved in the complex maneuver.

The first is AB 651 — a bill that updates Wisconsin’s workers compensation system. With that legislation, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 145, workers comp will cover post-traumatic stress syndrome in emergency medical responders, EMS providers and volunteer and part-time firefighters.

The measure had long been sought on behalf of those first responders.

“Community heroes who have given so much of themselves and need healing because of their service deserve our support, and I am excited to see this critical care extended to those to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude,” said Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), who championed the legislation.

The same bill has a number of other provisions, including an increase in weekly compensation rates for injured workers and an expansion in access to supplemental benefits for workers whose on-the-job injuries have left them permanently and totally disabled.

Previously those supplemental benefits were only available to workers disabled before Jan. 1, 2003. The new measure covers workers disabled between that date and Jan. 1, 2020.

The new law is the product of a longstanding joint labor-management council that advises lawmakers on the state’s workers compensation system

“Today, we’re proving that we’re more committed to that legacy than ever, and I want to thank all the bipartisan partners for their support and advocacy to come to good faith agreements and get this done,” Evers said in a statement.

Partial veto and a bill that died

On the second bill Evers signed, he used his partial veto power to free up $250,000 per year in money that goes to the Department of Workforce Development. 

That was made possible because of the third bill — AB 652, a revision of Wisconsin unemployment insurance law — which his office threatened to veto, and which didn’t even make it out of the Legislature.

Like the workers comp bill, the unemployment insurance bill  was the product of a joint labor-management advisory council.

The bill would have raised the top weekly jobless pay benefit by $25 a week, to $390, the first increase in a decade. 

But that was coupled with a number of provisions that Evers and Democrats opposed, including  a penalty for unemployed workers who receive federal Social Security Disability Income. The penalty would have cut their jobless pay by 50% of the value of their federal disability income.

The bipartisan unity in favor of the workers comp bill contrasted with deep division on the unemployment insurance bill. 

“The workers comp bill came out very clean, we had no issues with it,” state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) said Monday.

But drafts of the unemployment insurance (UI) bill raised alarm among Democrats “weeks before we got the UI bill,” Sinicki said. “We could not support actually reducing payments to those living with disabilities.” 

Rebellion over the jobless pay bill

Since 2013, Wisconsin SSDI recipients have been disqualified from getting unemployment compensation entirely. A federal judge ruled in 2024 that the restriction violated federal laws, and in 2025 ordered DWD to stop enforcing the provision.

Under a court order, DWD has now started paying back SSDI recipients who were denied jobless pay under the 2013 law.

AB 652 not only reduced those benefits, it also contained a number of provisions erecting new barriers to jobless pay, some of which Evers had previously vetoed in bills passed with only Republican support in the state Legislature.

One of those was a requirement for DWD to undertake specific “identity-proofing” measures for jobless pay applicants to prevent fraud.

Unemployment insurance lawyer Victor Forberger wrote in a blog post July 14 that the identity-proofing provision “does nothing” that DWD wasn’t already doing.

Evers’ communications director confirmed the governor’s intention to veto the measure after it passed an Assembly committee on a party-line vote in January.

The unemployment insurance bill passed the full Assembly on a party-line vote Jan. 20. It subsequently failed to make it to the Senate floor and died as a result.

Redirecting funds

That’s where the third bill comes in — AB 650. 

The bill includes funding for the workers comp program administration. Republicans added  funding for the identity-proofing measures that were in the unemployment bill. 

Separating funding for new policies from the bills that lay out those policies has become a regular GOP practice, in order to try to prevent Evers from using his partial veto to change policy. (In Wisconsin the governor can only use his partial veto on spending legislation.) 

But this time, the action gave Evers an opening. 

Because the unemployment bill had failed — but funding for one of its provisions remained in the separate bill — Evers was able to scratch out language allocating funding for the failed policy and repurpose the additional $250,000 per year the Republicans had intended for identify proofing.

To fund the identity-proofing provision, legislators had  proposed a revision in an existing budget appropriation that authorizes $250,000 a year for DWD to pay for substance abuse treatment.

Under a law enacted in 2015, under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, employers can report to DWD if a prospective new hire fails a drug test. The law disqualifies the person who flunks from receiving unemployment compensation — but also states that the individual can remain eligible by entering substance abuse treatment.

DWD is to pay for the treatment using the $250,000 that the Legislature appropriates each year.

Haley McCoy, the DWD communications director, said Monday that the provision is rarely used, and employers haven’t submitted any reports on job applicants who flunked drug tests since 2021.

In AB 650, GOP lawmakers expanded the use of DWD’s annual drug treatment appropriation, allowing the money also to be used for “costs related to identity proofing under s. 108.14 (10m) for which federal funding is unavailable.”

A funding provision with nothing to fund

The funding bill passed both houses of the Legislature unanimously. But by the time it got to Evers, the unemployment insurance bill and its identity proofing provision were dead.

On Monday, Evers pulled out his veto pen and scratched out references to “identity proofing” in the funding bill. He also crossed out additional words, turning the phrase about how the drug treatment money is to be used into “costs for which federal funding is unavailable.”

The rewritten bill became 2025 Act 144.

In Evers’ veto message, he noted that the language applying to “identity proofing” was “a reference to a statute which does not exist” and added that DWD already has tools to verify identity and prevent fraud. The department “conducts a variety of anti-fraud activities,” he wrote.

The partial veto, he wrote, gives DWD “new flexibility to access state funding in an appropriation that purports to improve the unemployment insurance system by drug testing claimants; in fact, this funding has gone unspent for several years, and drug testing only serves to create barriers for claimants to access necessary benefits in times of economic hardship.”

Evers’ veto message said the department will be able to use the “modest amount” of additional money “when the federal government fails to support state unemployment administration sufficiently.”

The veto message didn’t specify how the funds would be deployed, but the press release from the governor’s office announcing his action on the workers comp and the funding bills discussed at length the Evers administration’s project to upgrade Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system — for which the Trump administration has terminated $29 million in previously awarded federal grants.

“He could have just cut that funding out completely,” Sinicki said Monday. “But the way he did it, I thought, was really creative by giving the department some flexibility with it.”

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Democratic lawmakers gathered with a handful of veterans after the meeting to criticize the delay and call for Republican lawmakers to advance the bill. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

A bill that would provide funding to a program that helps identify the remains of missing-in-action service members is in limbo after an Assembly committee put off a vote Wednesday due to concerns by Republican lawmakers that Gov. Tony Evers would use his partial veto on the measure.

The University of Wisconsin Missing-In-Action (MIA) Recovery and Identification project, which was started in 2015 at the state’s flagship campus, works to further the recovery and identification of missing-in-action American service members. Those working on the project include researchers, students, veterans, alumni and volunteers who conduct research, recovery and biological identification. The program is partnered with the federal Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) on the work and has acted as a model for DPAA, which now partners with more than 50 other academic and nonprofit institutions to work on MIA identifications. 

AB 641, coauthored by Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), would appropriate $500,000 in each year of the 2025-27 fiscal biennium for the UW MIA Recovery Project. The purpose of the funds would be to allow the program to prioritize recovering and identifying service members from Wisconsin, according to written testimony from Hesselbein. 

According to the program, there are around 82,000 missing-in-action American service members with 1,500 of those coming from Wisconsin. According to the UW MIA program, of those from Wisconsin, approximately 1,300 were lost during World War II, over 160 were lost in the Korean War, 26 are missing from the Vietnam War and one service member is missing as the result of other Cold War-era operations.

The Assembly Veterans and Military Affairs committee was scheduled to vote Wednesday on the bill, setting it up for a vote on the Assembly floor. However, committee chair Rep. William Penterman (R-Hustisford) announced at the start of the committee that it had been removed from the calendar.

Sinicki thanked Penterman for his efforts but said she was disappointed with the entire Assembly Republican caucus because the bill is not being taken up.

“Many of you on this committee have come to me praising this program and tell me it’s got to get done, but once again that is so disingenuous — you are showing these military families just how disingenuous your support of this bill is,” Sinicki said during the committee meeting.

Sinicki said lawmakers were choosing once again to not “give these families the closure that they’re so desperately seeking” and that the “money requested is a drop in the bucket compared to the return that these families are going to get.” Wisconsin currently has a projected budget surplus of over $2 billion.

Penterman told the Wisconsin Examiner after the meeting the bill “just wasn’t ready for primetime” and said there are concerns in the Assembly Republican caucus related to what would happen if it makes it to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk.

“I mean, it spends money, so it gives the governor the option to line-item veto things, so he’s shown time to time again that he’s willing to take that to the extreme, so there’s concerns there,” Penterman said. 

Penterman said the pause on the vote Wednesday “doesn’t mean it’s not going anywhere for the rest of the session.”

Penterman also brushed off Sinicki’s accusation that the bill was removed from the calendar at the request of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester).

“There’s been concerns. My job as chair is to listen to concerns of members on both sides… I’d rather give it more time than rush it,” Penterman said.

Republican lawmakers have worked hard to try to get around Evers’ partial veto powers for the last several years, taking additional steps to try to prevent such action including passing bills without funding attached during the budget cycle. Under Wisconsin state law, the executive partial veto power, which is one of the strongest in the nation, can only be used on appropriation bills. 

Evers proposed dedicating the same amount to the program that is specified in the current bill in his 2025-27 state budget, but Republican lawmakers rejected that proposal.

Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said in an email to the Examiner that there is “virtually no basis for such a concern” and it’s “an absolutely bogus excuse.” She noted Evers’ previous support for the effort as well as email exchanges between Penterman’s office and Evers’ office, which were shared with the Examiner.

On Jan. 29, the day the bill received a public hearing, Penterman emailed Evers’ office asking for assurances that Evers would not use his partial veto power on the bill before he would schedule a committee vote.

On Feb. 2, two days before the committee was to vote, Zach Madden, Evers’ legislative affairs director, confirmed in an email to Penterman that Evers would not use his partial veto power on the bill as long as it remained in its original form.

“As you may recall, the Governor has been extremely supportive of the program and has proposed funding the UW Missing-in-Action Recovery and Identification Project in the last three of his biennial budgets,” Madden wrote. “It has been your Republican colleagues on the Joint Committee on Finance that have removed it each time. We would need to review any amendments to the bill to extend this same commitment if there were to be any changes from what was originally proposed.”

Cudaback said on Wednesday that “it seems Republicans simply don’t want to fund a program that helps identify and recover the remains of Wisconsin veterans who are missing in action, and that’s no one’s fault but their own.”

Democratic lawmakers gathered with a handful of veterans after the meeting to criticize the delay and call for Republican lawmakers to advance the bill. They stood in front of the POW/MIA Chair of Honor, a permanently empty, dedicated seat to represent service members who never returned, in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.

Sinicki said at the press conference that Vos is to blame for the bill being pulled from the calendar. She called for people who live in districts represented by Republicans to call their legislators and “tell them to stand up to Robin Vos.”

“[Vos] is the one and only person holding up this bill, and it’s because of his crazy hatred for our UW system. That is the only reason why he’s holding this bill,” Sinicki said. “It is time for him to put that hatred aside and do what’s right for our military families.”

Republican lawmakers have criticized the UW system for an array of reasons, including its spending, and sought to cut the UW budget in recent years. Vos, the state’s longest-serving Assembly speaker, has also been at the center of a number of bipartisan bills being blocked this session, including one to provide Medicaid coverage to postpartum mothers and to expand health insurance coverage of breast cancer screenings for at-risk women. His office did not respond to a request for comment from the Examiner by the time of publication.

Rep. Maureen McCarville (D-DeForest) spoke about her late uncle who died serving in the south Pacific in World War II. She said his remains were identified and returned seven decades after his death.

“I can’t say enough how much this project means to families out there… We need to fund this so that every other family can have that same closure,” McCarville said. “There are no words to express how disappointed I am sitting on the vets committee knowing that the chair of that committee, who is also an active service member, allowed this to be pulled from his agenda.”

Wisconsin VFW Adjutant Adam Wallace quoted the Soldier’s Creed, which says “never leave a fallen comrade,” and said the bill would help ensure this promise is kept. 

“We as a state have the opportunity to advance this piece of legislation, but unfortunately, petty politics and backroom politics has led to this being off the floor, and we are tired of the games,” Wallace said. “These games have real consequences. Every day, every year, every legislative session this does not pass is one next of kin or family member who can’t bring that closure.” 

Sinicki told the Examiner that the concerns about a partial veto are “an excuse they’re using to cover their butts.” She said barring some change, she thinks this is likely the end of the line for the bill this session. 

“I would find it hard to believe that they would do anything at this point,” she said.

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