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Brown County Judge Tammy Jo Hock said she doesn’t give her staff breaks, works them through lunch, makes them stay late. This was the only way cases could keep moving through court, Hock told the county’s Public Safety Committee on Sept. 9.

“It’s unreasonable what I do to my staff,” Hock said.

She pointed to the judicial system getting less than 2% of the 2025-27 state budget. “When you limit your resources like that, you’re not providing what the state needs,” Hock said. “And at some point, I hope they start addressing that.”

Warnings that underinvestment may be causing Wisconsin’s judiciary to fall short in delivering justice have mounted ahead of the Nov. 3 elections to decide the state Legislature, vested with budgetary powers, and the governor’s office. The politics in the budgeting process has left many in the judiciary frustrated at years of being under-resourced despite studies showing what’s needed. It has angered some county boards faced with the choice to locally fund gaps in the judicial system or not.

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Those within the system are burdened with the consequences.

Brown County has the largest deficit of judges and court commissioners of any Wisconsin county, short nearly six officials, according to the Wisconsin Judicial Needs Assessment Survey issued in April.

The finding adds to well-documented inadequacies elsewhere: short staffing in district attorney offices; low pay in public defense; struggles to recruit and retain lawyers; shortages in mental health treatment for those to stand trial.

Prosecutors face backlogs of cases in the thousands, slowing convictions. About half of all criminal cases needed more than six months to resolve in 2025. Some defendants have gone for months without an attorney, straining jails. Many judges feel pressure to move cases quickly, even when more time would improve their decision-making, according to the judicial needs assessment. Interest in law careers has dwindled, compounding staff shortages.

Outagamie County District Attorney Mindy Tempelis on Aug. 25, during the state’s first study committee into district attorney funding, said Wisconsin “was not meeting its obligation” and argued the state Legislature should invest in making a Wisconsin-specific judicial system that would not break down.

“People’s lives are on the line,” Tempelis said.

‘The entire system is broken’ with possible paths forward

In addition to the number of cases before them, judges face more time-consuming work than in the past, according to the 2025 Wisconsin Judicial Needs Assessment Study.

Digital evidence has mounted, become routine and taken much time to review, the assessment said. More litigants are self-representing and using artificial intelligence to create filings, which have made judges take more time to interpret “often lengthy, unclear, or legally inconsistent” files, according to the assessment. And judges are spending more time on cases before trial as evidence suppression and other pretrial motions have grown more popular.

For those making cases before judges, the workload has also grown more burdensome.

Tempelis told the state’s study committee that the current formula to calculate how many prosecutors each district attorney office needs has become outdated.

The formula assumes attorney work still revolves around paper files, faxed police reports, physical photos and evidence that could fit into a folder, Templis said in her presentation. There are now hours of footage from body cameras, which each county may use different versions of, and thousands of text messages to extract, she said.

Tempelis also said the mental health system is broken, with jail being the always-open alternative. She emphasized the attorney shortage in the state, the lack of lawyers interested in going to rural counties and inconsistency with which the Legislature decides to fund pay progression for prosecutors, leaving it entirely unfunded at times.

She pointed to the 1,400 cases that make up the backlog in her office.

“There are no prosecutor bodies, court bodies, or defense bodies to pick up that backlog anywhere in this state,” Tempelis said. “And that is a horrible realization for defendants and for victims and for our communities.”

Tempelis argued the Legislature could invest in finding data that would show the true workload of prosecutors, saying the studies should reflect work as close to real time as possible. She pushed for fully funding attorney pay progression and creating a prosecutor council, an agency that, in other states, advocates for and supports the work of attorneys.

She said she had no doubt the Wisconsin Legislature was not going to give the judiciary everything it wished for. She argued, though, that a sustainable system supported by data would prevent politically motivated decision-making.

Under the current system, Tempelis said that counties picking up the tab for the state’s responsibility was unfair. District attorneys, their assistants and public defenders are state employees.

She said she was lucky that the Outagamie County Board made it a priority to fund a prosecutor position in her office. However, “They are frustrated. They are angry and they don’t want to. But they’re trying to make a good decision for the people of Outagamie County; that’s their job. But funding us is not their job, because the state asked for it.”

Jennifer Bias, the state public defender, said, “The point has been made that the entire system is broken.”

Adding judges requires added support personnel

Judge Hock pressed the Brown County Public Safety Committee on Sept. 9 to endorse a resolution for the County Board to call on the state for two more circuit court judges.

Court dates were being pushed further out from a growing caseload. There were 3,755 pending criminal cases in the county in 2025, according to the resolution. Hock asks attorneys in the hallways if they will take cases as public defenders.

While she recognized the court assessment called for about six more judges, Hock said the director of state courts believes the Legislature will only have the stomach to fund two.

Plus, it’s not just as simple as electing two judges.

To accommodate two more judges, the county would need to provide enough support personnel to the tune of an additional $222,814, including two sheriff deputies, judicial assistants, court coordinators and a one-time staff setup charge. Accommodation for space has already been budgeted in the Brown County capital improvement plan, according to the resolution.

Brown County Board Chairman Patrick Buckley pointed to the county needing to shell out for support staff and court infrastructure as the state adds more judges, saying he didn’t think the county should have to pay for more prosecutors and wished to see more consolidated staffing “because throughout the county, as budgets get tighter, who do we cut? The sheriff’s office? 911?”

“I can’t address how the county and state share those expenses,” Hock replied. “All I can tell you is what the need is.”

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.

Judges warn that underfunded courts are falling behind 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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Editor’s note: This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets.

Three Democratic candidates tried to convince voters that they were the best shot to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Wied in the 8th Congressional District.

To a crowd of about 50 on Aug. 3 at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Christie Theatre, the candidates tried to differentiate themselves to voters heading into the Aug. 11 primary election. The winner will go against Wied in the Nov. 3 general election, vying to represent nearly 737,000 people across 11 counties in northeastern Wisconsin.

On substance, their positions often aligned, on issues such as the environment, culture and the rights of Indigenous tribes, but they deviated some on public education and health care.

They were most divergent on style and their read of the Democratic Party.

Rick Crosson, a former Green Bay School Board member, doubled down on his tactic of growing the Democratic Party’s appeal as an insider, saying there was “absolutely nothing wrong with being a Democrat” or being an insider to “fix any and all issues that we may be dealing with.” He said his political icon was the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights leader from Georgia.

Katrina deVille, a musician who has campaigned on being a political outsider and democratic socialist, said, “We don’t even have a left party in this country anymore” and “we have to vote for something different.” Her political icons are New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Mark Scheffler, a former wealth adviser who’s billed himself as a progressive independent, said Democrats “need to expand the base to include open-minded independents and even open-minded conservatives that are abandoning the Trump administration.” He considered former Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as his most esteemed political figure.

Here’s what the candidates said during the forum.

On winning a historically red district

Winning was top of mind for Scheffler and Crosson, so much so that Scheffler said it was the best word to describe his campaign.

The district has not elected a Democratic representative since 2008, when Rep. Steve Kagen won the seat before losing in 2010 to Republican Reid Ribble.

Scheffler said his strategy to winning was targeting those who have felt neglected by the Democratic Party. He pointed to voters in rural communities, whom he said the Democratic Party hasn’t done enough to connect with, and people in business, whom he said the Democratic Party hasn’t been welcoming enough of.

Crosson argued he had built a broad coalition that could win across the political spectrum and that he had “attached myself with every group you can name.” He said he’d gotten a neighbor of Wied’s to put up a Crosson yard sign and that a Republican former state treasurer had told Crosson that he’d nudged his Democratic wife to vote for him.

And asked what made her the best candidate, deVille positioned herself as a foil to Republicans and “the biggest eff-you that people can send to the federal government” being a transgender woman.

“Any time I’ve had to deal with a Republican politician, they crash out,” deVille said. “The minute I walk in the room, they can’t even look at me, and they just crash out, and it’s fantastic.”

She touted hosting town halls at gun ranges and her position as a Second Amendment advocate.

On breaking with the Democratic Party

Asked if there was a specific policy on which he would break from the Democratic Party when voting in Congress, Crosson said, “If I had anything to offer our party at this point in time, it is: We need to have a conversation about who we are, and do we have bias that’s running through our party that needs to be addressed and have the honest dialogue about what inclusiveness means?”

For deVille, it was gun rights. She argued that more gun laws would only deter law-abiding citizens and that more enforcement and focus on mental health care rather than legislation were needed.

For Scheffler, it was gerrymandering. He criticized both Republican and Democratic efforts to draw favorable district boundaries and said that “partisanship should never come at the price of an individual’s right to vote.”

On what they would do in Congress

The candidates aligned on much of their stances on abortion and transgender rights. They all said they would:

• Vote to codify the right to an abortion in federal law.
• Support equal opportunity and access for transgender people.
• Not take money from political action committees.
• Support a tax on billionaires.
• Support increasing funding to Social Security by raising the cap on payroll taxes.
• Support free four-year public college tuition.
• Support a universal, federally funded child care program.
• Support banning drilling leases on public land.
• Support increasing the size of the Supreme Court.
• Decriminalizing marijuana.
• Banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

Crosson said he would back the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would create a more stringent process for states and institutions to make changes that could affect voting rights.

He argued the size of the military needed to be reevaluated as it currently “is not based on a strategy or a vision,” he said.

Crosson said that health care was a universal human right and that there was enough money to expand Medicaid, but did not go so far as deVille or Scheffler to say he supported a universal health care system.

Only deVille said she would oppose introducing term limits on members of Congress.  

DeVille also said that she supported abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and that she would introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on her first day in Congress. She argued that the United States needed to be more open to free trade with the rest of the world.

She said she would support the CEO Act, a bill that would tax company heads for making at least 50 times what their company’s average worker makes.

She also said she would introduce legislation to “ban voucher schools.”

Scheffler said he would eliminate the Internal Revenue Service as part of his proposed policy to revamp the tax code with a singular sales tax. He argued that Republicans would be on board, that it was a progressive tax and that libertarians would be supportive with the need to file annual taxes being gone.

He also promoted his idea for the Great Lakes region to become the world’s largest market for biomass. Under the plan, farmers would be paid $400 an acre to grow “fibrous pulp” that would be sent to the region’s paper manufacturers, Scheffler said. He framed it as a sustainable method to reduce the area’s dependency on foreign-grown sources for the local paper industry and as a policy that would protect against tariffs.

Jesse Lin is a reporter covering the community of Green Bay and its surroundings, as well as politics in northeastern Wisconsin. He also writes a weekly column answering reader questions about Green Bay. Contact and send him questions at 920-834-4250 or jlin@usatodayco.com.

Democrats for 8th Congressional District seat argue they’re the party’s best shot against Tony Wied 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.