The Wisconsin Legislature sent a $133 million plan to combat contamination from so-called forever chemicals to Gov. Tony Evers for his approval Tuesday, promising an end to years of squabbling between the Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers over the issue.
Evers said immediately after the Senate approved the bills Tuesday afternoon that he would sign them into law. The rare bipartisan compromise offers at least some hope for the scores of Wisconsin villages, towns and cities grappling with PFAS pollution in their groundwater.
“Beautiful. This has been a long time coming,” Campbell Town Supervisor Lee Donahue said of the Senate votes. Residents of the town of 4,300 have been drinking bottled water since state health officials warned them in 2021 that more than 500 wells were contaminated. Donahue said state dollars would help the town transition from private wells to a municipal water system treated for PFAS.
“This is definitely a day for celebration,” she said.
PFAS — short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are manmade chemicals that don’t easily break down in nature. They’re found in a wide range of products, including cookware and stain-resistant clothing, and previously were often used in aviation fire-suppression foam. The chemicals have been linked to health problems, including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease, and have been shown to make vaccines less effective.
Communities located near industrial sites and military bases nationwide are grappling with PFAS contamination. Government estimates suggest as much as half of U.S. households have some level of PFAS in their water — whether it comes from a private well or a tap. While federal officials have put strict limits on water provided by utilities, those rules don’t apply to the roughly 40 million people in the U.S. who rely on private drinking water wells.
Municipalities across Wisconsin are struggling with PFAS contamination in groundwater, including Marinette, Madison, Peshtigo, Wausau, the town of Stella and Campbell. The waters of Green Bay also are contaminated.
In Stella, for example, private wells were badly contaminated by PFAS-laden fertilizer spread on farm fields. The state has had limited resources to help, struggling to provide widespread free testing, and officials have offered only a limited grant program for well replacements.
Tom LaDue, a Stella resident, lives on the shores of a highly contaminated lake. He said the Senate signing off on the bills was a rare bit of good news for his town of 670 people. Testing has shown very little PFAS in his private well, but LaDue sits on a town committee that tracks PFAS developments and he knows dozens of people are living on bottled water. He said he hopes the town will get enough money to at least test private wells for pollution.
“We’ve been waiting for it for a long time,” he said of releasing the money. “We’ll be letting everyone in the town know this has passed and we’ll finally see, hopefully, some forward movement in our small town.”
Evers and Republicans have been at odds for years over how best to address the pollution. The 2023-25 state budget created a $125 million trust fund to combat PFAS contamination, but the two camps haven’t been able to agree on how to spend it.
Two years ago the governor vetoed a GOP bill that would have spent the money on grants for municipalities, landowners and waste disposal facilities to test for PFAS in water treatment plants and wells. But Evers said the bill limited state regulators’ authority to hold polluters liable, and environmental groups urged him to kill the proposal.
The fund has grown to $133.4 million during the stalemate, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The chief sponsors of that original bill, Republican Sen. Eric Wimberger and Rep. Jeff Mursau, released two new proposals in January after discussions with the state Department of Natural Resources, an Evers Cabinet agency.
The first bill would spend $132.2 million from the PFAS trust fund for community grants, well replacements, airports and industrial properties and $1.3 million from the state’s general fund to cover 10 new state Department of Natural Resources positions to administer the spending.
The second proposal establishes a list of entities that would be exempt from liability for contamination, similar to the bill Evers vetoed in 2024. Included on the list are people who spread PFAS while in compliance with permits that did not address PFAS; landowners whose property was contaminated pursuant to a permit; owners of contaminated industrial property who didn’t cause the pollution; and fire departments that used PFAS in their foam. Businesses that own or operate facilities that currently or have used PFAS or have ever spread industrial waste could be held liable, however.
The Assembly passed both pieces of legislation unanimously on the last day of its regular two-year session in February. The Senate passed the bills overwhelmingly, approving one bill 33-0 and the other on a voice vote with almost no discussion.
“I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right,” Evers said in a statement.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Wisconsin Senate OKs $133 million package to combat ‘forever chemicals,’ sends bills to governor 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.
All public employees in Wisconsin must retain records, per the state’s open records law. Except one group. The ones who wrote that law.
State legislators have exempted themselves from the retention portion of the law. Some want to change that.
“The public should not have to worry about legislators having secret conversations or deleting emails,” said state Rep. Clinton Anderson, D-Beloit, who is introducing a bill that would close this loophole despite the fact that the state Assembly adjourned last month for the rest of the year.
Anderson released the bill Monday because it is the start of Sunshine Week, a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.
In Wisconsin, state legislators must comply with a records request, but if they have destroyed the record, they have nothing to send.
“Obviously, it’s troubling,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. “It allows legislators to make things go away that they would rather not see the light of day.”
State Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, told the Wisconsin Examiner in 2021 that his office “frequently deletes emails during the normal course of business each day.”
And he’s not the only one.
“My office does not delete records on principle, and we should make sure every elected official is held to that same standard,” Anderson said.
In 2025, Gov. Tony Evers stepped in to close this loophole – his 2025 budget proposal included a measure to “remove the Legislature’s exemption from open records law by requiring that records and correspondence of any member of the Legislature be included in a definition of a public record to provide greater transparency for the people of Wisconsin.” The proposal also would have allocated funds and opened a full-time position with the Legislative Technology Services Bureau to carry out this new requirement. But the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee removed it from the final budget.
State Sen. Chris Larson, a Democrat from Milwaukee, has introduced bills to close that exemption for state legislators multiple times and is doing so again in the Senate this week in tandem with Anderson.
Before his election to the state Senate in 2010, Larson served on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. As a public official, he had to maintain all his records there and assumed the same when he arrived in the Legislature.
But as his email inbox filled up and ran low on space, Larson said he was told by IT staff to simply delete old messages.
“People often wonder why so many wildly popular policies go session after session without a vote or even a public hearing, while special interest slop rises to the top of the agenda,” said Justin Bielinski, Larson’s spokesman. “The Wisconsin Legislature’s exemption from record retention requirements creates a perverse incentive to do the people’s business in secret. If lawmakers aren’t going to be responsive to their constituents’ needs, the least we can do is allow people to find out who they are listening to, and whose voices they choose to ignore.”
Larson’s bills to close the loophole have been ignored by Republicans who control the Legislature, he said. The majority party generally pays little attention to bills from the minority.
But the fact the Wisconsin Legislature is even subject to the open records law, albeit with a caveat, makes it one of the more transparent states. Nearly a quarter of all states — 12 in total — do not even allow records from the Legislature to be accessed by the public, according to a study from The Journal of Civic Information. Congress has also excluded itself from open records requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
The exemption for legislators here “completely undermines Wisconsin’s public records law and the ability for citizens to trust their Legislature,” said David Cuillier, director of the University of Florida’s Brechner Freedom of Information Project. “It’s really quite bizarre and an outlier in the United States. The right thing to do is remove it and restore accountability and credibility to the institution.”
The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported newsroom in Wisconsin.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
A loophole lets Wisconsin lawmakers delete public records 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.
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos criticized his Senate GOP counterparts on Tuesday for letting a bill to regulate data centers die, calling the issue “bigger than most that I have seen in my 22 years.”
The post Vos warns Wisconsin Senate inaction on data centers could cost GOP votes appeared first on WPR.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu relied on help from Democrats Tuesday to pass legislation that would legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin.
The post Despite GOP defections, online sports betting bill passes Wisconsin Senate appeared first on WPR.
Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, announced his decision Tuesday on what could be the Senate's last session day of the year.
The post Republican Van Wanggaard retiring from Wisconsin Senate appeared first on WPR.
As Wisconsin’s Republican leaders and Gov. Tony Evers continue working to hammer out a deal to provide both tax relief and money for schools, the state’s legislative Democrats have come up with their own plan.
The post Wisconsin Democrats float $1.3B school funding proposal amid tax cut negotiations appeared first on WPR.
After years of gridlock, the Wisconsin Senate passed two bills that set the framework for spending $133 million to address PFAS contamination.
The post After years of gridlock, Wisconsin Senate passes bills addressing PFAS appeared first on WPR.
Snowmobilers in the Northwoods are enjoying what could be their last rides of the season on fresh snow ahead of warmer temperatures in the forecast.
The post Snowmobilers squeeze in riding time as Wisconsin trails briefly reopen post-blizzard appeared first on WPR.
Snowfall on a property in Hayward, Wisconsin. (Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner)
Communities are recovering after a major weekend blizzard, dropping record-breaking amounts of snow in some parts of Wisconsin. From the Northwoods to Milwaukee, snowfall shut down roads, caused power outages and challenged plow trucks and public services.
The National Weather Service, calling the snowstorm “historic,” said that in central Wisconsin, snow fell at a rate of 4 inches per hour. “Near-blizzard conditions developed Sunday afternoon, fueled by northeast winds gusting between 35 and 50 mph,” the weather service stated in an update. Windspeeds reached 59 miles per hour at the Green Bay Airport, and 60 miles per hour in De Pere. “This combination of heavy falling snow and high winds created whiteout conditions and massive drifting,” the National Weather Service stated.
Historic amounts of snow reached approximately 30 inches in communities from Wausau to Marinette and Door County. In Green Bay, where 26.1 inches of snow fell as of Monday, the storm was the area’s largest in 136 years. By Sunday Green Bay had seen 17.1 inches accumulate, making it the city’s third-snowiest day and its heaviest day of snowfall since 1889. Over 11,000 people were reported to have lost power as well.
A “No Travel Advised” notice was posted on the Department of Transportation’s webpage as the storm loomed. “The heavy snow load and high winds caused widespread power outages, most notably in Door and Marinette Counties, and building collapses were reported in Sturgeon Bay and Kewaunee County,” the National Weather Services noted. “Many schools and businesses remained closed through Monday.” The snow was so overwhelming that snow plow operations halted in Marinette County, forcing the sheriff’s office to warn that emergency responses might also slow. That was an acute concern for people stranded in cars along the roadways.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sturgeon Bay in Dane County saw 33 inches of snow blanketing roads and neighborhoods over three days. The city of Madison recorded 5.6 inches on Monday. The state capital’s previous record was set in 2006 when 3.5 inches of snow fell. In western Wisconsin, the town of Montana received 26.5 inches of snow, more than any other area in the region. The city of Mondovi also may have broken a record with 16.5 inches the city’s unofficial record was 16 inches, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Over the three-day snowfall event, Madison was covered in nearly eight inches. Some residents reported they were unable to open their front doors.
Fallen trees and other damage was also reported as far south as Racine.
Waukesha County also struggled with the storm, after strong winds uprooted trees as early as Friday. The winds heralded an all-day rain storm which then turned into a blizzard. The shifting weather patterns meant that the county had to adapt rapidly. About seven inches of snow fell in Waukesha from Sunday to Monday. Crews with the Waukesha County Department of Public Works pulled 16-hour shifts.
“In severe weather government services matter most,” Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow said in a statement. “Waukesha County’s teams were out early, stayed out late, and worked around the clock so residents could reach essential services safely. Thank you to our crews and to the public for slowing down and giving plows the space they needed to do their jobs.”
From 2 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, Waukesha County’s 911 communications center received 47 calls for disabled vehicles, 25 for vehicles in ditches, nine reports of property damage, and three for traffic hazards. In many areas people struggled to dig their cars out, with Wausau residents reporting having literally not seen their cars for days until they were uncovered from the snow. Although temperatures were below freezing on Tuesday, the weather is expected to warm as the week continues. By the weekend, temperatures are expected to reach 70 degrees before tampering off again.
Researchers have long warned that extreme weather events would become more common due to climate change. Some of the communities recovering from the blizzard have yet to fully recover from record-breaking floods that occurred in August. In January 2025, extreme arctic cold enveloped the region, challenging communities with large numbers of people living unhoused on the street. This most recent snowstorm came as other parts of the United States dealt with rashes of tornadoes, heatwaves, and flooding.
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The UW-Madison football team plays at Camp Randall Stadium on Sept. 24, 2024. A bill enabling student athletes to make money from their name, image and likeness is advancing in the state Senate.(Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
In two narrow votes, the Wisconsin Senate on Tuesday passed bills to legalize online sports betting in the state and create a set of rules for managing name, image and likeness deals for University of Wisconsin athletes.
Both bills were passed and sent to the desk of Gov. Tony Evers despite opposition within both party caucuses.
After initially appearing to be on the legislative fast track upon its introduction last fall, the sports betting bill faced strenuous opposition and only passed on the last day of normal floor of activity in both the Assembly and Senate.
The bill passed the Senate 21-12 but divided both Democrats and Republicans. Only nine Senate Republicans voted in favor of the bill. Three Democrats joined nine Republicans in voting against the bill. The Republicans who opposed the bill said they were concerned about the consequences of the availability of frictionless sports betting in people’s pockets.
Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) said that the bill would be responsible for “family disintegration” across the state. Nass, who is not running for re-election, said in a statement that the passage of the sports betting bill was one of the reasons why he believes Republicans will not have a Senate majority in the next session.
“Lost productivity, addiction treatment, bankruptcy, increased demand for social services, criminal justice costs and diminishing household savings far exceed any revenue benefit in the state,” Nass said.
Under the Wisconsin Constitution, gambling is only allowed on the property of the state’s Native American tribes. It’s been legal to place bets on sports in person at tribal casinos in Wisconsin since 2021.
The sports betting bill models Wisconsin’s program after Florida’s online sports betting law, which allows online gambling if the servers hosting the bets are located on tribal land.
The state’s tribes have been supportive of the bill, arguing that it allows them to keep pace with the expansion of sports betting in neighboring Illinois and the emergence of quasi-sports betting prediction sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket.
Several Democrats said Tuesday they were supporting the bill because it would help the tribes.
“I really think that this moment is about a collective assertion of tribal sovereignty and the preservation of exclusivity that the tribes have fought for decades to protect,” Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said.
Just days before the start of the 2025 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, the Senate passed a bill that would establish rules for managing name, image and likeness deals for collegiate athletes.
The bill passed with no debate in a 17-16 vote with six Democrats joining 11 Republicans to vote in favor of the bill.
College athletes have been eligible for NIL payments since a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision. NIL has upended college sports, with major programs such as UW-Madison’s football team being pushed to line up large amounts of money to attract recruits.
UW-Madison Athletic Director Chris McIntosh said at a public hearing on the bill last week that its passage is necessary to retain the school’s athletics competitiveness.
The bill would provide $14.6 million annually in state funds to go towards debt service for the maintenance costs of UW-Madison’s athletic facilities. It also includes $200,000 annually in state funds for debt service for maintenance costs of the UW–Milwaukee Klotsche Center as well as $200,000 for the UW-Green Bay soccer complex. The purpose is to free up funds that the UW can use to provide students with opportunities for NIL agreements.
The bill also prohibits NIL contracts that conflict with school policies or provide money in exchange for athletic performance, as well as those that require student athletes to endorse alcoholic beverages, gambling, banned athletic substances or illegal activities or substances. It also includes a requirement that student athletes disclose third-party NIL deals they enter.
UW schools will also be able to contract with organizations that can help student athletes find NIL opportunities.
A controversial provision of the bill creates a sweeping exemption for UW NIL agreements from the state’s open records law. The provision has raised concerns among open government advocates in the state.
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A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that, once signed, will release $125 million set aside nearly three years ago to address PFAS contamination in the state’s water supplies.
The vote, on the last day the Senate was scheduled to be in session for the year, was the culmination of a multi-year legislative saga involving negotiations between legislative Republicans, Gov. Tony Evers, the state Department of Natural Resources and a number of outside interest groups.
A similar bill passed the Legislature during the last legislative session but was vetoed by Evers over objections from Democrats and environmental groups that the bill was too lenient to polluters responsible for PFAS contamination.
The “innocent landowner” exemptions at issue in the first version of the bill were more narrowly constructed this time after a negotiation process with the DNR. Those changes drew the ire of the state’s largest business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and groups representing the state’s paper industry over concerns that industrial manufacturers such as paper mills were being singled out.
The two-bill package passed unanimously in both legislative chambers despite the opposition from WMC, which is usually one of the largest supporters of Wisconsin Republicans.
The bill’s author, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) noted on the floor Tuesday how “meticulously drafted” the final version was to make sure all the parties were on board.
“The result is a bill that helps people who need to be helped and stops the government from going after people who are genuinely innocent of causing a hazardous discharge,” he said.
Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement that he was looking forward to signing the bill so the money could get out the door.
“While I wish it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long for the Legislature to join me in this important work, I’m thrilled that these bills will soon be on the way to my desk so that we can get these critical and long-overdue investments out the door to the folks and families who need them,” Evers said. “Whether it’s kids in the classroom, families at home, or our farmers and agricultural industries, folks should be able to trust that the water coming from their tap is clean and safe. I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right.”
Under the bill, landowners who spread PFAS contaminated materials on farm fields under a DNR-authorized permit, local governments and airports that used PFAS-containing firefighting foams, solid waste disposal facilities and anyone who had PFAS move onto their property through shifting groundwater will not be held responsible for PFAS pollution under the state’s toxic spills law.
The spills law allows the DNR to require property owners responsible for pollution to pay for testing and cleanup of that pollution. The risk that the PFAS legislation could undermine the spills law was the largest objection from environmental groups to the first version of the bill introduced in the last session.
The second bill in the package creates the programs through which the $125 million will be spent. Those programs include grants to municipal water systems and private well owners, as well as expanding the state’s testing capabilities and studying the long-term effects of PFAS.
The $125 million was first set aside in the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget. Throughout that time, communities across the state have continued to be affected by PFAS contamination of their water supplies. Places including Marinette, the town of Stella near Rhinelander and French Island near La Crosse have been managing the pollution, which has been tied to birth defects and cancer, for years.
Save Our Water, an advocacy group made up of residents of PFAS-affected communities, frequently complained throughout the long negotiations that the Legislature wasn’t working to enact standards for the acceptable level of PFAS pollution in the state’s groundwater. The state has established standards for PFAS in municipal drinking water and surface water, but not groundwater, which is the source of drinking water for residents across the state with private wells.
In a statement, the organization celebrated the bill’s passage while noting they’ll continue to push for the creation of a groundwater standard.
“This legislation will help impacted communities and innocent landowners who are forced to deal with PFAS contamination which they didn’t cause and don’t have the resources to clean up,” the group said. “[We] will continue to push forward to achieve a meaningful groundwater standard for PFAS and look toward using the bipartisan approach taken with this legislation as a model for future PFAS legislation.”
Erik Kanter, the government affairs director of Clean Wisconsin, said this bill is only the first step as the state continues to manage the effects of widespread PFAS contamination, including the likelihood that even more money will need to be spent on the effort and the need for a groundwater standard.
“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 32 months ago, and since then, people in Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the Town of Stella, and communities throughout the state have waited and waited for our state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. Now, an end to that waiting is finally in sight,” Kanter said in a statement. “The long, difficult work toward compromise on what should have been a straightforward spending bill is a telling sign that toxic PFAS contamination is evolving into a widespread, costly public health and environmental crisis — one that touches everyone from consumers to farmers and manufacturers. It’s a crisis our state cannot ignore. This must be the first of many actions from Wisconsin lawmakers to take real, meaningful action that protects all of us from these pervasive, harmful chemicals. The state must now establish PFAS groundwater standards to provide clean water protection for rural Wisconsinites on private wells.”
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A plaque commemorating those who protected the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is displayed on March 17, 2026. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — More than two dozen U.S. House Democrats cast a spotlight Tuesday on a newly installed commemorative plaque for those who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
The members — led by New York U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the U.S. Committee on House Administration — led reporters on a visit to the honorific plaque, displayed on the Senate side of the Capitol close to a West Front entrance.
The plaque, quietly installed earlier in March in an area of the Capitol not usually visited by tourists, garnered criticism for its lack of public visibility, as well as a three-year delay to get it installed.
The memorial is also at the center of a lawsuit by two police officers who defended the Capitol that day.
“This is not in a prominent location — the actual law that we passed dictates where the location is — this is not it,” Morelle told States Newsroom.
The honorary plaque was installed more than five years after the deadly riot, where a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Trump in January 2025 pardoned the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.
The visitors Tuesday included Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was speaker of the House during the Jan. 6 insurrection and a target of the rioters.
A 2022 law mandated that an honorific plaque be installed within a year of its enactment and be placed “at a permanent location on the western front of the United States Capitol.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has received flak for delaying the installation.
The plaque installation came after the Senate in January unanimously agreed to a resolution directing the Architect of the Capitol to “prominently display” the plaque in a “publicly accessible location” in the Capitol’s Senate wing, “until the plaque can be placed in its permanent location.”
Morelle praised that effort, led by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, but said “this isn’t a place where visitors will see it,” noting that “tours are not allowed down here” and “this is an emergency exit only.”
The New York Democrat said that if Democrats win back the majority in November, he would do everything he could to “make sure it’s moved to the place it’s supposed to, where Americans will come by and see it and honor the sacrifice of the men and women who defended us that day.”
Meanwhile, Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, and Daniel Hodges, a current Metropolitan Police Department officer, sued the Architect of the Capitol over the plaque installation delay in June 2025.
Shortly after the plaque was displayed, the two argued on March 10 that their lawsuit should continue.
They said the Architect of the Capitol’s “decision to install the plaque in a part of the Capitol hidden from the public fails to comply with the text law, which requires the memorial to be displayed on the Capitol’s ‘western front,’ an exterior part of the building.”
The U.S. Capitol on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans pressed forward Tuesday with a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot, despite long odds the legislation will ever become law amid bipartisan opposition.
The 51-48 vote to formally begin debate on the measure, which GOP lawmakers have named the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, only starts the process. Senators are expected to vote on several amendments in the days, or possibly weeks, ahead.
But at least 60 lawmakers will be needed to end floor debate, a highly unlikely prospect with Democrats arguing the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against starting debate. North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote.
Murkowski wrote in a social media post last month the November midterm elections are “fast approaching” and that implementing “new federal requirements now, when states are deep into their preparations, would negatively impact election integrity by forcing election officials to scramble to adhere to new policies likely without the necessary resources.
“Ensuring public trust in our elections is at the core of our democracy, but federal overreach is not how we achieve this.”
President Donald Trump has made enacting nationwide changes to voting his top legislative priority ahead of the midterm elections, although Republicans swept unified control of government less than two years ago.
He wrote in a social media post Tuesday morning that he plans to campaign against anyone who doesn’t support the legislation, which the House passed last month.
“Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote. “If they do, each one of these points, separately, will be used against the user in his/her political campaign for office – A guaranteed loss!”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said during floor remarks the legislation would require Americans “to run through an obstacle course of red tape unlike anything we have ever seen in voter registration.”
The bill becoming law, he said, would lead to millions of Americans being kicked off voter rolls due to a requirement that states run their list of registered voters through a “deeply flawed” Department of Homeland Security database.
“If you’re kicked off the rolls, you may never be told,” he said. “There’s no requirement to let you know.”
Schumer argued the bill is less about ensuring only Americans vote in elections and more about Republican concerns they will lose at least one chamber of Congress later this year.
“It’s funny. I don’t remember MAGA Republicans screaming about stolen elections and voter fraud after the 2024 election that they won,” he said. “Well, the same rules that governed the 2024 election are going to be the ones that govern the 2026 election. The only difference is that this time MAGA Republicans know they’re in trouble politically. So now they’re suddenly saying the system is compromised and broken and it needs to be changed. It’s all lies.”
It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and anyone found guilty could face fines and up to a year in prison. There are limited instances of people not eligible to vote actually casting a ballot, according to analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center of data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, an especially conservative think tank.
BPC’s examination “found only 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023” and that “there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated a few hours before the procedural step that “the votes aren’t there” to pass the bill via a talking filibuster, a path several of his members want him to take.
“So what we are doing is we are having a fulsome debate on the floor of the United States Senate, which is something that I think the Senate has done in the past, and probably should do a lot more of,” he said. “But we’ll have it up. Everybody will have their say. At some point, we’ll have votes. And we’ll see where the votes are.”
A talking filibuster would require Democratic senators to give a series of floor speeches in order to delay or prevent final passage. That process could tie up the Senate floor for months.
Thune said he wasn’t sure when votes on amendments would begin, but that he expects the process to last “for the foreseeable future.”
“I think at least for right now, there’ll be some flexibility to see where the road leads,” he said.
Trump has asked GOP senators to add several provisions to the legislation, including new restrictions on mail-in voting, a federal prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth and a new law barring transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Policy Committee chair, said she doesn’t believe the federal government should tell states how to manage mail-in ballots.
“A lot of states, red states and blue, have more than a majority of the votes that are mail-in ballots,” she said. “So I think we’ve got to be careful there.”
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said that once debate on the SAVE America Act has concluded, he wants GOP leaders to hold a floor vote on whether to keep the rule that requires at least 60 senators vote to limit debate on bills, known as the legislative filibuster.
“I think the days of the minority preventing legislation from passing is over. Because Democrat voters, they want their members to end it. Republican voters want us to end it,” he said. “So in the end, it’ll be that public pressure that I think will eventually end the filibuster. And I’d just rather beat them to the punch so we can pass things like SAVE America Act.”
Thune said during an afternoon press conference he believes the 60-vote procedural hurdle should remain in place because “throughout history it’s protected Republicans and conservative priorities and principles a lot more often than it’s protected Democrats.”
The bill would require local election officials to ensure anyone registering to vote proves they are an American, likely by showing a passport or a birth certificate. Then, when people go to cast a ballot by mail, during early voting, or on Election Day, they would need to show a valid photo ID, like a driver’s license or military identification card.
The legislation would require state governments to submit their voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security so its officials can run them through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system to check if anyone already registered isn’t a U.S. citizen.
The legislation doesn’t provide state or local governments with any extra money or time to implement the changes, if it were to become law.
The Bipartisan Policy Center writes in a brief about the legislation that the organization “recommends that policymakers avoid making major changes in an election year given the likelihood that they result in administrative errors and create confusion for voters.”
The three BPC experts who analyzed the bill said it “prioritizes expediency over precision.”
“The act becomes effective on the date of enactment, giving states no time to adjust processes,” they wrote. “It also requires that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission offer implementation guidance to states within just 10 days of enactment.”
The legislation would give private citizens the ability to sue election officials who register someone without evidence of U.S. citizenship.
Jeffrey Thorsby, legislative director at the National Association of Counties, wrote in a post about the legislation’s impacts that the “liability provisions could discourage election workers and volunteers from serving at a time when many counties already face recruitment challenges.”
“Currently, the onus on a non-citizen who registers or votes is on the illegal voter,” he wrote. “SAVE America Act proposes a radical change in how we punish fraudulent voting.”
Booths await voters at the Pennington County Administration Building during early voting on Jan. 19, 2026, for a municipal election in Rapid City, South Dakota. (Photo by Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight)
The voting overhaul measure that the U.S. Senate began debating Tuesday would cause major headaches for underfunded state and local election officials, without meaningfully stopping fraud, according to a collection of voting rights advocates and elections officers.
The so-called SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing, would create chaos for state and local elections administrators by immediately imposing several new requirements without adding funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said on a press call Tuesday organized by Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.
“I cannot emphasize enough the Herculean effort that the SAVE America Act would present for election officials across this country,” Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as a co-founder of the group Advance Elections, said. “Please do not set our country or these public servants up for failure. Bring us to the table. Develop this legislation properly and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”
The bill would initially add $35 million in costs for Washington state to administer this year’s midterm elections, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said. The measure would cost an estimated additional $12 million annually in presidential election years for the state’s elections administrators, he added.
But it would not provide federal funding for states and localities to meet the new costs.
“When I looked at the SAVE America Act to understand how it would affect election administration, I did a control-F for the dollar sign, and I did not see a single dollar, much less the hundreds of millions needed to implement these changes,” Brinson Bell said.
The bill, which Trump and other proponents say is necessary to stop immigrants from voting, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. They would also have to provide a photo ID at polling places.
But the measure “is the very definition of a solution in search of a problem,” Kimsey said on Tuesday’s call. Noncitizens voting in federal elections is exceedingly rare.
Overall, the bill would make voting more difficult, especially for people who have changed their names, tribal citizens and people without photo ID, participants on the call said. That counters the goal of elections officials: to make voting easier.
“The problem isn’t that the wrong people are voting,” Kimsey said. “The problem is that not enough people are voting.”
The bill would also create barriers for vote-by-mail, which Washington and other states have used for decades.
The system has increased voter participation and is widely popular across party lines.
“The state of Washington’s vote-by-mail system is such a strong system,” Cantwell said. “The whole country should be moving more towards that and not away from it.”
The bill’s backers, including most Republicans in Congress, say it would erect commonsense safeguards to protect U.S. elections.
In a Tuesday floor speech setting up debate on the measure, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune called it “essential.”
“If there’s anything essential to the integrity of elections, it’s ensuring that those who are registered to vote are eligible to vote – and that those who show up to vote at polling places are … who they say they are,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said.
The way to do that, he added, was to require proof of citizenship and photo identification.
Photo IDs, though, aren’t as universal as commonly thought, League of Women Voters of Maine Executive Director Chrissy Hart said.
Eighteen percent of citizens older than 65 lack a photo ID, as well as 16% of Latino voters, 25% of Black voters and 15% of low-income Americans, Hart said.
Kimsey, who identified as a Republican during his first run for office in 1998 and became an independent after the pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election, was asked if the measure was a continuation of Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. elections.
He answered that what he deemed the “election denial movement” lost momentum after Trump’s 2024 victory, but that it seemed to be reappearing ahead of the midterms.
“In my view, this is nothing more than a very clumsy — and I hope not effective — but a very clumsy attempt to create chaos in this year’s midterm elections,” he said.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., in an elevator at the U.S. Capitol on June 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C., at a time when Republican leaders were pushing to get President Donald Trump's "One, Big, Beautiful Bill," Act through Congress and to his desk before the July Fourth holiday. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Sure, Sen. Thom Tillis has become the most visible, outspoken Republican insider critic of the second Trump administration. But don’t mistake Tillis for a maverick.
The North Carolina senator is being who he’s long been, the sort of GOP stalwart known as an establishment Republican. A Republican who’s conservative on fiscal issues, usually pragmatic on other stuff. A Chamber of Commerce Republican. A Bush-Romney Republican.
“Thom Tillis was, and is, best understood not as a moderate, but as a pragmatist,” said Christopher Cooper, author of “Anatomy of a Purple State,” which analyzes North Carolina politics.
“When he speaks, when he acts, and when he stays quiet is all calculated to achieve the goals he has in mind,” said Cooper, professor of political science at Western Carolina University. “With no chance for reelection, it’s simply that his speech now is less costly.”
Tillis is stepping down after two Senate terms. Over the last nine months, he has shown a more blunt public side.
“The only rational explanation I’ve seen” for his recent outspokenness, said veteran North Carolina Republican strategist Carter Wrenn, “is that he’s free of all the politics right now.”’
Tillis would not consent to an interview for this story.
The latest, most public Tillis blowup came March 3, when he torched soon-to-be-former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Tillis had voted last year, along with 51 other Republicans and seven Democrats, to confirm Noem as secretary.
This time, he talked about the “disaster that President Biden left behind,” and a “failed DHS.” But, he said, he was critical of Noem because of how she’s run the agency.
Tillis maintained an angry tone throughout his confrontation with the secretary. “What we see is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem,” he protested. “Time after time I’ve been disappointed.”
He threatened to hold up unrelated U.S. Senate business unless he got satisfaction.
He cited a letter from her department’s Office of Inspector General, which noted several times she had made it tough for the agency to proceed with investigations of her department.
He recalled how Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency agents shot and killed two Minnesota protesters in January, both U.S. citizens. “Why can’t we just say we made a mistake?” Tillis asked. Noem would not apologize during the hearing for the shootings.
Tillis brought up Noem’s dog, which she shot because it could not be trained, an incident that became famous after she wrote about it in a 2024 book while South Dakota governor.
“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training. And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices?” Tillis asked incredulously.
The willingness to distance himself from party orthodoxy was vintage Tillis. The unrelenting exasperation was new.
Michael Bitzer, professor of politics and history at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, described state Republicans this way: Two-thirds are firm Trump loyalists. The other one-third make up the traditional GOP.
That means their roots are often in “Chamber of Commerce, mainstream, party-oriented Republicanism rather than the personality of Trump,” he said.
These Republicans still tend to run the U.S. Senate Republican Conference, led by senators such as Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and former GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
They have a long history of conservatism that tends toward a practical approach that gets the job done.
They teamed with Democrats in 2001 and 2002 to get President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education reform passed. They wooed enough Democratic support in 2002 to authorize Bush to invade Iraq. They helped the party nominate Arizona Sen. John McCain for president in 2008 and former Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah four years later.
When Tillis first ran for Senate in 2014, he got the backing of Romney, who appeared in a television ad for the candidate. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush campaigned for Tillis. They were not Trump fans.
When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced in 2016, a few weeks before the presidential election, showing GOP nominee Donald Trump making crude remarks about women, Tillis was critical.
“As a proud husband and father of a daughter, I find Donald Trump’s comments indefensible,” Tillis tweeted at the time.
Tillis, though, had a history of keeping the Republican faithful happy.
He stirred controversy in 2011, when while North Carolina House speaker, he said in a video, “What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance.”
His examples: “We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice, in her condition, that needs help and that we should help.”
But, Tillis added, “We need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government and say at some point, ‘You’re on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies, but we’re not going to take care of you.’”
In 2014, he told NBC News he regretted using the words “divide and conquer.”
As a U.S. senator, Tillis has voted with Republicans much of the time. He ranked 35th out of 100 senators in the nonpartisan GovTrack’s “ideology score,” which starts with the most conservative senators.
Twelve Republicans had lower scores (just below Tillis was Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., nominated by Trump to replace Noem).
The most public, most noticed breaks have come in the last year or so.
Tillis was sharply critical of Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin was controversial because of his ties to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump wound up pulling the nomination.
The loudest schism came in June, when Tillis voiced concern with Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law on July 4. He went on to vote against the final version.
This was and still is the signature domestic achievement of the president’s second term. It extends the 2017 tax cuts and adds new ones. But it also cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that helps pay costs incurred by lower-income people.
Tillis called Trump’s health care advisers “amateurs,” and described how he did extensive research to assess the impact on his state. He found it potentially devastating.
“So, what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?” he asked his colleagues.
Trump was furious. “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! “ he posted on his Truth Social website.
The day after Tillis made his speech, he said he would not seek reelection.
He was free. His decision made political sense.
“It looked like he was free of constraints,” said Wrenn.
Tillis will soon be in the spotlight again, as he’s vowed to hold up Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chairman.
While he sees Warsh as qualified, Tillis added that the Justice Department “continues to pursue a criminal investigation into Chairman Jerome Powell based on committee testimony that no reasonable person could construe as possessing criminal intent.”
The investigation is connected to Powell’s comments about spending on the renovation of the Fed buildings.
“My position has not changed: I will oppose the confirmation of any Federal Reserve nominee, including for the position of chairman, until the DOJ’s inquiry into Chairman Powell is fully and transparently resolved,” Tillis said.
A federal judge last week blocked the Justice subpoenas to Powell, saying “the government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime.”
Tillis is still not relenting.
“This ruling confirms just how weak and frivolous the criminal investigation of Chairman Powell is and it is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence,” the senator said in a statement.
“We all know how this is going to end and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office should save itself further embarrassment and move on. Appealing the ruling will only delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.”
Trump badly wants to replace Powell, thinking that Powell has been too unwilling to take steps to lower interest rates.
The Warsh drama is the latest vintage Tillis move, said congressional experts.
Tillis “is a creature of the legislature. He came with a very long legislative resume, knew how to play the game and was adroit at moving around and changing positions when it came to his advantage,” said Ross Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
He also wanted people to remember he was pragmatic, willing to be independent. Warsh provides one fresh opportunity. The Noem hearing offered another.
The day after the Noem hearing, Trump fired her, the first person in his second-term Cabinet to be dismissed.
Tillis, Baker said, “wanted to leave a memorial to himself, which may be something like the end of Kristi Noem’s career as secretary of Homeland Security.”
After all, he said, “Tillis is a good government guy.”
State-by-state figures from monthly utility bill data show, on average, American households paid roughly $110, or 6.4%, more for electricity in 2025, compared to 2024. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
WASHINGTON — Electricity rates “increased significantly” in nearly every U.S. state in 2025, with residents in a dozen states seeing at least a 10% jump, according to a congressional report released by Democrats Tuesday.
Minority members of the Joint Economic Committee released state-by-state figures from monthly utility bill data showing, on average, American households paid roughly $110, or 6.4%, more for electricity in 2025, compared to 2024.
The analysis came amid other gloomy economic headlines, including a steep increase in gasoline prices since the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began, and a lousy jobs report last month.
States that saw the highest spikes included New Jersey, 16.9%; Indiana, 16.3%; Illinois, 15.9%; Pennsylvania, 12.1%; Kentucky, 11.8%; Maryland, 11.6%; Tennessee, 11.6%; New York, 11.4%; Ohio, 11.1%; Missouri, 11%; Maine, 10.6%; and Washington state, 10.3%.
The District of Columbia topped the list with an increase of 23.5%, according to the two-page report.
Rates dropped by 18% in Nevada, 3.1% in California, 2.4% in Hawaii and 1.6 % in Arizona.
Democrats on the committee pointed to President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to slash electricity costs, among other prices, by half.
Affordability is a key issue ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress. Trump has repeatedly referred to the issue of affordability as a “hoax.”
“American families don’t need a report to tell them that the President has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs; they already feel the impact of President Trump’s actions every single day. But this report is yet another indication that sky-high costs are continuing to rise — and are continuing to hurt American families,” the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said in a statement.
The committee pulled the electricity bill data from the federal Energy Information Administration.
As of December, the majority, by far, of electricity in the United States is generated by natural gas. Next in generation are nuclear power and coal, followed by wind, conventional hydroelectric and solar, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Experts and economists challenged Trump’s campaign promise to cut domestic energy costs by expanding U.S. drilling, highlighting petroleum is priced on a global, not local, market, as noted in an October 2024 report by FactCheck.org.
Trump recently gathered tech CEOs in the Oval Office to sign a symbolic “ratepayer protection pledge” meant to combat rising energy costs due to AI data center demand.
“It’s a big deal; it’s going to have a tremendous impact on electricity costs… Under this new agreement, Big Tech companies are committing to fully cover the cost of increased electricity production required for AI data centers — and that would mean prices for American communities will not go up, but in many cases, will actually come down,” Trump said.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 4.8% increase in electricity costs over the past 12 months, according to the consumer price index for February. The report showed energy services overall rose 6.3% year over year as piped gas utility costs spiked 10.3% since February 2025.
Expenses overall rose 2.4% over the past year, according to the latest figures, continuing to exceed the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.
But nowhere has a price increase been more noticeable in recent days than at the gas pump.
Gas prices nationwide averaged just under $3.72 Monday — that’s up from $2.93 one month ago, according to AAA.
Roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum products have been choked off as Iran continues to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz with threats to shell any oil tankers passing through, except for a few negotiated trips.
The U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began Feb. 28.
The requests this spring include 60 operational referendum requests, totaling over $1 billion in requests, and 14 for capital expenses. A hallway in La Follette High School in Madison. (Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
More than 70 school referendum questions will appear on ballots across the state in April, continuing the trend of school districts going to voters to ask permission to raise property taxes to keep up with costs.
The requests this spring include 60 operational referendum requests, totaling over $1 billion in requests, and 14 for capital expenses. Two school districts, Sauk Prairie and Howard-Suamico, have a capital and an operating request on the ballot.
The requests come as state leaders debate the best way to provide property tax relief to Wisconsinites, as a group of teachers, students and community members have turned to the court system to find relief and as districts grapple with the consequences of referendum outcomes.
Ahead of Election Day on April 7, the Wisconsin Examiner checked in with three school districts seeking to raise property taxes to help with costs. The stakes are high in local communities as passage or rejection will determine which school programs are offered, whether staff get pay raises and whether school consolidation may be on the table.
Dodgeville School District is one of four school districts in southeastern Wisconsin that have not passed an operational referendum, though not for lack of trying.
The district is asking voters in the spring to weigh in on a $7.5 million request that would provide $2.5 million annually for operational expenses over the next three years.
The district had a failed referendum in November 2024 and another failed request in April 2025. Its new request is a slimmed down version of the last one.
A Wisconsin Policy Forum report from April 2025 found that “retry” efforts have increased as districts have become more willing over time to retry operating referenda that failed. According to the report, from 2000 to 2017, about half of failed operational referendum requests were not retried within two years, but since 2018, more than three-quarters of operating referendum failures were retried.
District administrator Ryan Bohnsack told the Examiner the district needs additional funds to keep up with costs. He said the district has been making cuts where it can, including by delaying technology upgrades, day-to-day maintenance and curriculum upgrades, but that can only go so far.
“We’ve gotten to the point where we know we don’t have the funds to keep operating,” Bohnsack said, adding that the district’s fund balance is below its operational balance and it will need to start borrowing money to pay its bills.
Bohnsack said rising costs, including for staff pay, declining enrollment and stagnant state aid have all played a role in the district’s financial situation.
Randell Thompson, the treasurer for the Dodgeville School Board, emphasized that the district’s need for an operational referendum is not unique.
“If you look across the 421 school districts in Wisconsin, the vast majority have needed to go to an operating referendum at some level,” Thompson said. “Part of the state funding formula is to get local taxpayers to have a say in how much of the school budget they want to cover.”
According to 2023 census data, Wisconsin has fallen to 26th in the nation in per pupil K-12 education spending and is spending 10% below the national average. The state was ranked 11th in 2002, and at the time spent 11% above the national average.
In the most recent state budget, lawmakers invested state funds in special education, though recent estimates find the amount of money set aside will not be enough to reimburse school districts at the promised 42% rate. The Legislature also declined to provide additional state aid to schools — blaming Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year veto that extended districts’ authority to bring in an additional $325 per pupil, which districts will only be able to take advantage of through raising property taxes.
A lawsuit recently filed in Eau Claire County Circuit Court is challenging the state’s school funding formula, arguing that it is unconstitutional as it does not meet the state’s constitutional obligation to provide educational opportunities to all students.
State leaders are also discussing ways to provide property tax relief through special education funding, school funding and school levy tax credits, though discussions so far have not yielded any results. While Gov. Tony Evers wants to provide additional funding to school general aids, Republican lawmakers have proposed investing in the school levy tax credit, which provides property tax relief but doesn’t provide direct dollars to school districts.
The last time Dodgeville had an operational referendum was in 2012, which was just a one-year ask. The district has passed two capital referendum requests since then.
Bohnstack said this means that an operational referendum is a “new concept” to many residents in the area, but that “given the strategy at the state level now… we’re now kind of at the mercy of the local control being able to support the school through the operational day to day expenses.”
The school district lays out the distribution for the referendum on its website. A little over $1 million annually, or 43% of the referendum, would be used for staff costs, $525,591 or 21% would be for the district’s fund balance and the rest would go towards technology costs, curriculum, facilities, playground safety updates at the elementary school and classroom supplies.
In addition to inflationary costs, Bohnstack said the district is grappling with declining enrollment, which has not helped its financial situation.
Data from the Department of Public Instruction reports that Wisconsin public schools lost 14,087 students this year. Wisconsin school funding is a complicated per-pupil formula that is tied to student enrollment, meaning that districts receive less state funding if they have a drop in the number of students.
“The challenge I have is I could lose 100 kids in my school district, but not be able to eliminate a single teaching position, because those kids are spread out over 12, 13 different age groups, and if I was originally of class sizes in the thirties, and I now have class sizes in the twenties, I still need a teacher either way,” Bohnstack said.
The state’s funding system also leaves districts with few options, he said.
“They don’t fund special education in a way that you can budget for it,” Bohstack said. “I also see this stalemate right now all because of this 400-year [veto], $325, and to me, who pays the price right now because they won’t work together, is the educators, the kids caught in the middle and the schools and the communities,” Bohnstack said, adding that lawmakers should make use of the $4.6 billion state budget surplus to fund Wisconsin schools.
Over the weekend, Democratic lawmakers introduced a $1.3 billion proposal that would provide over $445 million towards general school aid for the 2026–27 school year and provide schools with a special education reimbursement at 60% sum sufficient, meaning schools would be guaranteed that rate. It’s unlikely that the package will advance in the Republican-led Legislature.
Bohnstack isn’t holding his breath for action.
“Hope is not a strategy. I have no hope that they will do anything… Let’s solve our own problems, and in the end, if they do well, we adjust,” Bohnstack said.
Without the referendum, Bohnstack said the district is looking at freezing staff salaries. He said the district is already preparing to go to referendum in November if voters reject their spring request, though it would likely mean a larger request.
“There were certain positions that we cut that we cut deeper than what we needed to, and we need to ensure we have the programming in place to recruit and retain teachers, so there are some staffing positions that we need to rebuild,” Bohnstack said. He added that the technology and curriculum in the district needs to be updated.
Thompson said that a later referendum likely won’t be “any easier for people from a tax standpoint, I suspect,” but the district has to “be realistic about it and plan for what happens if it doesn’t pass.”
And still, the passage of the referendum wouldn’t be the end of Dodgeville’s referendum conversations. Its nonrecurring request would end in 2029 and could put it back at the financial point where it is now.
“Either the Legislature changes the formula, or we’re going to be coming back for a referendum in three years,” Bohnstack said. “We’re not going to be able to cut our way out of this challenge that we’re currently in.”
Chad Schraufnagel, the district administrator of the Lake Country School District, said his district has no choice but to go to referendum. The district, which is one of seven public school districts that feed to Arrowhead Union High School District, is going for its third “retry” attempt.
One operational request in 2024 failed, though a capital referendum passed that same year. A second operational request failed in April 2025
Schraufnagel said that without a referendum to help with operational costs, the district is looking at dissolving.
The Lake Country request would provide the district with the ability to bring in $800,000 annually for four years through property taxes. Schraufnagel said the funds would be enough to “just give us time to try and figure out a strategic way to consolidate and move forward.”
“If we don’t get the referendum, our district [is] going to dissolve,” Schraufnagel said. “It’s going to be hard for us to keep the doors open beyond ’26-27.”
The last school district in Wisconsin to dissolve was the Ondossagon School District in 1990. It was absorbed into the Ashland, Drummond and Washburn districts.
Schraufnagel said he explains the difference to residents this way: “Consolidation, it’s a three-year, three- to four-year process, heavily involved, and it takes a lot of time to do it correctly and strategically, given all of the tax implications, contract implications, costs and things like that, but with consolidation, you have local control… Dissolution the state of Wisconsin is going to tell you how it’s going to go, and you have no more local control.”
Schraufnagel said the factors that led to the district’s financial difficulties are threefold: state aid not keeping up with inflation, overstaffing and the cost related to an unemployment benefit that could’ve been cut many years ago.
“Those three things really were the financial nightmare for the district,” Shraufnagel said. “We could have as a district, I think, survived a combination of the two, but you cannot survive all three together.”
Schraufnagel said the district has worked to make over $1.6 million in cuts including by increasing class sizes, cutting post-employment benefits and eliminating programming such as band and Spanish courses.
“Those were very significant costs on the district that really were in control of the district… Now our problem is we’ve done all those things, but now it’s a matter of the state funding not keeping up,” Schraufnagel said.
Schraufnagel said the previous requests were likely rejected for a number of reasons, including a large operational request for the Arrowhead Union High School District that was on the same ballot and was also rejected. He said that the district has also worked to be direct with residents on the issues at hand and why the district needs the referendum.
Kelly Hoesly, a mother of three Lake Country School District students, is leading the “ Vote Yes” advocacy group in the district. She said the group is taking a new approach to informing community members about the referendum including watching social media and hosting events at local bars to provide answers to questions. She spoke with the Examiner one day after an event where she handed out about 130 “Vote Yes” signs to residents.
Hoesly said she made the decision to send her children to the district because “it just felt like home” and reminded her of “my elementary school that I had growing up,” and she said she is hopeful the referendum will help prop up the district so it can make decisions about its future without its “back against a wall.”
“This referendum is about maintaining that quality of education that our students have today and supporting that,” Hoesly said. “I’m encouraged by how our community’s been engaging this time around. People are asking questions, they’re attending the meetings, they’re having conversations even with different viewpoints. It shows people care. I’m hopeful.”
The effort has not been without its challenges. Hoesly said there is a misunderstanding among some about what could happen if the referendum doesn’t pass.
“There’s this appetite in our area to consolidate, and when talking about consolidation, everyone thinks it’s easy,” Hoesly said.
This legislative session, Republican lawmakers, who have pointed out declining enrollment as the main reason for the funding issues plaguing schools — rather than state aid lagging inflation — have proposed that school districts look at consolidation as a solution to the funding woes that are pushing them to go to referendum. They’ve said the state’s 421 school districts constitute an “unsustainable” number of districts.
During a public hearing in November on a package of bills meant to encourage school consolidation, Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said many districts have gone to referendum to “backfill” the loss of state aid due to declining enrollment, but that there “is no referendum that can be passed or law that can be signed to single-handedly reverse decades of birth rate declines to alleviate the stresses of declining enrollment in our schools. It’s clear that a more long-term solution is needed to address these demographic challenges because the status quo is not sustainable.”
The bills were framed as an option for schools, not mandatory. It is unclear whether the bills, which have passed the Assembly, will become law. They still need to pass the Senate before they can go to Evers to be signed or vetoed.
Hoesly said that she has concerns given the complicated nature of school consolidation and the need for a referendum approving any consolidation.
“In order for two districts to consolidate with one another, both voting communities have to go to the polls in a referendum vote and vote to approve it, and if one does and one doesn’t, then what?” Hoesly said. “If the communities don’t approve it, you are back at square one.”
Schraufnagel told the Examiner that he didn’t think consolidation would not solve the school funding issue.
“If 87% of all districts, those that are K-12, are going to operational referendum, what is consolidation going to do? It’s going to delay you needing to go to an operational referendum for maybe two or three years. The funding has not changed,” Schraufnagel said.
School consolidation did not end funding concerns for Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District, though it did help stave off financial crisis for about a decade, according to District Administrator Tracy Donich.
The district was one of five school consolidations in Wisconsin between 2000 and 2022, according to WPR.
Donich said that when the districts consolidated in 2011, the move cut down on costs in some areas including as the district cut administration down to one principal and one superintendent. The state also provided incentives for school districts that opt to consolidate.
But, Donich said, costs remained the same in other areas.
“The things that don’t change are the number of students. You also have the same amount of transportation, so there are a lot of other costs that don’t go away when you consolidate, but they did what they should. That helped for a little while, and eventually that temporary funding ran out,” Donich said.
Donich said the district “started to see a deficit budget,” which led to it going to referendum in 2022. Since the referendum was approved, Donich said the district has been considering the next one.
Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District is seeking a $6.8 million nonrecurring referendum. It would provide $1.1 million in year one and $1.9 million in years two, three and four.
Donich said the district is fortunate that the community has been supportive in the past, and they have worked to provide financial updates at school board meetings as well as set up displays at athletic events and posts on social media and the school website.
“We’re really trying to be very transparent with the community and give them all the information they need to make an informed decision,” she said.
This year’s April requests come as Wisconsin voters appear to be less friendly towards school funding referendum asks. Recent polling from Marquette University Law School found that 57% of voters said they would be inclined to vote against a referendum to increase taxes for schools in their communities.
Donich said the state’s funding formula “is definitely needing some updates… so the local taxpayers aren’t feeling that pinch quite so much.”
This year, the district’s request has increased from the previous referendum to deal with inflationary costs and a lack of state funding. Donich noted that the district has to transfer over $1 million each year from its general fund to its special education fund to keep up with the mandated costs.
“If we would not have to do that, it would really help us with having to go to referendum, possibly we wouldn’t even have to go to referendum if they had kept up even with half the amount of inflation,” Donich said. “We wouldn’t be in this situation at all.”
Without the referendum, Donich said the district will look to cut costs by delaying technology upgrades and having classrooms cleaned less frequently.
“We need to find a way that’s sustainable to help our school system thrive and not being able to rely on the factors at the state level definitely encourages people to go to more referendums,” Donich said. “When we have to do a budget without having any idea what the state will be able to provide, federal funding shifts, the most reliable thing we have is our local community.”
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