Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom that uses journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected, seeks a senior reporter to lead our newsroom’s state government coverage.
The successful candidate will be responsible for producing regular coverage of state government policy and politics with a premium on explaining how they affect the public and how citizens can stay in charge of their government. Coverage will include regular stories that provide context and deepen understanding about state government activities, explain what elected representatives are up to for areas of the state with no Capitol coverage, and deliver high-impact investigative and explanatory solutions. A top-tier candidate will already have a following on social media and be comfortable discussing Wisconsin politics on radio, TV and podcasts and in other web-based formats. Our aim is to deliver important state government news and knowledge to people through their preferred format and channels, whether that’s shared social videos, concise newsletter summaries or compelling narratives.
Job duties
The statehouse reporter will:
Produce weekly news and analysis content for the Monday newsletter Forward.
Produce substantive investigations that examine societal problems and explore solutions.
Participate in weekly planning meetings to map out short- and long-term coverage plans.
Mentor interns and other reporters in state government reporting.
Engage in opportunities to share reporting with media partners.
Report to state editor Matthew DeFour as part of a team with two other reporters and interns.
Required qualifications: The ideal candidate will bring a public service mindset and a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisan journalism ethics, including a commitment to abide by Wisconsin Watch’s ethics policies.
More specifically, we’re looking for a reporter who:
Has covered government and shown the ability to develop sources, find important stories and inform the public about what their elected representatives are up to.
Brings a nimble, innovative mindset — Wisconsin Watch is exploring the frontiers of nonprofit journalism, and we want reporters who bring ideas about how to grow our audience and deliver meaningful information to the people who need it most.
Is committed to nonpartisan reporting focused on identifying problems as well as best-practice solutions.
Key bonus skills:
Data reporting expertise.
Spanish language fluency.
Experience with audio and video storytelling.
Location: The reporter will be based in Madison with desks in both the Capitol press room and our Wisconsin Watch newsroom in Madison.
Salary and benefits: The annual salary range is $60,000-$80,000. Benefits include five weeks of vacation; paid sick leave and family and caregiver leave; 75% reimbursement for silver-tier health and dental insurance on the federal exchange; 100% vision insurance coverage; $100 per paycheck automatic employer contribution to a 403(b) retirement plan (no match required).
Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience.
Deadline: May 30, 2025
To apply: Please submit a PDF of your resume, work samples and answer some brief questions in this application form. If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Hiring Manager Matthew DeFour at mdefour@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We are an equal-opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.
About Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Founded in 2009, Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing independent, nonpartisan journalism that makes the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. We believe that access to truthful local news is critical to a healthy democracy and to finding solutions to the most pressing problems of everyday life. Under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella, we have multiple news departments including a statewide investigative and explanatory projects team, a Capitol bureau, a regional collaboration in northeast Wisconsin called the NEW News Lab, and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS).
NNS was founded in 2011 as a mission-driven newsroom that reports on and celebrates Milwaukee’s central city neighborhoods. Through its reporting, website, e-newsletters and News414 texting service, NNS covers ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connects readers with resources and serves as a watchdog for their neighbors. Together, Wisconsin Watch’s state team and NNS reporters collaborate to produce solutions-oriented investigative and explanatory stories highlighting issues affecting communities in Milwaukee.
Democratic voters on Thursday asked the liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court to throw out the battleground state’s current congressional district boundaries after a similar request was rejected last year.
Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight U.S. House seats — but only two of those districts are considered competitive. The petition seeks to have the state’s congressional district lines redrawn ahead of the 2026 midterms. Filed on Wednesday and made public Thursday, the petition comes from the Elias Law Group, which represents Democratic groups and candidates and also filed last year’s request.
The new petition argues that the court’s decision to redraw maps for state legislative districts a couple years ago has opened the door to revisiting maps for U.S. House districts. The petition asks for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take the case directly, skipping lower courts.
The chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, Brian Schimming, called the lawsuit “a desperate attempt by far-left Democrats who have shown time and time again that they can’t win without rigged maps.”
But Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, who criticized the state Supreme Court for not hearing the lawsuit last year, praised the new effort.
“The residents of Wisconsin deserve fair maps,” Pocan said in a text message. “Hopefully this will provide that.”
The court is controlled 4-3 by liberal justices. Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford won an April election to ensure the court will remain under a 4-3 liberal majority until at least 2028.
Redistricting was an issue in that race after Crawford spoke at a virtual event billed as a “chance to put two more House seats in play,” a move that Republicans said shows that Crawford is committed to redrawing congressional districts to benefit Democrats. Crawford denied those allegations.
Liberals will control the court until at least 2028 — with implications for abortion rights, congressional redistricting, labor rights and the environment.
The court in 2023 ordered new maps for the state Legislature, saying the Republican-drawn ones were unconstitutional. The GOP-controlled Legislature, out of fear that the court would order maps even more unfavorable to Republicans, passed ones drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Democrats made gains in the state Legislature in the November election and are hoping to take majority control in 2026.
When ordering the state legislative maps redrawn, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said the earlier conservative-controlled court was wrong in 2021 to say that maps drawn that year should have as little change as possible from the maps that were in place at the time. The latest lawsuit argues that decision warranted replacing the congressional district maps that were drawn under the “least change” requirement.
In 2010, the year before Republicans redrew the congressional maps, Democrats held five seats compared with three for Republicans.
Democrats are eyeing two congressional seats for possible flipping in 2026.
Western Wisconsin’s 3rd District is represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who won an open seat in 2022 after longtime Democratic Rep. Ron Kind retired, and won reelection in 2024.
Southeastern Wisconsin’s 1st District, held by Republican Rep. Bryan Steil since 2019, was made more competitive under the latest maps but still favors Republicans.
The current congressional maps in Wisconsin, drawn by Evers, were approved by the state Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2022 declined to block them from taking effect.
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.
The father of a Wisconsin teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting was charged with felonies Thursday in connection with the case, police said.
The shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison last December.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, of Madison, was taken into custody around 3:45 a.m. Thursday, police said.
Rupnow was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 resulting in death. All three charges are felonies, punishable by up to six years in prison each. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on Friday.
Rupnow’s daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, opened fire on Dec. 16, 2024, at Abundant Life Christian School, killing a teacher and a 14-year-old student before killing herself. Two other students were critically injured.
Jeffrey Rupnow did not immediately respond to a message The Associated Press left on his Facebook page. No one immediately returned voicemails left at possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow. Online court records indicate he represented himself in the couple’s 2022 divorce and do not list an attorney for him in that case.
According to a criminal complaint, Rupnow told investigators that his daughter was traumatized by her parents’ divorce and got into shooting guns after he took her shooting on a friend’s land. He said he bought her two handguns and told her the access code to his gun safe was his Social Security number entered backward.
Investigators discovered writings in her room in which she describes humanity as “filth,” hated people, got her weapons through her father’s “stupidity” and wanted to kill herself in front of everyone. She built a cardboard model of the school and developed a schedule for her attack that ended just after noon with the notation: “ready 4 death.”
Police recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that her father had bought her from a study hall where she opened fire and another .22-caliber pistol that her father had given to her as a Christmas present in a bag she had been carrying through the school.
Twelve days after the shooting, a Madison police detective received a message from Jeffrey Rupnow saying his biggest mistake was teaching his kid safe gun handling and urging police to warn people to change the codes on their gun safes every two to three months.
“Kids are smart and they will figure it out. Just like someone trying to hack your bank account.’ I just want to protect other families from going through what I’m going through,” he said.
Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.
Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.
The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.
In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school that offers prekindergarten classes through high school. About 420 students attend the institution.
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.
The federal Medicare program spends more per beneficiary for a person on Medicare Advantage than if the person were on traditional Medicare.
The difference is projected at 20% higher, or $84 billion, in 2025, compared with 22% and $83 billion in 2024, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.
The independent congressional agency says a key reason is Medicare Advantage uses a fixed monthly payment per beneficiary, rather than fee-for-service.
Medicare is federal health insurance mainly for people age 65 and over. Medicare Advantage is a private alternative paid for by Medicare. Advantage enrollees can get more benefits, but are restricted on providers they can see.
Advantage enrollment has been increasing, but some enrollees find it difficult to switch to traditional Medicare when they get older and sicker.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who represents the Madison area, claimed in April that Medicare Advantage was created to save money but costs more than Medicare.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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We spoke to more than 25 people who reported problems connecting via phone calls in Wisconsin prisons. The problems began intermittently after prisons began distributing free electronic tablets in March 2024, and they have worsened more recently.
Tablets were supposed to improve communication and give prisoners more flexibility to call loved ones, but the private contractor who runs the prison’s communication system has failed to keep up with increased call volume.
Wisconsin prisoners have struggled to connect with loved ones for weeks and even months as a state contractor fails to keep up with increasing demand for its call and messaging services.
The Department of Corrections last year began working with Texas-based ICSolutions, the prison system’s phone provider, to make electronic tablets free for every state prisoner. The state allocated $2.5 million to cover some of the cost. The program aims to boost quality of life behind bars by making it easier for incarcerated people to connect with their loved ones and access resources.
Intermittent problems began after some prisons began distributing the tablets in March 2024. The issues worsened this spring, prisoners and their family members say, spreading across institutions that imprison more than 23,000.
WPR and Wisconsin Watch heard from more than 25 people experiencing connection difficulties at multiple prisons. Incarcerated people described dialing a number multiple times before getting through and waiting more than an hour for calls to connect. Family members described hearing their phones ring but receiving no option to connect with the caller; some calls have dropped mid-conversation.
Family members are airing frustrations in a nearly 300-member Facebook forum launched specifically to discuss the phone problems.
Brenda McIntyre, incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, traditionally calls her grandchildren every weekend. But the overwhelmed system blocked a recent check-in.
“‘Grandma, why didn’t you call me? You said you’re going to call me,’” McIntyre recalled one grandchild asking when they finally connected.
Phone services somewhat improved late last week, McIntyre said. But she worries about missing updates about her sister’s cancer treatment.
“It’s been a living hell,” she said.
(Photo: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch, Audio: Addie Costello / WPR and Wisconsin Watch)
Neither ICSolutions nor its parent company responded to requests for comment. But in an undated statement on its website, the company promised improvements in the “coming weeks,” with “significant optimization coming this summer.” The statement recommended shifting calls to “off-peak hours” — before 5 p.m. or after 9 p.m. But family members say they are not always available at such hours.
Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke squarely blamed ICSolutions, saying state-run infrastructure and Wi-Fi access played no role in the issue.
“To be very clear, the quality of service that ICSolutions is providing is not acceptable to the department. If reliability and customer service do not improve, the department will be forced to reevaluate our contract,” Hardtke wrote in an email.
The statement from ICSolutions blamed “unexpected challenges” from increased demand for calls. But Hardtke said the company previously assured the department it could handle higher call volume during the rollout.
Prisoners in nine of Wisconsin’s 36 adult institutions — including all three women’s facilities — still lack tablets. The glitches affect them, too, because ICSolutions services the entire phone system, not just tablets.
The corrections department is pausing tablet distribution while trying to fix the reliability problems, Hardtke said.
Tablets mean more calls
Emily Curtis said she was cautiously excited when her incarcerated fiance gained access to a tablet at Stanley Correctional Institution.
Emily Curtis, director of advocacy and programming for the prisoner advocacy group Ladies of SCI, is shown with her fiance Martell and teenage son Brian. (Courtesy of Emily Curtis)
He previously could call only from the prison’s landlines and during limited hours. The tablet enabled calls most anytime, even during lockdowns. For about two months, the two talked daily — right before Curtis fell asleep and right after she woke up.
“It was great,” Curtis said. “Until everything kind of hit the fan.”
Wisconsin is not the only state prison system that has issued tablets.
Unlike some states, however, Wisconsin allows people to make calls from their cells and doesn’t limit the number of calls they can make, Hartdke said via email. That policy, which the department communicated to ICSolutions during contract negotiations, naturally increased call volume, she added.
Calls from Green Bay Correctional Institution, for instance, increased by nearly 200% after the tablet rollout, Hardtke wrote.
Curtis now hears from her fiance just once daily, usually very early in the morning. Their 14-year-old son has gone weeks without talking to his dad, Curtis said, because the phone lines are too jammed once he’s home from school.
Prison phone calls: costly for families, profitable for providers
ICSolutions and the prison system make millions each year from phone calls. The company charges six cents a minute and shares revenue with the state, adding nearly $4 million to its general fund in recent years.
Curtis said she spends roughly $250 a month on calls.
Tablets present new revenue opportunities for prison contractors. An ICSolutions affiliate sold them to incarcerated Wisconsinites before the state made them free. And even with free tablets, prisoners pay for calls, messaging and other applications.
The high cost of phone calls has long burdened the incarcerated and their families. The Federal Communications Commission last year responded by capping fees. Apps for TV and music aren’t subject to the same regulations. That makes tablets a safer investment for prison telecommunication companies, said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, which focuses on solutions to mass incarceration.
Incarcerated people often greet the rollout of tablets with excitement, Bertram said. But the attempt to improve virtual communication comes as Wisconsin, like other states, has restricted other communication — like physical mail.
In December 2021, the corrections department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The controversial effort aims to reduce the flow of drugs into prisons.
The change delays access to mail and boosts reliance on tablets. As a result, technology glitches have bigger consequences, Betram said.
‘We’re helpless’: Blocked calls mean lonely holidays
Charles Gill is incarcerated at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. His fiance lives in New York, and his adult son lives in New Jersey, too far to visit in person. Gill relies largely on his tablet for communication. But online texts have been delayed by two to three days, Gill said.
“We’re helpless,” Gill said.“To be a father, not knowing what’s going on with your child, to be in a relationship with someone and not knowing what’s going on with them. God forbid something happens and somebody goes to the hospital, somebody gets hurt. We don’t know about it, and we can’t reach out to nobody and talk about it.”
Gill felt particularly helpless on Easter weekend, the anniversary of his brother’s death. He couldn’t reach any family members.
“The phones were just destroyed on (Easter) weekend, ” he said. “You could really feel the tension in the air because people weren’t able to call their families.”
He worries about a repeat around Mother’s Day.
“Having that ability to speak to someone who still sees you as a human being and not a number is vital,” said Marianne Oleson, the operations director for Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing of Wisconsin.
Shawnda Schultz, left, is shown with her mother Marcella Trimble, who has been incarcerated for about nine years. Schultz said glitches in the state prison phone system have brought her to tears. (Courtesy of Shawnda Schultz)
That’s especially the case for mothers who are incarcerated. The majority of women in prisons nationally have children under the age of 18, according to a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report. Phone calls offer incarcerated women their only chance to act as parent, wife or daughter — ensuring their loved ones are safe, Oleson said.
The faulty phone system leaves incarcerated people with tough choices.
“We even have to choose to try the phone over going to meals,” Christa Williams, who is incarcerated at Ellsworth prison, wrote in an email.
Shawnda Schultz said phone failures have left her incarcerated mother in tears during recent calls.
“It bothers me because their phone calls are the one thing that (prisoners) have to keep them going in there, and it keeps us going too, because that’s our mother,” Schultz said.
Schultz’s sister recently delivered her first baby. If the phones don’t improve, she worries her mother will miss hearing updates, like when her grandchild says his first word.
“I found myself actually in tears because I’m just like, ‘what if something happens to my mom?’” Schultz said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2025 general recommendations are that children receive about 19 vaccinations and other immunizations.
Those include vaccines against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis, tetanus and diphtheria. The range is from one to five doses from birth through age 18.
Total doses could exceed 70. That’s mainly from annual recommended doses of the COVID-19 and influenza vaccines.
Wisconsin requires seven immunizations (19 doses) for schoolchildren. COVID-19 and influenza vaccines are not included.
Before vaccines, many children died from diseases such as measles and pertussis (whooping cough), according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
The viruses and bacteria that cause these diseases still exist, and some are deadly, the department says.
Attorney Mary Holland, head of Children’s Health Defense, an organization founded by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. that questions vaccines, said May 1 on Wisconsin radio the federal recommendation is for “at least 77 vaccines.”
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Low credit scores are keeping some Wisconsin residents from homeownership, renting properties and even job opportunities.
Reporter PrincessSafiya Byers sat down with Brenda Brown, a loan officer at Great Midwest Bank with over 20 years of experience, to find out what people should know about credit.
Here’s what you should know.
1. What is a credit score?
According to the Federal Trade Commission, a credit score is a number, typically from 300 to 850, that estimates how likely you are to repay a loan and make the payments on time.
Credit scoring systems calculate your credit score in different ways, but the scoring system most lenders use is the FICO score.
Brown said to think of it as a three-digit number that describes the information in your credit report.
Brown said she can help folks buy a home as long as their credit score is over 620. On average, a good credit score is considered to be 670 or above.
4. How do you build credit?
Brown said if you are new to credit, the first thing you want to do is be sure you have a bank account.
“So your direct deposit can go into that account,” Brown said. “You want to make sure that you’re managing the deposits that come into your account, and what bills you’re paying, so that you’re not overdrawn, because then that even shows the bank that you don’t know how to manage your money, so that can be a flaw.”
From there, she said, the best thing you can do is get a credit card and use it on purchases you can afford to pay at the time.
“You have to start somewhere,” Brown said. “If you don’t have established credit, then you might get your first credit card with maybe a $500 balance, and then start using the credit card for when you put gas in your car. But the catch is: Do not add more than you can pay before the due date.”
Be consistent and you’ll see your credit score go up.
5. What to do if you have a low credit score?
It takes time to fix a low credit score.
Brown suggests you give yourself a 12-month action plan.
Start by going through your monthly budget and cut any costs that aren’t necessary.
“Then you want to find a place that will give you a secured credit card,” she said.
A secured credit card is a special type of credit card that requires you to put money down. The money you put down becomes collateral every time you use your credit card. It allows you to build credit without needing to rely on a company to give you money.
Brown said to follow the same rules with your secured credit card as you would with a regular one.
“Use it for something small and pay it off before the bill is due,” she said.
Lastly, she said you have to address your debt.
“You have to deal with the issue,” she said. “You have to make those calls and get on payment plans and get it worked out.”
6. What if I use credit to help manage my bills?
Brown said the only thing you can do is cut back where you can.
“If you’re a single parent and you’re buying fast food often because you’re busy and tired, try investing in a crock pot to make time-effective meals,” she said. “You might learn new life skills by making minor changes to save.”
7. Filing for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy helps people who can no longer pay their debts get a fresh start by liquidating assets to pay their debts or by creating a repayment plan.
The downside is that it can impact your credit for years.
“Many people think it will only impact them for seven years, but it will actually show up for 10,” Brown said. “It’s not something I suggest if you have less than $10,000 in debt.”
If you have less than $10,000 in debt, Brown suggests calling debtors and negotiating payment plans.
“Even if all you can pay is $5 a month, it shows that you’re trying,” she said.
If you do choose to file for bankruptcy, Brown said, file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy so you have the means to manage your own money through the process.
8. Enjoy the free things in life
“It can help you save if you can find things you enjoy that are cheap or free,” Brown said. “It’s almost summertime. Take advantage of the free things happening.”
For more information
You can start teaching your children good financial habits now with the help ofthe smart money guide.
8 things to know about your credit 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.
Wisconsin Watch seeks a resourceful and ambitious philanthropy officer to support our fund development work in southeastern Wisconsin and the greater Milwaukee area.
The philanthropy officer will be a key member of the philanthropy team, responsible for cultivating and expanding our charitable support. This role will focus on donor cultivation and growing a regionally based portfolio. The right candidate will be effective in building and maintaining relationships with individual donors, foundations and corporate foundations and collaborating with the philanthropy team on fundraising campaigns and stewardship events. The philanthropy officer will play a critical role in ensuring our organization can continue producing excellent nonpartisan, solutions-oriented journalism that strengthens the communities we serve.
Duties and responsibilities
Relationship and portfolio development:
Build and manage a regionally based portfolio of donors.
Prospect identification: Research and identify potential major donors who have a passion for our work and have the capacity to make significant gifts.
Relationship building: Collaborate with the director of philanthropy, CEO and Milwaukee NNS executive director to craft funder outreach, write personalized communication and conduct in-person meetings. Steward donors and maintain relationships.
Gift solicitation: Approach qualified donors to solicit gifts, effectively articulating the impact of our work and how it overlaps with the donor’s passions.
Collaborate internally with business and editorial staff to craft meaningful donor interactions and proposals.
Act as an ambassador to southeastern Wisc0nsin, attending relevant community events and networking opportunities.
Meet established fundraising goals to support organizational needs.
Systems:
Maintain best practice standards when it comes to record keeping, including logging contact reports to the donor database/CRM.
Collaborate with the associate director of philanthropy to analyze weekly gift reports, customize acknowledgement copy and route letters for approvals and signatures.
Draft acknowledgment letter templates and refresh/update content on a biannual basis.
Partner with the business team on database policies and best practices in record keeping.
Other duties:
Track key initiatives, monitor deadlines and coordinate with teams to ensure the timely execution of goals.
Perform other major donor/development activities as may be required (i.e. tours, public speaking or spokesperson activities).
Collaborate with the philanthropy team on stewardship event execution.
Serve as a community ambassador/spokesperson as needed.
Support proposal development and grant writing as needed.
Qualifications
Excels at relationship building and connecting impact-driven missions with individual passions.
Has experience with high-touch fundraising and gift solicitation.
Displays a desire to work with culturally diverse populations using a compassionate, collaborative and respectful approach.
Responsive, tactful and professional, possessing a relationship-centric mindset.
Thrives in high-pressure environments and remains adaptable amid changing priorities.
Demonstrates a proactive, creative, problem-solving mindset with a focus on outcomes. Demonstrates a commitment to looking for solutions and opportunities for collaboration.
Is highly organized, detail-oriented and capable of juggling multiple priorities.
Is familiar and comfortable with various technologies, from Google Workspace (Sheets, Docs, etc.) and CRMs to social platforms, ensuring smooth execution of tasks and communication across different tools.
Preferred qualifications:
5+ years’ experience in nonprofit fundraising, stewardship, donor relations, project management and/or a related area.
Proficient in Google Suite, MS Office, Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Passion for journalism, local news, media, and/or civic engagement.
Location: The philanthropy officer will be located in southeastern Wisconsin, preferably the greater Milwaukee area.
Status, salary and benefits:
Full time, hybrid position.
Salary: $60,000 – $80,000. Final salary offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise and location.
5 weeks of vacation, retirement fund contribution, paid sick days, paid family and caregiver leave, subsidized medical and dental premiums, vision coverage, and more.
Deadline: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. For best consideration, apply by May 30, 2025.
To apply: Please submit your resume in this application form and answer each of these three questions in 50 words or less.
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. We are an equal opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.
About Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Founded in 2009, Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing nonpartisan journalism that makes the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. We believe that access to local representative news is critical to a healthy democracy and to finding solutions to the most pressing problems of everyday life. Under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella, we have three independent news divisions, a statewide investigative newsroom, a regional collaboration in northeast Wisconsin called the NEW News Lab, and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS). All three divisions maintain their unique reporting areas and together are positioned to grow and serve our communities with greater efficiency and impact.
NNS was founded in 2011 as a mission-driven newsroom that reports on and celebrates Milwaukee’s central city neighborhoods, specifically the city’s Black and Latinx communities. Through NNS’ reporting, website, e-newsletters and News414 texting service, we cover the ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connect readers with resources and serve as a watchdog for our audience. NNS, formerly a part of Marquette University, and Wisconsin Watch have a long history of collaboration. In 2024, NNS moved its administrative home and merged under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella. Together, Wisconsin Watch’s statewide team and NNS’ reporters collaborate to produce statewide investigative stories while highlighting issues impacting communities in Milwaukee.
Cuts to the federal volunteer program AmeriCorps are already affecting projects in Wisconsin, with one conservation agency losing more than half of its staffers this year.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration effectively gutted the 30-year-old federal agency AmeriCorps after placing 85% of its staff on administrative leave and terminating nearly $400 million in federal contracts for AmeriCorps programs.
The Trump administration said cuts were made because of $40 million of improper payments in 2024.
AmeriCorps dispatched about 200,000 Americans to projects nationwide last year, according to a release from the volunteer agency.
Eric Robertson is director of Wisconsin Conservation Corps, a nonprofit agency that focuses on environmental restoration projects across Wisconsin and the upper Midwest. The organization partners with state parks around Wisconsin and coordinates volunteers for projects ranging from constructing trails to environmental restoration efforts with the National Park Service.
Robertson told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that support from AmeriCorps helps make up nearly 25% of his agency’s funding.
“We currently have a model that needs to be adjusted very quickly (so) that we can reduce our overhead costs, reduce our direct expenses while trying to maintain revenue and then rely on community support to get us through this,” Robertson said.
Wisconsin is among nearly two dozen states that are suing the Trump administration over the cuts to the federal volunteer agency.
Cuts to AmeriCorps funding are affecting a variety of programs throughout Wisconsin. Serve Wisconsin Executive Director Jeanne Duffy told WPR that her organization receives about $14 million of federal funding annually. AmeriCorps volunteers contribute to programs in Wisconsin ranging from education and youth programs to public health and disaster response programs.
Duffy said AmeriCorps members in the Wisconsin Conservation Corps and the Green Bay Conservation Corps improved more than 570 acres of public land and around 170 miles of trails and rivers during the 2023-24 program year.
“The absence of AmeriCorps would hinder progress in preserving and improving Wisconsin’s natural resources for public enjoyment and conservation,” Duffy said.
Robertson said his organization is focused on pivoting operations and funding sources to meet the needs of current projects.
“Some of these projects have been in development for over a year, and some of these members who would have been joining us have committed to us six to nine months ago,” Robertson said. “We’re still trying to make sure that we can adjust these models, so that we can come out and say that the Wisconsin Conservation Corps can operate without these funds.”
A Democratic bill seeks to bring down house prices in Wisconsin by blocking hedge funds from buying single-family homes in the state.
“We know that there’s an access and affordability crisis in housing right now,” lead bill sponsor Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, told Wisconsin Watch in an interview, calling it a nationwide problem. “And as a state legislator, I want to see if I can do something about that crisis locally.”
Hedge funds pool money, generally from wealthy investors, and invest it in a range of markets seeking to make a profit, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That sizable pool of cash “really gives them almost unlimited power to buy what they would like at prices that are often out of reach for a typical purchaser,” Keyeski said.
Hedge funds’ ability to outbid other prospective home buyers, especially individuals, increases housing costs and prices out middle class families, Keyeski argued.
While the Democratic lawmaker acknowledged the practice of investor-backed groups gobbling up houses isn’t widespread in Wisconsin, she noted that groups with deep pockets bought more than a thousand houses in the Milwaukee area beginning around 2018.
Three companies, VineBrook Homes, SFR3 and Highgrove Holdings, owned about 1,500 homes as of the end of 2022, according to a 2023 analysis from John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.
VineBrook and SFR3 together owned almost 1,200 homes, deploying a “buy-to-rent” business model, Johnson said. However, in some instances, they were willing to flip their recently purchased homes. SFR3 paid about $2 million for 23 properties, Johnson found, later selling them for a total of $4.2 million.
Vinebrook now owns 703 properties, and SFR3 is down to 188, Johnson told Wisconsin Watch in an email.
There was an increase in investor-backed groups buying single-family homes in 2024, though still at a lower rate than before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from RedFin, a real estate brokerage and mortgage company. In the fourth quarter of 2024, for example, investor-backed groups bought 17% of the American homes sold in those three months.
The share of homes owned by large investment groups in the Milwaukee area was 14.9% in the last three months of last year, RedFin found, lower than the national average.
The increase in investor purchases was focused on single-family homes, RedFin found, as interest from deep-pocketed groups waned for townhouses, condos and multifamily properties.
Keyeski sees her bill as “a preemptive move” to protect other Wisconsin communities, she said.
The legislation also fits into a larger package of bills from Democratic lawmakers seeking to bring down costs for Wisconsin residents, Keyeski said.
The bill currently has 42 cosponsors — 41 Democrats and one Republican. But she said she has heard a positive response from both Democratic and Republican voters about the bill and is hopeful the legislation could get a hearing this session.
Legislative Republicans have so far not introduced any bills seeking to curb housing costs, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of legislative proposals. Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, who chairs the Senate Committee on Insurance, Housing, Rural Issues and Forestry, did not respond to questions about whether Keyeski’s legislation would get a hearing this session.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Joint Finance Committee has wrapped up its budget listening sessions around the state, and lawmakers will soon begin writing their own two-year budget for 2025-27, likely after throwing out Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ budget recommendations.
The public hearings — held in Hayward, West Allis, Wausau and Kaukauna — were attended by hundreds of residents who voiced their budget concerns and requests to the Republican-controlled committee.
Here are three of the budget-related issues that attendees raised most frequently.
Education funding
Education was the top concern at all four hearings, with many attendees voicing support for more higher education and K-12 school funding. Many residents also called for increased special education funding.
The Legislature reimbursed a third of Wisconsin school districts’ special education costs in the 2023-25 state budget. Private voucher schools receive up to 90% reimbursement of special education costs through a special program. Evers has proposed a more than $1 billion increase in special education reimbursements to meet a 60% coverage level in this year’s budget.
Multiple attendees said their public school districts have transferred thousands of dollars from their general funds to their special education funds to cover costs that have not been reimbursed. Others urged lawmakers to raise the special education reimbursement level to either 60% or 90%.
“Special education is mandated, it is regulated, and more than that it is important to our students and our staff,” Josh Viegut, assistant superintendent of the Wausau School District, told lawmakers in Wausau. “This year, our district will transfer over $10 million from our general education fund to our special education fund. By increasing the reimbursement rate to 60%, you would have a great impact on all students.”
A record number of public school referendums were held statewide last year, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, largely because inflation has exceeded the Legislature’s increases in per pupil revenue limits. Of the 94 questions on the ballot in February and April alone — the most in an odd-numbered election year since 2007 — 62 were operating referendums that asked taxpayers to raise their own property taxes to pay for daily school operations like utilities, routine maintenance and staff salaries.
“The state’s chronic underfunding of our public schools led Wauwatosa to recently pass its first operating referendum — the only way to prevent devastating cuts to our beloved teaching staff and programming,” a parent told the committee in West Allis. “Other school districts haven’t been so lucky.”
Last month, the state Supreme Court upheld Evers’ line item veto used in the 2023-25 state budget, in which he set in state law an annual increase of $325 in public school spending per student for the next 400 years. Republicans have criticized the decision and may seek ways to sidestep the governor’s veto power in this year’s budget.
As the federal government cuts funding to higher education, Republican lawmakers have pushed back on Evers’ $856 million budget request for the UW system. Wisconsin currently ranks 43rd out of 50 in state spending on public universities.
“This underfunding puts us at a disadvantage in the war for talent to retain and attract new students, faculty and future innovators,” Rocco Paulson, a student at UW-Superior, told the committee in Hayward. “This funding will directly support affordability — ensuring tuition remains stable … and making sure the possibility of raising our tuition doesn’t fall upon me and my fellow students.”
Health care
Other attendees raised concerns about federal threats to Medicaid, telling lawmakers how even a small cut to funding could greatly affect their respite care centers, disability care centers, in-home care programs and more.
“If anything would happen to any part of the Medicaid program, we would probably end up closing our doors, and we have 55 participants that come there every single day,” an attendee from the Balsam Lake Endeavors Adult Development Center told the committee in Hayward.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives last month passed a revised budget resolution that would require the committee that oversees Medicaid to cut spending by $880 million over the next 10 years. Medicaid programs like BadgerCare, Family Care and IRIS provide coverage to 20% of Wisconsin residents, 38% of the state’s children and 60% of nursing home patients, according to the Department of Health Services.
An attendee from Washburn providing in-home care for a disabled individual expressed concerns that the Family Care program will face federal cuts.
“Any reduction of support for this program will make it impossible for me to continue providing care for this person … the person will once again become homeless and without care,” he told the committee. “Is the state prepared to house and care for these individuals?”
Evers’ budget request would accept federal Medicaid expansion and would add 897,000 low-income people to the state’s program. Wisconsin is one of 10 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has defended that decision as insulating the state from the federal government scaling back Medicaid reimbursements.
Child care
Residents also used the public hearings to express concerns regarding child care access in Wisconsin, with many supporting Evers’ $480 million funding request for Child Care Counts — a pandemic-era program that helps providers cover costs.
Affordable and accessible child care has been a persistent issue across the state. Wisconsin is losing hundreds of child care providers every year, according to the Department of Children and Families.
In 2023, the JFC voted to end state funding for Child Care Counts. With the program set to run out of funding at the end of June, 25% of child care providers may close without continued Child Care Counts funding, according to a recent DCF survey. Many others say they would have to raise their tuition rates.
Chris Phernetton told the committee in Hayward that she owns one of only two licensed child care centers in Burnett County. She said her center’s small margin of profit last year was only possible because of the Child Care Counts program.
“We raised our tuition rates in January to try to make up for the 50% cut to Child Care Counts, but as we feared, enrollment quickly dropped. Families in Burnett County can’t afford the new rates,” she said. “When families can’t find care, they can’t work.”
A mother of two young kids told the committee the cost of child care is overwhelming. Her children’s care center often closes early due to lack of staff “because it’s hard to find teachers to work for less than a livable wage,” she said.
“If we lose state support for child care, I don’t know what families like mine will do,” she said. “Like so many others, we face tuition hikes when we can barely afford unexpected early pickups … all because there simply aren’t enough teachers to stay open.”
A couple of years ago, Lorraine Beyersdorff was ready to retire from her job as clerk of the town of Texas, Wisconsin, after 34 years of service.
“I will not run again,” she said in a community Facebook post in late 2022. “Nomination papers can be circulated for signatures beginning December 1st. If interested, call me for more information.”
About a dozen people thanked her for a job well done. But no one filed nomination papers. Nobody called. And because of a quirk in Wisconsin law, no one from outside of the 1,600-person town could take the job.
State law requires all elected town clerks — and the appointees who replace clerks departing mid-term — to live in the town where they serve.
Beyersdorff, 73, knew there was another option: The town could switch from electing its clerk to appointing one. That would allow officials to consider candidates from outside the town’s borders.
But in small towns such as Texas — those with fewer than 2,500 residents — making that change is slow and cumbersome. It first requires a vote at a town meeting to put the measure on the ballot, then another vote by residents to approve it.
In Beyersdorff’s case, that months-long process stretched into years. She remained on the job until voters finally approved the switch in November. In April, the town appointed a new clerk, whom Beyersdorff is training. The clerk job is part-time — about 20 hours a week, though that varies depending on elections and other town business.
“I wanted to get out, but I was OK hanging in,” Beyersdorff said. “After so many years, you’re almost scared to not have it. It’s been part of my life for so long, and because you can do it from home, it’s kind of intermingled with cooking and doing laundry and everything else.”
A proposal to make switching easier
Now, Wisconsin lawmakers want to streamline the process for towns like Texas. A bill introduced April 16 with bipartisan support would allow towns under 2,500 people to switch to appointing a clerk with a simple vote at a town meeting — no referendum required.
The proposal would also eliminate another hurdle: Under current law, even if a town approves the switch, it can’t take effect until the end of the current clerk’s term. The bill would let towns make the change immediately if the clerk position is vacant or becomes vacant.
The legislation passed committees unanimously last year but never received a full floor vote. The proposal authors, state Sen. Romaine Robert Quinn, a Republican who represents a northern Wisconsin district, and state Rep. Alex Dallman, a Republican from central Wisconsin, didn’t respond to requests for comment about the proposal. In a public hearing last year, Dallman said the proposal “will allow towns to operate more efficiently.”
Beyersdorff agrees. “You’d have a much quicker way to replace (clerks) and a bigger pool,” she said. “It can happen that somebody dies in the middle of the term, and then how do you replace them?”
Even in less dire situations, she said, appointing clerks can be advantageous because it allows the town to weigh qualifications heavily. In elections, Beyersdorff said, sometimes small communities vote for the people they know best, without caring “if they have any qualifications or even are capable of doing it.”
The multiple hurdles that small towns face under current law make it challenging for them to recruit and train qualified clerks, said Sam Liebert, a former clerk who is now the Wisconsin state director for All Voting is Local. “Giving local communities the flexibility to appoint their clerks is a common-sense solution.”
About one-third of Wisconsin towns now appoint their town clerks, and more are considering the switch, said Joe Ruth, government affairs director and legal counsel for the Wisconsin Towns Association. The role has become increasingly complex, and the longtime clerks who held the position for decades are aging out, he said.
It can be easier for towns to look for already qualified candidates who might live outside their municipal limits, he said, an option only available if the town appoints its clerk. By forgoing the currently required referendum that small towns need to make that change, towns can save the costs of administering that ballot question.
Ruth said that he often fields calls from towns that are desperate for help.
“We often hear the question, ‘We just lost our clerk. What do we do?'” he said. “Or, ‘We lost our clerk last year, we appointed someone to fill that vacancy, and now that person quit, and we can’t find anybody else.’ Those situations are really what have driven us towards these types of changes.”
The bigger challenge that towns face, Ruth said, is when elected clerks quit early in their tenure and no other town residents seek to replace them. Because state law prohibits towns from switching to appointing clerks until the end of the current term, towns can sometimes go one or two years without a clerk — a problem that this proposal would fix, he said.
More complications in town of Wausau
While Beyersdorff was OK continuing in her job until the town could find a replacement for her, that wasn’t the case 10 minutes away in the town of Wausau.
Late last year, the longtime clerk retired and moved out of town. The town supervisors thought they had the situation under control: They appointed a town resident. That person quit after two weeks.
Scrambling to find a clerk before the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, town supervisors advertised the opening in the town’s newsletter, during a budget meeting and on its website, said Sharon Hunter, a town supervisor.
People were interested in the job, she said, but they were typically working full time or had part-time jobs. “So the concern was the number of evening meetings, all of the responsibilities of the clerk, and especially running the elections,” she said.
Ultimately, nobody stepped up for the April election, so two town supervisors filled in. Hunter said she had been putting in an extra 20 hours of work per week between processing permits, licenses, keeping meeting minutes and preparing agendas, doing paperwork on the annual budget, and filing reports.
The town was lucky to have a chief election inspector — the official in charge of the town’s only polling place — with detailed knowledge, she said, because it would have been time-consuming for her to learn those duties.
In the April election, the town put forth a referendum to switch to appointing clerks, but voters rejected it by a narrow margin. Hunter attributes the loss to the failure of supporters to explain why it was necessary. The town will try the referendum again in the future, she said.
For now, at least, the town has a clerk. In the April election, voters elected another clerk, who ran unopposed.
“I’m sure she’ll do a wonderful job,” Hunter said. “My concern is stepping in and not realizing all that is involved. Maybe she finds out that this is something she really doesn’t want to do and then she resigns. Well, then we’re in the same situation again, without a clerk for two years.”
Town clerk takes on extra role after nobody else steps up
If you were to stumble across Sam Augustin at her northern Wisconsin house early on a weekday, you would find her sipping a coffee at her table, surrounded by four laptops.
One is a personal laptop. One is issued by Forest County, where she’s a board member. Another is from the town of Armstrong Creek, where she’s an elected clerk, and the last one from the town of Caswell, where she’s an appointed clerk.
It’s good to have all those laptops open at once, she said, because if she gets a call for help at any of her three public service jobs, she just has to wake up one of her laptops rather than locate it and start it up. It also helps that they’re four different colors, Augustin said.
Work for her didn’t used to be as complicated — or busy. Originally, she held the clerk position only in Caswell, where she lives. After the Armstrong Creek clerk died in late 2020, though, town officials approached her to become the clerk there, too.
“Nobody will step up in the town,” she said. “My grandparents said, ‘If you can help, you will help.’ Did I want to? Not necessarily, but I could not have, in good conscience, said no when I knew I could do it.”
Serving as a clerk in two communities is sometimes the reality in outstate Wisconsin, where about 30% of clerks leave their positions every year and, in Augustin’s view, younger people “don’t want to serve their community” despite more and more older clerks retiring.
It’s even more challenging because of frequent internet outages in rural Wisconsin. In big cities, Augustin said, clerks are used to the internet operating virtually everywhere.
“We have to go, ‘Oh no, the wind’s blowing the wrong way here. That means it’s going to knock out,’” she said.
Sharon Drefcinski, chief election inspector for the town of Rib Mountain, Wis., right, boxes mailed-in absentee ballots to send to the county for archiving during the primary election on Aug. 11, 2020. Town Clerk Joanne Ruechel, left, sent out 1,348 absentee ballots ahead of the election. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Augustin said having Starlink, a satellite internet service, ensures she typically has internet.
“Most people don’t have that option up here because it’s not cheap,” she said.
When residents or town officials seek her help, she said, she can receive calls anytime from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.
“You never know if they’re going to knock on your front door because everybody knows where you live,” she said. “So heaven forbid you don’t answer your phone. If they see your vehicle at your house, they’re going to stop.”
To be able to manage elections in two towns, she said, “you have to make sure you have good chief inspectors in place.”
“I have one town that’s better at it than the other,” she said, “so I tend to spend more time with one town than I do with the other.”
On Election Day in November, Augustin had to drive to the county seat in Crandon, 30 minutes away, to get more paper ballots for each of her towns, which are 11 miles apart.
“You just have to make sure you’re keeping your poll workers trained,” she said. “You have to keep, make sure you’re keeping everybody abreast of everything. And it changes so fast.”
The demands of her job go far beyond just running elections.
In mid-April, she said, she had an accounting meeting at the county at 1 p.m., an annual meeting in Caswell at 5:30 p.m. and then work in Armstrong Creek at 6:30 p.m.
“Two would be my limit,” she said.
Because towns of different sizes have to follow varying sets of laws, the best-case scenario is for people to be the clerk of two comparably sized towns, she said.
Augustin told Votebeat that she “definitely” supports the proposal.
It can cost $1,000 or more to hold an election on a referendum to switch to appointing a town clerk, Augustin said, “and small towns don’t have that kind of extra money laying around.”
“The process would be a heck of a lot simpler,” she said, “because it can be delayed by a great deal of time, the way they make you do it.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
The recent arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan – who is accused of obstructing a federal immigration arrest inside the Milwaukee County Courthouse – has intensified concerns over immigration enforcement and sparked questions about what rights individuals have when encountering federal agents.
Here’s what to know.
What is obstruction?
Obstruction occurs when a person prevents or makes it more difficult for officers to perform their duty – a definition that covers a broad range of actions, said Benjamin Van Severen, a Milwaukee-based criminal defense attorney and founder of Van Severen Law Office.
Obstruction can include physically interfering with an arrest, such as refusing to comply during a traffic stop.
“Let’s say you’re in a vehicle, and law enforcement does a traffic stop and then you refuse to unlock the doors – that could be obstruction,” said Van Severen.
Obstruction also includes providing false information to law enforcement.
According to the criminal complaint, Dugan obstructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by escorting the individual they intended to arrest into a nonpublic area of the courthouse after requesting the agents go to the chief judge.
A related but distinct offense from obstruction is known as harboring.
Harboring generally refers to knowingly assisting someone to remain in the United States unlawfully – typically by hiding, transporting or supporting the person in order to help avoid detention.
Knowledge and intent are critical components of the charge.
“You have to be acting with the conscious purpose of aiding their intention to remain here illegally,” said Ronald Kuby, a civil rights attorney familiar with similar cases.
“If, let’s say, Ahmed says to his neighbor, ‘Look, I need $150 to get a bus ticket to go to Canada because ICE is going to arrest me,’ it’s perfectly fine to give Ahmed that 150 bucks to go to Canada,” he said. “He may not buy that bus ticket to Canada. He may buy a bus ticket to, you know, Indianapolis, but that’s not on you.”
Different types of warrants
Understanding the difference between types of warrants is crucial in understanding immigration enforcement, particularly when it comes to where these warrants permit officers to go.
An administrative warrant permits immigration officers to arrest someone in a public place, such as a sidewalk or bus station. However, it does not allow entry into a private residence without consent.
Judicial warrants, by contrast, are signed by a judge and can authorize arrests in both public and private spaces.
Despite the differences, both administrative and judicial warrants are lawful tools that permit arrests in immigration cases, Van Severen said.
However, there are different rights that can be asserted depending on the type of warrant.
If law enforcement presents an administrative warrant, people inside a private residence have the right to refuse entry.
“If it’s not signed by a judge, they can’t come into your home without permission,” said R. Timothy Muth, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, of Wisconsin. “Ask to see the warrant. Have them slip it under the door or show it to you at your window. Look at the signature line – does it say ‘magistrate judge’?”
Other rights
Regardless of citizenship status, everyone in the U.S. has certain constitutional protections, including the right to remain silent and to speak to an attorney.
However, if the arrest is for an immigration violation and not a criminal offense, the government does not have to provide a lawyer, explained Ruby De León, staff attorney at Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy organization in Milwaukee.
Documenting activities related to immigration enforcement, such as filming and noting names and badge numbers, is also legal so long as it does not interfere with law enforcement actions, said Muth.
If people are not citizens but have documentation that permits them to stay in the country – such as a green card – they are required to keep that documentation with them, Muth said.
Muth recommends carrying documentation showing continuous presence in the country for more than two years, such as a lease agreement, pay stubs or utility bill in the person’s name.
Individuals who cannot prove they’ve been physically present in the U.S. for at least two years may be subject to expedited removal – a process that allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, to deport someone without a hearing before an immigration judge.
Advocates recommend ensuring documentation is current, applying for passports for U.S.-born children and pursuing citizenship or legal status if eligible, perhaps through an employer or family member.
Voces suggests completing power-of-attorney forms to prepare for potential family separation. If a person is detained or deported, these forms allow a designated individual to make medical, financial or child care decisions on the person’s behalf.
Forward Latino, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the civil rights of Latinos throughout the country, has created a tool kit regarding potential family separation.
Other resources
A city of Milwaukee municipal ID can serve as a form of identification for city residents who cannot get state identification.
Voces maintains a list of immigration, workers’ rights and family attorneys it deems trustworthy.
Voces also provides various workshops and clinics, including Know Your Rights training, citizenship classes and legal clinics. For citizenship classes, call (414) 236-0415 or email newamerican@vdlf.org. For other services or questions, call (414) 643-1620.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said Friday that every American should be concerned about “chilling” suggestions from President Donald Trump’s top border adviser that he could be arrested over guidance the Democrat issued to state employees about what to do if confronted by federal immigration agents.
“I’m not afraid,” Evers said in the extraordinary video posted on YouTube. “I’ve never once been discouraged from doing the right thing and I will not start today.”
Gov. Tony Evers releases message to Wisconsin residents regarding apparent Trump administration arrest threats.
At issue is guidance Evers’ administration issued last month in response to state workers who asked what they should do if agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement show up at their offices.
Evers’ guidance advised them to contact an attorney immediately and ask the officers to return if an attorney is unavailable. The memo also advises state workers not to turn over paper files or give ICE officers access to computers without first consulting the state agency’s attorney and not to answer questions from the agents.
The recommendations are similar to guidance that Connecticut’s Democratic governor issued in January. The guidelines also mirror what the National Immigration Law Center and other advocacy groups have said should be done when immigration officials show up at a workplace.
Republican critics argued that the guidance was an order from Evers not to cooperate with ICE agents, an accusation the governor vehemently denied in Friday’s video. The goal of the guidance was to give state employees “clear, consistent instructions” to ensure they have a lawyer present to help them comply with all applicable laws, Evers said.
He accused Republicans of lying about the guidance and spreading misinformation to fuel a “fake controversy of their own creation.”
“I haven’t broken the law,” Evers said. “I haven’t committed a crime and I’ve never encouraged or directed anyone to break any laws or commit any crimes.”
Tom Homan, Trump’s top border adviser, was asked about the Evers memo by reporters outside the White House on Thursday. Homan said, “Wait to see what’s coming,” when asked about the memo.
“You cannot support what we’re doing, and you can support sanctuary cities if that’s what you want to do, but if you cross that line to impediment or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that’s a felony and we’re treating it as such,” Homan said.
Some Republicans embraced the possibility of Evers being arrested. Republican Wisconsin state Rep. Calvin Callahan posted a fake image on social media showing Trump in a police uniform behind a grim-faced Evers in handcuffs outside of the state Capitol.
The comments from Homan and Evers’ response come a week after Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested at the courthouse on two felony charges. She is accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities by escorting him and his attorney out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that federal officers were seeking his arrest.
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.
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Wisconsin has seen a handful of new data center proposals, including projects in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin Rapids, Port Washington and Kenosha. Microsoft broke ground in 2023 on a 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus in Mount Pleasant at the former Foxconn site — a project that has twice paused.
Data centers use lots of electricity — accounting for nearly 4.5% of U.S. electricity consumption in 2023.
Wisconsin is among states that have offered tax breaks and power rate discounts to tech companies building data centers.
Tech companies promise billion-dollar investments, high-tech jobs and property tax revenue — arguing communities would be passed over if not for the incentives.
A build-out of new data centers — the often-gargantuan warehouses of power-gobbling microchips that power cloud computing, artificial intelligence and social media — is capturing the attention of utilities and states, which, anticipating potential profits, are compelled to satisfy the energy needs of tech companies.
Giants like Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are contracting nationally with utilities, which face a resulting boom in power demand. In 2023, data centers accounted for nearly 4.5% of U.S. electricity consumption, a figure that is expected to balloon up to 12% by 2028.
Wisconsin has seen a handful of new data center proposals, including projects in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin Rapids, Port Washington and Kenosha. Microsoft broke ground in 2023 on a 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus in Mount Pleasant at the former Foxconn site, although work on the data center has since paused twice.
Utilities generally operate under state-granted monopolies that enable the companies to cover service costs and earn a return on their infrastructure investments. The public is a “captive ratepayer,” meaning they lack other options.
Normally, this ensures utilities grow in line with societal energy demands, but when a few choice customers add significant load to the grid, priorities can change.
To attract investment, states compete to woo Big Tech with competitive incentives, including discounted power rates. More than 30 states, including Wisconsin, exempt data centers from the sales tax on information technology equipment.
But the courtship can become a race to the bottom.
Companies often promise billion-dollar investments, high-tech jobs and property tax revenue,marketed as zero-cost to states — arguing communities would be passed over if not for the incentives.
Less discussed, however, are the impacts of the new electric loads and the ways utilities can spread energy costs to the public.
At worst, construction of new power facilities could prove unneeded if a data center project fails to come to fruition or its power needs change, potentially leaving the public to foot the bill.
Those are some of the issues discussed in a recent white paper produced by Harvard University researchers, who express skepticism that consumers won’t absorb data center energy costs.
Ari Peskoe, who directs Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative, and legal fellow Eliza Martin reviewed almost 50 utility proceedings, documenting how utilities can subsidize the electricity demands of trillion-dollar corporations and simultaneously capture a profit by passing on costs to ratepayers.
Wisconsin Watch environmental reporter Bennet Goldstein recently spoke to Peskoe. Their interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where is the United States headed with respect to electricity use?
Our electricity use had been basically flat for the past 15 years, and now suddenly that’s projected to change pretty dramatically and pretty quickly. And it’s data center growth that’s really leading that charge.
These data centers are just massive, massive energy users. A single facility can use as much energy as a large city. There’s a facility in Louisiana that’s being built now that may be as much as two gigawatts. The city of New Orleans is one gigawatt. The rate-setting process just isn’t designed for these massive new facilities.
Can you describe the ways in which data center companies receive subsidies to site a project?
The simplest way that this can happen is just that the utility builds a piece of infrastructure — a new power line, a new power plant — and it’s designed primarily to meet the needs of one of these large data centers, and the utility would spread the costs across to all consumers.
But we think that doesn’t really make sense when, in some cases, there are billions of dollars of infrastructure being built for a single wealthy consumer. Utilities benefit from it a lot.
Your paper noted that utility contracts with data centers are treated as confidential agreements, not subject to public evaluation. Why does this matter and what other trends did you notice in the proceedings you reviewed?
A rate case is how the utility sets rates for everyone, and that’s a very public process.
Most of the proceedings we looked at were about these, sort of, “side deals” between a data center and a utility. Very few parties participate in these proceedings, so that’s a problem for regulators because regulators have to make decisions based on the evidence that’s before them. Here, there’s often only one party. It’s the utility, and it makes it very hard for regulators to rule against the utility when there’s not any competing evidence.
In some states, regulators are supposed to evaluate, for example, whether there are economic development benefits of the contract that make it in the public interest even if it is shifting some costs to other ratepayers. In some states, regulators do have to find that their contract does not burden other ratepayers.
These sorts of issues about cost allocation are generally heavily disputed when there are other parties participating, so we don’t put a lot of stock in the claims that these secret contracts are not burdening other ratepayers.
A Microsoft data center is built on land once slated for development by Foxconn in Mount Pleasant, Wis. Work on the 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus, seen here on May 8, 2024, has paused twice since workers broke ground in 2023. (Angela Major / WPR)
Are new data centers and accompanying infrastructure to power them good investments for the public?
When you hear one of these facilities being announced, sometimes they are being announced with great fanfare. Elected officials like to announce big projects. Some of these facilities get big press releases and press conferences, and the governor is up there smiling about it.
But, there ought to be some mechanism to ensure that the potentially very expensive infrastructure being built for these facilities is not being paid for by the public, but by the data center. We can’t make a specific claim about a confidential deal, but we’re skeptical that these deals are not shifting costs.
They’re a bad deal for ratepayers, looking at electricity costs — not considering the wider societal effects of these facilities and the construction jobs.
What are alternatives that would spare customers these costs?
These confidential contracts: Let’s get rid of them. Let’s do a more public, transparent process that encourages and allows for more participation. Let’s include these data centers in rate cases and figure out what terms and conditions make sense for them.
Allow the data centers to contract for infrastructure with developers who are not the utility. You have companies that are not utilities competing in markets to build power plants to sell that power. If you can have a contract just between a data center and a power plant developer, the utility is not part of it, and therefore, there’s no danger that those costs might somehow trickle through to other consumers’ bills.
How can ratepayers advocate for themselves?
Public utility commissions do have some public processes, particularly for the construction of new projects. Even if that contract is secret, if they’re going to build a new power plant, there’s typically a public process around that. Those processes can often attract attention and have public hearings and opportunities for the public to weigh in.
How about creating special rates for very large customers like a recent southeast Wisconsin proposal from We Energies for “very large customers”?
It makes a lot of sense to establish separate terms and conditions for utility service for these very, very large energy consumers. It’s billions of dollars of costs, and it makes sense to put some contractual system or a tariff system in place that makes sure those entities are responsible for those costs.
There’s a risk that the utility starts to build this infrastructure and potentially invest hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars. The market changes — as maybe we’re seeing right now — and suddenly that data center developer doesn’t want to complete their facility for any number of reasons. Now who’s going to be left bearing the billion-dollar cost that the utility just spent? You want to make sure it’s on the data center.
What does the construction of more data centers mean for curbing greenhouse gas emissions?
A lot of the new growth is going to be met by natural gas power plants. We’re seeing that in Louisiana, for example. A lot of states have strong clean energy goals. About 20 or so states have committed to 100% clean power by some future date. (Wisconsin’s goal: that all electricity consumed within the state be 100% carbon-free by 2050.) Those goals are premised on how much energy is going to be sold in that state. If there’s more energy sold, that means we have to build more clean energy to meet those goals. It’s already a challenge to meet the goals as it is.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin is no exception to national trends when it comes to courting Big Tech.
The state has seen a handful of new data center proposals, including projects in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin Rapids, Port Washington and Kenosha. Microsoft broke ground in 2023 on a 450-megawatt, $3.3 billion campus in Mount Pleasant at the former Foxconn site, although work on the data center has since paused twice.
Wisconsin lawmakers on the state’s finance committee included a sales tax exemption in the 2023-25 state budget based on a standalone bill that received bipartisan support.
The tax exemption, subject to approval by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., includes land, site improvements, IT and cooling equipment and electricity. The agency has approved three data centers to date.
Other states have enacted the model legislation at the urging of utilities and industry groups like NetChoice and the Data Center Coalition. NetChoice’s president noted at a legislative hearing that Wisconsin has long provided exemptions on agricultural and manufacturing equipment and asked lawmakers why they couldn’t do the same for America’s capital investment leaders.
Madison-headquartered Alliant Energy helped pay for a study that determined Wisconsin was at a competitive disadvantage to neighboring states.
The paper estimated that a hyperscale data center developed in the Milwaukee-Waukesha metro region could create 300 jobs, generate $3 million in annual state and local tax revenue and provide more than $87 million in annual economic output.
In a June 2023 hearing, the sales tax exemption bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, R-River Falls, said attracting data centers would actually have a “positive effect” on ratepayers’ electric bills from the “consumption and contribution of companies that will build these.”
To qualify for the exemption, a developer must invest at least $50 million to $150 million within five years, depending on the county population.
The state estimated that a typical data center would decrease tax collections by $8.5 million during the initial construction phase, followed by an annual reduction of $735,000. Additionally, if equipment is replaced on a five-year schedule, the sales tax would decrease by an additional $1.6 million on an annualized basis.
Microsoft’s data center campus has inherited additional perks initially designated for Foxconn: discounted electricity rates for Microsoft buildings located within a designated information technology zone. In future phases of Microsoft’s project, the company may purchase Lake Michigan water via the city of Racine, a rare arrangement in light of the Great Lakes Compact, which regulates the use and withdrawal of lake water.
We Energies intends to construct more than $2 billion in natural gas infrastructure, including two new plants and a pipeline, to meet the power demands of Microsoft’s data center, which is its largest anticipated electric load. This prompted concerns that ratepayers will be saddled with the new, fossil-fuel plants if the data center project is scaled back or canceled.
The utility has objected to such concerns, noting that the infrastructure is necessary to increase “reliability, resiliency, and dispatchability” of natural gas for its current customers.
Additionally, it has proposed a new rate structure, known as a tariff, for “very large customers,” which the company developed to meet the Microsoft and Port Washington data centers’ electric needs.
The rate would assign costs that result from new or expanded power plants and transmission lines along with electricity proportional to data center use, thereby protecting We Energies’ “customers and shareholders from harm.”
Wisconsin’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, is reviewing the proposal. We Energies has requested approval by the year’s end.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
In any community, the role of the medical examiner is vital.
Medical examiners — or coroners, in the nearly half of Wisconsin’s 72 counties that have them as an alternative — determine the cause and manner of death, support the criminal justice system and track data to identify trends that can impact public health and safety.
For me and other Milwaukee-area journalists, the insights provided by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office are integral to our coverage, providing crucial details and important context. Among the recent examples where the level of openness has played a key role are the COVID-19 pandemic, the tragic deaths of three men due to extreme cold last January and the high-profile case of D’Vontaye Mitchell last June.
Traditionally, the office has supplied “demographic reports” as well as “narrative reports.” Demographic reports include information such as the name of the deceased, where the death occurred, and the name of a family member who was notified. Narrative reports, in contrast, delve into the circumstances surrounding each case.
“Narrative reports are particularly illustrative when compared to other available public information,” wrote David Clarey in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in March. “Contextual information, such as whether a driver ran a red light or if a homicide resulted from a heated argument, is often missing (from demographic reports) and requires time-consuming requests from media and families alike.”
Tim Vetscher (Provided photo)
The media in Milwaukee were pleased with the level of openness we experienced from Karen Domagalski, the longtime operations manager for the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office. But when Domagalski retired on Feb. 19, the county’s medical examiner, Dr. Wieslawa Tlomak, announced a change in policy. Henceforth, she said, the office would stop sharing narrative reports until investigations were concluded and cases closed. She acknowledged that this shift represented a significant change in past practices.
Concerned by the change in policy, several news executives, including me, sent Tlomak a letter on April 4. It read, in part:
“The decision to curtail access to these preliminary findings poses a troubling scenario for our news organizations and, more importantly, for the residents of Milwaukee County. Withholding this essential information may leave the public waiting weeks, months, or even longer for basic insights into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of community members. This delay not only hampers our ability to keep the public informed but also undermines trust in the transparency of governmental processes.”
The letter noted that having access to narrative reports helps “clarify the circumstances” surrounding deaths and fosters “a better understanding among citizens about the events that impact their safety.”
Tlomak replied to our letter nearly three weeks later on April 23. Her response read, in part:
“I recognize that this shift in operational policies and procedures is new to members of the media that cover death investigations and public safety matters in Milwaukee County. After an internal review of operational policies and procedures, it became apparent that it is not within the ME’s Office mission and purpose to provide inaccurate and/or incomplete information to the public, as the disclosure of these draft details have the potential to cause significant harm to family members most affected by a death.”
Here’s my response to that: Dr. Tlomak, if your concern is releasing inaccurate information, the appropriate next step would be to correct the information rather than stopping its release altogether. I urge you to work with the journalists who rely on the reports provided by your office to develop a solution that ensures timely access to vital information without compromising the integrity of ongoing investigations.
Transparency is crucial for maintaining public trust.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Tim Vetscher, a council member, is news director at TMJ4 in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin’s constitution gives the Legislature two methods for removing judges from office.
Impeachment starts with a majority Assembly vote based on “corrupt conduct in office” or commission of a crime. A two-thirds Senate vote following a Senate trial would result in removal.
“Removal by address” occurs through a two-thirds vote of each chamber, based on misconduct. The judge would have an opportunity to make a defense.
Wisconsin judges run in nonpartisan elections. Bothchambers of the Legislature have a simple Republican majority.
Republicans called for the Legislature to remove Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan after the FBI arrested her April 24. She is charged with two crimes for allegedly obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting a criminal defendant in her courtroom.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court temporarily suspended Dugan. The Supreme Court can also remove judges for misconduct, based on a state Judicial Commission investigation.
Reading Time: 11minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
A new analysis of the formula the state used to distribute new aid to municipalities last session finds a statistically significant benefit to Republican communities.
Municipalities of fewer than 5,000 people received on average a 202% increase in shared revenue, compared with 25% for cities between 50,000 and 110,000. The state’s smallest communities have increasingly voted Republican in statewide elections while the state’s mid-sized cities have more consistently supported Democrats.
As Republicans drafted the legislation that would be signed into law as Act 12 by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, they adjusted the formula based on population in ways that benefited smaller communities.
Though Act 12 was hailed as a historic turning point, many municipalities continue to ask voters for permission to exceed the state’s strict limits on raising property taxes.
It was a big win for Wisconsin’s small towns.
Soon after the Legislature overhauled local government funding in 2023, reports surfaced of huge increases in state aid for tiny places.
Shared revenue, the state’s primary local aid program, jumped thousands of percentage points for towns and villages with less than 100 residents, while percentage increases were far more modest for the largest cities.
On Wisconsin’s political map, the biggest cities are also the bluest, and those Democratic strongholds are frequently the targets of scorn from the Legislature’s Republican majority. By contrast, small towns are growing ever more red, particularly in rural areas.
An analysis for Wisconsin Watch finds a statistically significant correlation between how a community votes and how much its shared revenue increased under the legislation known as Act 12.
An excerpt from Wisconsin 2023 Act 12, which increased state aid for local municipalities. (Via Wisconsin.gov)
On average, each percentage point of GOP vote share corresponds to a 2.1% increase in shared revenue, according to calculations by Phil Rocco, associate professor of political science at Marquette University.
To swing aid payments toward those small red towns, Republicans broke with the first century of shared revenue history and adopted a complex formula that divides Wisconsin communities into five tiers by their 2022 populations. Rocco found that formula resulted in average increases of 202% for communities of less than 5,000 people, but just 25% for cities with 50,000 to 110,000 residents and 35% for cities larger than 110,000.
Dale Knapp, research director for the Wisconsin Counties Association, drafted the formula using parameters set by lawmakers. Knapp said the initial goal was to give “a bigger bump” to communities that were getting less aid per capita under the old shared revenue formula, but as Republicans saw how specific communities would be affected by different versions of the new formula, they asked for more tweaks based on population size.
Only once before had the state used such an approach. In 2012, when the GOP controlled all of state government, Gov. Scott Walker’s budget also split communities into population tiers, slashing shared revenue more deeply for most big cities than for the smallest towns.
In a state where Republicans notoriously gerrymandered legislative districts by tweaking the lines to lock in their majority, was shared revenue gerrymandered too?
Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, responded with a terse “no” when asked if she and her Act 12 co-author, Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, had any partisan motive. They said they were correcting an imbalance that had shortchanged small communities.
Wisconsin state Sen. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, speaks during a Republican press conference on June 8, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol to announce a tentative agreement between legislative Republicans and Gov. Tony Evers on a shared revenue bill. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
“The new formula is trying to close these gaps between the communities who had done really well under the old formula and those who did poorly,” Kurtz testified at a committee hearing on the legislation. “The old shared revenue formula directed money at larger municipalities, so the new formula aims more funding at smaller municipalities to try to distribute aid a little better.”
But Democratic lawmakers have no doubt the formula was politically biased, said Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison.
“Clearly the way it was developed advantages Republican areas of the state and disadvantages larger urban areas like Milwaukee and Madison,” Roys said. “This Legislature has a history of punishing the biggest cities in the state.”
Democrats introduced several amendments that would have changed the formula to distribute shared revenue increases more evenly among communities of different sizes. All were defeated. That part of the debate received little public attention, overshadowed by clashes over other Act 12 provisions that granted new sales tax power to Milwaukee and Milwaukee County while sharply limiting how they and other local governments could spend taxpayer dollars.
Yet the debate over state aid to local governments didn’t end with Act 12’s passage. Although the legislation was hailed as a historic turning point in public funding, many municipalities are still struggling with tight budgets more than a year later. Dozens appealed to voters to approve property tax increases over the past year.
Instead of revisiting the shared revenue formula or the property tax levy limits that force communities to call those referendums, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is recommending a different approach in his 2025-27 state budget: For any county or municipality that freezes or cuts property taxes, Evers proposes a new state aid payment equaling a 3% levy increase.
How we got here
All that is a long way from how shared revenue started in 1911. Right after adopting the nation’s first state income tax, the Legislature decided to distribute most of its proceeds to local governments, based on how much income tax their residents paid.
Starting in 1972, lawmakers switched to the first of a series of formulas that used factors such as population, equalized value and local property tax levies. The goal of those formulas was to ensure that all local governments could afford “minimum levels of public services, regardless of their ability to finance those services through their property tax base,” according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau paper. Because the formulas directed more money to larger cities and to communities with lower property values, the Legislature added an extra boost for municipalities with populations under 5,000, starting in 1994. Similar formulas were used to cut shared revenue in 2004 and 2010, with payments frozen in between.
Back then, the size of a community’s population wasn’t strongly related to its partisan preferences, according to data compiled by John D. Johnson, research fellow at the Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. Democrats like President Barack Obama, Gov. Jim Doyle and Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold regularly carried many smaller communities.
Then-Gov. Scott Walker speaks at the State of the State address in Madison, Wis., at the State Capitol on Jan. 10, 2017. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
But in the “red wave” election of 2010, an overwhelming majority of communities with populations under 50,000 swung Republican to elect Walker as governor. That pattern has held for every gubernatorial election since then, and for most presidential and senatorial elections as well, Johnson’s data show.
Walker’s first budget, for the 2011-13 biennium, again cut shared revenue, but used population tiers that favored the smaller places that had fueled his victory. At the time, he linked the move to his controversial Act 10, which all but eliminated the power of most public employee unions to bargain for wages and benefits. Walker and his aides argued that Act 10 gave larger cities the “tools” to absorb the cuts through such tactics as shifting more health care costs to employees, while smaller communities with fewer workers couldn’t save as much that way.
However, the formula for the 2012 cut still retained some of the old formula’s factors. That allowed Milwaukee to escape with only a 4% trim to its shared revenue. By contrast, Madison’s shared revenue was chopped 25%, and reductions averaged 10% for the next 10 largest cities.
After that, shared revenue was frozen at 2012 levels. Without adjustments for changes in population and property values since 2003, disparities grew, while inflation ate away at the buying power of the stagnant allocations, said Knapp and Jerry Deschane, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.
Walker’s 2011-13 budget also tightened the state’s limits on property taxes, blocking local governing bodies from approving tax hikes in most communities without new construction. That forced local officials to seek voter approval for any increases beyond the state limits.
Caught between limited taxing authority, frozen shared revenue and rising costs, Milwaukee and Milwaukee County found themselves careening toward a “fiscal cliff” that would force deep cuts in services. At the same time, Felzkowski said, town officials in her district were warning her that they and their counterparts across Wisconsin were having trouble paying for emergency medical service for rural residents.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley forged a coalition with other local governments to seek changes to the funding system. Evers responded by proposing a $576 million increase to the $753 million shared revenue program in his 2023-25 budget. Republicans shot down that plan, but started work on the legislation that became Act 12.
In discussions with local government leaders, GOP lawmakers made it clear they didn’t want to change the existing shared revenue formula, Deschane and Knapp said. Felzkowski said other Republican legislators with experience in local government told her the existing formula was “broken,” and they didn’t want to create the kind of “tweaked mess” that resulted from years of incremental changes to the state’s school aid formula.
Instead, Act 12 created a new formula to distribute increases, called “supplemental aid,” in addition to the shared revenue base payments that had been frozen since 2012.
A thumb on the scale?
To analyze the legislation, Rocco developed a database of how much revenue each community would receive, compared with the Evers plan. Separately, Marquette’s Johnson had compiled a database of how every community in Wisconsin has voted in major statewide elections since 2000.
Wisconsin Watch asked the two scholars to merge their databases to determine whether Act 12 was politically neutral in distributing shared revenue increases of $206.9 million to municipalities and $68 million to counties.
Using Johnson’s data for gubernatorial races from 2010 through 2022, Rocco found a consistent and statistically significant bias toward Republican-voting communities in the percentage increases authorized by Act 12. The formula for counties — which didn’t include population tiers — showed no such bias, he said.
The largest proportional boost in municipal shared revenue was 5,748% for Rusk County’s town of Cedar Rapids, which at 36 residents is Wisconsin’s smallest community. The state’s second-smallest community, the town of Popple River in Forest County, scored a 5,070% increase for its 43 inhabitants.
By contrast, the smallest percentage increase, 10%, went to Milwaukee, although the legislation also authorized Wisconsin’s largest city to levy a new 2% sales tax. Shared revenue rose 56% for Madison, with no new sales tax power. Those two cities are the state’s biggest sources of Democratic votes.
Shared revenue increased around 20% for 10 predominantly blue cities with 2022 populations between 50,000 and 110,000, but a 67% boost went to Waukesha, the only red city of that size. Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, said he didn’t think the formula was engineered to favor Waukesha, although he expressed frustration that similarly sized cities like Janesville didn’t get more.
Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, shown during a press conference on Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., says he’s frustrated mid-sized cities like Janesville didn’t get more state aid in Act 12. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Drafting notes show the original version of the legislation would have given even lower increases to most cities between 50,000 and 110,000, before negotiations with the governor’s office and others. However, the increases of 22% for Janesville and 67% for Waukesha remained the same in the original and final versions.
Spreitzer said Assembly Republicans, led by Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, “drew that line” between cities above and below 50,000 in population, directing the smallest increases to the bluest cities. A Vos spokesperson did not respond to emails requesting an interview.
Deschane, Knapp, Felzkowski and Spreitzer said percentage increases could be misleading because many smaller towns and villages were receiving such tiny sums to begin with that a gigantic percentage increase still would result in relatively modest dollar amounts. They said per capita figures and total allocations could be more telling.
However, Rocco’s findings for pro-Republican bias in Act 12 are almost identical when looking at the shared revenue increase per capita instead of the percentage increase.
A separate analysis by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum highlighted striking variations in per capita allocations among communities of different sizes, based on 2023 populations.
Milwaukee saw the smallest percentage increase in shared revenue under Act 12, although the legislation also authorized Wisconsin’s largest city to levy a new 2% sales tax. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Before Act 12, per capita payments averaged $87 both for communities with less than 1,000 residents and for those with more than 20,000, except for Milwaukee, the Policy Forum found. But with the Act 12 increases, the smallest communities shot up to an average of $157, compared with $114 for the largest, again excluding Milwaukee, the Policy Forum calculated.
While Milwaukee’s per capita payment was $416, Madison’s $28 was the state’s third-lowest, compared with $34 for Waukesha, $76 for Janesville and more than $100 for each of Wisconsin’s seven other largest cities, the Policy Forum said. By contrast, the state’s smallest incorporated municipality, the village of Big Falls in Waupaca County, ended up with the largest total per capita aid: $1,040 for each of its 58 residents.
Rocco’s analysis cites research by other scholars who found that federal aid formulas “offer lawmakers a means of concealing bias” by using “ostensibly neutral” factors to “move aid toward communities they represent,” benefiting similar communities as well.
While Felzkowski denied trying to help red areas, she said her goal was to send more money to rural areas that can’t generate much property tax revenue, yet still must provide services to more remote locations than cities do.
“I’m a rural legislator,” Felzkowski said. “My largest community at the time was 9,000 people, and I represented my district.”
Overall, Act 12 boosted total shared revenue dollars for communities under 5,000 by 64%, compared with a 14% increase for cities of more than 50,000. Shared revenue payments to Wisconsin’s 13 largest cities dropped from 53% of the municipal total to 45%, while the slice for communities under 5,000 rose from 21% to 27%. One-third of the state’s population lives in those small communities, compared with 28% in the largest cities.
Rocco also found evidence of bias toward Democratic-voting cities in the per capita increases in shared revenue that Evers proposed in his 2023-25 budget. Unlike Act 12, the same bias wasn’t consistently statistically significant in percentage increases.
The Evers plan didn’t use population tiers. Instead, it revised the original shared revenue formula, with its per capita and equalized valuation factors, and added a boost based on local public safety spending. That would have benefited larger cities with bigger police and fire departments — the same kinds of cities that typically vote Democratic.
“The partisan affiliation of Wisconsinites impacted or benefited is not a factor the governor or our office consider in making policy decisions,” Evers’ spokesperson said in an email. “The governor proposed more funds be distributed to local communities and consistently pushed for a fairer distribution to mid-major communities while continuing to invest in all towns, cities, and counties across the state.”
Unfinished business
Cities large and small applauded the financial lift they received from Act 12. Milwaukee pulled back from its fiscal cliff, keeping its services and workforce intact. Monona was able to cover inflationary cost increases and hand out 3% raises to its employees, said the Madison suburb’s former Mayor Mary O’Connor.
But it didn’t take long before those cities and others were again facing tough choices. Milwaukee officials said the city had to raise property taxes, fees, fines and borrowing for 2025 to avoid service cuts and layoffs while meeting the public safety spending requirements of Act 12. Monona found itself short of what it needed to keep up with inflation and to pay employees enough to keep other cities from luring them away, O’Connor said.
And even though the Act 12 increases were earmarked for public safety and transportation, multiple communities still needed more to pay for emergency medical, fire and police services. Yet their leaders lacked authority to raise property taxes enough to cover those costs.
“Wisconsin has the strictest property tax limits in the country, and that is an ongoing challenge,” Deschane said.
Because property tax increases are tied to new construction, Monona officials estimate the city would need to attract a $20 million project every year to justify levy hikes sufficient to keep up with its costs, O’Connor said. That’s not realistic for a community with less than 9,000 residents and no vacant land, she added. The city along Lake Monona is hemmed in on all sides by Madison.
Snow falls on the Wisconsin State Capitol before the State of the State address Jan. 22, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Monona, Madison and 40 other municipalities decided to ask permission for higher tax increases. Wisconsin voters last year approved 21 municipal tax referendums, including those in Madison and Monona, and rejected 15. That includes two communities that went to a second referendum after losing on their first try. Another nine such questions were on the April ballot, including a second bid for one community that lost on its first attempt in 2024. Voters approved four and rejected five.
“Were it not for (Act 12), the number of municipal and county referenda in 2024 might have been even greater — and it is notable that even with Act 12, these referenda still reached near-record levels,” the Policy Forum observed.
Act 12 provides for shared revenue to grow as state sales tax collections grow, Deschane noted. Evers is seeking some additional sweeteners in his 2025-27 budget, including a 90% increase in a fund that compensates local governments for providing municipal services to tax-exempt state buildings.
But the governor didn’t propose changing the Act 12 formula to address the inequities that larger cities cited. And the Legislature rejected his 2023-25 budget recommendation to ease the levy limits as many local officials are pleading. Instead, his latest budget calls for $339.8 million over two years in new incentive payments for frozen or reduced levies. Still, many local referendums are seeking larger increases than the 3% boosts that communities could receive from that incentive program.
Evers’ office called Act 12 “a bipartisan compromise” that “delivered a generational increase for shared revenue,” but acknowledged “more is needed to continue to support the sustainability and strength of our communities across the state.” The budget plan represents an attempt to address local concerns about levy limits “while holding the line on property taxes,” the statement said.
Felzkowski and Deschane said they don’t know if the Legislature would support revisiting these issues in the next budget. Both see Act 12 as a major accomplishment, but they agree local government finance reform will continue to be an issue in the future.
“It’s not done,” Felzkowski said. “It’s never going to be done.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
As local governments across Wisconsin continue to wrestle with tight budgets, $300 million in state aid remains unspent.
That money could have provided a major boost to the $275 million in shared revenue increases that the Legislature approved in a historic overhaul of local government funding.
Instead, lawmakers deposited the $300 million in an “innovation fund” to reward cities, villages, towns and counties that cut expenses by consolidating or privatizing services.
It’s an approach championed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who at one point wanted to reserve $1 billion for the incentive payments, legislative records show. Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, says she expects the state’s smallest communities will benefit most from the plan.
But Democrats say the money could have been better used as part of the main shared revenue distribution than in what Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, calls “a set-aside slush fund.”
Act 12, the landmark 2023 local government legislation, increased shared revenue allocations to counties and municipalities throughout the state. Yet even though that cash infusion helped many communities, dozens are still calling referendums to seek voter approval to raise property taxes beyond state levy limits.
Under Act 12, the innovation fund will pay financial incentives to cities, villages, towns, counties and Native American tribes that successfully present proposals to contract with each other to share services or to hand them off to a business or nonprofit organization. Each agreement needs to cut costs by at least 10%, and the state Department of Revenue will give top priority to plans that save money on law enforcement, firefighting and emergency medical response, without jeopardizing service.
The Revenue Department expects applications for those grants will be available in July.
A related $3 million program provides planning grants to communities of less than 5,000 residents to prepare their proposals for the main innovation grants. To date, $1.7 million has been distributed in three rounds to 58 local governments, many of which received more than one of the 98 grants. With nearly half the allocation unspent, the application deadline was extended to April 30, adding two more rounds.
Proposals to combine fire departments and emergency medical services dominate the planning grants awarded so far. Others focus on sharing police, public works and administrative services.
A Vos spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for an interview. But legislative drafting notes indicate he championed the innovation fund — and even wanted it to be more than triple its final size.
“I just talked to the Speaker. He wants to put the whole billion in the first year” of the state’s fiscal biennium, says an email from an aide to Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, who co-authored Act 12, to legislative staff working on the bill.
During the discussions that led to Act 12 — and for years beforehand — Vos repeatedly questioned whether the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County were spending taxpayer money wisely. He urged them to do more to share and privatize services.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson and County Executive David Crowley responded with lengthy lists of how much their governments already had done to cut expenses and share services. The city’s list included establishing a joint recycling center with Waukesha County; reaching mutual aid agreements with suburban fire departments; contracting to take over fire and emergency medical protection for West Milwaukee; and privatizing snow removal at bus stops.
But none of that qualifies for an innovation grant. Act 12 specifies the grants are only for deals taking effect after Nov. 13, 2024, not for any previous moves by local governments.
Felzkowski said she thought the innovation fund would help small rural towns and villages consolidate services. In addition to merging fire departments, she suggested they might find efficiencies by sharing human resources and information technology staff. Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, said larger communities might benefit as well.
But Spreitzer questioned the fund’s emphasis on reducing overall costs instead of improving services. For example, if two or more communities wanted to share a fire chief and use the money saved to hire more firefighters, the state should encourage them to do that, he said.
Gov. Tony Evers’ office did not respond directly when asked what the governor thought of the fund.
While Roys said she is a “big believer in efficiency,” she also believes local governments should consolidate services only if it’s the right thing to do, not because they’re coerced into doing it.
The innovation fund is “kind of holding them over a barrel and forcing them to compete,” Roys said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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