Children enrolled in the Head Start early education program operated by Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council. (Photo courtesy of Western Dairyland EOC)

A new Trump administration federal rule would bar immigrants without legal status from a range of public programs, canceling a policy that was implemented nearly three decades ago.

The change bars the children of those immigrants from the Head Start child care program. It also closes the door to immigrants lacking legal status for various programs that provide mental health and substance abuse treatment, job training and other assistance.

Head Start, which provides early education and child care for low-income families, has never been required to ascertain the immigration status of its families, said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.

Families enrolling in the program have to provide a variety of pieces of information to verify they are eligible, Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner Monday, and the programs are “very compliance oriented” and collect “exactly what they have to collect.”

Mauer said a trusting relationship between Head Start programs and the families they serve is important.

“We’re serving some of the neediest families in our community,” she said. Some have had “challenging relationships” in the past with schools and other government agencies — making nurturing that trust even more critical, she added.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a notice July 10 that declared Head Start and a list of other federally funded programs would now be considered “public benefits” that exclude immigrants without legal status under a law enacted in 1996. The notice revokes a policy enacted in 1998 that had exempted the affected programs from the 1996 law.

The federal announcement said that the policy change was instituted to “ensure that taxpayer-funded program benefits intended for the American people are not diverted to subsidize illegal aliens.”

Mauer said there has been no implementation guidance from HHS since the notice.

The Wisconsin Head Start Association is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union opposing Trump administration actions against Head Start. The other plaintiffs include parent groups in Oregon and in Oakland, California, along with state Head Start associations in Washington, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

In a statement Friday the plaintiffs said they will amend the lawsuit if the administration follows through with the limits in the July 10 announcement.

Mauer said that the Wisconsin association is advising Head Start providers to “refrain from making any immediate changes to enrollment policy until they have an opportunity to fully evaluate their legal obligations.”

She said the notice has heightened concern about the safety of children whose families might be targeted by the new federal stance. But it will affect the entire program, she said.

Mauer said a second concern is that the policy could lead some families to take their children out of the program despite their need for it. If enrollment falls below the federally prescribed level of 97% of capacity, she’s concerned that the federal government might then take back grant money — creating “a negative feedback loop,” she said.  

“I am so afraid for our families,” Mauer said. “This is fracturing the safety of all of our children. This will hurt all of the children in Head Start.”

Child care provider Corrine Hendrickson addresses a rally in front of the state Capitol Friday demanding a re-do on the state budget to increase child care funding. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

While Gov. Tony Evers has touted the new state budget’s child care funds as a compromise victory, some providers say they’re deeply disappointed. 

“This was not a win,” said Bloomer child care provider Caitlin Mitchell at a rally outside the Capitol Friday morning organized by Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN). “It was a temporary fix with long-term consequences.”

A press release from Evers’ office after he signed the budget early on July 3 said the document contains “Over $360 million to support Wisconsin’s child care industry and help lower child care costs for working families, a third of which is in direct payments to providers.”

A majority of Democratic lawmakers voted against the budget, citing shortcomings in funding for public schools as well as for child care. Assembly and Senate Democrats who voted in favor of the plan described it as a compromise. 

“I really really wish that the governor and the Democrats had just admitted that this was the best that they could do and that it’s still not good,” Corrine Hendrickson, a child care provider and WECAN co-founder, told reporters at the Friday morning rally.

“Everything we’re being told about the budget absolutely does not help children in our state at all,” said WECAN’s other co-founder, Brooke Legler. “The only compromise was the children’s safety. And this isn’t OK.”

WECAN members say that the budget’s child care funding is well short of what they need, and that regulatory changes are bad for providers, families and children. 

A pilot program increases Wisconsin Shares payments by up to $200 a month if providers agree to higher ratios of four children to one teacher for children 18 months or younger, and seven children to one teacher for children 18 months to 2½ years old. Wisconsin Shares subsidizes child care for low-income families.

According to Hendrickson, the ratio increase lowers the quality of care, and tying it to the subsidy program treats the poorer children differently than the rest of the children in care.

“Those children deserve to have more time and attention,” she said in her address to the rally. “Their parents are loving, their parents are caring, but their parents are stressed because they’re in poverty and that affects those kids.”

Child care providers should refuse to participate in that pilot, she said. 

Another provision lowers the minimum age for an assistant child care teacher to 16 from 18, while retaining the education requirements for the position.

“Sixteen-year-olds are wonderful human beings but they are not teachers of young children,” said Hendrickson.

“Those exact same policies were presented two years ago through the normal process of creating a bill. And we as a state overwhelmingly said no,” said Legler. “It did not even make it out of committee.”

In addition to $110 million in direct payments to providers, the child care total’s other big ticket items include $123 million to increase reimbursements that providers get for children in the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program and $65 million for providers who participate in a new “school readiness” program similar to 4-year-old kindergarten.

The $110 million direct payments, which would end after the budget’s first year, amount to about one-fourth of the $480 million that Evers originally sought. His budget proposal aimed to continue the state’s Child Care Counts program, funded by federal pandemic relief money.

At its height, Child Care Counts paid out $20 million a month and was credited with helping providers boost wages for child care teachers without raising tuition for parents. Two years ago the Evers administration dialed the program back to $10 million a month to stretch out its payments. The federal funds have now run out.

In a survey of child care providers earlier this year the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty reported that about one in four said they could close without continued payments. Evers cited the survey during the spring while campaigning for his original $480 million child care proposal.

WECAN leaders sent Evers a statement Friday, calling on him to order a special session of the Legislature and seek the full amount of child care support that he originally submitted for the 2025-27 state budget.

“We’re asking Gov. Evers to finish what’s been started,” Mitchell said in her rally speech. “Temporary funding and weakened standards are not enough. We need a comprehensive long-term investment in child care.”

After the 2023-25 budget was enacted without the child care investment that Evers sought, the governor called a special session and introduced a bill that included funding for child care, education and other priorities. The Legislature’s Republican majority rewrote the bill, replacing his provisions with tax cut measures that Evers vetoed. 

Hendrickson acknowledged the outcome of the special session call two years ago, but said in an interview that Evers should pursue  effort anyway. 

“This is the only thing that we can do to keep this in front of everybody, to keep it top of mind,” she said. 

“The $110 million over the next 11 months is around 20% less than we are currently receiving,” WECAN’s letter to the governor states. “So, no, tuition prices will not be lowering; in fact, they will be going up next month to cover this loss, or providers will be closing their doors, especially in rural areas.”

The WECAN statement tells Evers that his public assertion that the child care provisions will lower costs “creates confusion and parents will blame us; disrupting our important relationship due to the distrust your words have sown.”

Legler told the Wisconsin Examiner later Friday that when the WECAN group delivered the letter and spoke with Evers’ communications director, Britt Cudaback, the conversation didn’t go well from her perspective.

“We felt very minimized, unheard and condescended to,” Legler said.

Evers’ office has not responded to requests for comment.

Nichole Robarge, right, describes the challenges faced by people with disabilities she assists when enrolling in Medicaid. With her is Kathleen Cummings, who provides similar assistance to people 60 and older. Both said impending changes to the program are likely to increase those challenges. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

With the Congressional mega-bill that cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid now law, people who have relied for their health care on the state-federal insurance plan and their advocates are scrambling to figure out  how and when it will hit home.

The timing of many of the law’s changes is still uncertain.

“This bill was written very hastily,” said Tami Jackson, policy analyst for the Wisconsin Board for People with Development Disabilities (BPDD), at a discussion of the law Thursday morning in the Wisconsin Capitol.

“There are implementation dates for various pieces of Medicaid that are not all in alignment,” Jackson said. “So, you’re going to get this in waves.”

Janet Zander of the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources paraphrased promises from members of Congress who publicly defended the bill.

“It’s really easy to listen to what we’re hearing about — ‘This isn’t going to harm us here in Wisconsin. We’re not doing anything that’s going to hurt older adults, people with disabilities, low-income families,’” Zander said. “Those of us who are working in these programs know that’s not the case at all.”

The new law imposes requirements for Medicaid participants to work or be preparing for work — although a majority already are working — or else be approved as exempt from having to meet the requirement.

That provision’s implementation date of Jan. 1, 2027 is less than 18 months away, Jackson said. And it could be up to a year before the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) produces an administrative rule to direct states on how they manage the requirement.

That doesn’t allow for much time to work out “20 or 30 unanswered questions” about how to require people to demonstrate they’re working, qualify for an exemption or prove that they’re exempt, Jackson said.

The added requirements will also impose new demands on agencies in charge of implementing the Medicaid changes in each state, as well as county agencies that help people navigate the program.

“If you are ramping up the workload and how much people have to do, and ramping up the staffing it takes to do that, that’s a lot more that counties are going to be doing locally, or will have to do,” Jackson said. “That’s going to exacerbate how many people lose coverage.”

Other items have no implementation date — which is usually interpreted as taking effect with the bill’s signing, said William Parke-Sutherland, government affairs director at Kids Forward.

“This bill, which is being kind of talked about as a tax and spending bill, is really a health care redesign bill, and it makes the most substantive changes to the health care system that we’ve seen since the Affordable Care Act,” Parke-Sutherland said.

That national health care law had four years to be implemented. With the new Medicaid changes, “we have no time in comparison.”

But the probable long-term impact remains dire, advocates said — making it harder for people to get coverage and keep coverage.

Taking together the projected loss of Medicaid coverage as well as the projected loss of Affordable Care Act coverage for low-income people who lose subsidies for their premiums that expire at the end of this year, as many as 17 million people in the U.S. could lose health care and long-term care coverage, Zander said.

The state Department of Health Services estimated in April that at least 52,000 Wisconsin residents could lose Medicaid coverage. Changes the Senate made in the bill will likely increase those estimates, however, according to advocates.

Safety-net barriers, old and new

As ultimately passed by the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and signed into law by President Donald Trump, the legislation has thrown new barriers in front of the nation’s safety-net programs, including Medicaid as well as the federal food aid program, SNAP.

Existing barriers were already very high, advocates said.

Kathleen Cummings works for the Columbia County Aging and Disability Resource Center assisting people who are 60 or older applying for Medicaid and other benefit programs. Based on their annual income and total assets, some people on Medicare also qualify for Medicaid to cover their out-of-pocket Medicare costs.

Cummings recounted the experience of a woman who had qualified for Medicaid but recently contacted her because she was getting bills for her health care. The woman accidentally failed to renew her Medicaid coverage when the renewal form she received got buried in a flurry of other Medicaid-related mail, Cummings said.

Under current law the client can get coverage retroactively for bills incurred in the last three months. But with the new law, “that will be changing to 30 days, so we will not, in the future, be able to request that backdated coverage for bills under the situation that she is in,” Cummings said.

Another client has had extensive treatment for lung cancer, she said. The man “is just barely, barely over the federal poverty level” — about $1,300 a month.

“A lot of my clients are very proud and do what they can with what they have,” Cummings said. “But when something like lung cancer comes along, he’s suddenly faced with all these bills that he only had limited coverage [for].”

She’s helping the man apply for Medicaid coverage backdated three months to cover those bills, she said. “Once he shows proof that he qualified, which he will, [he can] get some of these bills paid.”

Nichole Robarge also works for the Columbia County ARDC, helping people from ages 16 to 59 who qualify for federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits and other programs.

Robarge said that currently the disability application takes 12 to 18 months for a decision. As many as 85% of applications are denied at first, she said, and about 20% get overturned on appeal, which takes another 18 to 24 months. A second appeal, with a hearing before an administrative law judge, can take another two years.

In Wisconsin, approval for SSI automatically qualifies a person for Medicaid coverage. Until the SSI decision is resolved, however, the applicant has to apply for Medicaid separately, Robarge said — something that a disability can make much more difficult.

She pulled out the Medicaid application, which currently must be completed annually — a 41-page document that is a half-inch thick.

“Can you imagine getting one of these in the mail and having a cognitive disability or a physical disability, or maybe you had a stroke?…Or maybe you can’t read at all,” Robarge said.

“I bought a house and had less paperwork. I’ve bought a car and I’ve had less paperwork than what it takes to fill one of these out,” she added. “It’s tedious and it’s treacherous … This first barrier is huge, and this is even without getting the documents that you need to provide the proof that they’re asking for.”

Unintended consequences

The new law is poised to make those delays worse, advocates argue — blocking people from Medicaid coverage even though they meet the program’s qualifications.

“Medicaid is a wildly complicated program,” said Lisa Hassenstab, public policy manager for Disability Rights Wisconsin. “What we’ve seen in this bill is that all of these little changes [and] the unintended consequences, because people don’t understand what the program is. They don’t understand what it is, and so they don’t understand what the impact of these changes is really going to be.”

One thing the law won’t do, advocates said, is protect taxpayers.

“It won’t protect me,” said Tyler Engel, whose Medicaid coverage enables him to live more independently in the community with coverage for his caregivers.

“This bill saves money by making it so that, for somebody who is now currently eligible for health care, the provider who provides that care is not going to get paid,” Parke-Sutherland said. “This saves money by people who are currently eligible for health insurance” with federal help “not getting health insurance or having to pay more for it. That’s the only way that this bill saves money.”

Two-thirds of Medicaid participants are working, and therefore they are taxpayers, too, Jackson said.

“It’s a cost shift to the taxpayers,” said Jackson, because when people aren’t covered by Medicaid, “somebody else picks that up — whether it’s uncompensated care, whether it’s a medical bankruptcy, whether it’s your private insurance or your group premium going up.”

“If you stop paying for care, people’s care needs don’t go away,” Parke-Sutherland said. “You still pay. So this isn’t a boon to the taxpayers.”

Advocates for LGBTQ people and for the environment praised a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling Tuesday that bars the Legislature's Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules from blocking a rule that bans therapists from trying to "convert" a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. (Getty Images)

Gov. Tony Evers along with advocates for the environment and for LGBTQ people as well as Democratic Party lawmakers hailed Tuesday’s state Supreme Court ruling that strips a Wisconsin legislative committee’s power to block state regulations.

Republican leaders in the Legislature — who’ve deployed that power successfully against the Evers administration for the last six years — condemned the Court’s action as consolidating power in the executive branch.

Tuesday’s ruling, written by Chief Justice Jill Karofsky for the Court’s four-member liberal majority, found that state laws giving the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) the power to block state regulations were unconstitutional.

The ruling said that in doing so, the committee was rewriting state laws that affected the rights and duties authorized for executive branch officials.

JCRAR has repeatedly thwarted Evers administration rules since the governor first took office in 2019. Tuesday’s ruling was the result of a lawsuit Evers filed in 2023 challenging the committee’s actions in suspending a rule that bans conversion therapy and indefinitely blocking an update to the state building code.

“The people of Wisconsin expect state government to work — and work better — for them,” Evers said in a statement Tuesday applauding the ruling.

“For years, a small group of Republican lawmakers overstepped their power, holding rules hostage without explanation or action and causing gridlock across state government,” Evers said.

“Today’s Wisconsin Supreme Court decision ensures that no small group of lawmakers has the sole power to stymie the work of state government and go unchecked,” the governor said. “This is an incredibly important decision that will ensure state government can do our important work efficiently and effectively to serve Wisconsinites across our state.”

Conversion therapy ban maintained

The ruling ensured that a rule will continue barring therapists treating LGBTQ people from using conversion therapy to try to change sexual orientation or gender identity.

JCRAR suspended the rule in early 2023 after it was last promulgated. The professional board that had enacted the rule reinstated it in April 2024 after the Legislature concluded its 2023-24 session. Tuesday’s ruling will prevent JCRAR from blocking the rule again.

“The continuous suspensions of the rule represented legislative overreach in the rule-making process and threatened the ability of professions in Wisconsin to create their standards,” said the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin Chapter (NASW-Wisconsin) in a statement welcoming the Court’s ruling.

The association has sought the conversion therapy ban since 2018.

“After seven and a half years of trying to ban the harmful, discredited and unethical practice of conversion therapy and having the rule repeatedly blocked by the Joint Committee on the Review of Administrative Rules, I am thrilled by this ruling,” said Marc Herstand, the social worker association’s executive director. “Professions have the right to establish their own conduct code, and no social worker should ever engage in the practice of conversion therapy.”

Republicans attack ruling

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), chair of the committee, criticized the Court’s ruling.

“Today the liberal majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended nearly 7 decades of shared governance between the legislature and executive branch agencies aimed at protecting the rights of individuals, families and businesses from the excessive actions of bureaucrats,” Nass said in a statement.

“The liberal junta on the state supreme court has in essence given Evers the powers of a King,” he said.

Nass also attacked Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, charging that in the budget that lawmakers passed on the evening of July 2 and Evers signed shortly after midnight, Vos “gave away the power-of-the-purse-string for the next two years, so our options of defunding bureaucrats are now off the table.”

Vos also released a statement attacking the ruling.

“For decades, case law has upheld the constitutionality of the legislative rules committee to serve as a legitimate check on the powers of the Governor and the overreach of the bureaucracy,” Vos said. “The absence of oversight from elected representatives grows government and allows unelected bureaucrats to increase red-tape behind closed doors.”

Praise for the decision

Democrats, LGBTQ allies and environmental advocates said it was JCRAR’s practices, often shrouded in secrecy — not the rule-making process — that interfered with democracy.

“Today’s court decision is a victory for Wisconsinites, who deserve the freedom to have a government responsive to everyday people, not special interests and right-wing extremists,” said Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). “This decision sends a clear message: We are working toward making Wisconsin a place where everyone can build a better life.”

State Supreme Court curtails legislative committee’s right to stop regulations

Abigail Swetz, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Fair Wisconsin,  called the outcome “a powerful step in the right direction towards ending the harmful practice of conversion therapy,” and credited the advocacy of NASW-Wisconsin and other community members and partner groups.

Swetz also urged lawmakers and the governor to take “an even more powerful step” by passing SB 324, legislation banning conversion therapy in all licensed professions.

In a joint statement the Legislature’s LGBTQ+ caucus called the ruling “a victory against the abusive and discredited practice of ‘conversion therapy’ and a victory for LGBTQ+ people who want to live as their authentic selves.”

Environmental impact

Environmental rules were not at the heart of the Court’s ruling Tuesday, but environmental groups said the outcome would strengthen efforts to enact stronger environmental protections.

“The bottom line is that good environmental rules now face a much easier path to getting to the finish line and becoming law—which is good for the environment and public health,” said Evan Feinauer, an attorney for Clean Wisconsin, in a statement the organization issued.

Clean Wisconsin said JCRAR has  blocked regulations on PFAS contamination, nitrates, surface water pollution and remediating contaminated lands.         

“Far too often in recent years JCRAR’s ability to object to any proposed rule, for almost any reason, or no stated reason at all, prevented agencies like DNR from doing their jobs,” Feinauer said. “That political gridlock prevented our government from being responsive to environmental and public health challenges.”

In a statement from Midwest Environmental Advocates, executive director Tony Wilkins Gibart said that through JCRAR’s control of the rulemaking process, “small groups of legislators have been able to block the implementation of popular environmental protections passed by the full legislature and signed by the governor.”

MEA filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Wisconsin Conservation Voters and Save Our Water, a group of residents affected by PFAS contamination in and around Marinette and Peshtigo.

When JCRAR blocked a rule in December 2020 that regulated firefighting foam containing PFAS, it perpetuated the discharge of PFAS-contaminated wastewater in the Marinette wastewater treatment plant, MEA said Tuesday.

“Committee vetoes were anti-democratic because they allowed a handful of legislators to make decisions that affect the entire state,” said Jennifer Giegerich, government affairs director of Wisconsin Conservation Voters, said in the MEA statement. “We’re pleased this ruling restores constitutional balance and strengthens accountability for environmental decisions that impact all Wisconsinites.”

Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, shown here during oral arguments in January, wrote for four justices that laws empowering the Legislature's Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative rules violate the Wisconsin Constitution. (Screenshot/WisEye)

State laws that let a 10-member committee of the Legislature override regulations are unconstitutional, a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling hands the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a victory in an ongoing battle with the Legislature’s Republican leaders.

It also affirms that the state Legislature cannot renew its attempt to block regulations against conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, and appears to clear the way for an update of Wisconsin’s building code that was suspended nearly two years ago.

The ruling finds five statutes, granting power to the Legislature’s committee that reviews and periodically suspends administrative rules, violate the Wisconsin Constitution.

Taken together, wrote Chief Justice Jill Karofsky for the four justices making up the Court’s liberal wing, the statutes give the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules the power to effectively change state laws without going through the full legislative process.

“The ability of a ten-person committee to halt or interrupt the passage of a rule, which would ordinarily be required to be presented to the governor as a bill [to block the rule], is simply incompatible with Articles IV and V of the Wisconsin Constitution,” Karofsky wrote.

The Court’s three conservative justices took issue with the majority opinion, asserting that rulemaking itself involves legislative power and that Tuesday’s ruling improperly constrains the Legislature as the elected representatives of the people.

‘Legislative veto’ lawsuit 

The decision is the second to come from a lawsuit Evers filed in the fall of 2023, Evers v. Marklein, accusing the Republican leaders of the Legislature of exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto” hampering the lawful powers of the executive branch to make administrative rules.

The Evers administration argued that five statutes granting JCRAR the power to review, object to and block rules before or after they are promulgated violate the state Constitution. Those include a law enacted in December 2018, after Evers was elected governor but before he took office, that allows the committee to lodge “indefinite” objections blocking a rule.

The Court majority agreed with the administration’s argument.

The Wisconsin Constitution requires that for a law to be enacted, it must pass both the Assembly and the Senate and then be presented to the governor to be signed or vetoed.

“By permitting JCRAR to exercise discretion over which approved rules may be promulgated and which may not, the statute empowers JCRAR to take action that alters the legal rights and duties of persons outside of the legislative branch” without going through the lawmaking process, Karofsky wrote.

The indefinite objection “prevents the agency from promulgating a rule unless the Legislature passes a bill enacting the rule,” she wrote. “Said another way, legislative inertia after an indefinite objection could permanently stop the promulgation of a rule.”

Evers, lawmakers, advocates praise Court’s ruling on regulations

The law allowing the committee to pause a rule for 30 days before it is promulgated “essentially allows JCRAR to capture control of agency rulemaking authority from the executive branch during the 30-day pause period,” Karofksy wrote.

The pause, which can be extended to 30 days “operates as a ‘pocket veto,’” she wrote. “Even if such an interruption is relatively brief, the constitution does not contemplate temporary violations of its provisions.”

Similarly, after the rule has been promulgated, JCRAR’s power to suspend it multiple times “means that even after promulgation, JCRAR could suspend a rule repeatedly in perpetuity with no other checks in place,” the chief justice wrote.

Clearing way for conversion therapy ban, new building code

In overturning the five statutes, the Court majority also revoked two earlier rulings that had affirmed some of JCRAR’s powers — one from 1992, upholding the committee’s temporary suspension of a rule, and the other from 2020, endorsing the power to suspend a rule multiple times.

Evers’ suit focused on two rules that JCRAR blocked, both produced under the umbrella of the state Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).

One rule prohibited therapists from using discredited conversion therapy to try to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people. It was adopted by the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board.

“When the Board created new professional conduct rules banning conversion therapy, it exercised its statutory authority,” Karofksy wrote. “But when JCRAR objected to the rule it effectively blocked the Board’s authority” under Wisconsin law “to govern the professional conduct of its licensees.”

The conversion therapy rule was suspended in January 2023, but reinstated after the Legislature concluded its work for the 2023-24 session.

With “the multiple suspension provision,” however, Karofsky wrote, “JCRAR has the authority to suspend this rule again, in perpetuity.”

Another rule updated the state commercial building code to international standards set in 2021.

“The goal of these chapters is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public,” Karofsky wrote. JCRAR’s indefinite suspension of the code in 2023  “prevented DSPS from completing its statutory rulemaking duties,” she wrote.

Conservative justices object

Justice Brian Hagedorn, one of three members of the Court’s conservative wing, wrote an opinion that concurred with the majority on narrow grounds but dissented on finding the five laws at issue unconstitutional.

The JCRAR indefinite objection to the building code rule is unconstitutional under a 1992 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, Hagedorn wrote.

He argued that the conversion therapy rule is now outside the Court’s purview, however.

“This ethical rule is already in effect; it is no longer suspended,” Hagedorn wrote. “Since a ruling on JCRAR’s actions with respect to this rule would have no legal effect, this claim is moot, and we have nothing further to decide.”

Hagedorn criticized the decision’s far-reaching findings that whole statutes were unconstitutional, however. He said it also failed to grapple with arguments about the constitutional status of regulation by executive branch agencies.

“The effect of the majority’s decision is to greenlight executive alteration of legal rights and duties outside the lawmaking process while prohibiting legislative alteration of legal rights and duties outside the lawmaking process,” Hagedorn wrote.

Former Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justice Rebecca Bradley published separate sharply worded dissents.

Ziegler wrote that the majority ruling was the outcome of “this court’s misguided quest to restructure and unbalance our state government, culminating in even more power and control being allocated to the executive branch.”

“The legislature has delegated executive branch agencies broad rulemaking authority with the understanding that it will be able to oversee administrative rulemaking through JCRAR,” Ziegler wrote. “The majority now pulls the rug out from under the legislature…”

Bradley, invoking lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s song “Badlands” in which the singer says “a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything,” charged that the majority “lets the executive branch exercise lawmaking power unfettered and unchecked.”

Her dissent offered a full-throated attack on the administrative state and executive branch regulatory authority.

“The majority invokes the Wisconsin Constitution to take power from the People’s elected representatives in the legislature and bestow it on the executive branch, empowering unelected bureaucrats to rule over the People,” Bradley wrote.

The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine received federal tax credits for installing solar panels. Labor and environmental advocates are attacking the Congressional Republicans' tax cut megabill for rolling back clean energy programs enacted in the Biden administration. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

The tax cut megabill in Congress with a historic rollback on Medicaid also includes provisions reversing U.S. clean energy policies, advocates warned Wednesday, harming not only the environment but the economy.

“This legislation will kill economic growth and jobs, raise energy prices, and cede clean energy technology manufacturing to other countries,” said Carly Ebben Eaton, Wisconsin Policy Manager for the Blue Green Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.

Eaton took part in two online news conferences Wednesday to draw attention to the federal budget reconciliation bill and its repeal of key portions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

The budget bill has been the top priority of the Republican majority in Congress as well as the administration of President Donald Trump. It was drawn up to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that will expire at the end of 2025.

The package returned to the U.S. House for final action after a tied vote in the U.S. Senate that required Vice President JD Vance to pass the measure on Tuesday.

Steep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs have drawn the most attention during debate on the bill, along with the Congressional Budget Office finding that the wealthiest taxpayers will benefit most from its tax cuts.

The bill also includes measures that would undo several provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), one of the signature pieces of legislation enacted during President Joe Biden’s four years in office. After its passage the act was lauded by environmental advocates for provisions to address climate change by encouraging clean energy through tax credits as well as federal investments.

The House version of the GOP bill “already dealt a serious blow to clean energy tax credits and investments,” Eaton said Wednesday, “but the Senate took it even further, doubling down on cuts that will cost jobs, stall progress and raise energy costs.”

Consumer, business renewable energy incentives

The IRA’s tax breaks were designed to encourage consumers to move to energy-efficient and clean energy appliances and vehicles and encourage utilities and other businesses to increase their use of renewable resources such as solar energy and wind power.

Eaton said Wednesday that clean energy tax credits are supporting more than $8.6 billion in private investments in Wisconsin.

Garrik Harwick, assistant business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union Local 890 in Janesville, said that over the past three years more than 300 members have worked on solar projects in Southern Wisconsin. He spoke at a news conference with Eaton and several other union leaders.

The IRA tax breaks have encouraged those developments, Harwick said, and the investments have included increased apprenticeship slots, bringing in new trainees.

“These investments don’t just deliver clean energy,” Harwick added. “They create good paying union jobs that strengthen our local communities.”

He warned that repealing the tax credit will likely reduce the use of clean energy technologies and increase energy costs by 6% for homeowners and more than 9% for business customers.

The IRA’s provisions that encouraged apprenticeships helped “open doors that many didn’t even know existed,” said Andy Buck, government affairs director for the Wisconsin and Upper Michigan district of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.

He said the union has added a number of jobs, including apprentices, installing energy-efficient glass in buildings on projects that were facilitated by the Inflation Reduction Act.

“When someone enters a registered apprenticeship program, they aren’t just learning a trade,” Buck said. “They’re building a career, gaining self-respect, and finding a path to a better life.”

Another provision of the 2022 law opened up tax credits for renewable energy to nonprofit organizations and government agencies, allowing them to receive direct payments to the federal government comparable to the value they’d receive from the tax credit if they paid taxes.

A new middle school being built in Menasha will include solar panels and energy storage, said Matt VanderPuy, a business agent for the Sheet Metal workers union in Sheboygan. The direct pay program will reimburse the district $3 million, he said, while the energy savings is projected at $190,000 per year.

“This is money that they can reinvest into the students, the teachers and the school district,” while saving on property taxes, VanderPuy said.

‘Very ugly impacts,’ says advocate

At another news conference, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes observed that more than 90% of the jobs that IRA incentives helped create are in Republican congressional districts — although no Republicans in the state delegation voted for the bill. Barnes leads Forward Wisconsin, a nonprofit established during Biden’s term in the White House to inform people about the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate investments and to defend them.

But business uncertainty this year, which Barnes blamed on GOP positions including Trump’s tariff executive orders, has led nationally to the cancellation of projects worth $15.5 billion, he said.

“The so-called big beautiful bill is going to have some very ugly impacts in Wisconsin, ripping away tax incentives for wind and solar farms, for rooftop solar, for farm sustainability programs, for clean cars and school buses,” said Amy Barrilleaux, communications director for Clean Wisconsin, at the event with Barnes. “And giving more tax breaks to big oil and gas companies does absolutely nothing to create jobs here or any opportunities here — it’s a gift to big oil at the expense of Wisconsin families and at the expense of our environment.”

Heather Allen, policy director for Elevate, an energy efficiency nonprofit, said as many as 11,000 clean energy and manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin could be at risk.

Plans for a $2.5 billion network of electric vehicle charging stations in the state have stalled, Allen said, and Wisconsin manufacturers that would have supplied components “are going to lose that opportunity now.”

“This legislation is going to strangle our solar businesses with red tape,” Allen said. “What you have here is an attack on small businesses that are delivering clean energy solutions to help families save money on their energy bills. And that includes solar installers, but it also includes other home energy contractors, other construction jobs.”

In four recent polls, a majority of those surveyed disapproved of the Republicans’  megabill — making it “more unpopular than any piece of major legislation that’s been passed since at least 1990,” Barnes said.

At the labor news conference, Emily Pritzkow, the Wisconsin Building Trades Council executive director, said advocates are urging people to contact their members of Congress.

“The polling on this is abysmal, and as long as people continue to call and deliver that message , that is what we need to do right now,” Pritzkow said. “Now is the time to weigh in, not once it’s coming to your front door, impacting you, your community, and people you care about.”

Child care providers and parents attend a Wisconsin State Capitol rally on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Advocates have mixed opinions about child care provisions in the new state budget released Tuesday. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

The proposed Wisconsin state budget announced Tuesday offers child care advocates less than what they sought, and while some reacted with limited optimism, for others it adds up to little better than nothing.

The final deal will spend $110 million to extend direct payments to providers for another year. Starting in mid-2026 It will direct $65 million to providers who join a proposed “School Readiness Program” — similar to 4-year-old kindergarten (4K) but distinct from current 4K programs.

The deal also will add $123 million to increase the reimbursement for child care costs for low-income families under the Wisconsin Shares program. 

The agreement was reached Monday in negotiations involving Gov. Tony Evers, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton).

Kids Forward labeled the child care provisions “significant, but not sufficient, wins for Wisconsin’s working families.” Kids Forward is a policy and advocacy organization for low-income families and families of color.

“This deal doesn’t address the long-term needs of families and providers, but we look forward to working with legislators and the Governor to ensure sustained investment,” said Daithi Wolfe, senior policy analyst for Kids Forward, in a statement Tuesday.

‘Bridge’ payment program

The $110 million in direct payments to providers over the next 12 months will serve as a “bridge” after the end of Child Care Counts, the subsidy program funded with federal pandemic relief money that runs out this month.

Originally paying out $20 million a month, Child Care Counts helped stabilize the child care sector according to research reviewing the program, helping providers increase wages without having to charge parents more.

The money was cut in half two years ago, and since then providers have reported having to raise fees and, in some cases, reduce their capacity because they lacked enough child care workers. A survey report earlier this year found that 25% of providers said they might close if state payments stop.

The new payment program is intended to enable providers to plan and budget between now and July 2026 for the loss of Child Care Counts. It will be funded with interest income on the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds the Evers administration received starting in early 2021.

“The disappointing part is it’s not permanent,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA). WECA has campaigned all year for Gov. Tony Evers’ original proposal, which sought $480 million including for continuing monthly provider subsidies.

“This is not going to be the sort of panacea for child care,” Schmidt said. “We will still see child care programs needing to raise rates. We will likely still see closures throughout the year. But I think we will see them at much lower rates, and I think that’s a really good thing for child care.”

Schmidt praised Evers as a “champion for children” and also credited GOP leaders for being “willing to sit down” and negotiate. “I think bipartisanship has been at play in this,” she said.

A 4K-style program

The new Early School Readiness Program for 4-year-olds is a response to the impact that 4K expansion has had on child care providers. As 4K programs expanded in Wisconsin elementary schools, “that pulled a lot of 4-year-olds out of child care,” Schmidt said.

The new School Readiness Program will set curriculum standards and require child care workers who teach in it to have at least an associate degree. Schmidt said that for child care providers who participate, it will “ensure that child care has more opportunities to continue to serve 4-year-olds.”

Child care providers who take part will for the first time receive direct payments from state funds.

“Child care as an industry has long been very interested in finding out how to continue to do the services that they know are so important for 4-year-olds in their programs, and I think this is a mechanism that will allow for that,” Schmidt said.  “This is a net gain of $65 million in state general purpose revenue into child care. That’s a big thing.”

Providers view deal skeptically 

For some child care providers, however, the details of the budget deal fall short of what they contend their sector needs.

The $110 million bridge program “is less than we’re getting right now, and we can’t keep teachers and we can’t keep prices down the way it is,” said Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider. She doesn’t expect it to achieve its stated goal of increasing the number of teachers along with accessibility and affordability in child care.

Brooke Legler, another New Glarus provider, said the $480 million that Evers had originally sought translated to keeping child care workers’ wages at $13 an hour on average. “This doesn’t even do that,” she said of the bridge program.

Hendrickson and Legler are cofounders of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), a coalition of parents and providers that also campaigned actively for the original Evers proposal.

Hendrickson said she’s concerned that the School Readiness Program will be perceived by parents as “less academic, less school, less quality than the free option at the public school.”

Legler questions whether the new program as structured will succeed in drawing more families of 4-year-olds who would otherwise send their children to 4K. School districts have expanded their 4K programs to all day schedules in part because of a lack of child care, she said.

“I think that’s such a disservice that we have … closed door negotiations and that we’re not including the people at the table that need to be at the table, especially if we want to have effective and efficient policies that work for Wisconsin,” Legler said.

Both Legler and Hendrickson said they’re also concerned about a provision creating a “large family center” category with up to 12 children. Currently there are family centers with up to eight children and group centers with nine or more children.

Another provision would lower the minimum age for entry-level child care workers to 16. Both the age change and the large family provision were in bills that Republicans introduced in the 2023-24 legislative session and that providers mostly opposed.

“That’s not an answer. That doesn’t do anything financially” to help providers, Legler said.

“We have people making life-altering decisions for many people in Wisconsin, yet they have no experience or expertise on the matter,” she said. “This method does not work.”

American Family Children's Hospital, part of the UW Health complex on Madison's west side. Nurses in the UW Health system have been seeking to restore union representation since 2019. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

This report has been updated with reactions from UW Health and SEIU.

Five and a half years after nurses launched a campaign to restore union representation at UW Health, the state’s highest court ruled Friday that the Madison-based hospital system has no obligation to collectively bargain with employees.

Act 10, the 2011 state law that stripped most union rights from public employees, also removed legal guarantees of union representation for University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority’s employees, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote for a unanimous Court.

“When we examine the statutory language along with the statutory history, it is clear that Act 10 ended the collective bargaining requirements formerly placed on the Authority,” Hagedorn wrote.

The Court rejected the argument from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that with the Act 10 changes, the hospital authority as a corporation fit the definition of “employer” under the Wisconsin Employment Peace Act.

The Peace Act defines an employee as anyone working for hire other than an independent contractor and an employer as a person — including partnerships, corporations and some other legal entities — that engages the services of an employee.

The hospital authority doesn’t automatically meet that definition, however, Hagedorn wrote.

Hospital, nurses union respond

The hospital system affirmed the Court’s ruling “that the Wisconsin Peace Act does not apply to UW Health” in a statement Friday, adding, “UW Health appreciates the court’s deliberate, diligent and final review.”

In a statement, SEIU and the UW Health nurses said they would continue to seek union recognition.

“While we are disappointed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, which found that UW Health nurses are not covered under the Wisconsin Employment Peace Act, we are not deterred,” SEIU and the UW Health nurses seeking union recognition said in a statement.

“Our fight to restore collective bargaining rights doesn’t end in the courtroom,” the union statement added. “We will continue to explore all possible pathways to restoring our full collective bargaining rights, including seeking voluntary recognition and passing legislation, to ensure that all of us, no matter who we are or where we work, have a seat at the table and a voice in our workplace.”

A 2022 agreement between the hospital and the union to discuss issues of concern is continuing, according to the nurses’ union statement.

Over the last three years, “hundreds of nurses have become official union members and have been meeting with top administrators to address critical issues around retention, safe staffing, and quality patient care,” the statement said. “Earlier this year, UW nurses and management mutually agreed to extend this agreement through 2027. All the while, we continue to leverage our collective voice to elect pro-worker leaders at every level of government.”

UW Health has in the past made statements declaring that Act 10 prevented the hospital system from engaging with the union.

“Based upon legal advice received from both internal and external counsel, UW Health is concerned about the lawfulness of engaging in collective bargaining, which is not authorized under any statute,” the hospital system’s press secretary, Emily Greendonner, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email message Friday.

“While today’s decision provided final clarity that we are not required to collectively bargain, the question of whether we are legally allowed to do so has not been decided by the courts,” Greendonner said.

Ruling relates Act 10, hospital system history

The hospital system was spun off from the University of Wisconsin in 1996 into a new “public body corporate and politic,” the UW Hospital and Clinics Authority. The hospital system’s employees were state employees represented by unions and with collective bargaining rights under Wisconsin’s state employment relations law.

The hospital authority “is not defined as a corporation,” Hagadorn wrote, “it is a ‘public body corporate and politic.’” He cited the Peace Act’s definition of “employer” that states the term does not include “the state or any political subdivision thereof.”

The 1996 law creating the new hospital authority removed its employees from the state employment relations law and added language specifying that the hospital authority was an employer under the Peace Act.

Act 10 changed that, Hagedorn wrote — repealing the hospital authority’s collective bargaining duty that was in the 1996 law as well as all other references to collective bargaining.

“In sum, Act 10 purged references to the Peace Act from the Authority Statute,” Hagedorn wrote.

“When it created the Authority, the legislature added the Authority as an employer under the Peace Act and imposed numerous other collective bargaining provisions. In Act 10, the legislature eliminated the Authority as a covered employer along with other collective bargaining requirements. We therefore hold that the Authority is no longer covered by the Peace Act and is not required to collectively bargain under the Peace Act.”

Friday’s ruling was the final stop for a case that started in September 2022. In an agreement brokered to avert a planned three-day strike by nurses demanding union recognition at UW Health, the hospital system and SEIU agreed to a joint petition to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC).

In the petition, the union argued that the hospital should be considered an employer under the Peace Act, while UW Health argued that Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining at the hospital system. WERC sided with UW Health, and Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost subsequently affirmed the employment commission’s conclusion.

Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin's East Side Madison clinic. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A union organizing campaign has turned into a contentious conflict at a Madison-based health care nonprofit.

The organizing drive at Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin has gotten mired in a mountain of litigation before the National Labor Relations Board.

There have been disputes over who should be included in a union representation vote as well as dozens of unfair labor practice charges that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has filed against Group Health management.

Most recently, the NLRB’s regional director has issued an order blocking the election after the union argued that the charges against the co-op would taint the outcome. Group Health is denying the charges, and co-op executives say they want a vote to take place as soon as possible.

The Group Health co-op was founded nearly 50 years ago as a health maintenance organization. Members, who include its employees, say the nonprofit’s focus on primary care and wellness has been central to its appeal. Those who support the union contend that the co-op’s response to the union drive is betraying its progressive roots.

“Everyone involved are gut-wrenched by the animosity that has developed,” said Susan McMurray, a former public employee union lobbyist and Group Health member for nearly 20 years. McMurray spoke at  a union rally outside Group Health’s clinic on Madison’s far East Side on June 20.

“There’s a multitude of reasons many of us chose a cooperative model over a for-profit shareholder model for our health care and insurance over the past almost 50 years,” said retired state employee Ruth Brill, a Group Health member, at a May 13 rally for the union.

“Some of our fellow GHC members have chosen to form a union. A union is like a cooperative in almost every way,” Brill said. “I’m calling on GHC to uphold the cooperative principles that it was founded on.”

In an interview, Marty Anderson, Group Health’s chief strategy and business development officer, rejected the accusation that the co-op has engaged in union-busting.

“GHC is not opposed to a union here at the cooperative,” Anderson said. “I think our position all along has been that we want our employees to have a voice — all of our employees, to have a voice in that choice.”

But Group Health co-op members who support the union see the management’s response — challenging the union’s proposal for who would vote as well as distributing messages to workers criticizing the union — more critically.

Paul Terranova, a community organizer, said he got involved in trying to persuade the co-op’s board to take a different approach earlier this year after a conversation with his Group Health doctor.

Terranova put together a group of members and asked for a board meeting in March.

“They gave us 20 minutes on the agenda to speak,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. “It was just us making a presentation to them and them saying ‘thank you.’”

Terranova said his group asked the board and the management to “stop the anti-union messaging [and] anti-union activity” and to “get a second opinion” from other nonprofits that work cooperatively with union-represented employees.

“They refused to engage and they denied that there was any anti-union activity or messaging going on,” he said.

Terranova is also part of a member campaign that has endorsed, with the union, four candidates for the Group Health board in elections that concluded this week.

Update: All four were elected to the board. Election results were announced at the co-op’s annual meeting Thursday evening. 

Staffing struggles

The pro-union employees and SEIU filed a petition in December 2024 for a union representing Group Health clinic doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nursing staff in three departments: primary care, urgent care and dermatology. They also included physical therapists, occupational therapists and health educators.

According to union supporters, nearly 70% of the workers in those jobs and departments had signed cards asking for union representation.

Union supporters say that in those departments, issues including employee turnover and increased workloads prompted the campaign.

“We’re calling for equitable wages, safe provider-to-nurse ratios, meaningful ways to ease the crushing workloads we face and real strategies to improve retention,” said Dr. Ira Segal at the June 20 rally.

“There’s been a lot more turnover in our staffing, and that has increased over the years, which negatively impacts our ability to provide excellent care,” said Dr. Nisha Rajagopalan, a family physician. “The increasing turnover in our staff is unsustainable.”

Staffing crunches in health care have been widespread in the last five years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There just aren’t enough care providers and folks that assist those care providers within the [health care] system in total,” said Anderson, the Group Health executive. “We’ve had to flex with the changing health care environment.”

Julie Vander Werff, a physician assistant and union supporter, said she understands the health care workforce challenge. Despite that, she said, she’s experienced a shift in the co-op’s culture that is contributing to the problem.

“They used to be a very respectful employer, and they’ve really gotten off track in terms of how respectful they have been,” Vander Werff said in an interview. “And they’re being really punitive, and we’re losing staff as a result with high, high turnover rates.”

Who’s in, who’s out

The bargaining unit called for in the union’s original petition did not include other Group Health departments: optometry, behavioral health, radiology and pharmacy. It also did not include physical therapist techs, lab techs and interpreters, social workers, receptionists and maintenance staff.

Addressing the June 20 rally, Vander Werff explained that “other departments who are not under primary care leadership are happy with their jobs” and not interested in unionizing. “But primary care is not.”

From the start, Group Health challenged the bargaining unit described in the petition, according to a letter that employees leading the union drive sent to the Group Health board of directors on Feb. 10.

“Federal labor law says that to form a union, workers need petition only for ‘an’ appropriate bargaining unit — not ‘the’ most appropriate bargaining unit (however that would be determined), and certainly not the unit their employers would most prefer,” the employees wrote. “Rather than accepting a unit of GHC workers’ rightful choice, however, administration and counsel have chosen to contest our bargaining unit.”

Still at an impasse after two days of hearings before an NLRB hearing officer, the union amended its election petition to focus on a single Group Health facility, the Capitol Clinic on Madison’s near West Side. The employees wrote in the Feb. 10 letter that the change was made at the NLRB official’s suggestion.

Group Health challenged that, too. After an additional hearing, the Minneapolis-based NLRB regional director rejected the union’s petition for a single-clinic vote. The decision directed an election covering all clinical departments at Group Health — the bargaining unit that the co-op management sought.

Group Health’s position is that the bargaining unit the employees sought “didn’t include classes or employees that do go between our clinics,” Anderson said. “And because we are an integrated care delivery system, we need to make sure that all the appropriate employees are in the bargaining class.”  

While some Group Health members see the response to the union drive as a turn from the co-op’s roots, Anderson defended it. 

“We were formed by a vote of our members, our board is elected by our members, and I think this goes right along with our ethos as a cooperative to allow our employees the opportunity to vote,” he said.

Pro-democracy, or diluting support?

Employees involved in the union campaign and their allies among the co-op’s members argue that the management claim is disingenuous, however.

“While the administration claims they’re fighting us in order to give everyone a voice, this is a union-busting tactic to prevent workers from winning in a fast and fair election of our choosing,” the Group Health workers wrote. “Anti-union organizations do this to flood the unit with people that they hope will vote against our union.”

According to an NLRB report on union representation elections in 2023, 89% of employers didn’t challenge the workers’ proposed bargaining unit. 

Group Health member Paul Terranova rejected the idea that expanding the vote to include people in jobs and departments who weren’t interested in the union was “just trying to be democratic.”

 “If folks in Madison decided we wanted to put something on a referendum, and the state Legislature said ‘No, everyone in the state has to vote on it,’ everyone would know right away what they were doing,” Terranova said. “People would call BS. It’s the same thing here, right?”

“The right of workers to unionize and to decide what our union looks like . . .  doesn’t belong to administration,” Sarah Spolum, a physician assistant, said at the May union rally. “It doesn’t belong to lawyers. It belongs to us, the workers.”

Anderson said Group Health stands by its position. “We have no idea how our employees are going to vote,” he said. “That’s why we want to get to a vote — because we want that certainty and we want to know what our employees are feeling.”

Unfair labor practice charges

Throughout the campaign, the union has filed charges with the NLRB accusing Group Health management of numerous unfair labor practices. The allegations include changes in pay practices due to union organizing, surveillance of employees for union activity, prohibiting employees from displaying union-related materials, firing union supporters and a variety of other actions.

Group Health has denied all the charges.

After the co-op management’s bargaining unit petition was granted, however, the union petitioned the NLRB to block an election. The agency’s regional director granted the petition, ordering the election to be suspended until all the unfair labor practice charges are resolved.

The union, wrote regional director Jennifer Hadsall, “provided sufficient offers of proof which describe evidence that, if proven, would interfere with employee free choice in the election.”

Group Health, through its lawyer, has demanded a hearing on the allegations in the blocking charge, contending that it’s a smokescreen for diminished support.

At the union’s June 20 rally, Susan McMurray read from a letter she sent to Group Health’s CEO.

“Nothing good will come of this decision,” she said of the co-op’s stance during the union campaign. “It will in my view ruin GHC’s reputation in our community, cause irreparable harm to staff, as well as jeopardize patient care.

“And it didn’t and it doesn’t have to be like this,” she added. “In the past few weeks, I have communicated to management repeatedly that we could find a way through the strife and give everyone a graceful way out, a path going forward and something positive to announce at the annual meeting.”

This report was updated Friday, 6/27/2025, with the outcome of board elections at Group Health that were announced Thursday evening.

Children watch popcorn pop at their child care program operated by the Dodge County YMCA. (Photo courtesy of the Dodge County YMCA)

For months child care providers and their allies campaigning for direct financial support from Wisconsin lawmakers have highlighted employers and the economy as central to their pitch.

Child care providers are “the workforce behind the workforce” in one of the rallying slogans of the provider-parent coalition Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN).

Employers and business owners themselves, however, have largely stayed in the background — from time to time offering testimonials about their employees’ need for child care, but rarely weighing in on policy alternatives.

Last week more than 75 business leaders broke that pattern, sending a letter to members of the Wisconsin Legislature.

“Wisconsin’s lingering child care crisis … cannot go unaddressed any longer by state legislators, because Wisconsin remains at a workforce crossroads that presents significant, pressing challenges for businesses and the economic vitality of the state,” the group wrote.

“We therefore ask you to advance a significant long-term state investment in child care in the 2025-27 state budget because inaction will further shutter child care programs and continue to hamper efforts to stabilize and grow Wisconsin’s workforce.”

The letter was distributed with the help of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA), which provides advocacy and professional services for child care providers and also conducts policy research.

Campaign continues for direct subsidy

The letter embraces what Gov. Tony Evers, child care providers and their allies have been seeking in the 2025-27 Wisconsin budget this year: A direct state subsidy for child care providers. Evers and providers have warned that without that kind of support there’s likely to be a drastic shutdown of child care centers across the state in the coming months.

“Child care programs operate on razor-thin margins with budgets balanced on parent fees, which, despite being costly for families, do not cover the full cost of programs providing high-quality care,” the letter states.

“As employers, we have explored and implemented different local initiatives to help grow access to care,” it adds. Nevertheless, “those solutions are limited and must be complemented with a long-term, significant investment of state revenue.”

Tracy Propst, the executive director of the Beaver Dam Chamber of Commerce, helped organize support for and signed the business letter.

“I really do believe child care is part of an economic strategy,” Propst told the Wisconsin Examiner. “If you don’t have access to abundant and economical child care, you are going to lose workforce.”

Mary Vogl-Rauscher, a human resources consultant in Beaver Dam, joined the letter along with businesses she works with.

Prospective fee hikes are “enough of an increase, if we don’t get the subsidies, to take people out of the workforce,” Vogl-Rauscher said. “From an employer perspective and a business perspective, if [the cost of care] goes up and we don’t continue with the state subsidies, it’s going to make an even bigger economic impact.”

Vogl-Rauscher is active in the local and state chapters of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and organized a community discussion of the issue this spring. 

Propst and Vogl-Rauscher both say they’ve sought to persuade their local Assembly member, state Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), the Joint Finance Committee’s co-chair, that the lawmakers should add the subsidy program into the budget. 

“I’ve had conversations with Mark,” Propst said, adding that he told her that the committee was “doing something,” although not what she had asked for. “He will listen to his constituents,” she said. 

Middle-class squeeze

Both Propst and Vogl-Rauscher said their conversations with Dirk Langfoss, CEO of the Dodge County YMCA and a board member at the Beaver Dam chamber, were instrumental in clarifying the problem.

The Dodge County Y has the largest child care program in the county. Langfoss told the Wisconsin Examiner that competition for employees with other businesses has produced “upward pressures” on wages. The average weekly rate for infant and 1-year-old care is $253 — which adds up to $13,000 for all 52 weeks in the year. Rates are lower for older age groups.

“The middle-income families are the ones that are getting squeezed,” he said, with some telling him now that “they are strapped.”

If subsidies end entirely and the Y has to raise its rates, “those families are going to have to make some very hard decisions,” Langfoss added.

Propst views a direct investment now as a step toward something more comprehensive. “It’s really about child care stabilization,” she said, allowing providers to get their footing.

She also considers the immediate situation to be urgent, and fears the urgency hasn’t gotten through to many people.

“I just think this has snuck up on the businesses,” Propst said. “Like they weren’t aware this is happening, and here we are. And they don’t realize the ramifications of what’s going to happen — and that’s child care closures, child care price increases, and we’re not going to have enough providers.”

Direct investment divisions persist

While child care advocates have been arguing for a direct investment for years, the argument hasn’t fully caught on with the broader public or in the business community.

Among business leaders and the public, “there is a general recognition that child care is essential for workers, especially those that are taking care of young children,” said David Celata, vice president of policy and research for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. But the true cost of care and why most working families can’t afford it is “an incredibly complex issue,” Celata told the Wisconsin Examiner.

“The numbers really don’t add up until we recognize that there is a social and economic good related to child care that we are failing collectively to truly maximize,” he said. “That then requires some sort of a public investment to strengthen the infrastructure of our child care sector.”

In Wisconsin the campaign for a state child care subsidy has been underway since the 2023-25 budget after monthly grants from federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds helped child care providers raise wages without having to increase the fees families paid.

The Legislature’s Republican majority turned aside attempts to continue the subsidy program, Child Care Counts, with state money in the 2023-25 budget. Evers subsequently redirected other federal funds to extend the program at reduced rates through the middle of 2025.

The last of those funds will run out by early July. A survey that the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty released in April found that as many as one in four child care providers said they might shut down without the continued support. Anywhere from half to two-thirds of programs forecast fee increases.

Evers put a $480 million proposal for a state-funded Child Care Counts program in his 2025-27 budget. Republicans on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed it from the budget along with more than 600 other proposals Evers included before beginning work on their own version of the document.

After visiting a child care center in Waukesha County on Monday to highlight his subsidy proposal, Evers told reporters that he would not sign a budget this year without direct child care support. Evers said the provision was part of his ongoing budget negotiations with the Legislature’s GOP leaders.

Direct funding is still a sticking point, however.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) told reporters Tuesday that Republicans are open to working with Evers on child care but remain firmly opposed to “writing checks out to providers.”

Kristen Crowell, executive director of Fair Share America, speaks Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., the first stop for Fair Share America's bus campaign to oppose the Republican budget reconciliation bill currently in the U.S. Senate. (Photo courtesy of Fair Share America)

Over the next three weeks, a band of advocates in a bright green bus is traveling across the U.S. with a message aimed at members of Congress — and at the voters who live in their districts.

To the voters, the message is that they will be hurt by the Republican mega-bill taking shape in Washington — a bill that would extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 that primarily benefit the wealthy and pay for them by slashing Medicaid and other federal programs that critics of the measure argue broadly benefit the public.

To U.S. senators and representatives, the message is: Vote against the measure, or face the wrath of voters in 2026.

The bus trip was launched by  Fair Share America, a coalition of groups focused on  beating back attempts to extend the 2017 tax cuts, one of the signature pieces of legislation from President Donald Trump’s first term. The organization is made up of unions, organizations favoring progressive taxation, and progressive social justice and policy groups.

Fair Share America’s executive director is Kristen Crowell, who lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. In 2022 she helped lead a campaign in Massachusetts when voters approved a constitutional amendment that created a 4% surtax on earned income over $1 million.

“That increase is now generating $3 billion annually that is dedicated for education and transportation,” Crowell told the Wisconsin Examiner.

The Boston Globe reported that the campaign to pass the Massachusetts “millionaires’ tax” raised $27 million, nearly twice as much as the $14 million raised by business-backed opponents of the measure. Crowell said the campaign succeeded by appealing to voters on the issue of fairness.

“We know that when we ask the wealthy to pay a little bit more, to pay their fair share, we can fund the investments that our neighbors and families and communities deserve — and really importantly, right now in this moment, they need in order to to get ahead,” Crowell said in an interview.

Opposition group launched in 2024

The 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of this year. With that date on the calendar, Fair Share America launched in September 2024 to oppose renewing them.

“We started organizing before we knew the outcome of the election and were handed a different reality than we might have hoped for,” Crowell said.

Since then, the organization has helped “lead the pushback at the state level to make sure that constituents and the public understand what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and to really bring the fight to key districts and geographies across the country where lawmakers, in particular the GOP members of Congress, have shut out their constituents,” she said.

The bus trip started on Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., stopped in Philadelphia on Sunday and will hit four more cities across Pennsylvania on Monday. Stops in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa follow. After that, the bus will double back on its route for three Wisconsin stops, in Racine and Oshkosh on Monday, June 30, and La Crosse on July 1.

The schedule will continue through the middle of July, stopping in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada before concluding in Bakersfield, California on July 14.

The tour isn’t the start of the organization’s campaign. Fair Share America and its partners with other advocacy groups have been holding town hall meetings in 33 states across the country, Crowell said — including one in Racine in April that featured former Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley.

Crowell was at the Racine event, to which the local member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) was invited but didn’t show up. “Over 200 people came [from] across the political spectrum.” Crowell said.

At that town hall and other such events across the country, she’s seen energetic opposition to the new Trump administration as well as the priorities of the current Congress, she said.

“Fair Share America’s not speaking to one side of the aisle vs. the other,” Crowell said. “This is a populist moment.”

Public opposition to budget bill

A poll on behalf of three of the coalition’s member groups found that even before they were given information about details of the GOP budget reconciliation bill, the American voters surveyed had a negative opinion of it.

According to the pollsters 38% of those surveyed said they support the bill, 46% said they oppose it and 16% said they don’t know enough to have an opinion.

Fewer than one-third of voters surveyed — 30% — have heard a lot about the bill. Another 40% have heard “just some” about it, and the remaining 30% said they’ve heard little or nothing about the measure.

The more people heard, however, the less they liked it, according to the report from the polling firm, Hart Research. Opposition increased among all groups after pollsters told people about various details — its changes to Medicaid and to SNAP federal nutrition aid, for example.

“By being in the rooms and town halls and knocking on doors here in Wisconsin, that is what we are hearing and seeing,” Crowell said.

With its slogan, “Stop the billionaire giveaway,” Fair Share America’s bus tour aims to amplify the bill’s cuts to programs that benefit the public and to center the message that its tax cuts favor the wealthy.

Congressional Republicans “have not engaged with their constituents” in Wisconsin and elsewhere about the reconciliation bill, Crowell said. Fair Share America’s goal is to break down the details in terms that people will understand and respond to.

“When you tell them what’s at stake, what’s coming down, they are furious and they want to know how to get in the fight,” Crowell said. “They want to know how to organize their three or four neighbors. So it is incumbent on all of us to shed light on the horrors of this reconciliation bill and do everything it takes to get the word out.”

Funding values and priorities

In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has said he opposes the bill and has threatened to vote against it, criticizing it for not making deeper federal spending cuts. 

While that’s the opposite of Fair Share America’s agenda, “voting ‘No’ is voting ‘No’ at the end of the day,” Crowell said.

She is skeptical that Johnson will follow through on his threat, however.

“When push comes to shove, I don’t think Sen. Johnson is going to cross the White House or cross GOP leadership. I expect him to fall in line,” she said. “But we’re here to push back and say, ‘Absolutely not. We will hold you to that No vote and we do want you to understand what the stakes are for your constituents.’”

While the campaign’s goal is to stop the bill, there’s a second message regardless of the outcome, Crowell said.

“We are building a movement that is strong and durable and it crosses partisan lines,” she said. “If they in fact do go ahead and pass this, there will be hell to pay for those members who abandoned  and threw their constituents and their communities under the bus.”

Crowell said her more than two decades of activism started when, as a working mother, she opposed Milwaukee public school budget cuts. Her daughter, who was in kindergarten then, is now 29.

She went on to organize with “We Are Wisconsin,” the grass-roots coalition that sprang up in reaction to Act 10 — the 2011 law stripping most collective bargaining rights from most public employees, introduced and signed by Scott Walker in his first term as governor.

Act 10 was billed as a “budget repair bill.” Crowell said that working against it she saw clearly the connection between government budgets and policy.

“If progressives want to really win … and fund the things that we care about, we have to compete for what happens in the budget process,” Crowell said. “We have to compete for a fair and just tax code. We have to compete for the revenue that funds all of the issues that we care about, whether that’s health care or climate or education or child care.”

A budget “can be used either to fund our priorities and reflect our values or attack the things that we deeply care about,” Crowell said. With the federal budget reconciliation bill, “we’re watching the GOP members of Congress do exactly that — looking to further harm our communities through advancing this budget.”

Tami Jackson of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities describes how unpaid family caregivers could be affected by proposed Medicaid cuts in the Republican budget reconciliation package in Washington, D.C. Janet Zander of the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources, seated at right, also spoke. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Among the many people whose health care could be in jeopardy from possible Medicaid cuts, one group may be even less visible than the rest.

“Medicaid is the primary thing that supports family caregivers,” said Tami Jackson, policy analyst for the Wisconsin Board for People with Development Disabilities (BPDD), in a presentation to social workers Thursday in Dodgeville. 

The person under the caregiver’s care could be living at home, but will probably still require long-term support of some kind — support covered by Medicaid, Jackson said. Medicare provides coverage only for a limited time, such as when a person has come home after being hospitalized.

Private long-term care insurance plans “are unaffordable and they have not been workable for many years,” she added. “So Medicaid is it — and we happen to have a lot of people who need long-term care.”

Jackson and Janet Zander of the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources met with Iowa County social workers in Dodgeville Thursday to explain the likely effect of Medicaid cuts that are part of the budget reconciliation bill that has passed the U.S. House and is now in the Senate.

The GOP majorities of both houses want to pass the legislation so they can extend tax cuts enacted in 2017, when President Donald Trump was in his first term. Those tax cuts have been found to heavily benefit wealthy Americans. Without action they will expire at the end of 2025.

Cutting Medicaid, hiking other costs

Medicaid is the single largest source of federal funds in the state budget — about $9 billion a year.

Under the U.S. House version of the budget reconciliation bill, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) has projected between 71,000 and 111,000 Wisconsinites would lose Medicaid coverage, including more than 3,800 people with disabilities and 2,400 older adults. The state’s federal Medicaid revenues would be cut by $501 million to $663 million.

The Medicaid cuts on the scale of those in current iterations of the bill “are too large to not cause states to have to cut many things in their state budget,” Jackson said.

The bill’s Medicaid cuts as well as changes it would make to the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace — including ending subsidies that have made marketplace plans more affordable for lower-income people — would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 16 million in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“Whether you’re a caregiver, whether you’re on Medicaid, whether you’re working for somebody who’s on Medicaid,” everyone will be affected by 16 million more uninsured people, Zander said.

With more uncompensated care for hospitals and providers, she predicted that the cost for other payers will increase.

“We’re going to see premiums for any kind of [health] insurance skyrocket — the employer’s portion, the employee’s portion,” Zander said.

Reduced Medicaid care, more unpaid care

Family caregivers feel Medicaid’s impact in several ways. For many people who are elderly or have disabilities it enables them to get paid, professional care at home. If that care is cut back, that means more work for the unpaid family member.

“Those paid caregivers — they’re paid for by Medicaid dollars and there aren’t enough of them. There haven’t been enough of them for years,” Jackson said.

 If Medicaid cutbacks reduce the pay for those caregivers, the workforce that is already underpaid is likely to be even harder to find — making access to paid care even more difficult, she added, to the point where “it’s either the unpaid caregiver or nothing.”

Family caregivers who take on more unpaid care responsibilities may have to cut back on their own paid jobs.

“The amount of people who are reducing, limiting [work hours or] leaving the workforce because there isn’t a stable, paid caregiving workforce to provide what they need is huge,” Jackson said.

A BPDD survey found that for unpaid family caregivers in Wisconsin providing or coordinating care or filling in for missing care workers took 80% of their time. Two-thirds said caregiving had a negative impact on their family finances and 50% said they left jobs or reduced hours to provide care because there were no care workers to hire.

Unpaid caregivers who leave the workforce not only lose income but reduce the earnings that contribute to their Social Security retirement, Jackson said.

Kristin Voss, a Madison public school teacher for 24 years, had to retire to help manage and care for her 23-year-old daughter. Her daughter has epilepsy, autism and an intellectual disability and “functions at about anywhere from 6 to 12 years old,” Voss said in a panel discussion that was part of Thursday’s presentation.

Until her daughter was 21, she was entitled to public education, where she got “tons of support” including in her transition period that started when she was 18, Voss said. At 21, those supports were no longer available, however.

Her daughter enrolled in the state’s self-directed long-term care program called IRIS. The program includes a caseworker, but Voss also has responsibility as her daughter’s family caregiver, helping to manage day-to-day changes in her daughter’s placement and activities.

“I don’t mind doing these things, but there’s things that I don’t always know about and I’m not always prepared for,” Voss said. “And so, no, I couldn’t do this and be a public school teacher.”

Instead, she has put together a collection of part-time positions that give her flexibility that she needs — although none of them have health insurance, Voss said.

Unpaid caregivers ‘untangling the mess’

Some unpaid caregivers who leave the workforce may also turn to Medicaid for their health coverage because they can’t afford health insurance or work at a job that doesn’t provide insurance.

“About 4 million people nationally are unpaid caregivers who are in Medicaid themselves,” Jackson said.

Among the changes proposed for Medicaid is a requirement for participants in the program to prove every six months that they are still eligible for the program, instead of once a year, the current standard. Another change proposed is to add a work requirement for certain Medicaid participants.

Both of those changes will mean more paperwork. “Unpaid caregivers are the folks that are keeping people who are in Medicaid programs already,” Jackson said — by filling out the forms that are required to prove the person is still eligible.  

“Often these processes are so complex,” Jackson said. And when something goes wrong, because of an error in an eligibility form or a billing mistake, family caregivers “are the people who are untangling the mess.”

The current version of the bill in the Senate gives caregivers an exemption from the work requirement — but Jackson said the definition has raised concerns.

The current proposal limits the exemption to people who are caring for a person under the age of 14. National advocates have said that “really narrows that caregiver exemption and doesn’t quite fit with the reality that most unpaid caregivers are providing care for people with disabilities and older adults,” Jackson said.

Including exemptions in the proposed work requirement provisions also doesn’t necessarily reduce the paperwork.

“You either have to prove you’re meeting the work requirements, or you have to prove that you’re exempt for those requirements,” Jackson said. “And if you’re a caregiver who’s in Medicaid, you have to do that for yourself and probably the person you’re supporting.”

A bill that passed both the Assembly and the Senate Wednesday would automatically classify ride-share and certain delivery drivers as independent contractors. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Legislation that would declare that drivers for app-based ride-share and delivery businesses are independent contractors will go to Gov. Tony Evers after clearing both houses of the Legislature Wednesday.

The legislation also authorizes the affected companies to offer drivers benefit plans without classifying them as employees.

After two previous attempts to pass the bill, in the Legislature’s 2021-22 and 2023-24 sessions, the Senate and Assembly votes Wednesday — mostly along party lines — marked the first time the measure will get to the governor’s desk.

The bill — AB 269 — applies to drivers for delivery and transportation businesses such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash who are hired by customers using online apps or similar technology.

It defines those drivers as independent contractors who are not subject to laws guaranteeing minimum wage, unemployment compensation and workers compensation.

Update: The bill passed the Assembly on a vote of 56-36, but as of Friday, the Assembly’s official journal of the session reported that three of four Assembly Democrats who were recorded as voting “yes” for the bill asked that their votes be registered as “no,” and their requests were granted, resulting in a new tally of 53-39. One Democrat supported the bill. 

WisPolitics.com reported the changed votes on Friday. WisPolitics.com also reported that according to the office of Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, Assembly chief clerk’s office and the Legislative Technical Services Bureau “conducted a thorough testing” of the Assembly’s electronic voting system and found no problems.

In the Senate, the bill passed 16-15, with no Democratic support and one Republican, Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) voting in opposition.

As of Wednesday the Wisconsin Ethics Commission had no public reports on money spent lobbying for or against the legislation. But since early this year DoorDash has been running digital ads on WisPolitics.com and elsewhere promoting the legislation’s “portable benefits” provision.

DoorDash issued a statement Wednesday lauding the bill’s passage. “Dashers and customers in Wisconsin have sent hundreds of letters to the governor, urging him to sign the bill into law,” the company stated.

If Evers signs the measure, Wisconsin would be the first state in the country to enact such legislation. DoorDash has pilot benefit programs without legislation in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Georgia, the company said.

While the bill authorizes the companies to offer the benefit plans, it does not require them to do so. It sets the standards of coverage for such plans if they are offered. It also allows the businesses to establish deferred compensation retirement plans for their drivers.

“This bill will provide meaningful, affordable benefit opportunities for these independent contractors,” said Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Green Lake) at an Assembly press conference before Wednesday’s floor session. “They’ll be able to solidify that they get to choose when and where they want to work, the freedom that they have to be able to earn benefits through the work that they provide for these different companies, and be able to really set themselves up for a future of success by having things such as health insurance.”

A new independent contractor standard

The legislation lists four practices that would exclude a ride-share or delivery company from the independent contractor protections: If it requires drivers to be logged into the service on certain dates, certain times or for a minimum number of hours; if it terminates a driver’s contract for not accepting a specific service request; if it bars drivers from working with other such businesses; and if it bars drivers from working in any other occupation or business.

A company would have to flunk all four of those provisions to be disqualified.

In both the Senate and the Assembly, critics said the bill would serve the contracting companies, not their drivers.

“We don’t need to create a new category of workers with fewer protections, which is what this bill does,” said Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) on the Senate floor. “The sad realization is that all of the so-called benefits talked about in this bill may never come to fruition for any gig driver. And yet the bill makes mandatory the loss of employee status for every single app-based driver.”

Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), said drivers testified in favor of the legislation that “they don’t want to be employees.” Bradley is the lead author of the Senate companion legislation. 

“If you watch any of the hearings, they’ll tell you, ‘We love the flexibility of being an independent contractor.’ They chose to be independent contractors because of the flexibility.”

Under state law and regulations, the state Department of Workforce Development (DWD) uses a nine-part test to determine if workers are employees rather than independent contractors, said Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) during the Assembly debate.

“The big problem with this bill, though, is that it actually allows the executives of these companies to dictate their own test to fit their own needs,” Sinicki said.

‘Difficult way to pay the bills’

“Driving for ride-sharing services like Lyft or Uber is a grueling, difficult way to pay the bills,” said Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who said he’s a ride-share driver.

He said the industry’s claims that a driver collects $25 or $30 an hour are based on the travel time alone.

“So in an hour, if I take two people on rides which cost them $7 each and I get about $3.50 from each of those, Lyft might report that I got $30 an hour because they don’t count all the minutes between the rides. But I actually gross $7 that hour,” Clancy said.

The bill allows a company to contribute up to 4% of a driver’s earnings to the proposed benefits account. He said Uber drivers have an average weekly revenue of $513, so 4% “would come out to just $267 a quarter” — too little to cover a health insurance premium.  

The bill aims to keep drivers from being classified as employees because “it’s far easier to exploit an independent contractor than it is an employee,” he said.

Clancy said drivers across the U.S. have been “trying to get recognized as the employees they are, and to try to get access to basic benefits and workplace protections and access to unemployment insurance, just like the vast majority of employees in Wisconsin.”

Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee), a co-sponsor of the bill was the only Assembly Democrat to support, although three other Democrats were initially recorded as voting “yes” before being granted a request to change their vote to “no.”

“I heard countless testimonies from drivers who wanted the flexibility of being independent contractors,” Ortiz-Velez said, adding that she has received “a ton of emails, a ton of support” for the bill this year as well as in the last two-year session.

“This bill offers portable benefits that right now don’t exist,” Ortiz-Velez said. “It won’t exist if we don’t pass this bill.”

Dallman, the bill’s lead Assembly author, said on the Assembly floor that critics of the bill can simply choose not to work for the companies it covers.

“This is for the independent contractor and the freedom that they have to get ahead in life by working a couple extra jobs, a couple extra trips on a weekend to make a little bit of extra cash,” Dallman said. “While at the same time, voluntarily partnering with one of these companies . . .  to pay for their benefits, to pay for their retirement. Again, the opportunity for workers to make choices on their own to get ahead in life.”

This report was updated Friday, 6/20/2025, to update the Assembly vote on SB 269 after the Assembly journal reported on a request by three Democrats to change how their vote had been recorded.

Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) speaks at a Republican news conference Wednesday before the Senate's floor session. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

On unanimous voice votes, lawmakers approved legislation Wednesday that allows nurses with advanced training to practice independently in Wisconsin.

The bill now heads to Gov. Tony Evers, who vetoed similar bills twice before but who is now expected to sign the measure after negotiating changes to address his previous objections.

“I can’t stress what a team effort this was. It was bipartisan,” said Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), the lead Assembly author on AB 257, before the vote on the Assembly floor. “People put their pettiness aside and they actually got a good product across the finish line.”

The Assembly passed the legislation Wednesday and the Senate concurred later in the day.

“While this legislation had been vetoed in the previous two sessions, I’m proud to say and stand before you that we have an agreement and a deal that when this reaches the governor’s desk, that is going to become law,” said Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point).

The bill creates a new formal nursing credential under state law, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN).

To win Evers’ signature, authors of the bill agreed to increase the amount of training and supervision before an APRN can practice independently, added additional supervision requirements for APRN practitioners who specialize in pain management and included language to restrict the titles APRN practitioners use so patients aren’t confused about their credentials.

Evers previously vetoed APRN measures in 2022 and 2024, specifying in his veto messages that he didn’t sign them because of those issues.

“I wish it didn’t take us nearly a decade to do this,” said Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) in the Assembly floor session. “But It needed to and I’m glad that we’re getting it done now and I’m glad that we’re getting it done right.”

Under the proposal, the Wisconsin state nursing board would oversee the credentialing of advanced practice nurses. The credential would include certified nurse-midwives, certified registered nurse anesthetists, clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners.

“This is a really important bill,” said Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) before the Senate passed the measure. “It is going to increase access to high-quality patient care for people around the state, but especially people in underserved communities.”

People protest on June 24, 2022, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court after the release of the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v Wade case and erased a federal right to an abortion. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Two years ago Megan Kling and her husband were eagerly looking forward to the birth of their third child. Then at 20 weeks they got devastating news from their doctor.

The infant, upon being born, would have no chance of surviving. He lacked critical internal organs and his brain and heart were both abnormal.

“Our baby would die, either in utero or within hours after birth,” Kling told reporters Monday morning. “We were in a situation with no good outcome.”

To carry him for another four months, knowing that he would not live, “seemed inhumane,” Kling said.

The diagnosis was confirmed at 22 weeks — and by then, Kling said, her doctors were unable to help her because of an 1849 Wisconsin law that at the time was still being interpreted as a near-blanket ban on abortion.

Kling and her husband, residents of western Wisconsin, traveled to neighboring Minnesota. There, doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester confirmed that, if born, their baby would not be viable. At her request, the medical team induced labor at 23 weeks. Kling gave birth and the couple’s son died in their arms an hour later.

Kling told her story Monday at a news conference held by advocates to draw attention to next week’s third anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending a national right to abortion.

Dr. Nike Mourikes of the Committee to Protect Health Care said from the moment the ruling was issued, “I realized how this cruel decision would cause harm to so many lives and undermine the ability of physicians and other health care providers to care for their patients.”

Abortion was a legal right throughout her medical training and practice until the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mourikes said. 

The Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the first 20 weeks while placing some limits on the procedure later in pregnancy. Although Mourikes had heard “the horror stories” of what women had experienced before that decision, she said, “I never imagined that we would ever, ever go back to those days again.”  

As a physician, she has cared for many women who sought abortion to end a pregnancy. “Each woman had her own unique history, her own unique reasons and circumstances that led her to make this complex decision,” Mourikes said. “But that choice was her choice, not the government’s, not a politician’s. It was her body and it was her right.”

The 2022 ruling effectively reinstated Wisconsin’s 1849 law, which at the time was widely seen as a near-blanket abortion ban.

A September 2023 Dane County Circuit Court ruling reversed that assumption, with the judge holding that the law applied to feticide, but not to elective abortions. A decision on that ruling is now pending in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, the law “casts a shadow over our state,” Morikes said. Republican lawmakers have been unwilling to repeal the law, and even when Roe v Wade was still in effect, enacted laws “that force doctors to practice medicine not for the good of their patients, but to satisfy anti-abortion politicians.”

Those include a requirement for “an invasive, sometimes painful and medically unnecessary ultrasound” before an abortion, she said, as well as “a medically unnecessary 24-hour waiting period” that requires women to visit a health provider two days in a row before having an abortion.

Sydney Andersen, a government relations specialist for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, said Planned Parenthood has succeeded in returning abortion services to Wisconsin since the Dane County ruling.

But the organization faces new challenges, she said. Those include the budget reconciliation bill  that passed the U.S. House last month and is now in the Senate. A provision in the bill prevents Planned Parenthood from accepting Medicaid coverage for low-income patients.

Planned Parenthood at risk of closing hundreds of clinics, drastically limiting abortion access

If the U.S. Senate enacts the provision and it becomes law, “more than 1 million patients across the United States could lose their access to birth control, wellness exams, vaccines, STI [sexually transmitted infection] testing, and cancer screenings, including over 50,000 patients in Wisconsin alone,” Andersen said. Black women, other people of color, rural residents and other low-income families would experience “the most significant impact,” she said.

Kling, who is 34 and described herself as a working mother, said she was telling the story of her third pregnancy to make the point that “abortion restrictions can impact anyone who can become pregnant.”

In an interview, Kling told the Wisconsin Examiner that she had not been politically engaged before the experience.

“I was always pro-choice, but after going through this experience I wanted to utilize my story to help people understand that this can impact anyone,” she said.

Despite the current circuit court ruling, the current state of Wisconsin law is such that hospitals “will always create policy that is more restrictive than what the law allows,” Kling said. “There’s a lot of gray area in our law right now with the politics.”

In the news conference, Kling described the emotions that washed over the couple in the hour that she and her husband held their dying infant.

“Our son only knew love,” she said. “But as parents, those were the most helpless and traumatic moments that we have ever had to endure.”

Kling said she tried to contact her Republican state lawmakers in hopes of raising their awareness about the effect of the current state of abortion restrictions. Her state representative has not responded to her calls or email messages, and her state senator’s aide said he was “too busy to schedule a 10-minute meeting to hear my story,” she said.

“Are they unwilling to understand what real women are going through or do they simply not care?” Kling said. “Is this the reality you want the women of Wisconsin to face? Forcing us to flee our state for care?”

Green Bay Conservation Corps workers, from left, Emily Swagel, Zak King and Cailie Kafura, plant native shrubs in Fireman's Park. The work is part of installing a pollinator corridor and a larger land restoration project across Green Bay. (Photo courtesy of Green Bay Conservation Corps)

Jake White says he was lucky.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with a global health major, White was in his second year of an AmeriCorps placement in the Sawyer County Public Health Department, where he helped out with department reports and outreach to the community. Then AmeriCorps pulled the plug at the end of April — cancelling its grants to agencies all across the country.

White was in the middle of working with a team assigned to produce a community health assessment for the county when he got the news. Sawyer County kept him on so he could stick with the project, converting his position to a  limited-term employee (LTE) through the end of June, when White starts medical school in Wausau.

The reprieve also gave him a chance to hand over a second project, on substance abuse prevention, to another community member, White said. The future of that work was one of his biggest worries about AmeriCorps’ sudden shutdown.

His AmeriCorps experience at the county “really gave me the foundation for the skills and knowledge I will carry into my role as a physician,” White told the Wisconsin Examiner.

The aftermath of the AmeriCorps shutdown didn’t go as  smoothly for Maxwell Robin. He was placed with the St. Vincent DePaul charitable pharmacy in Madison.

“I did whatever needed to be done,” Robin said — working on computer projects at the pharmacy, filling prescriptions, serving as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients.

When the AmeriCorps cancellation notice arrived, the projects he was working on “got thrown into chaos,” Robin said a week after the notification.

Now a federal judge has ordered AmeriCorps to restore its grants and reinstate its volunteers. But all of that remains up in the air.

“Things are just very confusing now,” Robin said Friday.

Despite that, Robin has been able to move on. He is waiting to hear back from several job applications.

And he still volunteers part-time at the pharmacy, where he developed a strong interest in working in the nonprofit sector.

“We were able to take people who, for whatever reason, had been kicked to the side,” Robin said.

But program administrators still don’t know for sure what will happen and when.

“We are still waiting for official notification from AmeriCorps,” said Jeanne Duffy, the executive director of Serve Wisconsin, in an email message Friday.

Serve Wisconsin, based in the Wisconsin Department of Administration, is the state administrator for AmeriCorps.

Wisconsin has 25 AmeriCorps programs operating in more than 300 locations across the state — volunteers who are paid a stipend and who work in health care, help with environmental projects, assist in school classrooms and carry out  other projects.

When the Trump administration canceled AmeriCorps grants April 25, the action caught participants in the program as well as officials responsible for coordinating its work by surprise.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul joined the federal lawsuit brought by 25 states to challenge the AmeriCorps shutdown.

Thursday’s order, by U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman in Maryland, found that the Corporation for National Community Service, the agency that operates AmeriCorps, and its administration “likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking before making significant changes to service delivery, that the plaintiffs will be irreparably harmed if this injunction does not issue, and that the balance of the equities and the public interest favor an injunction.”

The cancellation affected programs all over Wisconsin that have worked with AmeriCorps, some of them for years, and the volunteers who have flocked to AmeriCorps looking for experience through community service work.

“It’s a tragedy,” said state Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee), who spent two years as an AmeriCorps participant 15 years ago. “AmeriCorps is about volunteerism. We have limited resources and we have this unlimited need.”

In Green Bay, AmeriCorps helped staff the Green Bay Conservation Corps. Founded in 2022, the Conservation Corps has fielded teams of AmeriCorps members each year on projects that have included establishing a pollinator corridor through the city, removing invasive plants, maintaining walking trails and restoring area streams.

“Altogether we’ve seen over 70 AmeriCorps members come through our doors,” said Maria Otto, the Green Bay Conservation Corps coordinator. “They’re the ones getting the work done.”

The Green Bay city council passed a measure covering the rest of the 2025 service year from city funds.

“After two weeks of uncertainty, our entire crew was able to work for the Conservation Corps again” thanks to the funds, said Cailie Kafura, one of the AmeriCorps volunteers. The money will allow the program’s work to keep going through August.

“We were doing a lot of work that people maybe don’t even know is being done,” said Kafura. “I know that the work I’m doing, I want to be doing that kind of work in the future. I want to be using my body and my mind for good out in the world.”

Lynn Walter operates a nonprofit, New Leaf Foods, that promotes access to healthy food and education in the greater Green Bay area. Founded 15 years ago, New Leaf began working with AmeriCorps five years ago through a partnership with Marshfield Clinic. The clinic deploys AmeriCorps participants on health-related projects around the state.

Walter said Friday after the cancellation she was able to retain one of her three AmeriCorps participants this year on a contract basis. A second AmeriCorps member chose to stay on as a volunteer to complete a project she had been working on, while the third needed more paid hours and went to another job.

Even with the court ruling, Walter said, she’s been told that what happens next remains uncertain. And she fears there’s been longer-term damage regardless of what happens in the court case.

“Even if the program starts up again, there won’t be the momentum that there has been in the past,” Walter said. She expects prospective participants to be wary of signing up in the future: “What would you tell a young person?”

In his early 30s, Omokunde joined Public Allies, a leadership development nonprofit, in 2010 and 2011 as an AmeriCorps participant. He called the experience “a tipping point” for him personally and professionally.

“One of the core values is collaboration,” Omokunde said. “It taught me that collaboration is one of the most difficult things to do — but it’s one of the most necessary things to do.”

Omokunde is blunt in his assessment of why AmeriCorps was targeted in President Donald Trump’s second term.

“I think it follows a long tradition of people not valuing the work that is done in certain communities,” Omokunde said. “Donald Trump is a bully. He doesn’t want anything in opposition to him and his agenda.”

Omokunde ticked off a list of colleagues in politics who came up through AmeriCorps and Public Allies: State Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, former state Rep. David Bowen, and the late Milwaukee alder Jonathan Brostoff, also a former Assembly member.

“When he sees this cadre of individuals who are rooted in community and learning about asset-based community development, diversity and being committed to anti-oppression as well, people who represent all people, he doesn’t want that kind of opposition,” Omokunde said. “He just wants people to go along and do his bidding.”