Child care providers, parents and advocates arrive at the state Capitol Wednesday, April 16, 2025, for a rally in support of child care funding. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Hundreds of child care providers and parents rallied outside the state Capitol Wednesday, then headed inside to buttonhole lawmakers of both parties, urging support for a $480 million provision in the next state budget for Wisconsin’s child care providers.

“Child care is not a luxury, it’s not a nice-to-have,” said Claire Lindstrom, an Eau Claire parent who addressed the rally. “It is infrastructure.”

“We’re here today because the people who are doing this very important work can no longer afford to hold up a broken system,” said Toshiba Adams, an instructor and instructional chair in early childhood education at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

The rally and afternoon visit with legislators followed a morning gathering of the participants at the nearby Concourse Hotel that included talks by lawmakers, parents and providers. At noon 350 or more people — the largest action by child care advocates in recent memory — marched from the hotel to the rally, with chants of “Kids first, families first, invest in child care now.”

The crowd massed on the Capitol building’s west steps for a half hour of speeches.

Lindstrom broke down the average cost for child care. A single parent paid the minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, “would have to work 43 full-time weeks just to cover one year of infant care,” she said. A family making the median income in Wisconsin — about $75,000 a year — will probably spend 20% of their earnings on care for a single child.

“If they have two kids, an infant and a 4-year-old, they’re spending over a third of their income just to go to work,” Lindstrom said. “This is not a personal budgeting issue. That’s a broken system.”

Gov. Tony Evers has proposed $480 million in the state’s 2025-27 budget that would go to licensed child care providers, replenishing the state’s Child Care Counts program funded from federal pandemic relief. Without that, Child Care Counts will expire for good in June.

At its height between 2021 and 2023, Child Care Counts was credited with stabilizing Wisconsin’s providers, who shared in payments totaling $20 million a month. Providers reported that with the money they were able to raise wages for child care workers while holding down increases in the fees that parents paid.

“Our early childhood educators are trained in how to support brain development, emotional regulation, and school readiness,” Lindstrom said. “We expect them to do this important work and yet we pay them less than workers at Kwik Trip and Culver’s.”

Evers, a Democrat, was unable to persuade the Legislature’s Republican majority to extend the program in the state’s 2023-25 budget. He repurposed other federal funds, and the total payment was reduced to $10 million a month. That will run out in June.

Providers, advocates and early childhood education experts have argued that only with an ongoing investment like Child Care Counts can providers pay child care workers adequately without pricing care out of reach for the average family.

“We need child care for our communities to function,” Lindstrom said. “We can no longer afford to treat this like a personal problem. It’s a public domain. And the solution is clear. We need to fund child care.”

A survey report released April 10 found that up to 25% of Wisconsin providers said they might close without continued support along the lines of Child Care Counts. More than one-third said they might have to reduce the number of children then could serve for lack of staff.

Large majorities said they might have to cut pay and that they expect to have more difficulty recruiting workers. More than half said they expect some employees to quit and that providing high quality care would become more difficult.

“We will see dramatically less care available in virtually every single county in the state,” Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, told the crowd. “Is that acceptable?”

“No!” the crowd roared back in reply.

“Is it acceptable that moms will have to consider leaving the workforce in record numbers because you cannot work if you cannot afford or find child care? Is it acceptable that stressed out parents doing the best they can will have no support from the state to ensure that they can work and contribute to our tax base?”

With each question the rallygoers responded with resounding shouts of “No!”

Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, told the crowd that businesses should support state funding for child care.

His company pays employees with young children $400 a month toward their child care costs, he said. When the crowd applauded, he thanked them, then added, “but I also feel very embarrassed. … That’s so little, and the cost of child care is, you know, several thousand dollars a month, and this is just barely scratching the surface.”

Shivaram pointed out the state manufacturing tax credit that his company receives, along with all Wisconsin manufacturers.

“And guess what? We have to do absolutely nothing to get that tax credit,” he said. “We don’t have to invest in any capital equipment, we don’t have to train any workers, we don’t have to give back to the community, nothing. You know, how about we make that tax credit contingent on helping the child care situation?”

In an interview after the legislative visits Schmidt of WECA said the hundreds who took part went to almost every state Senate office and about 90% of the Assembly members’ offices as well. WECA organized the event along with Wisconsin Head Start Association and Raising Wisconsin — an advocacy campaign that WECA and allied groups launched in 2022.

“We really wanted this to be nonpartisan,” Schmidt said — “just an opportunity to tell stories and share, from a real perspective, from the heart what’s going on with this industry.”

Some of those conversations — with leaders in the Legislature who advocates have already spoken to about the budget request — were “not necessarily a surprise,” she acknowledged.  

With other lawmakers, she added, including some of the 30 first-term Assembly members elected in November as well as others who have not served on committees where child care has been an agenda item, “there was a lot of interest in just learning,”

The visits were an opportunity for personal testimony to reach lawmakers and their staff, Schmidt said. “The power of having parents tell their stories, and the power of having educators tell their stories about how they’ve been using the public funding when it’s available — it was very compelling.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

In a new survey of Wisconsin child care providers, 25% said they could close without renewed state support. Corrine Hendrickson, shown here at a 2023 event to support the child care sector, said her New Glarus family care will likely have to raise fees. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

One in four Wisconsin child care providers could close their doors if the state’s ongoing support isn’t replaced after it ends in June, according to a state-commissioned report released Thursday.

More than one in three providers expect to reduce their capacity for children or the hours they operate, or both, according to the report, based on a survey of most of the state’s licensed child care providers.

The report was commissioned by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) and produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It was released by the office of Gov. Tony Evers to support $480 million for child care providers in his 2025-27 proposed budget — a successor to the state’s Child Care Counts program that was funded with federal pandemic relief money. 

“It underscores what those of us in the field have known for a long time — that is, the need for public investment in order to stave off closures and rate increases,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association.

The association supports Evers’ $480 million budget proposal and is holding an advocacy day at the state Capitol on April 16, with plans to meet lawmakers.

In a statement announcing the survey findings, Evers underscored his proposal.

“The cost of child care is too darn high, wait lists are too long, and providers are already struggling to keep the lights on, their doors open, and meet demand for child care across our state,” Evers said.

“The results of this survey are crystal clear: if we don’t make needed investments to support our child care providers and industry, programs will close, wait lists will get even longer, providers will be forced to raise prices, and parents and loved ones who can’t afford for [their] costs to get any higher may have to leave our workforce.”

Child Care Counts has provided monthly payments to state child care providers since 2021. From November 2021 to January 2024, it was funded from Wisconsin’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the federal pandemic relief legislation enacted in 2021. The program paid out more than $479 million to providers. After that money ran out, Evers directed another $170 million additional pandemic relief funds to carry the program through June 2025.

Child Care Counts paid out $20 million a month until mid-2023, when it was cut to $10 million a month, with providers getting half of what they had previously received.

The Republican majority in the state Legislature rejected Evers’ proposal to put up to $360 million in the 2023-25 budget to continue the subsidy program at its earlier monthly amount.

Providers have credited the Child Care Counts program with making it possible for them to increase pay for child care workers in the face of competition from other employers without being forced to raise the fees they charge parents.  

About 80% of the state’s more than 4,500 child care providers received and took part in the survey, which was included in providers’ November application for Child Care Counts payments.

The survey included questions about providers’ experiences before and after the Child Care Counts reduction. It also asked about their expectations after the program ends in June, as well as the potential impact of a continued program.

Two-thirds of providers surveyed reported that after the payments were reduced, they raised fees.

Responding to questions about the impact of state support ending in June, 25% or more of providers in the survey said they would be somewhat or more likely to close. Fully 10% of providers said closing their program “was very or extremely likely,” the report found.

“That’s an incredibly concerning statistic,” said Schmidt. “That’s a lot of child care programs that could be pulling up stakes. It’s going to hit rural communities super hard, but across the state we’re going to see significant closures.”

More than one-third of providers — 37% — said they were “at least somewhat likely” to close some of their classrooms or reduce the number of children they serve. Almost that many, 36%, said they were likely to reduce the number of hours they provide care.

By 59%, providers also expect their waiting lists to grow without continued state support.

Providers also expect to have a harder time hiring and keeping employees, with 66% saying that it was “at least somewhat likely” they will have to cut compensation, including their own. Fully half of providers “said this was very or extremely likely,” the report states.

More than half of providers — 56% — said it was at least somewhat likely that more employees would quit, and 46% said staff cuts were somewhat or more likely.

Of providers in the survey, 69% said “that it was at least somewhat likely” they would have a harder time hiring qualified employees.

About half of providers surveyed — 51% — said they thought it would be “at least somewhat likely” that they would find it harder to provide high quality care.

Between one-fourth and nearly half of providers said they expected to have more trouble being able to meet some parents’ specific needs. Those include providing care earlier or later in the day, serving families in the state’s Wisconsin Shares subsidy child care program for low-income families, caring for infants and toddlers or caring for children with special needs.

“With families already struggling to afford child care, respondents repeatedly described how continued funding — whether at the original or at current levels—would help prevent further tuition rate increases,” the survey report notes. Some providers said it would allow them to hold rates at their current level or reduce them, while others said it would keep the rate of tuition increases down.

Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider and organizer of an advocacy group for providers and families, Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), said the survey points out “the disastrous results for children and families after the initial [Child Care Counts] funding wasn’t replaced in the state budget.”

Rural areas, where families are younger and have lower incomes, may be hit the most dramatically if the child care sector contracts, Hendrickson said.

Hendrickson said she is likely to have to raise the rates she charges for her family child care center, which has a capacity of eight children. A $30 increase “will put me out of reach for too many families,” Hendrickson said. “If I lose two children and can’t replace them within a month or two, I will have to close.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

When a child's birth is covered by Medicaid, county social service agencies may require the father to pay back Medicaid costs as part of a child support order. (Getty Images)

Gov. Tony Evers is asking Wisconsin counties to give up a practice they’ve relied on for years: clawing back money from the absent fathers of children whose mothers were Medicaid recipients when they gave birth.

The practice is called birth cost recovery. When Medicaid covers the birth of a child and the father doesn’t live with the rest of the family, county social service departments and the courts may add a requirement to repay Medicaid to a father’s child support order.

In his 2025-27 state budget proposal, Evers wants to end the practice, and he’s offering counties a deal to give it up: a nearly $4 million boost for child support agencies.

Although permitted under federal law, only two states now authorize the use of birth cost recovery: Kansas and Wisconsin. Proponents of the practice have argued that it’s only fair to try to recoup state funds spent on the birth of a child if the child’s father can afford it.

But research at the Reproductive Equity Action Lab (REAL) questions the benefits of birth cost recovery when compared to the potential harm it can cause. The lab is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

“This is a policy that takes money out of low-income families’ hands in the state of Wisconsin to pay the state back for the social services they receive,” Klaira Lerma, the lab’s associate director, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “This creates financial strain on families, and families view it as government greed.”

This week REAL published a policy brief on birth cost recovery. The brief summarizes research by the lab’s director, Professor Tiffany Green, along with Lerma and other contributors, that contradicts assumptions proponents have made.

There were 14,880 unmarried Wisconsin residents who gave birth in 2023. The brief reported that unmarried parents already tend to have lower incomes than married parents, making a birth cost recovery debt especially challenging.

Wisconsin gives counties the option to use birth cost recovery, but doesn’t require it. If a county takes the option, 15% of the money it recovers goes to the county’s child support program, while 85% goes back to the state Medicaid program.

ABC for Health, a Madison-based nonprofit public interest law firm, has been campaigning against birth cost recovery for more than a decade and succeeded in persuading Wisconsin’s two largest counties to drop the practice. Dane County stopped filing new birth cost recovery claims in 2020 and stopped pursuing old outstanding cases in 2023. Milwaukee County quit the practice in 2024.

As part of their investigation of the practice, REAL researchers interviewed 40 Wisconsin parents who had been subject to birth cost recovery.

Parents who live together aren’t subject to birth cost recovery — only noncustodial fathers. Lerma said parents told them they weren’t even aware they might be on the hook to repay Medicaid until there was a formal court order for child support.

“They described a lack of transparency and feeling bamboozled” when they were told about paying back Medicaid, Lerma said.

“Parents clearly described how Birth Cost Recovery payments reduce fathers’ ability to financially support their child(ren) by taking money out of their budget,” the policy brief states.

“You’re taking away the way somebody can feed their family,” one parent is quoted as saying. “You’re taking away child care, how somebody can provide for their family. You’re taking away [money for] health care.”

Another told researchers that a birth cost recovery payment “going back to the state is money that can be put into the child.”

For fathers in low-wage jobs, having to pay off a birth cost recovery debt “puts them in risk of losing housing, the ability to put food on the table,” a parent told the researchers.

“It also causes many marginalized fathers to throw up their hands and leave the lives of their children. And eventually, they may get caught, held in contempt. And once again, that whole cycle just starts,” the parent said. “They’re not going to get a job. They have this on their record. They’re not going to get housing. They’ll be always underemployed.”

Lerma said that in families covered by Medicaid, children are more likely to be at risk for illness. Birth cost recovery, she said, is effectively “taxing these families who are more likely to be facing significantly worse health outcomes.”

The brief cites research that found the financial strain from having to pay a birth cost recovery debt was associated with lower employment levels and less ability to maintain child support payments.

“In contrast, evidence shows eliminating Birth Cost Recovery appears to increase child support compliance,” the brief states.

“Ending Birth Cost Recovery across the state may reduce harm on Wisconsin families and result in more child support money going to children and their custodial parent,” the brief concludes.

To offset the expected loss counties would experience by giving up birth cost recovery entirely, Evers’ budget proposal sets aside $3.8 million over the two-year budget for county child support programs.

The brief says implementing that proposal could ensure “that county child support agencies remain fiscally solvent to carry out their mission.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers still wants certain powers restored to his office.

In his executive budget proposal, Evers last month proposed repealing a series of controversial laws that were approved in a 2018 “lame-duck” session after he defeated his Republican predecessor Gov. Scott Walker, but before he took office. The laws stripped the governor and attorney general of certain powers and instead gave them to the Legislature.

He’s called for repealing the laws in all four of his proposed budgets.

One law Evers targeted, for example, specifies that when the state Senate rejects the governor’s nominees for state government positions, the governor may not reappoint that person to the same position. The law clarifies what “with the advice and consent of the Senate” means in other parts of state law. Evers’ proposal to cut the statute prompted outrage from one Republican senator last week.

“What’s the point of advice and consent of the Senate if the person can serve after being rejected by the Senate?” Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, said in a statement. “Can you imagine the uproar from Gov. Evers and Democrats if President Trump or former Gov. Walker did this?”

“This is a repeal of the 2018 lame-duck provisions Republicans passed because you were mad about losing to a Democrat,” Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback fired back on social media. 

The statute is just one of many approved by GOP lawmakers over six years ago as they moved to swiftly strip powers from the incoming governor and attorney general, sending fast-tracked bills to Walker’s desk during his final weeks in office.

Among those last-minute changes was a move to block governors from re-nominating political appointees who are rejected by the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. More than 180 of Evers’ appointees have yet to be confirmed by the Senate. Republicans have fired 21 of his picks since he took office in 2019, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau. Evers has tried to repeal the Senate advice and consent law in all four of his budget proposals.

Attorney General Josh Kaul, whose authority was also hampered by the laws, has challenged the lame-duck laws for years. In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s then-conservative majority upheld the GOP’s last-minute legislation. But now, with a 4-3 liberal majority, Kaul has asked the court to decide whether one of the laws — granting the GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee the ability to reject settlements reached by the Department of Justice in certain civil lawsuits — is constitutional.

While these legal challenges have persisted for nearly six years, Evers has attempted to repeal lame-duck laws via another route: his state budget proposals.

“This is why you read the actual language of the budget,” Wanggaard said. “Trying to sneak this through is exactly why Republicans start from scratch in the budget.”

Evers has attempted in all four of his budget proposals to repeal a lame-duck law that gave the speaker of the Assembly, the Senate majority leader and the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization — positions held by Republicans for more than a decade — the power to authorize legal representation for lawmakers, allowing them to hire counsel outside of the DOJ.

In all four budgets, Evers has also proposed striking down a lame-duck statute that requires at least 70% of the funding for certain highway projects to come from the federal government each year. If the Department of Transportation is unable to meet this, the law allows the department to propose an alternate funding plan that must be approved by the GOP-controlled JFC. 

The governor also proposed overturning a statute in all four budget proposals requiring the Department of Health Services to obtain legislative authorization before submitting requests for federal waivers or pilot programs. It also requires DHS to submit plans and progress reports to the JFC for approval, additionally granting the committee the power to reduce DHS funding or positions for noncompliance.

In each budget proposal, Evers has also tried to overturn other lame-duck statutes that grant Republican-controlled legislative committees greater power, such as approving Capitol security changes and new enterprise zones. 

Republican lawmakers have rejected the governor’s efforts in the previous three budget cycles. That will likely be the case again this year.

Gov. Tony Evers attempts to repeal Wisconsin lame-duck laws in budget again is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Gov. Tony Evers speaks to a group in Port Washington on Tuesday, Feb. 25, about highlights in his proposal for the state's 2025-27 budget. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

PORT WASHINGTON — Holding forth for a crowd of more than two dozen people gathered upstairs from a local coffee shop, Gov. Tony Evers recapped his budget pitch Tuesday for a friendly audience.

The governor highlighted his proposals to hold down or cut taxes for the middle class, increase school funding with particular attention to special education, and make a sustained investment in child care providers.

Evers is touting his budget for providing $2 billion “in tax relief — and it’s all everyday stuff,” he said.

Boosting state investment in public education and in shared revenue with local governments, he added, will in turn make it possible for school districts and municipalities to hold the line on property taxes.  

Evers also made a pitch — to willing ears — for the budget’s $480 million in child care support.

“That is something that, if you agree with me, you really have to work on this issue,” he said.

The governor’s 2025-27 budget  is replete with big proposals, just like each one he’s proposed since taking office in 2019, including provisions for new agencies and vows to invest in sectors that have long complained of underfunding.

And as with  each of Evers’ budgets, the Republican leaders of the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee dismissed the governor’s proposals the night he announced them and promised to follow up by stripping all of them from the budget draft on the first day of deliberations. Every biennium since Evers was elected in 2018, they have then built the budget “from the base” — in other words, from the spending plan as enacted in the last budget cycle.

Last week they announced minutes after Evers’ budget address they would follow the familiar script.

Reaching out to voters, supporters

Tuesday’s round table with local officials, small business owners, teachers and residents of the Ozaukee County city was the second in a series that Evers began on Monday with stops in Wausau and Superior.

Evers opened the session with a brief account of his recent visit to Washington, D.C., where he and other governors met with President Donald Trump, and where “people are on pins and needles” amid the drastic changes taking place in the federal government since Trump took office.

The governor emphasized the impending tariffs Trump has vowed to impose — 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico, among others — are “going to be a big deal,” potentially costing the average Wisconsin consumer $1,200 a year.

With that image as the scene setter, Evers went down a partial list of his budget’s tax proposals. He’s proposed eliminating the sales tax on medicine, utility bills, and cash tips for workers such as restaurant servers and others who are paid gratuities. Tips added to a credit card payment would not be included.

Part of the budget’s claim to $2 billion in tax relief reflects putting more state funds into education, shifting the burden for funding schools off local taxpayers.

“We will be investing heavily in public education, and that includes about $3.15 billion for K-12 schools, $800 million for University of Wisconsin System and a $60 million increase in the technical college system,” Evers said. The K-12 education money includes increasing the state’s share of special education funding, now about 30%, to 60%.

His proposal also would nearly double the personal exemption under the state income tax to $1,200 from $700.  For low- and moderate-income state residents who qualify, the state would increase the earned income tax credit. Additional tax relief is aimed at veterans and surviving spouses.

Referring to a recent blockage in federal funding that hit Head Start providers across Wisconsin and nationwide before payments resumed, Evers questioned whether the 60-year-old federal child care and early education program for low-income families might meet an early demise.

“I’m not sure Head Start will survive the federal government” under the Trump administration, Evers said. “And that would cause things to be much, much more difficult” when it comes to child care.

Child care: ‘We’re going to lose providers’

Evers recapped how federal pandemic relief funds enabled Wisconsin to bolster child care providers under the Child Care Counts program. The monthly payments enabled providers to increase wages for child care workers without raising the fees parents pay for child care, but the last payments will end this summer.

“That money is gone, and now we have an industry that is struggling,” Evers said. “If we don’t do something proactive to support them — directly support them — we’re going to lose providers.”

But so far, he added, “I’m not sure the other side gets it.”

Laura Klingelhoets, who owns and is administrator of a child care center in the community of Belgium about 10 miles north of Port Washington, said staffing remains her biggest challenge.

Klingelhoets recalled a recent conversation with a father. His teenage children “can go to work,” he told her. “My toddler cannot go to work. I need the help now — and I need you to stay open.”

Bob Steffes, vice president and general manager at Allen Edmonds, the high-end shoe manufacturer that has its factory in Port Washington, offered Evers one example of how the struggle for child care hits employers:  “We lose about 30% of our female [employees] that get pregnant,” he said.

Dana Glasstein teaches English as a second language and said she has seen “a lot of interrupted learning” for students who miss classes or put off taking them because they can’t get needed child care.

Klingelhoets said she’s had conversations with legislators on the Joint Finance Committee. “I have been very respectful in some of that lobbying,” she said, “but I have been told right to my face that women should not work — they belong at home, and child care isn’t a necessity in our state.”

School funding, lead pipes

Evers’ plan to increase the state’s contribution for special education would add “almost $3 million in our general fund for schools,” said Michael McMahon, superintendent of the Port Washington-Saukville School District. The district will hold a referendum April 1, asking voters to increase their property taxes to fund a new elementary school, replacing one built 70 years ago, McMahon said. The $59.4 million ask also includes money for deferred maintenance. 

“We’ve been taking care of our facilities,” McMahon said. “We just have had to defer that to make sure we’re putting teachers in front of kids and keeping programming.”

Provisions in Evers’ budget proposal would replace sources of lead, from old paint in buildings to lead water pipes. It contains $100 million for renovations removing lead paint in schools, home and child care centers, $7 million to replace lead water lines for home-based child care providers, and $200 million to replace homeowners’ lead service lines.

In Port Washington about 800 lead water service lines need to be replaced, said Dan Buchler, the city’s water utility director. At $7,000 a line, the cost is the responsibility of property owners. 

“We’re putting a huge burden on them,” Buchler said. “Just because you live in a house that has a lead line, you didn’t put that line in the ground. It’s not your fault.”

Urging voters to prevail on their lawmakers

Meeting with voters and urging them to let lawmakers know their concerns has been a standard political tactic for the Democratic governor as he’s confronted Republican majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.

“We need to have people engage with the [budget] bill,” Evers said in a brief interview after the session. “It’s important that people understand that.”

How this year’s budget deliberations unfold could offer a glimpse into the impact of the new legislative maps enacted in 2024 that are more evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats and resulted in a smaller gap between the parties in both houses after the November election.

“Some of Evers’ proposals frequently poll quite well, but a statewide audience has generally been irrelevant to the majority of GOP legislators who represent solidly red districts,” said John D. Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University who has analyzed poll results and the state’s legislative maps, in an email message.

“However, since the 2024 redistricting, Republicans from safe districts no longer make up a majority of either chamber,” Johnson said. Evers may be “hoping that the Republicans representing swing seats will feel pressure to support popular policies he proposes.” Or perhaps, he added, Evers’ tactic could simply be “a rhetorical move made with an eye to the general election in 2026.”

The same dynamic works the other way, Johnson noted: “Of course, the flip side of this is that Republican legislators regularly try to pass bills they believe to be popular but which they know Evers will veto.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers unveiled his 2025-27 biennial budget proposal last week — a two-year plan totaling nearly $119 billion compared to the $100 billion budget currently on the books.

Republicans lawmakers who control the powerful budget writing committee immediately vowed to throw out the governor’s spending plan this spring. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said Evers’ proposals are “dead on arrival.”

Many of the governor’s recommendations have been reviewed and rejected by GOP lawmakers in previous budgets, like his plans to expand Medicaid or legalize marijuana.

But in this year’s budget address, he introduced several new items. Here are four examples from the governor’s fourth state budget proposal. 

No tax on cash tips 

“No tax on tips” quickly became a Republican mantra on the 2024 campaign trail after it was heavily touted by President Donald Trump. But Democrats have followed suit, coming out in support of the popular policy.

For the first time, Evers is seeking to eliminate income taxes on cash tips in the budget, a proposal that mirrors a Republican-authored bill in the Legislature. The plan would reduce state revenue by just under $7 million annually — a paltry amount compared to the roughly $11 billion in individual income tax the state expects to collect each year. 

“Interesting. @GovEvers wants to eliminate tax on tips (great idea, swear I heard it somewhere before) but not a single Democrat co-sponsored the bill that Sen. (Andre) Jacque and I authored to create tax exemption for tips. I’m glad we can count on Evers’ support,” state Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, wrote on X.

Service industry workers might shrug when they discover that the tax exemption would only apply to tips left in cash and would not exempt the majority of tips, which are left on a credit card. But that’s not the only reason why Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, says the proposal would have little impact.

“Many of the lower wage workers who receive tips may not have to pay any state income taxes as it is,” Stein told Wisconsin Watch. “There are other policies like the earned income tax credit that would benefit low-wage workers…they’re more industry-neutral. They’re profession-neutral.” 

Free college tuition for Native American students

In another new proposal, Evers recommended providing full tuition waivers for any student who is a Wisconsin resident, a citizen of any of the state’s 11 federally recognized tribal nations and enrolled at a Universities of Wisconsin System or Wisconsin Technical College System school. The governor’s office could not confirm the cost of this specific proposal, but noted it is part of a $129 million effort to increase affordability in the UW System over the next two years. 

The proposal mirrors the Wisconsin Tribal Education Promise already in place at UW-Madison, which covers all educational costs for Native students who are citizens of a tribal nation. That program began last fall, is not tied to household income and is funded in part by philanthropy rather than state funds.

The program was announced in December 2023, shortly after Universities of Wisconsin regents struck a deal with Republican lawmakers to end diversity hires across their campuses in exchange for previously approved employee raises and project funding. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said the program is a testament to the university’s commitment to diversity.

Universities in other states have launched similar initiatives in recent years, granting in-state tuition for Native students.

Auditing health insurance companies 

Evers wants Wisconsin to be the first state in the nation to audit insurance companies that frequently deny health care claims. But the details of this plan, such as how frequently an insurance company would have to deny claims to be audited, are slim. 

“If an insurance company is going to deny your health care claim, they should have a darn good reason for it. It’s frustrating when your claim gets denied and it doesn’t seem like anyone can give you a good reason why,” Evers said. “If an insurance company is denying Wisconsinites’ claims too often, we’re going to audit them. Pretty simple.” 

The plan would cost $500,000 in program revenue, potentially from new fines, for two full-time positions over the next two years “to establish a framework for auditing high rates of health insurance claim denials among insurers offering plans in the state over which the office has regulatory authority.”

The new office would set the percentage of claim denials that would warrant an audit. The office would then enforce “corrective action” through fines or forfeitures. 

New tax bracket for millionaires

Evers is also seeking new ways to increase state revenue. This includes his plan to “ensure millionaires and billionaires in Wisconsin pay their fair share” through a new individual tax bracket of 9.8% that would apply to income for single and married joint filers above $1 million. For married couples filing separately, income above $500,000 would also fall under this tax bracket.

The new tax is estimated to generate nearly $1.3 billion over the next two years. 

The current top income tax rate is 7.65%, covering married joint filers with an income above $420,420 and individuals with an income above $315,310.

Here are four items in Gov. Tony Evers’ $119 billion budget that he hasn’t previously proposed is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday decried what he called “irresponsible decisions in Washington” and “needless chaos,” saying his new two-year spending proposal was designed to prepare for drastic cuts from the federal government.

Evers released his budget as he considers seeking a third term in the battleground state that President Donald Trump narrowly won in November.

Evers’ budget is more of a wish list than a roadmap of what will actually become law. Republicans who control the Legislature promised to kill most of his proposals, as they have done on his three previous budgets, before passing it later this year.

“With so much happening in Washington that’s reckless and partisan, in Wisconsin we must continue our work to be reasonable and pragmatic,” Evers told the Legislature and other guests.

He urged lawmakers to leave $500 million available to respond to situations caused by federal decisions.

Here are highlights of Evers’ $119 billion two-year budget, which would increase spending by more than 20%:

Pushing back against Trump on tariffs, higher education

Evers said that Trump’s tariffs — or import taxes — could spark trade wars with Wisconsin’s largest exporters and hurt the state’s $116 billion agriculture industry.

Trump has imposed 10% tariffs on China and threatened, then delayed for 30 days, 25% taxes on goods from Canada and Mexico.

“I’m really concerned President Trump’s 25% tariff tax will not only hurt our farmers, ag industries and our economy but that it will cause prices to go up on everything from gas to groceries,” Evers said.

Evers’ plan calls for creating a new agriculture economist position in state government to help farmers navigate market disruptions caused by tariffs. He’s also calling for increasing funding to help farmers find and increase markets for their products.

Tariffs are just one issue where Evers has fought back against the Trump agenda.

Evers also previously called for a bipartisan solution to immigration, while criticizing Trump’s move to deport people in the country illegally.

And Evers proposed the highest increase in Universities of Wisconsin funding in state history, citing concerns about federal cuts.

“Politicians in Washington don’t know a darn thing about what’s going on at campuses across Wisconsin,” Evers said. “They don’t know how important our UW System has been to our state’s success or how important it is for our future.”

Evers taps into the Republican priority of cutting taxes

Evers has clashed with Republicans over tax cuts in the past, gutting a $3.5 billion tax cut in the last budget, while approving a $2 billion tax cut in 2021. In his new budget, Evers called for cutting a variety of income, sales and property taxes by nearly $2 billion, while increasing the income tax on millionaires by $1.3 billion.

Republicans will almost certainly kill any tax increase. They have said they want to use the state’s entire $4 billion surplus on cutting taxes.

The Evers plan includes eliminating the income tax on tips and doing away with the sales tax on over-the-counter medications. He also proposed reducing income taxes for the middle class and creating a new incentive for local governments not to increase property taxes.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu discounted Evers’ tax cuts as “gimmicky,” called the budget “irresponsible” and said the GOP will deliver an alternative broad tax cut proposal soon.

Fighting water pollution caused by ‘forever chemicals’

Evers and Republicans have long been at odds over how to battle PFAS pollution, even as numerous Wisconsin communities struggle with contamination from the so-called forever chemicals and are forced to drink only bottled water.

Evers is calling for spending $145 million to fight the pollution through additional testing to find the pollution and researching ways to combat it.

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are man-made chemicals that don’t easily break down in nature. The chemicals have been linked to health problems including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease and have been shown to make vaccines less effective.

Republicans unlikely to go along with Democratic plan

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said most of Evers’ plan was “dead on arrival” and said the GOP would start from scratch. Republicans have repeatedly rejected his calls to expand Medicaid and legalize recreational marijuana. They are also unlikely to increase funding for K-12 schools and the Universities of Wisconsin budget as much as Evers wants.

Evers also proposed making Wisconsin the first state in the country to audit insurance companies over denying health care claims.

However, Republicans did not summarily reject another major Evers proposal to close the 127-year-old prison in Green Bay as part of a massive overhaul of the state’s correctional system.

Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this report.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers calls for tax cuts, pushback on Trump’s tariffs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers unveiled his 2025-27 biennial state budget proposal. The nearly year-long process is now picking up speed, but the next two-year budget is still far from being finalized. 

Over the next few months, the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee, controlled by Republicans, will make significant changes to Evers’ proposals before approving a final budget bill. During this time, the politically divided executive and legislative branches will wrestle over funding for public schools, child care, higher education, Medicaid expansion and much more. 

Another budget surplus expected

Wisconsin ended its 2024 fiscal year with a more-than-expected $4.6 billion budget surplus and is on pace to end the current fiscal year with a $4.2 billion surplus. Republicans want to reduce the surplus by passing income tax cuts before the budget debate begins, while Democrats are urging more funding for things like K-12 education.

The Legislature must pass a budget signed by the governor every two years in order to use up state revenues for government operations. A budget period begins on July 1 of each odd-numbered year and concludes on June 30 of the next odd-numbered year. The last two-year budget totaled nearly $100 billion. 

Here’s what this hectic process will look like: 

The process involves three main entities that work to both create and pass the budget: the governor, the Legislature and state agencies. 

State agencies like the Department of Public Instruction and the Department of Natural Resources calculate their financial needs for the upcoming cycle and submit formal funding requests, which were due to the State Budget Office back in September. The Department of Administration then analyzes and compiles the requests for the governor. 

The governor then spends months crafting an executive budget proposal based on these requests, and community listening sessions are held across the state in December. On Tuesday he will give his budget address, which he is legally required to deliver to the new Legislature. Proposed funding for state agencies will be made available. 

Soon after that — likely in March — Evers will reveal his capital budget proposal, which includes spending plans for long-term projects like new UW System buildings. 

Then, the Joint Finance Committee will review and revise Evers’ budget. Under a divided government since 2019, the committee has scrapped the governor’s proposals and written its own. In 2023, GOP lawmakers began this process by stripping nearly 550 of his proposals.

Lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee typically hold their own community listening sessions in April.  The committee typically completes its revisions by the end of May.

Then, lawmakers in both houses of the Legislature — the Republican-controlled Senate and Assembly — have until the end of the fiscal year on June 30 to pass the budget before it heads to Evers’ desk for signing. Here, he can use his controversial partial veto power to remove specific appropriations from the budget bill, also allowing him to delete large sections of language and manipulate words or numbers.

In 2023, Evers made national headlines after he manipulated punctuation in the Legislature’s budget to extend school funding for 402 years. A case challenging the partial veto is pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In the meantime, Republican lawmakers have introduced a constitutional amendment that would strip away the governor’s partial veto power.

If the budget is not signed into law by July 1, the state will continue to operate under the previous budget passed in 2023 until the new one is signed.

Here’s how Wisconsin’s state budget process works is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

While 2024 may have stolen the show as a pivotal election year, the excitement doesn’t end in 2025. That’s right, it’s a state budget year!

Major funding decisions for health care, public schools and universities, the environment, roads and more will be made in the 2025-27 biennial budget. Not only that — a politically divided Legislature and governor must reach an agreement on spending, which totaled nearly $100 billion in the last two-year budget.

Wisconsin Watch will break it down here in our new series: Budget Bites.

This series will regularly appear in Forward, our Monday morning newsletter. We are excited to provide updates on what’s happening with the state budget as it makes its way through the Legislature. Our reporters will also cover key budget items like public education, child care and housing, and we will be looking to hear from those most affected by these issues. 

State agencies have already submitted their funding requests, and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has finished hosting budget listening sessions across the state. His executive budget proposal will make its debut on Feb. 18. The Republican-controlled Legislature will then review it and make significant changes before Evers signs a final budget bill into law, typically within a few days of the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Wisconsin ended its 2024 fiscal year with a more-than-expected $4.6 billion budget surplus. Republicans want to reduce the surplus by passing income tax cuts before the budget debate begins, while Democrats are urging more funding for things like K-12 education. 

We will be watching the battle over public education funding, which constitutes a third of the state’s general fund budget. Wisconsin held a record number of school referendums this year. Districts, public officials, local taxpayers and public school advocates are speaking out, calling for increases in state aid after approving $4.4 billion in property tax hikes so their local schools can continue to cover operating costs, as well as large projects. 

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have told Wisconsin Watch that voters aren’t happy about having to increase their own property taxes. But Republican lawmakers have stood their ground in support of private school vouchers and have criticized state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly’s $4 billion ask for public school funding in the upcoming budget. The state Supreme Court will decide whether an Evers veto in the previous budget that guaranteed $325 per pupil annual revenue limit increases for 400 years will stand, which could influence the debate. 

Another topic we’re monitoring is child care. A Wisconsin Department of Children and Families child care survey found last year that almost 60% of providers in Wisconsin have unused classroom capacity due to staff shortages. Providers report that if they were able to operate at full capacity, they could accept up to 33,000 more children. The state is losing hundreds of child care providers every year, according to DCF. 

In 2023, the powerful Joint Finance Committee, which will review and likely rewrite most of Evers’ budget proposal, voted to end funding for the Child Care Counts program — a pandemic-era subsidy program. 

Homelessness is also a growing problem all across Wisconsin, especially in rural areas. It can be largely attributed to rising housing costs following the pandemic and a lack of affordable housing units. Annual homeless counts conducted in January show that the state’s homeless population has increased every year since 2021.

Evers’ previous attempts to fund emergency shelter and housing grants, case management services and workforce housing grants in the state budget have been nixed by Republican lawmakers.

There are likely more battles coming over higher education funding after last year’s restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion hiring. Wisconsin remains an outlier on Medicaid expansion, particularly postpartum coverage. Transportation funding continues to be a challenge as more fuel-efficient vehicles use a system built around the gas tax. Republicans have signaled opposition to the land stewardship program after the Supreme Court limited the finance committee’s power to block purchases. And the state prison system has been plagued by understaffing, inmate deaths, alleged corruption and a problematic juvenile facility.

That’s just a small taste of what’s coming in the budget this year.

Here’s what we’re watching for in this year’s Wisconsin budget debate is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.