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• A special prosecutor was appointed in March 2024 to look into Judge Mark McGinnis’ decision to jail a concrete contractor in December 2021 over a money dispute during a probation hearing for an unrelated crime. The money dispute was with a courthouse employee.

• The special prosecutor, La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, said he plans to make a decision on the case around Labor Day.

• Criminal charges against a judge for a decision made from the bench are possible, but unlikely and without recent precedent. Judicial misconduct cases have been reviewed by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission since 1978, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court has the final say on any penalty.

A special prosecutor expects to decide in early September whether to take the extraordinary step of filing criminal charges against an Appleton-area judge over his actions from the bench.

The special prosecutor, La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, declined further comment to Wisconsin Watch on his investigation of Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis.

Wisconsin Watch reported in January 2024 that McGinnis’ actions were the focus of a Wisconsin Department of Justice criminal investigation that had been ongoing for more than a year. The March 2024 appointment of the special prosecutor has not previously been reported.

McGinnis had jailed cement contractor Tyler Barth in December 2021 over a private dispute that was not a matter before the court. 

When Barth appeared before McGinnis for a probation review hearing, on a felony conviction for fleeing an officer, McGinnis accused him of stealing several thousand dollars from a cement contracting customer.

The customer worked in the same courthouse for another Outagamie County judge. 

Even though Barth had not been arrested or charged with theft, McGinnis ordered him jailed for 90 days, saying he would release Barth as soon as he repaid the customer.

“I think it’s definitely crazy, just lock a guy up with no charge, no pending charge, no nothing and then get away with it,” Barth told Wisconsin Watch in a recent interview.

The 32-year-old Fremont resident said he spent three days in jail before Fond du Lac attorney Kirk Evenson intervened and persuaded McGinnis to release him.

“I just don’t think the guy should be able to do this to anyone else,” Barth said.

Barth later settled the money dispute with his customer. An attorney advised him it would be difficult to win civil damages against McGinnis because of judicial immunity, but Barth is waiting to see what happens with the criminal case before deciding whether to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit.

McGinnis did not reply to requests seeking comment.

McGinnis was first elected in 2005, at age 34, and has been re-elected each time, without opposition. Most recently he was re-elected in April 2023 for a term that runs through July 2029.

Wisconsin judgeships are nonpartisan.

Gruenke, a Democrat, is a 30-year prosecutor, including the past 18 years as the La Crosse County district attorney. 

Gruenke was appointed as special prosecutor by the Outagamie County Circuit Court in March 2024 after Outagamie County District Attorney Melinda Tempelis determined it would be a conflict of interest for her office to handle the case.

Legal experts agree judges have unparalleled latitude for taking away someone’s liberty, especially if the person is on probation. But invoking criminal penalties to compel action in an unrelated dispute arguably goes beyond a judge’s lawful authority.

Judicial historian Joseph Ranney, an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School, said he is not aware of any instance in which a sitting Wisconsin judge was charged with a crime for actions taken as a judge.

Jeremiah Van Hecke, executive director of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, also said he was not aware of such a case.

Since 1978, the Judicial Commission has been the body responsible for investigating complaints against judges, which are then referred to the state Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has published 31 decisions that carried some form of punishment, often a reprimand, including several for actions taken from the bench.

In 1980, Milwaukee County Judge Christ Seraphim was suspended for three years without pay for a number of violations, including “retaliatory use of bail.” In 1985, retaliatory use of bail was one of the charges brought against Rusk County Judge Donald Sterlinske, who was ordered removed from office even though he had resigned.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman has agreed to a three-year suspension of his law license, but is awaiting formal action in that case. It centers on his work as a special counsel investigating the 2020 presidential election, not his work as a judge.

Marquette University law professor Chad Oldfather said, though it’s unlikely, McGinnis could be charged with misconduct in public office. That state law prohibits, among other things, officials from knowingly exceeding their lawful authority. 

But a referral to the Judicial Commission seems much more likely than a criminal charge, Oldfather said.

The commission could also initiate an investigation on its own.

A special prosecutor, Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett, decided not to file criminal charges following a 2011 incident in which state Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused Justice David Prosser of choking her during an argument in a justice’s office.  

The Judicial Commission recommended that the Supreme Court discipline Prosser for misconduct, but the court took no action for lack of a quorum of four of the seven justices. Three justices recused themselves because they were witnesses to the incident. 

Any matters before the Judicial Commission are generally confidential. They become public only if the commission files a complaint against a judge or if the judge being investigated waives confidentiality.

There have been criminal charges filed in connection with a judge’s role as a judge, though they were not in response to official actions taken by a judge. 

In April, federal prosecutors charged Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan with two crimes for allegedly obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting a criminal defendant in her courtroom. Her case is pending.

In 2019, a Winnebago County jury found Leonard Kachinsky, a municipal court judge, guilty of misdemeanor violation of a harassment restraining order involving his court manager.

Special prosecutor weighing whether to criminally charge Outagamie County judge is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• The $111 billion state budget adopted last month doesn’t extend the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund, but it does include two conservation earmarks totaling $15 million in Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ district.

• The projects include repairs to Echo Lake Dam, which Vos said will save Burlington taxpayers $3,000.

• Environmental advocates are hopeful the Legislature will still extend the Knowles-Nelson fund before the end of the current session. A Republican bill would reauthorize it for four years at $28.25 million per year with additional legislative controls.

Wisconsin’s recently passed budget doesn’t include the extension of a popular land conservation program, but it does include two earmarks for environmental projects in the home district of the state’s most powerful Assembly Republican.

After Republican legislators declined to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund in the state budget, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed five natural resources projects, criticizing the Legislature for choosing “to benefit the politically connected few” instead of supporting stewardship through the statewide fund. 

“I am vetoing this section because I object to providing an earmark for a natural resources project when the Legislature has abandoned its responsibility to reauthorize and ensure the continuation of the immensely popular Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program,” Evers wrote in his veto message.

However, Evers didn’t veto other natural resources projects, including two totaling $15 million in Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ district in southeastern Wisconsin west of Racine. Asked why Evers spared those projects, his spokesperson Britt Cudaback referred Wisconsin Watch, without specifics, to the agreement between Evers and legislative leadership that cemented the $111 billion two-year budget. 

Local environmental earmarks in the state budget are nothing new, but the latest examples highlight how such projects can take on greater political dimension when not overseen by civil servants at the DNR and the Legislature’s budget committee, as has been the process for more than 30 years since the creation of the Knowles-Nelson fund. Legislators have allowed the program to inch closer to expiration while attempting to secure stewardship programs in their own districts.

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund supports land conservation and outdoor recreation through grants to local governments and nonprofits and also allows the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to purchase and maintain state land. The program is currently funded at $33 million a year until the end of June 2026.

Local governments and nonprofit organizations can apply for Knowles-Nelson grants during three deadlines every year, and DNR staff evaluate and rank projects based on objective criteria including local public support, potential conservation benefits and proximity to population centers. 

Despite not authorizing the fund through the state budget, Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, and Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, committed to reauthorizing the fund and introduced stand-alone legislation in June to reauthorize the stewardship fund at $28.25 million per year for the next four years.

Burlington receives $15 million for two natural resources projects

The two projects in Vos’ district received a total of $15 million in state taxpayer dollars from the general fund and were the only natural resources earmarks mentioned in the state budget agreement between Republicans and Evers.

The only larger natural resources earmark — a $42 million grant for a dam in Rothschild — was added by the Joint Finance Committee and included in the final state budget, though it wasn’t mentioned in the agreement. That grant isn’t funded with general fund revenue, but rather a separate forestry account, which includes revenues from the sale of timber on public lands.

In a statement on the inclusion of funding for the projects, Vos, R-Rochester, touted how $10 million for the Echo Lake Dam will save Burlington residents an average of $3,000 in taxes that would otherwise fund the project. Upgrades to Echo Lake will cost as much as $12 million including $3.5 million for dam modifications and up to $5 million for lake dredging. 

For years, city officials in Burlington have grappled with how to address the Echo Lake Dam. In 2022, the Burlington City Council considered removing the 200-year-old dam but ultimately voted to keep it after residents expressed support though an advisory referendum. The dam needs upgrades because it doesn’t meet DNR requirements to contain a 500-year flood.

The Browns Lake Sanitary District also received $5 million for the removal of sediment in Browns Lake. Local residents have raised concerns over sedimentation in the lake, affecting the lake’s usability for recreation and ecological balance. 

In a website devoted to the Browns Lake dredging, Claude Lois, president of the Browns Lake Sanitary District, thanked Vos for including $5 million for the project and advised residents: “If you see Robin Vos, please thank him.”

DNR spokesperson Andrea Sedlacek directed Wisconsin Watch to Evers’ spokesperson, declining to answer questions on whether the two projects in Vos’ district could have been covered by Knowles-Nelson funds. The Echo Lake Dam project tentatively received a grant for over $700,000 from the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund last fall for development of gathering spaces adjacent to the lake. 

Vos did not respond to a request for comment. 

Other conservation projects were vetoed by Evers, including a $70,000 dredging project on a section of the Manitowoc River in the town of Brillion. Ultimately, the DNR and the Evers administration provided funding for the project after Sen. Andre Jacque, R-New Franken, and local farmers criticized the veto, claiming that they were at risk of flooding without funds for the dredging project. 

Rep. Rob Swearingen, R-Rhinelander, said he was surprised and disappointed with Evers’ veto of the Deerskin River dredging project in his district. He called Evers’ reasoning a “lame excuse, using the Knowles-Nelson program as political cover” in an email statement to Wisconsin Watch. Swearingen said he and Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, were considering alternative funding sources, including introducing stand-alone legislation to finance the dredging project.

Swearingen declined to say what he thought about the projects in Vos’ district getting funded. Other Republican lawmakers with vetoed projects in their districts didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Deb Andraca, D-Whitefish Bay, a member of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, told Wisconsin Watch she supports Evers’ vetoes because the earmarked projects did not go through the process the DNR uses to evaluate the benefits of particular projects.

Andraca said while several earmarked projects were likely strong contenders for Knowles-Nelson, without the DNR’s process of evaluating project merit, the most beneficial projects may not receive funding.

“We need to make sure that we’re taking into account that the best, most important projects are being funded, not just the projects that are in someone’s (district) who might have a little bit more sway in the Legislature,” Andraca said.

Paul Heinen, policy director for environmental advocacy organization Green Fire, lobbied for the first stewardship fund in 1989. Heinen said legislators have pushed for stewardship projects in their districts through the state budget process for as long as the stewardship fund has existed.

“The DNR has a process by which they go through to analyze projects, and that’s all set up in the code and everything,” Heinen said. “But of course, just like Robin Vos and any other legislator, if they can get something in the budget, it’s faster and you don’t have to go through the steps in order to get something done.”

In the 2023-25 budget cycle, the largest natural resources earmark was $2 million for dredging Lake Mallalieu near River Falls. 

Heinen said legislators are faced with a conundrum — they claim to oppose statewide government spending on stewardship, but want projects in their own districts. 

“Publicly, they say they’re opposed to government spending in this boondoggle stewardship fund,” Heinen said. “But then when it gets down to something in their district, they are at the ribbon cutting.” 

State Supreme Court decision complicates reauthorization

For years the JFC halted Knowles-Nelson conservation projects by not taking a vote on them, something critics referred to as a “pocket veto.” The Evers administration sued over the practice, and in July 2024 the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 6-1 the Legislature’s pocket veto was unconstitutional.

“What the court said was that the finance committee by going back after the fact and blocking an appropriation that had already been approved by the entire Legislature, and that was an unconstitutional infringement on executive authority,” said Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, an alliance of land trusts in the state.

Republicans have said trust issues with both the DNR and the Evers administration prevented them from releasing Knowles-Nelson funds without more control.

Kurtz and Testin’s proposed bill also includes new requirements for legislative approval for larger projects over $1 million in an effort to allow legislative oversight without the pocket vetoes.

The bill’s funding level is below the $100 million per year for 10 years that Evers proposed in his budget, but close to current funding levels of $33 million per year. 

In 2021, the fund was reauthorized with $33.2 million per year for four years. In 2019, the fund was reauthorized for only two years, breaking a cycle of reauthorization in 10-year increments.

A poll of 516 Wisconsin voters commissioned by environmental advocacy organization The Nature Conservancy found 83% supported Evers’ proposal, with 93% of voters supporting continued public funding for conservation. However, most respondents were unaware of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund.

Funding for Knowles-Nelson peaked in 2011 and was reauthorized under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson was the first governor to approve funding for the stewardship fund in 1989.

“There was a lot of talk initially from mostly Republican legislators who were skeptical of the governor’s proposal,” Carlin said. “But it’s really only a huge amount of money in comparison to how the program had kind of been whittled down through the years.”

In a January interview with the Cap Times, Vos said the chances of Republicans reauthorizing the fund were less than half. 

Andraca said she hears more from constituents about the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund than almost any other program.

“I seriously hope that my Republican colleagues are serious about passing something because it would be a real tragedy to lose something like this that has bipartisan support and has been so instrumental in preserving Wisconsin’s natural areas,” Andraca said.

‘Totally uncharted territory’ for stewardship funding

Carlin said the failure to reauthorize Knowles-Nelson puts land stewardship organizations and local municipalities — the typical recipients of Knowles-Nelson grants — in “totally uncharted territory.” 

Although Knowles-Nelson funding is set to expire at the end of next June, Carlin said local governments and land trusts face uncertainty in planning because they aren’t sure the Legislature will get the new reauthorization bill done.

“Similar to what you’re probably hearing from folks about federal budget cuts … this just totally scrambles the planning horizon,” Carlin said.

Heinen, however, is more optimistic the Legislature will vote to reauthorize Knowles-Nelson. 

“90-plus percent of the people in the state of Wisconsin want the stewardship fund,” Heinen said. “Legislators know that. They’re not going to go running for reelection in November of next year and have their opponents say, ‘Why are you against the stewardship fund?’ So I’m really not worried about it at all.”

Budget deal’s $15 million in earmarks for Robin Vos’ district highlight politicization of Wisconsin’s conservation funding is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison election officials to follow several specific election procedures to ensure that ballots don’t go missing again in the capital city, rejecting arguments by the interim clerk that the orders may exceed the agency’s legal authority. 

The commission’s 5-1 vote Friday came a month after it withheld a first set of proposed orders amid pushback from Madison and Dane County officials and asked the city to propose its own remedies. Madison interim Clerk Mike Haas said the specificity of the commission’s original proposed orders “would set a troubling precedent.”

The city did submit its proposals, but the commission rejected them as overly broad and finalized orders that were largely similar to the ones it proposed in July, with some minor revisions, including citations of the legal basis for each order.  

The orders require Madison officials to create an internal plan detailing which election task is assigned to which employee; print pollbooks no earlier than the Tuesday before each election; develop a detailed record to track absentee ballots; and search through election materials for missing ballots before the city’s election canvassing board meets to finalize results.

The WEC action responds to lapses by the Madison clerk’s office, then headed by Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, after the November 2024 presidential election, when staffers lost track of 193 ballots and did not report finding them until well past the state deadline for counting. The commission launched its investigation into the matter in January.

Clerk’s cookie baking factored into commissioners’ discussion

During discussions ahead of the vote, Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican, cited Votebeat’s reporting that Witzel-Behl spent a long post-election vacation at home — not on an out-of-state trip, as he had believed — baking thousands of cookies when some lost ballots were discovered. That, he said, factored into his vote for stricter orders.

“She couldn’t be bothered to turn off the oven, to come to the office to figure out if the Ward 65 ballots could be counted,” he said. “The failure to mention that the clerk was readily available to address this issue, along with the fact that none of the city officials we depose felt it was their job to get the ballots counted, makes me even more determined that the Commission must impose the directions in our order.”

Similarly, commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said it was “peculiar” that clerk’s office staff never told commissioners during their monthslong investigation that they rented cars on city time to deliver cookies after the ballot discovery. 

Those deposed “were all part of the cookie crew,” she said ahead of her vote. “Why didn’t they tell us about that? Why didn’t the city of Madison ever mention this? Why did nobody bring this up?” 

In a memo circulated ahead of the meeting, commission staff said the scope of the error “warrants a detailed order from the Commission correcting (Witzel-Behl’s) office’s policies and procedures, and ensuring those issues are actually fixed before the next statewide election.”

Haas, who was formerly the commission administrator, disagreed with the original proposed orders. He said the commission’s authority “does not extend to requiring the future implementation of specific procedures in excess of those required in the statutes.”

But commission staff pushed back, calling it “unreasonable and absurd” to read state law as barring the commission from ordering specific remedies.

In some cases, the commissioners made the requirements more stringent than what Madison proposed, but more lenient than the commission’s originally proposed orders.

For example, one order the commission initially proposed would have required Madison to print pollbooks no sooner than the Thursday before Election Day, despite state law calling on officials only to have the “most current official registration list.” Haas requested an order more in line with what state law outlines, printing the ballots as close to Election Day as possible.

The final order sets the deadline for printing pollbooks on the Tuesday before Election Day — two days earlier than first proposed — and requires that they be delivered no later than the Friday before the election.

Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two wards that lost ballots on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day. The commission said printing that early made it harder for officials to track absentee ballots returned before Election Day and harder for poll workers to see how many ballots went uncounted.

Interim clerk’s objections to the commission’s order

Haas, who took over as interim clerk after Witzel-Behl was suspended in March, told Votebeat on the Tuesday ahead of the meeting that it was “way too early” to think about whether Madison would appeal the commission’s orders in court. In a statement after Friday’s vote, he said he was grateful that the commission altered some orders after the city’s feedback.

“The question is which level of government is best suited and authorized to determine specific procedures that work for the municipality in going above and beyond what the statutes require,” he told Votebeat. “We look forward to working with the Commission to ensure compliance with state law.”

Mark Thomsen, a Democratic commissioner, said he wasn’t comfortable with the agency beating up on Madison over mistakes made under a former clerk when a new permanent clerk hasn’t yet been hired.

At the meeting, Thomsen said he was uncomfortable imposing burdens on a new clerk that “no one else has to follow.”

“This order seems spiteful, and I don’t want to go there,” he said, before casting the lone dissent. Republicans Millis, Bob Spindell and Marge Bostelmann joined Democrats Carrie Riepl and Jacobs in approving the orders.

State law allows the commission to “require any election official to conform his or her conduct to the law, restrain an official from taking any action inconsistent with the law or require an official to correct any action or decision inconsistent with the law.”

Many of the orders, such as assigning specific staff to each election task, are not explicitly mentioned in statute.

Addressing claims that the orders were too detailed, commission staff attorney Angela O’Brien Sharpe said, “If the Legislature intended for the commission to only be able to issue general orders, they would have written a law to say just that.”

In a statement following the vote, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city is reorganizing the office to improve efficiency and accountability.

“We appreciate the Wisconsin Elections Commission considering our input and amending its orders to reflect that feedback,” she said. “I hope the WEC’s investigation can help inform best practices for election clerks around the state.” 

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Elections Commission finalizes specific orders for Madison to follow to avoid ballot errors is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Editor’s note: This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing “988.” Or you can send a text message to 988 or use the chat feature at 988lifeline.org.

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• Older adults account for 1 in 5 suicides in Wisconsin, with the rate among men over 75 twice the statewide rate for everyone.

• The latest data from 2023 show suicide rates among older people declined over the previous year, when they were higher than the national average.

• The state budget includes additional mental health resources in the Fox Valley and for Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh. Republican lawmakers are calling for additional telehealth resources, while Democrats want to reinstate the 48-hour waiting period for gun purchases.

Earl Lowrie doesn’t spend a day of retirement without thinking about suicide.

The disabled 66-year-old lives with two grandchildren in the village of Cameron in northwest Wisconsin, where he is $50,000 in debt and suffering from multiple autoimmune diseases. Nowadays, Lowrie spends his time trying to elude a pernicious voice, telling him “there really isn’t any recourse now” and to “take some opioids and go to sleep.”

Nationwide, adults over 65 have some of the highest suicide rates by age group, though they are among the least likely to seek or receive mental health support. They made up 20% of all suicide deaths in Wisconsin between 2018 and 2023 — but in 2023, only 3,142 older people used county mental health services, down from a peak of nearly 4,000 who used them in 2018.

Wisconsin Watch spoke to policymakers, health professionals, advocates and older adults about the current mental health landscape for older people in Wisconsin and the possible roads to geriatric suicide prevention in the future. Their goals beyond prevention are to help older adults realize that they are not forgotten and to raise awareness about community supports at every stage of life.

That’s what Lowrie is working to remember. 

Older men kill themselves at two times the statewide rate

In 2023, 184 older Wisconsin adults ended their own lives, out of 921 total suicides. The statewide age-adjusted suicide rate was 15 out of 100,000 residents, while the rate for those between 65 and 74 years old was 15.7. Suicides among those 75 and older were higher at 17.1.

That’s down from the previous year, when Wisconsin adults above 65 died at a higher rate than the national average, 18.6 vs. 17.7. It’s unclear why the numbers went down or whether it will continue in future years.

Nonetheless, depression and anxiety disorders “have really picked up” recently for the patients of Kenneth Robbins, a geriatric psychiatrist based in Rock County. He has especially noticed issues with older men, who died from suicide at more than two times the statewide rate in 2023. 

Robbins said that one of the biggest contributors to this suicide rate is isolation.

“What’s unique about older white men is that many of them are not very socially adept,” Robbins said. “When they retire, they’re not quite sure what to do with their lives exactly and often become very lonely and feel like they’re not doing anything meaningful and start to wonder, ‘What’s the point of living?’”

Robbins also noted that older adults who struggle with medical problems, such as dementia or cancer, are highly likely to attempt suicide for fear of physical pain and becoming a “burden” to their loved ones.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, more than half of residents 55 years and older who died by suicide in 2023 had health problems that “appeared to have contributed to their deaths.”

Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, said he was at a wedding when his wife’s great-grandmother, suffering from dementia, told him to kill her. James’ father told him he would rather die by suicide than live with the disease.

“I’ve had many family members state they would rather die by suicide than to remain on the Earth if they were attacked by dementia,” said James, who worked to ensure the recently approved state budget included more mental health services in the Chippewa Valley.

Older adults in rural Wisconsin face extra challenges

Lowrie retired from truck driving in 2019 after he had a fall at work and needed a spinal fusion for his back. Around that time, he developed rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis, and later stage 4 cancer. 

“My mental illness went off the rails,” he said. “The only reason that I didn’t (take my life) was because I’ve seen how painful it is for others around you.”

The pain Lowrie was referring to was the loss of his youngest son, Justin, who shot himself a little less than a decade ago. Ever since then Lowrie retreats for long periods into a depression “closet” that lets very few people inside.

“I’ve been trying to break out of that here more recently,” he said. “Often you don’t have that trigger that you needed to get you out of the closet to go out and find something that’s going to bring you out of this slump.”

Lowrie’s home county has an age-adjusted suicide rate lower than the statewide average, but many rural counties in the state have significantly higher than average rates. Of the 184 suicides among older adults in 2023, 115 were in areas with populations under 50,000 and 42 were in areas with populations under 10,000.

Older adults in rural areas often live far away from mental health providers, many of whom don’t accept Medicare, according to Robbins. They also often live far away from family and community.

“That further adds to the hopelessness you feel and the loneliness that you feel,” Robbins said. “Nobody’s noticing that you’re getting more and more depressed, and becoming less and less functional.”

No legislation geared toward geriatric mental health

Though there is no legislation circulating to address geriatric mental health and suicide prevention, legislators are pushing broader bills related to mental health, substance abuse and gun control, which they say will start to help. 

Gov. Tony Evers’ initial 2025-27 state budget recommendations included $1.2 million and six full-time equivalent positions for Mendota Mental Health Institute’s geropsychiatric treatment unit, which serves mentally ill, disabled or drug-dependent older adults who require more specialized services than are generally available.

The request was for hiring additional staff and moving the unit to a nearby building with larger treatment space. Jennifer Miller, the communications specialist for Mendota, said the Wisconsin DHS made the request because it is seeing an increase in older patients who need mental health services.

With the new space, “there (would have been) additional capacity at (Mendota) to serve these individuals in a space designed to meet the unique mental health treatment and service needs facing an aging population,” Miller said. 

However, legislative Republicans removed the additional funding for Mendota. Instead, the budget provides almost $16 million to address the current deficit at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute’s “civil patient treatment program” for 2025. Winnebago, located in Oshkosh, treats patients legally ordered to undergo mental health treatment, but the funding is not specifically for geriatrics.

The budget also includes $10 million in funding for the development of a mental health campus and $1 million for reopening a substance abuse treatment facility in the Chippewa Valley, which has a significantly higher suicide rate than the statewide average. 

James and Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, who co-authored the provisions, said the campus will restore the region’s mental health beds lost after two nearby hospitals closed last year. Moses also said that he has been working on general telehealth bills that would help bridge gaps in mental health care for older adults in rural areas.

“It’s about making sure they’ve got access — (especially) if they don’t have family members — to someone they can talk to,” Moses said. He believes older adults should be able to do an online video meeting rather than drive 45 minutes or an hour to talk to someone about their issues.

For suicide prevention, Democrats have circulated multiple bills related to gun safety, one of which would reinstate the previous 48-hour mandatory handgun purchase waiting period repealed by Republicans in 2015. 

Former Democratic state Rep. Jonathan Brostoff — who last year purchased a handgun and killed himself within hours — had argued for reinstating the waiting period, saying it had prevented his own previous suicide attempts. 

Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, a close friend of Brostoff who reintroduced the bill to the Senate in June, said the law had protected an “untold number of people.”

“There’s the false narrative of, ‘if you don’t have a gun, you’re not safe,’ right? … (But) the statistics show that most suicides that end in death are with a handgun,” Larson said. “The more time we can put in between the time that somebody is trying to obtain a handgun and when they actually get it, it saves lives.”

People 65 and older carry out 25% of all firearms suicides in Wisconsin and use firearms for suicide at by far the highest rate. Lowrie disagrees that gun legislation would prevent suicides and said older adults start to feel a “very large sense of helplessness” when their guns are taken away.

Finding community

Lowrie attributes suicide challenges and reluctance among older adults to seek mental health support to the way his generation was raised. 

Organizations such as NewBridge, a Madison nonprofit dedicated to serving low-income older adults, seek to proactively address the issue by providing older adults with community programming and case management, but especially mental health care.

Kathleen Pater, the mental health manager at NewBridge, described older adults as a “forgotten group” who “might not be the best advocates for themselves.” Her team is often the first human interaction their clients have in a long time and the first to have honest conversations about mental health.

We need to “really focus and see the importance of this stage in life and how much seniors can really offer the community back,” Pater said. “It’s connecting them back into the community with intergenerational programs, and just a societal shift in seeing our elders as valuable and knowledgeable and having all this life experience rather than being isolated and forgotten.”

In January, Lowrie finally sought out help for his mental illness after an interaction with his ex-wife sent him into a “tailspin” of anxiety and suicidal thoughts. When an online artificial intelligence therapist didn’t work, his best friend Wes told him about the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Initially, Wes had suggested a NAMI chapter in Rice Lake, about seven miles away from his village. But Lowrie soon found the Rice Lake office was closed, and the nearest location in Eau Claire was 50 miles away.

Despite “talking (himself) into it and out of it above half a dozen times,” Lowrie took a leap of faith with the encouragement of Wes and his granddaughter and went to Eau Claire. He now describes NAMI as “a rope pulling me out of the water, keeping me from drowning.”

“There’s people from every walk of life and every different kind of problem that you could imagine, but mine was no more twisted and weird than their own,” Lowrie said. “It was through them I found enough encouragement and ideas of finding more help.”

Through NAMI, Lowrie was connected to individual, weekly counseling, a nutritionist, a dietitian, and a mental health prescription that gives him hope. He continues to attend NAMI Eau Claire’s biweekly meetings, and his cancer is now in complete remission.

Despite newfound support, Lowrie said he is often “suffocated” by his mental illness and that most of the time, he would rather be dead than suffer. In his worst moments, not even his favorite things, like the laughter of children or the breeze on his skin, can draw him out.

But Lowrie doesn’t intend to stop fighting. 

“I am going to do everything in my power to get to the other side of my mental illness,” Lowrie told Wisconsin Watch. “I’m on a mission, and I’m not holding back at all … I’m coming out the other side one way or another.”

Older adults make up 1 in 5 suicides in Wisconsin. Here’s what can be done to fix that. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission expressed alarm Thursday at how much time former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl spent on vacation while a crisis was erupting in her office: the discovery of 193 missing ballots from the November 2024 election that never got counted.

In its 400-page investigative report, finalized at a meeting by a 5-1 vote, the commission said that Witzel-Behl began her vacation in mid-November, days after the election, “and then had little to do with the supervision of her office until almost a month later.” No staffers took responsibility during the extended absence, the commission chair, Democrat Ann Jacobs, complained before the vote. The missing ballots were not reported to the commission until mid-December. 

Records obtained by Votebeat provide some clarity into what Witzel-Behl was doing around the time: baking thousands of cookies and calling on her staff to help deliver them.

Most of that activity began after Dec. 2, when the second batch of uncounted ballots was found.

These records have not been publicly reported and were not included in the investigative report finalized Thursday.

“This is remarkable,” Republican Commissioner Don Millis said when Votebeat showed him some of the findings. “None of the witnesses we deposed disclosed her cookie staycation.”

After approving the report, the commission voted 4-2 to delay action on proposed corrective orders after city and county officials argued that the requirements were overly specific and exceeded state law. The city now has until Aug. 7 to provide a more complete response to the recommendations, and a follow-up meeting has been scheduled for Aug. 15.

Witzel-Behl didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

‘Cookie extravaganza’ featuring ‘100 different types’

Emails show that Witzel-Behl took time off for all or part of 17 days between Nov. 11 and Dec. 6 and said, according to an event invite, that part of it was for “devoting a staycation to baking.” 

Beginning in November, she invited city staff and election officials in Madison to what some staff called a “cookie extravaganza” held on Dec. 7, a Saturday, to help decorate cookies and take some home for their families. She baked “100 different types” of cookies, the invite said.

According to the commission, Witzel-Behl knew about the first batch of ballots on Nov. 12. That was well before the cookie event.

The second batch of uncounted ballots was discovered on Dec. 2 by office staff. Witzel-Behl was out of the office that day and for the rest of that week. She told the commission she learned of the second batch of ballots on Dec. 10. “While on vacation, she did not inquire of her staff whether there were absentee ballots in the bag,” the report reads. 

On Dec. 10, she sent an email to three staffers, including Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick, saying she’d reserved three cars for cookie deliveries. “Maybe each of you can make at least one cookie delivery to a library,” she wrote. 

She also arranged additional deliveries and rented more cars for later the following week, an email sent Dec. 13 shows. “We still have several packages of cookies, so feel free to pick a few agencies for another delivery,” she suggested to 16 staffers across her office and other city departments the same day.

“I had assumed — obviously erroneously — the clerk was vacationing in some faraway place,” Millis told Votebeat, denouncing Witzel-Behl for not personally managing the discovery of the uncounted ballots.

The clerk’s staff didn’t tell the commission about the missing ballots until Dec. 18. By that point, the state had already certified the election and the missing ballots couldn’t have counted.

‘She worked her ass off’ — on the cookies

Jacobs said before the vote that she was surprised by Witzel-Behl’s “complete lack of action” during the relevant time period. Marge Bostelmann, a Republican appointee on the commission and the former longtime Green Lake County clerk, said that even if she had been on vacation in such a situation as a county clerk, she would have remained accessible if urgent questions arose.

Commissioner Bob Spindell, a Republican, was the lone dissenter on the vote to approve the report, saying he didn’t want Witzel-Behl to be “crucified.”

One person close to the Madison Clerk’s Office, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told Votebeat that the task of making thousands of cookies and arranging deliveries “became all-consuming” for Witzel-Behl. “You could see how she was not focused on getting through reconciliation or whatever.”

“For some people, baking is calming,” that person continued. “It seemed like she needed a break. But then she worked her ass off (on the cookies). It was a huge operation.” 

Between early and mid-December, city employees from a variety of departments thanked Witzel-Behl for her cookies. It’s not clear how many cookies she ultimately made.

On Dec. 16, one person in the city’s transportation department sent a clerk’s office staffer an email asking, “Are these cookies for the entire first floor? The entire building? The entire universe?”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Madison clerk was on a cookie-baking staycation as missing-ballot mess unfolded is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Wisconsin’s state budget doesn’t include $24 million that Gov. Tony Evers proposed to address homelessness in the state.

• At the same time, the Trump administration is looking to pull back on resources that address housing, including consolidating a grant for permanent housing solutions into one that can only be used to provide up to two years of temporary housing.

• Rural service providers are looking to philanthropic sources and others across the state to address the growing homeless population in their local communities.

At a recent gathering of social service organizations in Brown County, participants contended with a double gut punch to their efforts to reverse Wisconsin’s recent rise in rural homelessness: almost no new support in the state budget and federal funding cuts.

The Brown County Homeless and Housing Coalition, which focuses its efforts not only on the urban growth around Green Bay but also on the rural towns along the outskirts of the county, consists of at least 45 partner and supporting member organizations — representing the vast complexity of the issue they’re attempting to fix.

Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal gave them reason for hope. It included over $24 million of new funding to address homelessness.

The funding would have increased support for programs, including the Housing Assistance Program that provides support services for those experiencing homelessness and the State Shelter Subsidy Grant Program that funds shelter operations. 

But after the Republican-controlled budget committee cut Evers’ proposal, organizations were left with the same state resources they had last year, despite increasing homelessness across the state and looming cuts in federal support.

Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, who both represent mostly rural districts in Wisconsin, did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Sen. Romaine Robert Quinn, R-Birchwood, a JFC member who represents the rural northwestern corner of Wisconsin, including the city of Shell Lake where Wisconsin Watch reported on a father and daughter experiencing homelessness, declined an interview request. Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, who represents the western part of Brown County, did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Federal cuts coming for homeless services

President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget reductions would cut funding for key programs administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including grants that many local organizations depend on to provide housing and supportive services. 

The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal funding began with a Jan. 27 executive order that temporarily paused many federal grants and financial assistance programs — including those supporting homelessness services — causing immediate disruptions for organizations like RAYS Youth Services in Green Bay.

Josh Benti, program coordinator for RAYS and homeless initiative project director for the Brown County coalition, recalled how his organization’s basic services were abruptly halted, leaving it unable to support a child in need.

Benti’s organization provides services designed to promote stability and independence for youth up to age 24. They include placement in licensed foster homes, similar to emergency shelter stays.

Shortly after Trump signed the order in January, Benti received a text from his boss saying the organization could no longer move forward with placing a child in a host home. He had to inform the child it was uncertain whether the program would be funded. 

Even after federal funds were reinstated weeks later, disbursement delays further affected how employees were paid. Benti’s role, originally salaried, was switched to hourly so that he and his colleagues could maintain their positions.

Benti explained that because RAYS’ federal funds are matched by private grants, the organization’s development staff has begun applying for grants across the state. The organization seeks to expand its services and collaborate with statewide partners to become “too big to fail.” 

“We can’t do it all by ourselves,” Benti said. “We need those funds to take care of those pieces we do every day.”  

Trump’s big bill brought new limitations to RAYS through changes to social safety net programs, such as provisions introducing new work requirements for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which limited eligibility and access of certain recipients. 

These policy shifts have raised additional concerns about the potential losses to critical areas of the organization, especially Medicaid. Reductions to the federal health care program for low-income people threaten a large portion of Foundations Health and Wholeness, a nonprofit that provides mental health care to uninsured and underinsured individuals, many of whom rely on Medicaid as a source of health coverage.

Carrie Poser, executive director of Wisconsin Balance of State Continuum of Care — a nonprofit committed to ending homelessness — pointed out that Medicaid cuts, along with restrictions on food stamps, won’t only affect people experiencing homelessness directly. 

“It will impact those living in poverty who are maybe just … a paycheck away from becoming homeless, and now you’ve just hit them with the potential of losing their health insurance, or losing access to food,” Poser said.

The organization manages a variety of federal grants, including funding for Coordinated Entry Systems that prioritize housing resources based on need, as well as a large federal Rapid Re-housing project of more than $5 million focused on domestic violence survivors.

Trump calls for shift from permanent to temporary housing

Trump’s budget proposal could eliminate federal funding for the Continuum of Care program, funneling those resources into state grants for up to two years of housing assistance. The shift would eliminate Permanent Supportive Housing, which is geared toward homeless individuals with disabilities. Under current law, those temporary housing grants can’t be used for permanent housing.

Trump’s budget also would zero out the funding for the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program.

“The top-line takeaway is that rural and suburban communities are going to suffer the most loss,” said Mary Frances Kenion, chief equity officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

About 48% of Wisconsin’s permanent supportive housing is currently funded through Continuum of Care dollars. Areas served by the outstate organization rely on federal funding for roughly 41% of their homelessness services budget.

The outstate organization also receives Housing Assistance Program grants, which it subgrants to organizations aiming to address specific gaps in their communities and offers them support that may not be available through federal funding.

Without added state support, the organization can’t expand its efforts to end homelessness, though it can maintain current levels. Currently, Housing Assistance Program funds support half a dozen projects outside Milwaukee, Dane and Racine counties, a limited reach that additional funding would have broadened for the organization.

Additionally, more state funding for shelter operations could have helped shelters pay more staff and reopen after many closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Poser said.

Now, as the demand for shelter continues to rise, other service providers also face limited resources to expand their services.

The shelter funds provide support to the Northwest Wisconsin Community Services Agency for operating its shelters. However, CEO Millie Rounsville said the funding has remained flat for years, despite growing demand for services.

“As you’re trying to create additional projects … there’s no additional resources to be able to support those and actually would take away resources from other communities because the pot is the same size and the programs are expanding, which means that there’s less money to go around, and no new money to address any of the increase in the unsheltered,” Rounsville said.

With no increases in funding, expanding programs or launching new initiatives to meet rising homelessness has become increasingly difficult.

As several housing assistance organizations face limitations to state and federal funding to maintain many of their day-to-day programs and services, Kenion urges them to take stock of existing resources and make contingency plans.

Kenion advised communities to map out what services they currently offer, whether that’s through permanent supportive housing or homelessness programs, and to clearly understand where their funding may come from. She added that rural communities, in particular, should begin having difficult conversations about their funding landscape and work to broaden partnerships such as those with faith-based groups, clinics, small businesses, victim service providers and philanthropies.

Rural areas face challenges accessing support

Don Cramer, a researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum, points to some of the difficulty rural areas might face in obtaining funding to address homelessness. 

In rural parts of the state, limited staff capacity could mean that local agencies miss out on some of the state and federal funding opportunities that their urban counterparts are able to obtain. Cramer suggested that larger cities with high homeless populations, like Milwaukee, typically have more staff and time to dedicate to pursuing grants, while smaller counties, even those with higher homeless populations, often don’t have the employees who focus their time exclusively on applying for these funds.

Cramer also pointed out that rural communities often struggle not only to secure funding, but to capture the scope of homelessness in their areas, making it even harder to recognize and address the issue.

As Wisconsin Watch previously reported following the winter “point in time” count, one of two annual nights in the year that portray the number of people experiencing homelessness across the country, the state’s mostly rural homeless population reached 3,201 last year, its highest number since 2017.

The reported number of homeless students in Wisconsin last year reached its highest number since 2019, with 20,195 students experiencing homelessness, according to a report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum. Last year was the third consecutive year the number of reported homeless students has increased after hitting its lowest level in 2021 during the pandemic. 

The sheer difference in the number of students experiencing homelessness and individuals experiencing homelessness further highlights how the methodology for quantifying homelessness across the state, which is used to determine a community’s level of need, “doesn’t make sense for those who don’t know the differences in the methodologies,” Cramer said. 

The standards of counting between Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which would count a student who may be sleeping on a relative’s couch in its homeless count, and HUD, which wouldn’t, illustrate the strict guidelines that likely don’t come close to representing the full picture of homelessness in the state. 

“When you think of the (homeless counts), many assume those are undercounts,” Cramer said. “But I think the students would be pretty accurate — because schools are working with a majority of the state’s student population, and kindergartners aren’t hiding that information.”

‘We need to take into account our increasing need’

Katie Van Groll sees this issue firsthand through her work as the director of Home Base, an arm of the Boys and Girls Club of the Fox Valley that specifically works with youth up to age 21 who are experiencing challenges related to housing insecurity. 

Van Groll added that the difference between the HUD and DPI counts contributes to a systemic misunderstanding of what homelessness looks like for young people. For example, couch surfing is much more common in young people experiencing homelessness than it is for adults, but because the HUD count doesn’t include that frequent circumstance, the difference between being sheltered and being homeless “almost gets forgotten,” Van Groll said. 

“What that does is it makes them ineligible for other funding and other resources because they don’t meet the HUD definition until they are literally on the street, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid,” Van Groll said. “The sooner that we can intervene, the quicker we can disrupt that cycle and change those generational experiences of homelessness.”

While the number of youth experiencing homelessness in the state continues to rise, Evers’ budget proposal to increase funding for the Runaway and Homeless Youth program, which already operates on a difficult-to-obtain regional lottery system that Home Base competes for each year alongside other youth-oriented programs, was denied an increase in funding. 

Only one program serving runaway and homeless youth per region receives funding by the state, which in itself “is a disservice,” Van Groll said. “Right now, we’re lucky in that we are in a current federal grant so we are not looking at reapplying to the (state) funding that was just released, but we expect that other programs may not be in the same situation.” 

“Many people are going to be like, ‘well, what are you complaining about? You’re not losing any money,’” Van Groll said. “But you kind of are because we need to take into account the state of our economy, we need to take into account our increasing need, we need to take into account the fact that losing those decreases likely impacts those programs just like it does ours, which means it continues to be largely competitive across the state, inhibiting some programs from accessing those fundings.”

Meaghan Gleason, who leads the Brown County count, announced during the Brown County coalition meeting on July 9 that the current number of volunteers signed up for the summer homeless count is lower than the last two counts. She asked attendees to contribute in any way they can. 

“I would encourage you to contact your friends, family, community members, board members, funders — anyone who may be interested in going out and helping and seeing the work that we do in action,” Gleason said. 

In a phone interview on July 16, Gleason said that after reaching out to the coalition for more volunteers, involvement for the July 23-24 overnight summer count in Brown County will now see the highest number of volunteers she’s directed since taking on the role two years ago.

Homeless advocates added that there’s been an increase in encampments, with people experiencing homelessness moving deeper into the woods as the summer goes on. 

Amid the wet and hot season lately, Peter Silski, Green Bay homeless outreach case coordinator, explained that many of the people he encounters have no other choice than to build simple tents and shelters. 

Through conversations with people experiencing homelessness and connecting them with local, grassroots programs, Silski said the goal is “to empower individuals to become self-sufficient, but we want to make sure we’re there for them for as long as they need us.”

Wisconsin Watch reporter Margaret Shreiner contributed to this report.

‘We can’t do it all by ourselves’: As rural homelessness grows in Wisconsin, Republicans balk at boosting support is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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A federal appeals court ruled Monday against a Wisconsin town that disavowed electronic voting machines, siding with the U.S. Justice Department’s argument that this would unfairly harm voters with disabilities.

What’s the dispute? 

Leaders of Thornapple, a town of 700 people in northern Wisconsin’s Rusk County, voted in 2023 to stop using electronic voting machines, in favor of allowing only hand-marked ballots. They did without the machines for two elections in a row, in April and August 2024. 

The DOJ, under the Biden administration, sued the town in September 2024, arguing that its decision violated the Help America Vote Act, which requires every “voting system” to be accessible for voters with disabilities. Accessible voting machines allow voters with disabilities to hear the options on the ballot and use a touch-sensitive device to mark it.

The town argued that it wasn’t subject to the federal law’s accessibility provision because its use of paper ballots didn’t constitute a “voting system.” 

A district court judge rejected the town’s argument last September and ordered it to use electronic voting machines for the November presidential election. The town appealed that order, but did use a machine in November. 

On Monday, a three-judge panel in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower-court order, finding that “individuals with disabilities would lack the opportunity to vote privately and independently if they only had access to a paper ballot.”

The court based that finding partially on Thornapple Chief Inspector Suzanne Pinnow’s testimony about a blind woman who relied on her daughter’s assistance to fill out a ballot, and a man who had a stroke and who needed Pinnow to guide his hand so he could mark a ballot.

Who are the parties? 

The DOJ had sued two northern Wisconsin towns and their officials in September after both decided not to use electronic voting equipment for at least one federal election. One of the towns, Lawrence, immediately settled with the Justice Department, vowing to use accessible voting machines in the future.

Thornapple officials decided to fight the case. They’re currently represented by an attorney with the America First Policy Institute, a group aligned with President Donald Trump.

Why does it matter? 

The case reaffirms what has long been election practice in Wisconsin: Every polling place must have an electronic voting machine that anybody can use but is especially beneficial for voters with disabilities. 

Distrust of voting machines, which has grown on the right following misinformation about the 2020 election, has led to a movement to ban them across Wisconsin. But the Thornapple case shows that for now, municipalities still have obligations under federal law to allow voters to cast ballots on electronic machines.

The case is relevant nationally, too. Since Trump took office in January, the U.S. Justice Department has withdrawn from multiple voting-related cases. But the Justice Department forged ahead in this lawsuit, signaling that, at least for now, it is not backing the movement to forgo electronic voting equipment entirely.

What happens now? 

Thornapple is “considering our options,” said Nick Wanic of the America First Policy Institute. The case could get appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court or proceed in the lower federal court. 

Although the order that required Thornapple to use accessible voting machines applied only to the November 2024 election, at this point, two federal courts in this case have ruled that towns must have accessible voting machines for people with disabilities.

“Voters with disabilities already face many barriers in the electoral process, and making sure they have access to a voting system which allows for basic voting rights to be met is a minimum — and legal — standard that they should not be worried about when exercising their right to vote,” said Lisa Hassenstab, public policy manager at Disability Rights Wisconsin.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin town loses federal appeal over its ban on electronic voting machines is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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For over a decade, Wisconsin has heard the same message from Republicans regarding full Medicaid expansion: Accepting 90% federal reimbursement to cover more low-income people will only set Wisconsin up for failure if the federal government abandons its part of the deal. 

At first glance, President Donald Trump’s recently signed big bill appears to validate that argument. The 40 states that have fully expanded are now expected to lose billions of dollars in federal aid while getting tagged with additional administrative costs to create work requirements and eligibility assessments required in the bill. 

But it turns out Wisconsin is still going to be subject to the new federal mandates without the higher federal reimbursement rate that expansion states will continue to receive. In other words, at a time when the Republican-controlled federal government is supposedly pulling out the rug from expansion states, Wisconsin is still left holding the bag.

A look back

Back in 2014, then-Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans made the controversial decision not to accept full Medicaid expansion.

At the time, Walker explained his goal “is to get more people out into the workplace, more people covered when it comes to health care and fewer people dependent on the government, not because we’ve kicked them out, but we’ve empowered them to take control of their own destiny.”

But he also argued that the federal government would eventually pull back on its commitment to fund Medicaid at 90%.

“That commitment is not going to be there and taxpayers all across America will be on the hook,” Walker said. “They are not going to be on the hook in Wisconsin.”

At the time, Wisconsin was one of 25 states not accepting expansion. Now, the state is one of the 10 remaining holdouts, with most of the others in the deep red South. Even reliably red states, like Arkansas and Louisiana, have accepted full expansion. 

Instead of accepting full expansion, Wisconsin chose to cover individuals through BadgerCare, the state’s Medicaid-supported health insurance program for low-income residents set up by former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican. 

Walker and Republicans lowered Medicaid coverage to 100% of the federal poverty line from the previous 200% and eliminated the waiting list for childless adults. Those above the poverty line without employer-sponsored insurance could purchase it through the Affordable Care Act marketplace using federal subsidies, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.  

But Wisconsin taxpayers are paying more to cover individuals below the poverty line: 39.3% of costs rather than 10% under full Medicaid expansion. In 2023, Medicaid accounted for 15.7% of state taxpayer spending, according to the policy forum.

Under its approach, Wisconsin doesn’t have an eligibility gap like some states, something Republicans highlight as a reason the state doesn’t need to expand.

But that has come with a loss of federal funds. Over the past decade, Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services estimates, the state has spent about $2.6 billion more to cover the costs of a partial expansion compared with the projected cost under a federal expansion.

Under an expansion, more individuals would be able to access Medicaid. But the Wisconsin Policy Forum found it would have a somewhat modest impact on coverage levels — the percentage change in Medicaid enrollees would be 7.2%, compared with nearly 30% or more in other non-expansion states. 

Work requirements still in effect under Trump bill

With the recent federal bill, Walker and other Republicans still argue Wisconsin was right not to accept federal expansion. The state is going to experience the impacts to a lesser extent than fully expanded states. 

But because Wisconsin receives federal waivers for its Medicaid program, the state is still subject to some provisions under the new law, including the work requirements, eligibility determinations and provider taxes.

Under the new work requirements, individuals covered by Medicaid are required to prove they are working 80 hours per month — parents with dependent children or people who are medically frail are exempted.

As a result, some 230,000 Wisconsin residents could lose coverage while the state incurs administrative costs to account for the new requirements, according to an estimate from U.S. Senate Democrats based on data from the Congressional Budget Office.

The work requirements don’t stop at individuals covered by Medicaid alone; it also extends to coverage through marketplace subsidies, affecting over 200,000 Wisconsin residents. 

Work requirements used to be required for Wisconsin residents to access coverage through federal waivers, but in 2021 then-President Joe Biden removed the work requirement. 

The labor force participation rate has dipped from about 68% in 2017 to a little over 65% as of May 2025 but has remained higher than the national average, which is about 62%. Some reports suggest that decline is due to the aging workforce in the state.

Work requirements have also been found to increase the uninsured rate.  

The Wisconsin Policy Forum reports that one of the main reasons work requirements may lead to higher uninsured rates is that they are confusing and time-consuming. Some people may choose to get rid of coverage altogether to avoid unnecessary paperwork. 

What could happen with the federal bill?

The Kaiser Family Foundation also found that implementing work requirements will be costly for states, costing anywhere from $10 million to over $270 million, depending on the size of the state. DHS estimates the state will pay $6 million annually to implement work requirements, while receiving a lower federal match rate than fully expanded states to reimburse for administrative costs.

With a lower federal match rate, Wisconsin has increased Medicaid funding through hospital taxes, which the new state budget just increased from 1.8% to the federal maximum of 6% for the 2025-27 biennium budget.

Republican lawmakers in the state were quick to approve the hospital tax increase, despite their previous opposition to Medicaid expansion as a means for drawing down additional federal funding. If they hadn’t, the state’s 1.8% tax would have been frozen under Trump’s big bill. The increase will raise some $1 billion more annually in federal matching funds that the state can use to pay hospitals for care they provide Medicaid patients.

States that expanded will not lose the 90% federal match rate, but those like Wisconsin that didn’t will now miss out on an additional incentive to expand created during the Biden administration.

The incentive would have raised the federal match rate to 95% for two years, but was eliminated by Trump’s big bill. Instead Wisconsin will remain at about 60% reimbursement, while still facing the same bureaucratic requirements as expansion states.

Wisconsin still losing out from not expanding Medicaid — even under Trump’s big bill is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated multiple state laws when her office failed to count nearly 200 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, according to a draft report released Wednesday by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

The commission cited a lack of leadership in the clerk’s office, referring both to Witzel-Behl and the deputy clerk who assumed control during her vacation shortly after the election.

Witzel-Behl, who was put on leave by the city after the error and then resigned, broke state law by failing to supervise absentee ballot handling, neglecting post-election processes, and by not training poll workers to check the bags used to transport ballots, the commission concluded.

“There is no evidence that the City Clerk took any steps to investigate the uncounted ballots once they were brought to her attention,” the commission wrote. “The evidence demonstrates that the City Clerk began her vacation on November 13 and then had little to do with the supervision of her office until almost a month later.”

The draft report follows a months-long investigation into the 193 ballots that went missing on Election Day. The ballots were found over the next several weeks — some of them before final certification of results — but were never counted. Commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, jointly led the investigation alongside Republican commissioner and former Chair Don Millis.

For months, Madison election officials have been saying that the ballots that went uncounted were delivered to two polling sites but weren’t unopened. But the commission found no evidence the ballot bags were ever delivered. A chief inspector at one site testified he was confident there was no unopened bag in the supply cart sent to his ward.

The errors have already prompted significant changes in Madison’s election processes. Officials have overhauled ballot tracking procedures, which Madison and Dane County leaders say should prevent a repeat of the 2024 mistake.

Still, the commission emphasized “it is essential that the public understands what has occurred, so that municipalities throughout the state can review their own processes and make certain that they too do not find themselves in this very unfortunate situation.”

The commission’s sharp criticism extended beyond Witzel-Behl, noting that “the staff of the City Clerk’s office failed to take any action regarding those ballots.”

Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick said that his post-election involvement was “minimal” and that he didn’t think it was his job to do anything about the missing ballots, the commission’s findings state.

“However, he did not attempt to speak to the City Clerk about the matter,” the review continues. “There was nobody who took responsibility for these ballots. It was always someone else’s job.”

Madison Interim Clerk Mike Haas said in a statement that the city is reviewing WEC’s report and that he hopes that it can provide lessons that prevent similar errors in the future. He did not respond to a request for further comment.

Former clerk violated laws, gave contradictory statements

The report focused on lapses in training by the clerk’s office. For example, it said, Witzel-Behl stored absentee ballots in green courier bags, but didn’t mention that in poll worker training, and the bags weren’t labeled as carrying absentee ballots. She also failed to train poll workers that absentee ballots could also be stored in red security carts, which the commission said contributed to the ballots going uncounted. That lack of training broke state law, the commission stated.

The commission also found that Witzel-Behl violated a law requiring her to supervise absentee ballot handling. In her deposition, she “could not answer basic questions about absentee ballot handling procedures in her office.”

The commission’s report highlights contradictions between Witzel-Behl’s actions in office and deposition testimony. Although she claimed not to know about the uncounted ballots until December, the commission said she messaged an election worker in late November with instructions on how to handle the first batch of uncounted ballots.

Upon learning of the missing ballots in November, the commission said, Witzel-Behl should have alerted the city attorney, the County Board of Canvassers and the commission and immediately investigated her office’s procedures — but she didn’t.

The commission also alleged she violated laws by printing pollbooks too early, failing to oversee poll workers and inadequately preparing for the city’s review of election results.

Draft findings include several orders for Madison compliance

The report lists draft recommendations that the commissioners will vote on at their July 17 meeting. These include requiring the Madison Clerk’s Office to create a plan detailing which employee oversees which task; printing pollbooks no earlier than the Thursday before each election; clearly labeling and tracking the bags carrying absentee ballots; checking all ballot bags and drop boxes before the city finalizes election results; and explaining how it’s going to comply with each of the orders.

Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two affected wards on Oct. 23 — nearly two weeks before Election Day — despite state guidance to print them as close to the election as possible.

Had they been printed later, absentee voters whose ballots had already been returned would have been marked automatically, alerting poll workers that those ballots were in hand but not yet counted. 

But printing pollbooks no earlier than the Thursday before an election could be challenging, said Claire Woodall, who was formerly Milwaukee’s top election official. Cities like Madison and Milwaukee must print tens of thousands of pollbook pages, often using private printers, and distribute them to chief inspectors.

“It seems like you’re rushing a process” with the Thursday requirement, Woodall said. “The last thing you want is for voters to show up at 7 a.m. and discover you don’t have the correct pollbook.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Elections Commission alleges former Madison clerk broke laws 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: 6 minutes

Wisconsin lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers approved a $111 billion state budget early Thursday morning that will increase spending on child care and the Universities of Wisconsin system, while cutting taxes by $1.5 billion. 

The budget was the first since Democrats gained 14 seats in both chambers of the Legislature under new legislative maps and reflected a stronger bipartisan compromise than in previous cycles. 

Senate Republicans, with only one vote to spare, needed Senate Democrats at the negotiating table to pass the budget after multiple Republican senators indicated their disapproval with the budget. Four Republican state senators voted against the budget, and five Democratic state senators voted for it.

The budget was approved in both chambers on Wednesday evening and signed by Evers after 1 a.m. because lawmakers wanted to finish the state budget before President Donald Trump’s big federal bill passed. The federal bill capped Medicaid reimbursement for state taxes on hospitals at 6% and would have frozen tax rates on states like Wisconsin, which previously was at 1.8%. The move helped Wisconsin secure $1.5 billion in additional federal funds.

Evers called 2025 the “year of the kid,” prioritizing more funding for child care, K-12 education — particularly special education reimbursement — and higher education. While those areas received significant funding increases, and Republicans got their desired tax cut, postpartum Medicaid extension, renewal of the popular Knowles-Nelson public land acquisition fund and several other items, many with bipartisan support, were missing from this budget.

Postpartum Medicaid eligibility not extended to a year

Notably missing from the budget is extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months — an item that every single senator on the budget committee voted for when it was last brought before the Senate. 

“The governor called this budget the ‘year of the kid,’ and the year of the kid really needs to include mothers and parents and their mental health because the first indicator of a child’s well-being is their parents’ mental health, their mother’s mental health,” said Casey White, marketing and communications manager for Moms Mental Health Initiative. 

Evers asked for the state to allocate over $24 million to extend postpartum Medicaid eligibility to 12 months. Advocacy groups and women’s health experts say the most risky time for a mother’s health is six to nine months postpartum, but eligible new mothers currently only receive about two months of coverage. 

Wisconsin is one of only two states that do not extend eligibility for 12 months, despite the severe maternal morbidity rates rising in the state and increases in perinatal depression diagnoses. 

Extending postpartum Medicaid has received bipartisan support in both the Senate and Assembly. In April, the Senate passed a stand-alone bill that would extend postpartum Medicaid coverage. But the bill has stalled in the Assembly. 

Former Rep. Donna Rozar, R-Marshfield, told Wisconsin Watch in January she authored the bill because she wanted to support new mothers. Even with bipartisan support in his chamber, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, refused to schedule it for a hearing last session. 

This time around, Joint Finance Committee Republicans did not remove Evers’ proposal to extend postpartum Medicaid eligibility from budget consideration, meaning the committee could have introduced and passed a motion including the provision. 

But as the committee wrapped its work last Tuesday, the extension was missing. Now, the stand-alone legislation awaits an unlikely hearing in the Assembly. 

Child care provisions enough?

Late in the budget process it became clear that one of Evers’ highest priorities was funding a child care program supported by expiring federal pandemic relief dollars. The budget includes more than $361 million to fund direct payments to providers, increase child care subsidies for low-income families and fund an early school readiness program.

While the bipartisan willingness to address the ongoing issue of child care access in the state is a significant step, Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, explained the $110 million in direct payments to providers is far from enough to stabilize the field. 

Another critical part of the budget was the early school readiness program. Schmidt said allocating general purpose revenue to this program demonstrates lawmakers trust in the provider community to supply a school readiness curriculum to families around the state.

The third major piece of funding approved this budget cycle is raising the Wisconsin Shares child care program to the 75th percentile of market rates, allowing low-income families to access affordable, quality care. 

“I always will argue that we can do more, and we can and other states do more, but for us to be at a place where we are restoring payments to 75% of the market is hugely important,” Schmidt said. 

Schmidt noted that not all of the provisions are what is recommended by child care advocates, particularly the ratios of children to caretakers. 

The budget would increase the class size for 18- to 30-month-olds by instituting a ratio of one caregiver to seven children rather than the recommended one-to-four. Schmidt said that is not something WECA would stand behind as best practice in the state and is not necessarily the right move for long-term investment into child care.

WECA is preparing to provide additional training to the facilities that take on this pilot program over the biennium. 

Environmental advocates look to fall session for stewardship, PFAS fund

Two major environmental initiatives — reauthorization of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund and increased funding for the PFAS trust fund created in the last budget cycle — failed to make it into the final budget.

But Republican lawmakers have shown a willingness to reauthorize the stewardship fund, with a separate bill by Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, and Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, aiming to fund the stewardship program through 2030. The fund supports land conservation and outdoor recreation through grants to local governments and nonprofits and also allows the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to purchase and maintain state land. 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, shared her disappointment that the budget deal did not reauthorize the stewardship fund and pointed to it as one of the reasons she voted against the budget. 

“Beyond the long-time importance of this program to me personally, Knowles-Nelson funding has stood out as the single-most popular issue I have heard from my constituents during my first six months in office – from voters across the political spectrum,” Habush Sinykin said.

The state Supreme Court recently limited the power of the state budget committee to block conservation projects. Although funds for the program are currently set to expire on June 30, 2026, most funds are already awarded, and a lapse in funds could impact planning for land trusts and local governments hoping to access the funds, according to the program.

Paul Heinen, policy director at environmental policy organization Wisconsin Green Fire, and a lobbyist for the first stewardship fund in 1989, said the battle over reauthorization mirrors past debates over the fund. 

“The stewardship fund is, could very well be, the single most loved state program,” Heinen said. “But oftentimes it’s leadership who says, no, we’re spending too much money. We’re not going to spend money on this, and then invariably, the other 120 legislators overrule them at some point, and the stewardship fund is reauthorized. That’s where we’re at right now.”

Heinen said he was “99% sure” the fund would be reauthorized in future legislative sessions but was uncertain at what level the fund would be restored. Evers’ budget proposed reauthorizing the fund with $100 million of bonding authority per year through 2036. The Republican bill proposes $28 million per year for the next four years.

UW system funding rebounds with some strings attached

Just two weeks ago, Republican lawmakers floated an $87 million cut to the Universities of Wisconsin budget, yet in the final deal between lawmakers and Evers, the system will see a $256 million increase, the largest increase in over two decades. 

Republican lawmakers conditioned their support for additional funding on several things, including a required transfer credit policy between system schools, the continuation of a cap on state-funded positions and workload requirements for faculty. 

UW-Madison faculty advocacy group PROFs celebrated the increased funding for the system, but called the updated workload requirements an overreach “that would intrude on the responsibilities of both institutions and their faculty members.” 

The budget also specifies certain funding to be directed toward lower-enrollment universities. The funding formula the UW system uses to distribute state aid among schools has been a source of controversy among Republican lawmakers who have argued for more transparency. 

Jon Shelton, president of AFT-Wisconsin and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, said he was frustrated faculty and staff were not part of negotiations over work requirements.

“It takes something that otherwise could have been, I think, relatively positive for the UW system and created a poison pill that was unnecessary,” Shelton said. 

Although the $256 million increase is a significant boost to the system, the funding is only a fraction of the $856 million that Evers and UW requested. 

UW system President Jay Rothman had indicated that if the $856 million request was fulfilled, the remaining two-year branch campuses, several of which have closed in recent years, battling funding shortfalls and enrollment decreases, would stay open, and tuition would not increase. System spokesperson Mark Pitsch did not respond to a request for comment on the potential impacts on branch campuses or tuition.

DAs but no public defenders

Republicans voted to increase assistant district attorneys in Wisconsin counties, notably adding seven ADAs in Brown County, but they didn’t add any public defender positions. Without filling these positions, the American Civil Liberties Union reports current public defenders are overburdened and cannot conduct thorough investigations into a case. 

Brown County already faces a backlog of cases, with reports saying there has been an increase of over 2,000 open criminal cases in the past decade. While adding ADAs may allow the prosecutors to bring more cases to the courts, failing to add public defenders will not address the backlog of criminal cases. 

That means as more cases are presented by ADAs, there might not be enough public defenders to actually represent the individuals, so those accused of a crime may spend more time in jails as they await an attorney. 

Republicans also added 12.5 ADA positions in Milwaukee County. 

Milwaukee has been addressing backlogs but still faces challenges. By adding more ADAs to bring cases forth, while ignoring a shortage of public defenders, backlog challenges could be exacerbated.

Here’s what didn’t make it into Wisconsin’s $111 billion state budget 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: 4 minutes

A Wisconsin Watch reader asks: The state expungement statute seems very strict. Does anyone actually get their record expunged? Is it easier to get a pardon or commutation from the governor? Why is it so difficult?

While it is certainly possible for people to get their records expunged, the laws and conditions surrounding expungement remain nuanced.

Expungement seals a person’s criminal records, meaning the public can no longer access them through court databases, such as Consolidated Court Automation Programs, or CCAP. 

Oftentimes, employers and landlords use court databases, such as CCAP, to review someone’s criminal records. State law prohibits discrimination unless the crime is materially related, like someone convicted of bank fraud applying to work at a bank. By removing a public criminal record, it removes the stigma that could lead to discrimination in housing and job opportunities. Employers are not allowed to use an expunged record against an applicant, even if the crime is materially related.

But obtaining expungement in Wisconsin is much more difficult than it appears. First, anyone requesting expungement must have been under 25 years old at the time of sentencing and not convicted of a violent felony. Only misdemeanors and Class H and I felonies qualify. The attorney must also request expungement at the time of sentencing; it cannot be requested after the fact.

“I’ve seen judges just disagree with expungement as a concept and never order it,” said Natalie Lewandowski, senior clinic supervisor at the Milwaukee Justice Center. “I think some judges don’t believe that people can be rehabilitated enough to deserve to be back in society and have that not be counted against them.”

Even district attorneys can take expungement off the table. In some cases, defense attorneys may not even know expungement exists and therefore won’t know to bring it up during a person’s trial.

As a new attorney, Lewandowski wasn’t aware of expungement until she was told minutes before the trial. It is not something that is often taught, and there is no handbook, she said. 

If the judge recommends expungement, a person must then meet all conditions of probation, including paying all financial obligations and supervision fees in full. The person cannot be convicted of a subsequent offense or violate any Department of Corrections rules.

But even with the expungement conditions laid out, the process is nuanced, and the success rate is low. 

For those who were found eligible for expungement at the time of sentencing, Lewandowski said a shocking number of them fail to get their case successfully expunged. 

In general, people believe that if they complete probation, they will have their case expunged. But they also must meet all the requirements of probation before they are discharged. 

“I’ve had to tell too many people that they can never get their case expunged because at the time of their discharge, they still owed $10 in supervision fees,” Lewandowski said. 

A probation office has to submit a form either notifying that the person completed conditions for expungement or failed to meet the conditions, with each condition laid out directly on the form.

It’s unclear how many people have their record expunged each year. The DOC does not keep data on how many cases meet the requirements for expungement, and court data is unreliable and not readily aggregated. Wisconsin Policy Forum estimates that around 2,000 people have their record expunged each year. 

Pardons, on the other hand, have a more clearly defined process. 

Requirements for a pardon include an old felony conviction and at least five years since the individual completed a sentence. To be granted a pardon, a person either applies to the Pardon Advisory Board, where a hearing is held on the pardon application, or the person can qualify for the expedited process in which the application is forwarded directly to the governor without a hearing. 

The applicants have to include certified court documents. The cost of copies of court documents is $1.25 per page and an additional $5 to get the document certified.

“The kicker is the application processing times, the time it takes from when you submit your application to get a hearing in front of the pardon board, where they’ll decide, is like two years right now,” Lewandowski said. “If you’re eligible for a pardon, it’s still something that you have to prove to the pardon board that you’re deserving of, so a lot of people don’t get pardoned.”

Most of the pardoned cases are low-level, non-violent offenses. Pardoning does not expunge the record or indicate innocence, but instead symbolizes forgiveness from the governor and restores certain rights — such as the right to serve on a jury, possess a firearm or hold a state or local office. 

Unlike expungement, pardons also depend on who is governor at the time of the request.

For example, Gov. Tony Evers has granted over 1,436 pardons as of April 2025 — the most ever — while former Gov. Scott Walker was adamantly against pardons during his time in office. 

For individuals seeking expungement or pardons, there are resources available. 

The Mobile Legal Clinic through the Milwaukee Justice Center includes information on expungement and pardon eligibility. There is also a guide on completing the pardon application for people who wish to do it independently. 

There have been attempts by lawmakers to decrease the barriers to expungement, such as eliminating the age requirement and allowing a person to petition the court for expungement after sentencing. 

Evers most recently requested these changes in the 2025-27 budget, but it was removed from discussion by Republicans in early May.

Does anyone actually get their record expunged in Wisconsin? 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

We’ve learned a bit about American society amid the rhetoric over President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” For example, unauthorized immigrants don’t get Medicaid, but millions of working-age adults have gone on it. We’ve also knocked down some false claims about the bill along the way.

As of July 3, the nearly 900-page measure, filled with tax breaks and spending cuts, had moved toward passage but was still being debated in Congress.

Wisconsin Watch fact briefs have cleared up misstatements about the bill itself and about programs it would cut, such as Medicaid and food stamps.

Note: Our fact briefs answer a factual question yes or no based on the facts available when the brief is published.

Here’s a look.

Would the ‘big beautiful bill’ provide the largest federal spending cut in US history?

No.

The largest-cut claim was made by Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, who represents part of southeastern Wisconsin. His office cited a $1.7 trillion claim made by the Trump administration.

Even if the net cut were $1.7 trillion, it would be second to a 2011 law that decreased spending by $2 trillion and would be the third-largest cut as a percentage of gross domestic product, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

But when Fitzgerald made his statement, the bill’s net decreases were $1.2 trillion, after taking its spending increases into account, and $680 billion after additional interest payments on the debt.

Have millions of nondisabled, working-age adults been added to Medicaid?

Yes.

Millions of nondisabled working-age adults have enrolled in Medicaid since the Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility in 2014.

Medicaid is health insurance for low-income people.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that in 2024, average monthly Medicaid enrollment included 34 million nonelderly, nondisabled adults — 15 million made eligible by Obamacare.

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents most of northern Wisconsin, complained about “able-bodied” adults being added, saying they are “draining” Medicaid.

The nonpartisan health policy organization KFF said 44% of the working-age adults on Medicaid, some of whom are temporarily disabled, worked full time and 20% part time, many for small companies, and aren’t eligible for health insurance.

Are unauthorized immigrants eligible for federal Medicaid coverage?

No.

Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for traditional, federally funded Medicaid and have never been eligible.

Fourteen states, excluding Wisconsin, use state Medicaid funds to cover unauthorized immigrants. 

Trump’s bill proposed reducing federal Medicaid funds to those states.

Opponents of the bill, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who represents the Madison area, said Trump administration officials claimed that unauthorized immigrants receive traditional Medicaid.

Do half the residents in one rural Wisconsin county receive food stamps?

Yes.

In April, 2,004 residents of Menominee County in northeast Wisconsin received benefits from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

That’s about 46% of the county’s 4,300 residents.

SNAP, formerly known as food stamps and called FoodShare in Wisconsin, provides food assistance for low-income people.

Menominee County’s rate was cited by U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention. He commented on the bill’s provision to remove an estimated 3.2 million people from SNAP, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Is Donald Trump’s megabill projected to add more than $2 trillion to the national debt?

Yes.

Nonpartisan analysts estimate that the “big beautiful bill” would add at least $2 trillion to the national debt over 10 years.

The debt, which is the accumulation of annual spending that exceeds revenues, is $36 trillion.

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., claimed the bill would add trillions.

Among other things, the bill would make 2017 individual income tax cuts permanent, add work requirements for Medicaid and food assistance, and add funding for defense and more deportations.

After we published this brief, the Senate passed a version of the bill that would increase the debt by $3.3 trillion.

Would ‘the vast majority’ of Americans get a 65% tax increase if the GOP megabill doesn’t become law?

No.

Most Americans would not face a tax increase near 65% if Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are not extended under the bill.

The tax cuts are set to expire Dec. 31. 

The Tax Foundation estimates that if the cuts expire, 62% of taxpayers would see a tax increase in 2026. The average taxpayer’s increase would be 19.4% ($2,955).

GOP U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents western Wisconsin, made the 65% claim. 

Do you have questions about this bill and how it affects Wisconsin? Submit them here, through our Ask Wisconsin Watch project.

Here are 6 claims about Donald Trump’s big bill — and the facts 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

As the Joint Finance Committee continues to make progress on completing the 2025-27 budget, a recent Marquette Law School poll reveals where voters stand on some of the key sticking points in the budget debate.

JFC plans to meet on the remaining topics, including the UW system, health care and the capital budget, Tuesday morning after delaying Friday’s meeting by 12 hours. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, remains hopeful the budget will be completed this week.

The next budget will not be approved by the July 1 deadline, so current spending levels from the 2023-25 budget will carry over into the next fiscal year. 

Republicans are working to make a deal on the state budget that both Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and state senators will support. Senate Republicans have an 18-15 majority, so they can only lose one Republican vote without picking up votes from Democrats. Two Republican senators have voiced discontent with the current budget process.

K-12 funding vs. property taxes

The Marquette poll found 57% of Wisconsin residents would rather see lower property taxes, while 43% support more funding for K-12 schools — a figure that has been trending away from support for public schools over the past decade. 

During the last budget cycle, Evers used a creative veto to increase caps on K-12 funding each year. To keep property taxes lower for residents under the so-called 400-year veto, the state would need to increase general state aid for public schools. 

But the Republican budget provides no increase to general school aid, which Democrats argue could in turn lead school boards to raise property taxes and continue to rely on referendums to make up for the lack of state funding.

2024 saw a record number of school referendums with over half of all public school districts requesting additional funding to account for inflation and lack of financial support from the state, increasing taxpayers’ property taxes around the state.

Postpartum Medicaid

The poll also found 66% of residents want to see legislation passed to extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers to 12 months, rather than the current coverage of 60 days postpartum. 

Evers proposed extending coverage to 12 months in his 2025-27 budget proposal, but JFC has yet to make a decision on this provision. The committee intended to vote Friday but delayed discussion on health services. Co-chair Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, said the committee plans to take action on health services, among other programs, at a “later date.”

Evers previously proposed extending coverage to 12 months in his 2021-23 budget request, but Republicans revised the budget to instead request 90 days of postpartum coverage — the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied the request, saying it would not approve a waiver for coverage under one year. 

While there has been bipartisan support for extending postpartum coverage in the Senate and the Assembly, Vos previously blocked the bill from a hearing. Vos has expressed opposition to expanding welfare in the state.

UW system

Wisconsin voters were divided on support for the Universities of Wisconsin system, with 49% of those surveyed saying the UW system budget should stay the same size, 23% supporting a reduction and 27% supporting an increase. 

The UW system has requested a record-high $856 million increase while Republican lawmakers have floated an $87 million cut to the system. 

UW system leaders have pointed to Wisconsin’s ranking at 44th in the nation for public funding for universities and the closure of two-year branch campuses. When given this information, 41% supported an increase, while 57% of voters said the UW should still receive the same amount of state funding.

Evers called the potential cut a “nonstarter.”

Other budget-related topics in the poll include: 

• 79% of Wisconsin voters said they were very or somewhat concerned about PFAS contaminating their drinking water, and 33% said the so-called “forever chemicals,” which are found in firefighting foam and nonstick cookware, were the most important issue impacting drinking water. Evers’ budget proposal included $145 million for a PFAS cleanup trust fund — one of 600 items removed by the JFC in early May. 

• While 71% of voters favor a “major increase” in state funding for special education. JFC increased reimbursement to 35% in year one and 37.5% in year two of the biennium over the current rate of 30%. Evers requested 60% reimbursement. 

• 75% of Wisconsin voters supported comprehensive mental health services in schools. The JFC voted to provide $20 million over the next two years for school mental health programs. Evers proposed $170 million for comprehensive mental health services. 

• Support for marijuana legalization has continued to increase in the state. The most recent poll shows 67% of residents favor legalizing marijuana; the number of people in favor of legalization has grown nearly 20% since 2013. Evers proposed legalization in his budget, but Republicans removed it from consideration entirely in early May. 

Here’s how Wisconsin’s Republican budget compares with public opinion 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

A Wisconsin Watch reader asks: How much funding do the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Madison College receive from the U.S. military?

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has 198 active Department of Defense awards, totaling $221.3 million in funding, according to UW-Madison’s declaration from the Association of American Universities lawsuit against the Department of Defense. 

Defense-funded research aims to expand “warfighter capabilities” and the U.S. “strategic and tactical advantage.” President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense tried to cap indirect costs at 15%.

Defense awards support research in fields directly related to the military, such as “cybersecurity, maritime navigation, materials science, injury prevention and recovery and military flight technology,” said UW-Madison Vice Chancellor for Research Dorota A. Grejner-Brzezinska in the lawsuit challenging the Defense Department’s attempt to limit indirect costs. 

The Department of Defense awarded $67.4 million in grants to UW-Madison in 2023-24, making up 8% of total agency funding, the fourth-highest source after the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. UW-Madison ranked sixth in national research expenditures with over $1.7 billion in the latest annual review.

UW-Madison also has 81 pending Defense grant proposals, as of June 13, 2025, with a requested total budget of $70.5 million, according to Grejner-Brzezinska’s declaration.

Indirect costs are costs that support research but are not directed to a specific award and include “costs for building maintenance, utilities, procurement of shared equipment, administrative services, information technology, libraries and compliance with federal regulations,” said Grejner-Brzezinska in the declaration.

On June 17, 2025, a federal judge in Boston temporarily granted universities a temporary restraining order, meaning they will temporarily operate with the previously negotiated indirect cost reimbursement rates of 55.5%. This follows an NIH cap of 15% on indirect costs, also blocked by a federal judge. 

“The 15% rate cap will make most, if not all, of UW-Madison’s proposed and ongoing research projects infeasible,” Grejner-Brzezinska said.

Defense-funded studies at UW-Madison include a group of 30 scientists who study traumatic brain injuries, satellite data systems and artificial intelligence infrastructure and research.

Madison College currently has no active Defense awards or grants, according to a website detailing federal grants.

How much funding do the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Madison College receive from the US military? 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: 4 minutes

Republicans on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee canceled last Thursday’s Joint Finance Committee meeting after two GOP senators voiced discontent and Gov. Tony Evers called a possible $87 million cut to the Universities of Wisconsin system a “nonstarter.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and JFC co-chair Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, said they had chosen to return to negotiations with Evers to guarantee tax cuts in the final budget and shared hope that Senate Republicans “will come back to the table to finish fighting for these reforms.”

Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, and Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, indicated they are unlikely to vote for the budget in its current form. 

Senate Republicans have an 18-15 majority, so they can only lose one Republican vote without picking up a vote from a Democrat. To pass the budget, both the Assembly and the Senate must vote for it, and Evers must sign off. Evers can use his partial line-item veto or veto the whole budget.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said conversations were heading in an unaffordable direction and Senate Republicans were ready to pass a budget “that cuts taxes and responsibly invests in core priorities.” 

Negotiations initially broke down on June 4 when Republicans walked out of conversations with the Evers administration, failing to agree on tax cuts and education spending. 

With delays and cancellations in approving the budget, it has become increasingly likely the next biennial budget will not be approved by the July 1 deadline. If it is not approved by the end of the month, the 2023-25 budget would carry over into the next fiscal year.

That’s not entirely unusual, though the latest Evers signed his first three budgets was July 8. In 2017, under former Gov. Scott Walker, the budget was not signed into law until September.

Democrats said if the budget is not approved before July 1, local school districts and municipalities will have to delay hiring because they won’t know how much funding they will receive from the state. 

Also, the looming federal budget puts Wisconsin at risk of losing out on federal dollars and programs if a budget is not passed soon. 

“We see a horrible budget bill being debated in Washington that could contain really, really significant cuts for services that all Wisconsinites rely on, thinking about, obviously health care, but certainly things like education, transportation, natural resources, agriculture,” Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said.

Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, also criticized Republicans for “allowing extremists within their caucus to hijack this budget and go against the will of the people.”

Vos told reporters Wednesday afternoon the Republican caucus supports an $87 million cut to the UW system budget, yet an Evers spokesperson said any cut to the UW system would be a “nonstarter.” 

The UW system requested a record $856 million funding increase, which was scheduled for action on Tuesday and then removed from the agenda. Last budget cycle, Republicans withheld pay raises from the system and approval of UW-Madison’s new engineering building, eventually signing a deal to freeze diversity, equity and inclusion spending in exchange for the release of the funding.

Vos signaled the potential cuts to the UW system are also about leverage over campus culture. The Trump administration has similarly threatened to withhold and ultimately cut federal grants from universities unless they comply with demands aimed at reshaping campus culture and combating antisemitism. 

“It’s not about cutting money. What it is, is about getting some kind of reforms to the broken process that we currently have,” Vos said. “There is still too much political correctness on campus. We don’t have enough respect for political diversity.”

Democrats decry prison budget as ‘kicking the can down the road’

The budget committee voted 11-3 along party lines to increase funding for prisons by $148 million over the biennium, though Evers had requested $185 million.

Some of the key differences included the Legislature providing about $20 million less for community reentry programs and 50 fewer contract beds in county jails than Evers proposed.

During the budget committee meeting, Democrats accused their colleagues of “kicking the can down the road” by not funding programs that reduce recidivism in the approved motion. 

Republicans said that their budget motion is “realistic” and that it expands on “huge improvements” in prison guard vacancies made by the 2023-25 budget.

Upper middle income earners get bulk of GOP tax cut

The Wisconsin Republican tax cut plan will give middle to upper income earners the largest tax cut, while taxpayers earning under $40,000 will receive less than 1% of the total, according to a report last week from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Wisconsin taxpayers earning $100,000 to $200,000 would receive 58.5% of the tax decrease, with an average cut of $242 for tax year 2025. In Wisconsin, those making between $100,000 and $200,000 account for a third of tax filers, according to the fiscal bureau.

Some lost federal disaster assistance gets state support

The committee passed a motion to provide additional funding for the Department of Military Affairs for emergency planning — a sign of some bipartisan agreement on alleviating the effects of federal funding cuts.

While the bill included most of Evers’ requests, the approved motion, introduced by Republicans, did not include Emergency Management Programs Sustainment funding, which would have replaced $1.13 million over the biennium in revenue lost as a result of federal cuts.

Previously, FEMA awarded $54 million in grants to Wisconsin to address environmental risks in the state, but federal cuts have canceled $43 million, reducing federal funding for natural disaster prevention by nearly 80%.

The measure adopted Tuesday with bipartisan support would allocate $2 million in 2025-26 for pre-disaster flood resilience grants and $3 million for state disaster assistance programs. The funding would prepare Wisconsin for disasters and provide assistance to mitigate consequences if a natural disaster were to occur.

Republicans add more assistant district attorneys

The budget committee voted 11-3 to add 42 additional assistant district attorneys in counties across the state, including seven positions in Brown, six positions in Waukesha and four positions in Fond du Lac.

Each county would now have staffing levels at approximately 80%, according to a workload analysis from the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association. Currently, 15 counties are below 60% of the staffing level suggested by the WDAA workload analysis, and 33 of 71 counties are below 70%.

The state has been struggling with a shortage of rural attorneys for several years, an issue Larry J. Martin, the executive director for the State Bar of Wisconsin, has called “a crisis that policymakers in our state Capitol must address.”

Wisconsin budget progress stalls amid Senate GOP resistance is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Wisconsin incarcerates more people per capita than the majority of countries in the world, including the United States. 

Wisconsin Watch and other newsrooms in recent years have reported on criminal charges against staff following prison deaths, medical errors and delayed health care and lengthy prison lockdowns linked to staffing shortages in Wisconsin prisons.

The state prison population has surged past 23,000 people, with nearly triple that number on probation or parole. Meanwhile, staff vacancies are increasing again across the Department of Corrections.

A reader called this situation a “mess” and asked how we got here and what can be done to fix it.

The road to mass incarceration

The first U.S. prison was founded as a “more humane alternative” to public and capital punishment, prison reform advocate and ex-incarceree Baron Walker told Wisconsin Watch. Two years after Wisconsin built its first prison at Waupun in 1851, the state abolished the death penalty.

For the next century, Wisconsin’s prison population rarely climbed above 3,000, even as the state population grew. But as America declared the “War on Drugs” in the 1970s and set laws cracking down on crime in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Wisconsin’s prison population began to explode.

“In the early 1970s … the rise in incarceration corresponded fairly closely with increases in crime,” said Michael O’Hear, a Marquette University criminal law professor. “The interesting thing that happened in both Wisconsin and the nation as a whole in the ‘90s is that crime rates started to fall, but imprisonment rates kept going up and up.”

According to O’Hear, Wisconsin was late to adopt the “tough-on-crime” laws popular in other states during that era. But by the mid-1990s, the state began to target drug-related crime and reverse leniency policies like parole. 

“There was a period of time in which Milwaukee was just shipping bazillions of people into prison on … the presumption of being a dealer with the possession of very small amounts of crack cocaine,” UW-Madison sociology Professor Emerita Pamela Oliver said. She cited this practice as one of the reasons Wisconsin’s racial disparities in imprisonment are the worst in the nation.

Starting in the late 1990s and 2000s, Wisconsin’s “truth-in-sentencing” law, which requires people convicted of crimes to serve their full prison sentences with longer paroles, resulted in both a cycle of reincarceration and a large prison population full of aging inmates with low risk of reoffending.

Then in 2011, the anti-public union law known as Act 10 caused a mass exodus of correctional officers as working conditions in the state’s aging prisons continued to deteriorate.

Extended supervision

Along with mandating judges impose fixed prison sentences on people convicted of crimes, truth-in-sentencing requires sentences to include an inflexible period of “extended supervision” after a prison term ends. This is different from parole, which is a flexible, early release for good behavior and rehabilitation.

Judges often give out “extraordinarily long periods of extended supervision,” according to Oliver, at least 25% of the incarceration itself by law and often multiple times that in practice. To her, it is simply a “huge engine in reincarceration.”

According to DOC data, of the 8,000 people admitted to Wisconsin prisons in 2024 more than 60% involved some kind of extended supervision violation, known as a “revocation.” Half of those cases involved only revocation.

Extended periods of supervision after release from prison do little to improve public safety, research suggests. The long terms “may interfere with the ability of those on supervision to sustain work, family life and other pro-social connections to their communities,” Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor of criminal law, wrote in a 2019 study examining 200 revocation cases.

Substance abuse problems contributed to technical revocations in an “overwhelming majority” of cases, Klingele wrote, because “agents have few options to impose meaningful sanctions other than imprisonment.” 

“Fewer, more safety-focused conditions will lead to fewer unnecessary revocations and more consistency in revocation for people whose behavior poses a serious threat to public safety,” Klingele added. 

Streamlining the standard supervision rules would require the Legislature to act.

Oliver attributes Wisconsin’s high rates of revocations to parole officers failing to reintegrate people into society in favor of playing “catch-somebody-offending.”

“You get reincarcerated, (and) all that time (in prison) doesn’t count,” Oliver said. “You can stay on a revolving door of incarceration and extended supervision for five times longer than your original sentence.”

People behind the statistics

The factors behind both crime and incarceration are complex, with socioeconomic factors relating to poverty, race, location and more increasing the chances of contact with the judicial system. 

According to O’Hear, overall crime rates began increasing in the ‘90s during the War on Drugs in part due to prosecutors “charging cases and plea bargaining more aggressively.” 

A study by the Equal Justice Initiative found that plea bargaining perpetuates racial inequality in Wisconsin prisons. White defendants are 25% more likely than Black defendants to have charges dropped or reduced during plea bargaining, and Black defendants are more likely than whites to be convicted of their “highest initial charge(s).”

In the 53206 Milwaukee ZIP code where Baron Walker grew up, nearly two-thirds of Black men are incarcerated before they turn 34. Recalling his youth, Walker said “it seemed like almost all the males in my family were incarcerated at one point in time.”

During his time in the prison system, which included stints at Waupun, Columbia and Fox Lake correctional institutions, Walker struggled with accessing his basic needs.

“Their water came out black, dirty. It had a stench,” Walker said. “It sinks into your clothing, even when you wash them … you consume this water, it’s what they cook the food with.”

Water quality in Wisconsin prisons has been a consistent concern of inmates and activists in the past 15 years. Despite multiple investigations into lead, copper and radium contamination at these maximum- and medium-security prisons, recent reports found unhealthy radium levels in the drinking water — with no free alternatives.

“They would microwave the water (at Fox Lake) and the microwaves would spark up and blow out,” WISDOM advocate Beverly Walker, Baron’s wife, told Wisconsin Watch. “The water at the time was $16 to just get a case of six bottles of water … it so ridiculously high.”

EX-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) of Wisconsin peer support specialist Vernell Cauley’s issues within Wisconsin prisons were more personal. His daughter died during his intake into Dodge Correctional Institution, and Cauley wasn’t allowed a temporary release to attend her funeral. 

“It had some deep effects on me,” he said. “Some of the things I didn’t realize I had until I was actually released, when you understand that you didn’t get the proper time to grieve.”

Cauley was put in solitary confinement during that time, and for three months total over the course of his prison stay. According to DOC data, the average stay in solitary confinement across Wisconsin prisons is 28 days, though that’s down from 40 days in 2019.

Furthermore, inmates who struggle with mental illness are overrepresented in solitary confinement across U.S. prisons. Multiple inmates have committed suicide due to long stints of solitary, particularly during recent prison lockdowns.

Working conditions

Joe Verdegan, a former Green Bay correctional officer of nearly 27 years, said he and most of his coworkers “conducted (them)selves pretty professionally” and “always had a lot of respect” for inmates. This respect went both ways, he said, because guards built relationships with inmates for decades at their post.

According to Verdegan, being a correctional officer used to be a “career job” where “nobody left.” Despite the dangers and odd work hours of the post, the guards had a strong union and good benefits and could climb up the ladder as they gained seniority. 

But it “all went to hell” after Act 10 was passed.

Senior staff left in droves, leaving remaining guards with 16-hour shifts and “bad attitudes” that perpetuated the worsening work culture, Verdegan said. Religious, medical and recreational time was cut for inmates due to staffing shortages, and the respect between correctional officers and prisoners dwindled.

“When you’re not getting out for chapel passes or any of that kind of stuff, it just builds that hostility,” he said.

The changes caused Verdegan to retire from corrections at 51, earlier than planned. He and many of his friends took financial penalties by retiring from the Department of Corrections early and ended up working other jobs at bars, grocery stores and factories. 

They also went to funerals. Many former coworkers “drank themselves to death” due to their experiences within corrections, Verdegan said.

Coming home

In 1996, when Walker was sentenced to 60 years in prison for his role in two bank robberies, no one expected him to serve more than a third of his sentence —  not even the victims. 

But when truth-in-sentencing passed, mandating judges to impose definite, inflexible imprisonment lengths on people convicted of crimes, Walker’s hopes for an early release quickly disintegrated.

Walker was released from prison in 2018 on probation, an alternative to incarceration offered on condition of following specific court orders. He was released after being denied parole six times in the seven years since he first became eligible.

In the aftermath of Walker’s imprisonment, he and Beverly have had their “most beautiful days,” along with some trials. Walker said he has struggled to adjust to independent living, and he would have been at a “complete loss” for adapting to 20 years of technological change if he hadn’t studied it in prison.

“You are programmed and reprogrammed to depend on someone for your anything and everything, whether it be your hygiene products, the time you shower, your mail, your bed, your bedding, your food,” Baron said. “Now, suddenly, you cross out in(to) society … and you’re told now as an adult you’re responsible for your independence, your bills, your clothing, your hygiene, your everything.”

Walker has also struggled with finding employment, despite earning “a litany of certifications and degrees” in food service, plumbing, welding, forklift operating and more while incarcerated. He said the DOC’s reentry programs need “overhaul” and more companies should be encouraged to hire formerly incarcerated people.

As of 2021, Wisconsin spent $1.35 billion per year on corrections, but only $30 million on re-entry programs. Less than a third of the re-entry funding is allocated for helping ex-prisoners find jobs — even though studies show employment significantly decreases the likelihood of reoffending.

Looking ahead 

To Oliver, a significant barrier to solving issues within the prison system is changing sociopolitical attitudes.

“People imagine that if you’re punitive enough, you will have no crime,” Oliver said. “It’s really hard to get the general public to realize you ultimately reduce crime more by creating the social conditions that help people live productive lives without committing crime.”

O’Hear believes a key solution to problems within Wisconsin prisons is addressing the “mismatch” between large prison populations and available resources. He argues that “for a couple generations now, there’s been more of a focus on cutting taxes than on adequately funding public agencies” like the DOC.

O’Hear also said that judges should consider shorter prison sentences because “most people age out of their tendency to commit crimes” and that there should be “more robust mechanisms,” such as more compassionate release and parole laws for elderly inmates.

“We have people in prison in their 50s and their 60s and their 70s and even older who are really past the time when they pose a real threat to public safety,” O’Hear said. “Health care costs alone for older prisoners are a tremendous burden on the system, and they’re contributing to overcrowding.”

The Walkers are continuing their advocacy for prison reform by opening up the Integrity Center, which supports incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals with navigation, re-entry, employment assistance and more. They also advocate permanently shutting down aging prisons such as Green Bay and Waupun correctional institutions.

“All of our people who are eligible for release should be released, and people who are eligible to move into minimum facilities should be moved,” Beverly Walker said. “We don’t need any new prisons if we just utilize what we have.”

Verdegan said that he doesn’t believe the Legislature will ever pass a bill closing Green Bay in his lifetime and that “both political parties are to blame for this mess they’ve created with the Wisconsin DOC.” “Throwing money” at corrections officer positions will not fix staffing vacancies, he said, without the guarantee of eight-hour workdays and adequate job training.

He and Cauley both said supporting the mental health of prisoners before and after incarceration is key. Verdegan supports training staff to work with mentally ill prisoners. Cauley would rather see prison abolished altogether.

“Most people who end up in prisons, they have things going on mentally, these issues not getting met,” Cauley said. “Prison only makes people bitter, more angry … you know, it traumatizes them.”

Correction: This story was updated to reflect the average stay in solitary confinement is 28 days. Also 60% of the more than 8,000 people entering prison in 2024 involved a revocation, but half of those cases also involved a new crime.

Why is Wisconsin’s prison system such a ‘mess,’ and what can be done to fix it? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Wisconsin’s rate for vaccinating 5- and 6-year-olds against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) has continued to slide since the COVID-19 pandemic began, with 74.1% of such children receiving two doses of the shot in 2024 — down from 79.3% in 2019. 

Nearly every Wisconsin county last year vaccinated a lower share of kindergarten-aged children for MMR than before the pandemic. Menominee County, home to the Menominee Indian tribe of Wisconsin, was the lone exception, according to Wisconsin Department of Health Services data. 

After dipping from nearly 80.7% in 2019 to as low as 74.7% during the height of the pandemic, Menominee County’s MMR vaccination rate for kindergartners grew to nearly 83.6% in 2024, the state’s highest rate. 

That success was due to local health officials “being proactive” and conducting outreach that included “looking up kids that were behind, reaching out to parents and encouraging them to bring them in,” said Faye Dodge, director of community health nursing services at the Menominee Tribal Clinic.

Vaccination rates matter because measles is highly contagious and potentially dangerous.

Before the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Americans faced measles infections each year. The advent of vaccination eliminated the disease in the United States by 2000. But outbreaks have returned to some U.S. communities as trust in vaccines wanes in many communities.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control though June 19 confirmed more than 1,200 measles cases this year in 36 states, including every state bordering Wisconsin. About 12% of cases sent patients to the hospital. Three people have died.  

Wisconsin, which has some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates for children, has been lucky to have dodged cases so far, said Margaret Hennessy, a pediatrician and member of the Wisconsin Council on Immunization Practices.

Wisconsin’s risk of outbreaks will grow as families with children travel over the summer.

“They’re going to be traveling all over the country,” Hennessy said. “Realistically, it’s likely a matter of time for somebody who’s not vaccinated or doesn’t have immunity to get the disease.”

Wisconsin Watch analyzed statewide vaccination data for 5- and 6-year-olds in the state, conducted other research and spoke to public health officials.

Here are some takeaways:

• The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted local vaccination programs, leaving children behind in their vaccination schedules. Understaffed, under-resourced counties have struggled to catch up. 
• Creating relationships with trusted community members and reducing access barriers is the most effective way to inoculate more children against contagious diseases like measles, public health officials say. 
• No Wisconsin county comes close to reaching the vaccination rate of 95% that is considered the benchmark for herd immunity protection. That was true in 2024 and before the pandemic. 
• Just three counties — Manitowoc, Marathon and Kewaunee — fully vaccinated at least 80% of kindergarten-aged children in every year from 2019 to 2024. 
• While vaccination rates are lagging from pre-pandemic levels in most counties, 28 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties reported vaccination gains between 2023 and 2024 — four more than the previous year. Still, the majority of counties saw declines.

Vaccination rates are plunging in Clark County, which consistently ranks lowest statewide for vaccinating 5- and 6-year-olds against measles. Just 42.9% of those children received both MMR doses in 2024, down from 57.9% in 2019. 

Brittany Mews, Clark County’s health officer and director, cites a range of challenges in her sprawling county. Those include distances between few clinics in communities with no public transportation, low levels of health insurance access and diverse populations who face language barriers — and may adhere to cultural norms that prioritize traditional remedies over Western medicine.

But the county has found some success in partners ranging from school districts and child care centers to faith communities, Mews said. The health department has asked schools to notify parents when their children need vaccines, for instance, and positive feedback prompted the scheduling of multiple vaccine clinics at the schools and community churches.

Community partnerships in familiar places make people feel more comfortable — particularly in the county’s diverse communities, including those with language and cultural differences. 

Clark County is also working to increase vaccine access by partnering with neighboring health departments to offer vaccination clinics six times a year at a church food pantry, creating a “one-stop-shop” system, Mews said.   

Forging personal connections can grow trust and spread accurate information at a time when disinformation is running rampant online, Hennessy said. Hearing about positive vaccination experiences from a parent, neighbor or other trusted source can hold more weight than information a physician shares. 

“It’s unfortunate that we all can’t be everywhere all the time to fill that,” Hennessy said.

Heather Feest, a Manitowoc County public health nurse manager, said patience and understanding of concerns are also key to increased vaccinations.

“We’re not trying to persuade one way or another, it’s giving that information and answering questions — and allowing them to get factual information and have a conversation without judging,” Feest said. “It’s harder now than what it used to be.”

DataWatch: Measles will likely arrive in Wisconsin. Here’s where vaccination rates are trending is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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On a day of high drama and chaos — Donald Trump’s military parade, nationwide street protests and a political assassination in Minnesota — Wisconsin Democrats convened in Lake Delton to try to forge a way forward.

The theme of the party’s state convention was “the road to 2026,” with elections for governor, the Legislature and Congress at stake.

But how to counter Trump and his ascendant brand of smash-mouth politics was front and center for attendees interviewed Saturday at the Chula Vista Resort.

“When you’re dealing with a ruling party that is not interested in actual governance, that’s a problem,” said Victor Raymond of Madison, referring to Republicans controlling the White House and Congress. “So, there needs to be more efforts made to establish an actual resistance.”

Raymond, who was not a delegate, said he was attending his first state party convention “because I’m concerned about the encroaching fascism in this country.” 

He said more Democrats must resist the Trump administration the way U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla did last week because “what the right wing wants is for everyone to be intimidated.” 

Padilla, a California Democrat, interrupted a news conference Thursday held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to try to ask a question. He was forcefully removed and handcuffed by officers as he tried to speak up about the administration’s immigration raids.

“There’s a need for the Democrats to show just how extreme the Republicans are and how it’s not even close to the values that they say they’re supposedly upholding,” Raymond said.

Another first-time attendee, Dane County delegate Christie Barnett, said she is becoming politically active for the first time because she believes the country is sliding into autocracy.

Barnett acknowledged that the day felt heavy, particularly after a gunman shot and killed one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and wounded another in separate incidents. But her focus was on trying to counter Trump.

“If people like me are getting involved, who haven’t been, maybe that’s the hope right there. I don’t know,” she said.

Eleven Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers were named in a list police obtained from the suspected gunman’s vehicle, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Police officers were stationed outside the convention center, and they periodically walked through the halls. After a manhunt, the gunman was arrested and charged with murder on Sunday.

At the state GOP convention last month, rank-and-file Republicans cheered the sheer speed of Trump’s actions since starting his second term and yearned for further moves to the right.

Last week, Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, who represents the Green Bay area, introduced legislation that would direct the Justice Department to publish a list of state or local governments that are “anarchist jurisdictions.”

That’s the mood in Waupaca County, which voted for Trump by a 2-to-1 margin in November, said Democratic delegate Wendy Skola. “You bring up anything to do with Democrats, you’re shot down,” she said. 

Skola said Trump’s presidency led her to participate in a recent protest and attend her first state party convention. She said she feels the need to stand up because, the way Trump has governed, people feel “we can all do whatever the hell we want.”

More than 700 delegates and about 150 guests attended the convention. That included delegate David Shorr, a former Stevens Point alderman who also voiced fears about autocracy.

“The country’s in trouble, very, very dangerous, dark times,” he said. “You have a president who demonizes a lot of people …. He’s been very comfortable for many, many years talking about violence should be used against these people.”

But how to counter Trump is unclear, Shorr said.

“There is no easy answer,” he said. “I don’t have any easy answer, except that we can’t give up.” 

In reflecting on the weekend’s events, including Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., the “No Kings” protests that drew millions of demonstrators across Wisconsin and the U.S., and the Minnesota shootings, delegate Sophie Gloo of Racine said the antidote is kindness and taking care of each other.

“I don’t think we should kid ourselves into saying that everyone’s getting along really well because clearly there’s a lot of clashing,” Gloo said. “I think the best way to continue to do good work is to stick together and just make sure that you’re supporting one another.”

That extends to elections, said Gloo, who has worked on state legislative campaigns. The Democratic Party needs to be visible away from campaign season by attending events and knocking on doors year round, she said.

“I think, as a party, you have to be consistent about showing up for people. People who lean one way or the other might not feel like the Democratic Party has been listening to them,” she said. “They’re upset that we only come around when the elections happen.”

More outreach was a theme of the three candidates who ran to succeed Ben Wikler, who stepped down after six years as party chair.

Delegates chose senior state party adviser Devin Remiker of Reedsburg, who was endorsed by Wikler, over Milwaukee-area communications consultant Joe Zepecki and La Crosse-area party leader William Garcia in Sunday’s election.

“I think we have a lot of trust building to do, and that is going to be a major focus of mine, is showing up,” Remiker told Wisconsin Watch last week. “Not to ask people to vote for us, but just to ask them to keep an open mind and rebuild those relationships of trust that have been damaged.”

Wisconsin Democrats search for answers as fear of autocracy galvanizes grassroots is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Republicans revealed their big-ticket tax cut plan for this budget cycle, passing through the Joint Finance Committee on Thursday a $1.3 billion tax cut over the next biennium and offering incremental increases in special education and technical college funding. Read on for some bite-sized budget updates:

Middle class income and investment tax cuts approved

Currently, taxpayers pay 4.4% in taxes on income between $14,680 and $29,370 and 5.3% on income between $29,370 and $323,290. Under the new plan, which would begin in tax year 2025, the 4.4% tax bracket would expand to include income up to ​​$50,480. For married couples filing jointly, the income covered in that bracket would rise from $39,150 to $67,300. 

The proposal would reduce taxes by about $190 for a single filer and $253 for a joint married filer. 

Older retirees would also see a tax cut, as they wouldn’t have to pay taxes on up to $24,000 of retirement income that comes out of 401(k)s, IRAs and pensions. That doesn’t include retirement income that is already not taxed, such as Social Security.

The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates that those with a retirement account of $1.2 million or more would receive the maximum benefit.

Republican K-12 education plan points to property tax increases

The budget committee voted 12-4 along party lines to increase funding for special education reimbursement, though at a rate lower than recommended in Gov. Tony Evers’ budget and advocated for by parents of special education students. 

Currently, the state reimburses about 30% of the costs associated with providing students special education services to public school districts, and under the Republican proposal, this rate would increase to 35% in the first and 37.5% in the second year of the biennial budget. 

Democratic legislators, Evers and school districts across the state advocated for a 60% special education reimbursement, citing the record number of Wisconsin school districts that have gone to referendum and the state’s over $4 billion surplus.

K-12 education traditionally takes up the largest portion of the state budget; however, the proportion of funding allocated to school districts across the state has decreased from over 43% of the state’s general fund in 2002 to 36% in the last budget cycle.

Democratic and Republican legislators sparred over “right-sizing” the budget, with Republican legislators pointing to the increase in special education funding and desire for fiscal responsibility and Democrats reading testimony from students, parents and school administrators across the state expressing a need for stronger state support. 

Republican legislators also approved 90% reimbursement for high-need special education students — about 3% of special education students — and no funding increase in general school aid. 

Democrats highlighted how by not increasing general school aid, the Republican proposal would likely lead to higher property taxes across the state. If the state increases aid, property tax increases would be limited. 

Republicans pointed to Evers’ 400-year veto as the reason why property taxes will likely increase. That’s because in the previous budget, Evers used a creative veto to increase state-imposed caps on K-12 funding each year for 400 years. 

Technical colleges get modest increase

Republicans proposed an increase of more than $8 million to general aid for technical colleges over the next two years, a fraction of  Evers’ $45 million proposal.

Unlike per-pupil aid for students in the Universities of Wisconsin system, which ranks 43rd in the country, the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) is currently funded at about the median rate for technical college systems. 

In an interview with the Cap Times, WTCS President Layla Merrifield said increased demand for fire and EMS training in rural areas of the state, in addition to a bounceback in enrollments since the COVID-19 pandemic and workforce shortages, necessitates the $45 million increase in state funding.

Supreme Court police force denied

Credible threats against Wisconsin judges are on the rise. There were 30 in 2022, 46 in 2023 and 29 in 2024, but 22 in just the first three months of this year.

Despite that, Republicans last week rejected the Supreme Court’s state budget proposal to create the Office of the Marshals of the Supreme Court — a law enforcement agency to serve the Supreme Court specifically. The proposal would’ve cost $2.3 million over the biennium to fund 8.4 positions.

Judges are responsible for making decisions impartially, even in the face of intimidation. Democrats on the state budget committee warned additional threats could sway rulings. 

“Given the role that they play in our judiciary and in order to be impartial, we shouldn’t want them to be in danger, or to fear for their safety, or to have any outward pressures on them that would influence the case,” Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, said. 

Threats to federal judges have doubled since 2021. The increase has been attributed to the politicization of courts. In Wisconsin there were also contentious Supreme Court elections in 2023 and 2025.

Legislative Republicans argue it would be redundant to allocate funds to create a new police agency. 

“The Capitol Police protects the Capitol for visitors, employees, legislators, the court, whoever happens to be here,” Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, told reporters. “I think they’ll continue to provide top-notch work here at the Capitol.”

Private health insurance market gets a boost

To address the rising costs of private insurance premiums in Wisconsin, the budget committee approved legislation to raise the cap on a reinsurance fund the state created to help insurance companies pay high-cost claims. The Wisconsin Healthcare Stability Plan — a program aimed at making insurance more affordable — would receive an additional $35 million, setting the cap at $265 million. 

In 2024, insurance claims exceeded the cap by $26 million, leading insurance agencies to raise premiums for consumers. The new cap, which is $15 million more than what Evers proposed, aims to address the rising costs of insurance. 

Due to insurance claims exceeding that $26 million cap, JFC Republicans also passed a provision to direct the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance to cover those additional claims up to $265 million for 2025. 

But Republicans decided against Evers’ proposal to automatically adjust the cap based on inflation, meaning if claims once again exceed the cap, raising it would be dependent on what happens in the next budget cycle. 

In recent years, the cost of insurance premiums have increased due to inflation raising the price of goods and services. Federal dollars cannot be used for claims exceeding the cap, putting the burden of higher premiums on consumers.

Big Wisconsin Republican budget plans on taxes, K-12 education come into focus is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Wisconsin Republicans want to require that all proposed constitutional amendments come with a plain-language explanation, a move that they say would help voters better understand complex ballot questions.

The proposal has drawn broad support. But some lawmakers are concerned about whether the measure as proposed would leave the interpretation of ballot questions vulnerable to partisanship. And even some supporters say the bill should have more specific standards for what constitutes plain language.

In its current version, the bill calls for the Legislature to pass a plain-language explanation along with any proposed constitutional amendment. The explanation would be drafted by the Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan legislative agency that helps draft bills, but legislators would be able to revise it. Neither the explanation nor the amendment would be subject to a governor’s veto.

The proposal has the support of a wide swath of voting organizations: The ACLU of Wisconsin, the city of Madison, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, All Voting Is Local Action and Common Cause in Wisconsin are all registered in support of it. No group has registered in opposition.

“Most of our voters do not have law degrees to interpret many of these questions,” Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, the bill’s author, said at a June 3 public hearing before the Assembly elections committee. “It leaves individuals unprepared to really make an informed decision.”

But Republicans and Democrats expressed concern at the hearing that the bill, as written, gives too much control of the process to the legislative majority. 

O’Connor maintained that crafting the explanation should ultimately be the Legislature’s responsibility. He didn’t respond to Votebeat’s request for comment. 

Proposal leaves plain language undefined

States that require plain-language summaries of their ballot proposals vary widely in how they craft them. Oregon uses a demographically representative citizen panel. Arizona leaves it to a legislative council controlled by the majority party.

The drafting process is often contentious, and litigation over fairness is common, said Thomas Collins, executive director of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

There’s no gold standard for laws on plain-language explanations, said Michael Blasie, an expert on the subject and an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law. Regardless of who writes the explanation, he said, the key is user testing: giving drafts to readers and checking whether they understand them as intended. 

The Wisconsin bill doesn’t require that. Without testing and feedback, Blasie said, the bill is a positive step but won’t have a meaningful impact unless it’s followed by further reforms.

There are about 1,100 plain-language laws across the country at the federal, state and local levels, including in Wisconsin, Blasie said. Some of them broadly require jurisdictions to provide plain-language explanations of proposals; others are more specific, defining criteria like sentence length or prohibiting passive voice.

The Wisconsin proposal falls into the former category, requiring plain language without defining what that means, or how to enforce it. That’s a common approach and allows for more flexibility, Blasie said. 

“You can adapt as the needs of voters in Wisconsin change,” he said. 

“The downside is drafters really have no specific guidance and no way of knowing whether they have met that standard,” he said.

One of the groups that registered in support of the proposal, Disability Rights Wisconsin, urged lawmakers to include a standard to determine what constitutes plain language.

Concerns over changing who writes explanations

Under current law, it’s up to the Wisconsin attorney general’s office to write the explanations of constitutional amendment proposals voters see on their ballots. This bill would eliminate that role. 

State Rep. Scott Krug, R-Rome, vice chair of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, said the explanations that come out of the attorney general’s office are often confusing. Some are written at a 12th grade reading level, whereas plain-language guidelines typically call for writing them at an eighth grade level.

Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli, a Democrat, acknowledges that the current system needs improvement. But she said she doesn’t support the bill as written, arguing that a partisan body like the Legislature can’t produce what should be a neutral explanation for voters.

“It’s almost certain that whoever is in the majority trying to pass this legislation is going to craft it in a way that leans towards the outcome that they’re desiring, Republican or Democrat,” she said.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

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Wisconsin proposal to require simple explanations of ballot questions needs work, critics say 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.