Wisconsinites are paying slightly more for their Thanksgiving meal this year, thanks in part to a higher cost for turkey.
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A national survey found the smallest business owners are feeling less confident as they close out the year. Inflation, tariffs and shifts in consumer spending are some of the reasons why.
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The federal government is investigating Northwestern Mutual, a Milwaukee-based financial services firm, over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies in response to allegations the company discriminated against a white man.
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Environmental groups are asking a federal judge to overturn a plan to fast-track connecting new power plants to the Midwest electric grid, including a proposed natural gas plant in Wisconsin.
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On “Wisconsin Today,” aviation reporter Howard Hardee spoke about air traffic controller hiring challenges, airline concerns and the extended impact of the federal shutdown on aviation.
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Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin's East Side Madison clinic. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Directors of a Madison health care system will consider Thursday whether to change course in the organization’s response to a union organizing campaign.
Supporters of the union campaign at Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin put five motions before the board of directors at an in-person meeting in October — including one to voluntarily recognize the union, SEIU Wisconsin.
A statement from the co-op management Wednesday did not address whether the board will directly act on any of the motions when it meets.
“The motions are advisory to the Board of Directors concerning its instructions to management about the unionization efforts of our direct care employees,” Group Health stated. “All the Motions will be considered by the Board at the November 20th meeting. The results of those discussions will be communicated to our membership in a future statement.”
Group Health’s response to the union drive, which became public about a year ago, has produced a rift between the co-op’s management and some of its members, who have criticized the organization’s response as a betrayal of its progressive heritage.
“To me it was horrifying to learn that we had people leaving because the conditions were not tolerable,” said Ruth Brill, a Group Health member since 1979 who has supported the union organizing campaign.
According to union supporters, the five motions offered at an Oct. 11 in-person mass meeting to discuss the union organizing campaign passed unanimously. About 170 Group Health members attended that meeting, and union allies said it was the largest turnout in memory for an in-person meeting of co-op members.
Three of the five motions call on the board, the co-op management, or both:
The third motion also demands a report on all legal or consulting fees that Group Health has spent related to the union drive, including itemized details.
The fourth motion demands that the board and administration “faithfully follow the democratically expressed will” of the co-op members, charging that the membership has “been denied an opportunity to duly and fully exercise its role” in leading the co-op.
The fifth motion calls for a meeting by mid-January “on the democratization of GHC governance.”
“GHC says members are the most important part of our cooperative and yet the board is not listening to what the members have very clearly stated what they would like to happen,” said Dr. Nisha Rajagopalan, a family practice physician and among the union campaign’s leaders.
“If we are a cooperative that is for our members and our patients, those people showed up in the room and they voted and said exactly what they wanted, and we would like to hear the board uphold that,” said Katie Cloud, a certified medical assistant who has also been active in the union campaign.
Paul Terranova, a Group Health member for 25 years, organized a presentation to the co-op board earlier this year to make the case for unionization in the context of a nonprofit co-op. He later helped organize a slate of candidates for the board in opposition to four incumbent board members. All four of the rival candidates were elected in June.
Terranova said that board members have not communicated directly with Group Health members about the union campaign. Board discussions about the matter have been conducted in closed sessions.
The board’s consideration of the motions is “a really pivotal moment for GHC,” Terranova said, “and how they handle this is going to say a lot about whether this is still a cooperative or if it’s become just a corporate board with cooperative window dressing.”
The union campaign at Group Health Cooperative has been mired in conflict over who should be represented.
Originally union organizing focused on specific health care professions in specific departments where union activists said there was the strongest interest in union representation and where there were specific concerns in common about working conditions.
Group Health management opposed that bargaining unit, asserting that because Group Health is “an integrated care delivery system” all health care-related staff should be included and should vote in the election.
Union supporters have argued that expanding who votes in the election was a ploy to defeat the union, an accusation that Group Health management officials have denied.
“The only reason to include people who would not be interested [in union representation] would be to water down the vote, so that there’s a higher chance that the vote for representation will fail,” said Ruth Brill, a retired member of the state employees’ union who is supporting the Group Health unionizing campaign.
Hoping for a compromise agreement, the union and employees leading the union campaign changed their petition to confine the election to a single clinic. Instead, however, the co-op stuck to the original management proposal covering all health care workers.
The National Labor Relations Board regional director assigned to the case chose the company’s proposed unit over the union’s single clinic proposal.
After that decision, however, SEIU Wisconsin argued that dozens of unfair labor practice charges against Group Health would intimidate employees from voting for the union and prevent a fair election. The NLRB regional director agreed to block the election until the unfair labor practice charges are resolved.
While awaiting the NLRB’s investigation of the charges, employees campaigning for the union have argued instead that Group Health should voluntarily recognize the original bargaining unit that the union proposed.
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The agricultural industry is feeling the strain from President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, and Republican lawmakers are certainly hearing about it back home.
What elected officials will do about farmers’ frustrations is much less clear — an indication that relief could be far away.
“Members are beginning to talk about it, but it doesn’t feel as though a particular solution is coming into focus yet, and clearly the White House is going to be the most important player in these conversations,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee.
Ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in agricultural centers, from California to Wisconsin to New York, have increased pressure on members of Congress to provide fixes for farmers who say they are facing labor shortages.
In Wisconsin, for example, a 2023 University of Wisconsin study found that 70% of labor on the state’s dairy farms was done by undocumented workers. Many of those farmers have turned to existing temporary visas — like the H-2A visa, a seasonal agricultural visa — to staff their farms. The Trump administration moved to strip back labor protections for farmers hiring workers on the visa earlier this year, in an effort to streamline H-2A visas.
But those visas are inherently limited for year-round work, like at dairy farms.
The program is also associated with high costs and a slow-moving bureaucracy. Democrats and immigrant advocates said the administration’s move put workers at risk of abuse and exploitation. Approximately 17% of agricultural workers have an H-2A visa.
There are currently several proposed reforms floating around the Capitol.
A bipartisan bill introduced in May by Reps. Dan Newhouse and Zoe Lofgren proposes streamlining the H-2A visa process and providing visas for year-round agricultural employers.
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden has proposed legislation that would allow undocumented farmworkers to gain legal employment status, as long as they haven’t committed a crime. Both immigrants and their employers would be required to acknowledge the worker’s status and pay a fine.
“We got to understand, at this point these people are our neighbors. Our kids go to school together, and they’re part of our communities,” Van Orden said. “I don’t want these people having to hide underneath a trailer when immigration shows up.”
Van Orden’s bill has no co-sponsors.
Lawmakers formed a task force in 2023 to consider possible reforms to the H-2A visa program and improve the industry’s reliable labor shortage.
The Republican-majority House Committee on Agriculture has readied a bill that largely follows task force recommendations — which include proposals to streamline administrative paperwork, expedite application review by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and change the wage system — to overhaul the H-2A program.
Committee chair Rep. Glenn Thompson said the bill is awaiting “technical assistance” from the Department of Labor. That final step had been delayed by shutdown furloughs, he said. The Department of Labor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We’re very close to introducing a very strong, I’ll call it a tripartisan bill, because that includes Republicans, Democrats and individuals from the industry,” Thompson said.
The bill draft is expected to be ready for public review by early January.
Rep. Salud Carbajal, a Democrat on the agriculture committee, however, says he hasn’t heard from his Republican colleagues or the White House on the issue.
“There’s been no communication from my colleagues on the other side and from this administration,” he said.
Republicans say the White House is engaged on the issue. Thompson told NOTUS that he’s been in “frequent discussions” with the White House and the Department of Agriculture about immigrant farmworkers.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who also sits on the House Agriculture Committee, said the White House is “in the mood here to engage” on farmworker visas.
“A while back, the president acknowledged in a speech that we got to up the game on having more and simpler processes for having farm workers available. I know we feel that in California with our specialty crops,” LaMalfa said.
Trump in June suggested that farms would get a pass in the deportation crackdown — a statement that senior administration officials seemed to disagree with.
Immigration advocates haven’t been happy with the administration’s visa policy changes thus far.
Alexandra Sossa, the chief executive officer with the Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project, said that her organization is “not in favor” of the H-2A visa program, which it associates with “human labor trafficking and labor exploitation.”
And now, with the ongoing immigration raids, she says, farmworkers who are brought to the country under the visa program fear deportation, and those who are considering coming under the program are apprehensive about doing so.
“We are talking about workers who wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning and start working at 5 a.m. and end working around 9 to 10 p.m., Monday to Sunday. So that’s not easy to find, and it’s a difficult job to do. The consequences on the economy are reflected when you go to the grocery store to buy food,” Sossa said.
Democrats, meanwhile, are calling for larger immigration reform to address the dangerous working conditions that the H-2A program has led to, while also giving a bigger pathway to work.
“When people are exploited, we’ve got to crack down on that,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat on the House Committee on Agriculture, said about the concerns regarding H-2A visas. “But I just think the climate that’s been created by this administration makes it difficult for some Republicans to even want to talk about the issue.”
“I hear from farmers all the time about concerns that their labor force will disappear, or that they can’t count on workers,” McGovern said.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
Farmers are feeling the squeeze from Trump’s mass deportations. Congress isn’t close to a fix. 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.
Abbott Laboratories is buying Madison-based biotechnology company Exact Sciences in a $23 billion deal, the companies announced Thursday.
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The new site could be Rockwell’s largest manufacturing campus in the world.
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Photo by Getty Images
In an ever-changing world, it’s nice to know that some things stay the same – my annual health insurance premium increase just came through for the 20th year in a row! For 2026, my company’s small-group policy will rise roughly 10%. And believe it or not, in the world of American health care, that’s considered a modest increase.
For my own family — myself, my wife, and our four kids — our health insurance plan costs about $1,800 per month with a $12,000 annual deductible. That is about $34,000 per year.
If your household earns around $110,000 a year, you’re actually doing extremely well: that puts you in the top 15% of earners in states like Wisconsin.
But even at that income, a $34,000 annual healthcare bill eats up 40% of your post-tax income.
Let’s put that in perspective:
But here’s the bigger problem: When premiums go up 7% per year — again, considered “moderate” — the magic of compound interest turns that into a doubling of price in just a decade.
At only 7% increases, by 2037, a family earning $110,000 will be paying a $45,000 annual premium for a small-group plan. Add a $15,000 deductible, and private insurance would consume 80% of their after-tax take-home pay.
No household, no matter how responsible or hard-working, can withstand that.
We’ve been promised reform for nearly a decade. Donald Trump began talking about fixing healthcare back in 2016. By 2024, the country still had nothing more than “concepts of a plan.” And temporary patches — tweaked subsidies, tinkering with tax credits, or tossing out $2,000 checks — are not even in the neighborhood of a real solution.
At the very least, Congress should make sure those price spikes don’t devastate families on Jan. 1, but the fact that those tax credits are needed speaks to out of control costs within the health care system.
We are out of time for small fixes. The system doesn’t need polishing — it needs structural change.
What we need is bold leadership and big ideas. And in my view, the fastest, most practical path forward is a public option — Medicare-for-all-who-want-it. Let individuals and small businesses buy into Medicare. If my family could get coverage for anything less than $34,000 a year, that’s an immediate savings! And we’re far from alone. That’s why I’m advocating with other small business owners, including those at the Main Street Alliance, to get it done.
You can’t solve an economic problem with partisan politics. That’s why Rep. Derrick Van Orden must come to the table to negotiate on health care. He said he would protect rural health care earlier this year, then turned his back on folks on Western Wisconsin and voted for the ‘Big Ugly Law’. The system is broken and we need serious people to address health care in a serious way. The math has already made the case. Now we need you to have the courage to follow it.
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The United States minted its final pennies last week, but the phase out of the 1-cent coin is expected to vary from community to community.
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Labor unions and educators are among those in Wisconsin’s construction industry hailing data center projects as long-term job creators.
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Leaders of the state’s energy assistance program are urging eligible Wisconsinites to get their applications in, despite an ongoing delay in federal funding.
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A Kwik Trip station in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, was among the locations chosen for new charging stations in the first round of Wisconsin's build-out for its charging station network under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program (NEVI), part of the bipartisan infrastructure law enacted during President Joe Biden's term in office. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
A program to expand electric vehicle charging stations in Wisconsin is getting a $14 million jolt with plans to build 26 more stations across the state.
Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation announced the expansion plan Monday.
The announcement recharges the state’s electrical vehicle charging network project, supported by the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. NEVI, part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law signed by then-President Joe Biden, provides grants to states to build more charging stations.
“Transportation is evolving, and departments of transportation and states have to adapt with that evolution,” said John DesRivieres, WisDOT’s communications director. “As the market and the number of folks who are driving electric vehicles grows, EV infrastructure is needed.”
NEVI funding paused after President Donald Trump took office, and Wisconsin was one of 15 states along with the District of Columbia to sue the Trump administration in May for cutting off money for the program. A federal judge blocked the administration in June from defunding NEVI, and the Wisconsin DOT subsequently restarted its program.
The $14 million in federal funds for Wisconsin’s new round of charging stations will go to projects in communities throughout the state, from Superior in the northwest to East Troy in the southeast. They include 11 locations at Kwik Trip service stations, six locations at hotels or resorts, six locations at other service station brands and a handful of other businesses.
“My administration and I have prioritized ensuring our state’s infrastructure meets the needs of the 21st Century since Day One because expanding our clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure helps create jobs and bolster our economy, and it’s good for our planet, too,” Evers said. “Thanks to our actions to get the Trump Administration to release this critical funding that they were illegally withholding, we are thrilled to see the NEVI program continue to support these goals and further move us toward the clean energy future Wisconsinites deserve.”
The transportation department chose projects based on their location, their potential for future development, and the business site’s hours. Extended hours were given preference to accommodate longer refueling times, according to WisDOT.
Wisconsin’s plan calls for charging stations along 15 major interstate, U.S. and state highway corridors that cross the state. A WisDOT EV charging station dashboard shows the locations for all planned chargers in the state.
With the round of grants announced Monday, Wisconsin has invested a total of $36.4 million in federal funds for 78 projects.
The first round, announced in May 2024, invested $22.4 million to build 52 stations. Of those, 11 are operational, 16 have been authorized for construction and the rest are in pre-construction phases.
A federal tax credit for electric vehicles that was included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act abruptly ended, effective Sept. 30, under the Republican tax-cut and spending mega-bill enacted in July.
“There are already 37,000 EVs on the road today, and we saw that number spike as people raced to purchase EVs before the federal tax credit expired,” said Alex Beld, communications director for Renew Wisconsin, a nonprofit that promotes policies and programs to expand solar, wind and hydropower along with building electrification, energy storage and electric vehicles.
“By expanding our network of charging stations, we hope to see that number continue to climb,” Beld said. “Through this transition away from gas-powered vehicles, we can reduce emissions and support our state’s economy.”
An analysis by SRI International published in 2023 for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. concluded that “there is a tremendous opportunity for Wisconsin to develop a globally competitive cluster centered on the manufacturing of EVs and EV-related equipment, which in turn can help revitalize Wisconsin’s automotive manufacturing industry and drive statewide economic development.”
Beld said that jobs related to clean energy grew four times faster than the rest of Wisconsin’s economy in 2024.
“If this funding had been clawed back permanently, I think we would have still seen progress,” Beld said. “It would have certainly been slower and would have likely cost the state jobs.”
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Democratic state lawmakers are proposing a bill that would essentially cap residential energy bills in Wisconsin at 2 percent of household income.
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The sites selected in the latest funding round include 11 Kwik Trips, hotels, other gas stations, a Culver’s and a chocolate shop.
The post Wisconsin awards $14M in EV charging grants to 26 projects across the state appeared first on WPR.
An average 15-pound turkey could cost around $30 this Thanksgiving, according to an analysis from Purdue University. That’s a 75 percent price increase since October 2024—a reversal from the relatively low prices of previous years.
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Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore spent a few minutes sorting donated food before signing an executive order in late October declaring a state of emergency to allow for distribution of food aid. As the federal government reopens, questions remain about how states will be reimbursed for the costs they incurred. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)
Though Congress ended the record-setting federal government shutdown, many questions remain for states that were already wading through seismic federal changes.
One major uncertainty: whether and how states will be reimbursed for the costs they incurred, as they have been in previous shutdowns. And for the longer term, the shutdown offered a glimpse into the funding challenges facing states. They’ll have to rely more on their own money and staff to keep federal programs going even at a time when many face their own budget problems.
That’s a top concern for the federal food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Amid conflicting federal guidance during the shutdown, states reacted in different ways: Some issued partial benefit payments, others sent aid to food banks to keep people from going hungry.
But even after the government reopening restores SNAP aid, other challenges loom. The major tax and spending law enacted this summer tied SNAP funding to state error rates, which measure the accuracy of benefit payments. Advocates fear the shutdown will increase error rates because of conflicting federal guidance.
Air travel, SNAP benefits, back pay at issue as federal government slowly reopens
“States are really worried,” said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit working to address poverty-related hunger.
And states have been rushing to inform rural residents, veterans and older adults that they will soon be forced to meet work requirements or lose SNAP benefits. It’s just the first in a wave of cutbacks to the nation’s largest food assistance program required under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed in July.
FitzSimons said the shutdown highlighted the importance of SNAP and how “untenable” many of the upcoming changes will prove for states. For now, states are working to get benefits to people immediately, and then will focus more on questions of reimbursement and ongoing changes to SNAP.
“The hope is that states will be able to move quickly and then turn their attention to all the changes,” she said.
While public attention has centered on the shutdown chaos in recent weeks, more fundamental changes are occurring outside the spotlight, said Eric Schnurer, founder and president of Public Works, a consulting firm specializing in government performance and efficiency.
“The ground is shifting under their [states’] feet even as this goes on,” he said. “Even if the Trump administration and his policies were to pass on in another three years, there are serious structural changes in the relationship between state and federal government.”
Since taking office, the Trump administration has stripped states and cities of billions of dollars that Congress approved for education, infrastructure and energy projects. And the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandates deep cuts to social service programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.
Under the law, states will be required to pay a greater share of administering SNAP in the coming years. That requirement, along with eligibility changes, could result in millions of Americans losing benefits.
“I think the public in general got a taste of what that might look like over the past month,” Schnurer said, referencing the shutdown’s first-ever disruption to SNAP benefits.
The legislation to reopen the government approved by Congress and signed by the president this week says that states shall be reimbursed for expenses “that would have been paid” by the federal government during the shutdown.
“So that sounds promising for states,” said Marcia Howard, executive director of Federal Funds Information for States, which analyzes how federal policymaking impacts states.
But it’s unclear how that language will be interpreted. For example, states that sent money to food banks for emergency food assistance are less likely to be made whole compared with states that sent funds through existing federal programs like SNAP, she said.
California dedicated $80 million in state funds and deployed the National Guard to food banks across the state. But Virginia launched a temporary state-level version of the federal food stamp program.
Previous administrations have been more flexible with federal funds, making it easier for states to receive funding or reimbursement, Howard said.
“This administration is really more holding states’ feet to the fire perhaps than other administrations have. So I think they’ll be less permissive in who and how they reimburse,” she said.
It could take weeks or months before states know the full fallout from the shutdown, especially with food assistance.
“[States] did such different things, and I think there’s going to be a fair bit of back-and-forth: should this be covered? Should this not be covered?” Howard said.
The shutdown and its aftermath underscore the ongoing strain between state and federal governments, said Lisa Parshall, a professor of political science at Daemen University in New York.
Federal uncertainty can cause state leaders to be more cautious about their own budgets — similar to how an economic downturn can decrease consumer spending, she said.
In some ways, even though the shutdown is over, things are not going to go back to ‘normal.’
– Lisa Parshall, a professor of political science at Daemen University
“There’s a delay of services, there’s a diminishment of capacity and partnership, and those things might be harder to quantify when you’re talking about what is the cost of the shutdown,” she said. “But I think those are real costs.”
And the end of the shutdown does not extinguish those tensions.
“In some ways, even though the shutdown is over, things are not going to go back to ‘normal,’” she said.
Aside from spending cuts and new administrative costs, Trump’s July law made major tax code changes poised to cost many states, said William Glasgall, public finance adviser at the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit that supports public sector workers.
Most states use the federal tax code as a basis for their own income tax structures, so changes at the federal level can trickle down to state tax systems or states can choose a different structure to avoid those changes.
Last month, a Massachusetts budget official said federal tax changes would cost the state $650 million in revenue this budget year.
So even with the government back open, states have to plan for some level of unpredictability, Glasgall said. And the future of entire agencies like the Department of Education remain up in the air, he noted.
“So there’s still a lot of uncertainty, even with this bill,” he said.
On Wednesday, state budget analysts briefed Maryland lawmakers on the $1.4 billion budget gap they could face as they head into the 2026 legislative session.
That figure does not include the fallout from the federal government shutdown, which may not be known for months, according to Maryland Matters.
In late October, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore declared an emergency and directed $10 million in state funds toward food banks and pantries. Earlier this month, he announced $62 million in state funds would be deployed directly to SNAP recipients.
Rhyan Lake, a Moore spokesperson, told Stateline that Maryland expects the federal government to reimburse the state for its SNAP expenditures during the shutdown.
But lawmakers are still gearing up for a hit from major federal changes.
In addition to cuts from Trump’s domestic tax and spending law, Maryland has lost about 15,000 federal jobs, budget officials said. But many federal workers who took buyouts were paid through September. And the shutdown caused a pause in federal employment data, potentially concealing the true impact.
State Sen. James Rosapepe, Democratic chair of the joint Spending Affordability Committee, said he’s worried the state has only seen the beginning of its federally induced fiscal challenges. He also noted that this week’s shutdown-ending legislation only assures the government remains open through January, meaning another shutdown could be just a couple months away.
“We’re less than a year into the administration, and the effects of things they’ve already done don’t seem to have flowed through yet to the data that we have, which leads me to believe that the worst is yet to come,” he said.
Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
State Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) questions a witness at Thursday's hearing of the Assembly labor committee about the unemployment insurance bill produced by the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
A business lobbyist Thursday sought to salvage a new unemployment insurance bill that has sparked opposition from some Democrats and advocates for people with disabilities.
The bill came from the joint labor-management Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. The council is historically a source of consensus legislation to update Wisconsin’s laws on jobless pay, but its 2025 proposal includes provisions Democrats have strongly opposed.
The senior Democrat on the Assembly’s labor committee has disavowed the bill because it includes a financial penalty for people who receive federal disability pay if they apply for unemployment insurance when they’re laid off from a job.
The council bill also contains several other changes that Democratic lawmakers have unanimously opposed and Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed in the past.
At a public hearing Thursday on the legislation, AB 652, Scott Manley of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce emphasized that the measure had the unanimous support of both the management and labor members of the advisory council.
Manley chairs the council’s management caucus. Representatives from the council’s labor caucus did not take part in the hearing.
“There’s a reason we have a council,” Manley told the Assembly Committee on Workforce Development, Labor and Integrated Employment. “It’s a process we believe in. We think it’s a process that works. And we would ask everybody in the community to respect that process.”
WMC and other business groups have repeatedly backed Republican legislators’ bills to change the state’s unemployment laws when they bypassed the joint advisory council. Evers has regularly vetoed such bills.
Manley said that it would be unprecedented for an advisory council bill to split the Legislature on party lines, however.
“My fear is that if the Legislature decides to turn this into a partisan issue, despite the fact that it was unanimously supported by labor and management, that Gov. Evers would consider vetoing the bill,” Manley said.
If that happens, he said, the bill’s $25 bump in the state’s maximum weekly jobless pay — the first increase in more than a decade — would likely be put off until 2027.
Victor Forberger, a lawyer who specializes in unemployment law, said even that increase, bringing the maximum benefit to $395 a week, was inadequate compared with surrounding states.
Minnesota tops out at $914 a week, Forberger testified. Iowa’s maximum is $602 and Michigan’s is $446, with an increase to $530 in 2026.
“We’re not keeping pace with the states around us,” Forberger told the committee. “We’re not even coming close to that
The advisory council bill’s highest-profile point of contention applies to people who receive Social Security Disability Income.
Since 2013, Wisconsin law has automatically disqualified SSDI recipients from collecting jobless pay, even if they get laid off from a job and otherwise meet the requirements for unemployment compensation.
A federal judge ruled in 2024 that the SSDI jobless pay ban violated federal law. After an additional court order this summer, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development is now reviewing the cases of people denied unemployment compensation in the last 10 years due to the SSDI ban, and is issuing payments to those who qualify.
The joint advisory council unemployment bill repeals the ban on unemployment insurance for SSDI recipients. But it would also cut their jobless pay by 50% of their SSDI pay.
That provision led Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the ranking Democrat on the labor committee, to keep her name off the list of sponsors for the advisory council bill.
“I simply cannot support taking benefits from those who are disabled,” Sinicki said when she, along with the committee’s other two Democrats, voted against the bill’s formal introduction Thursday. “They receive very little money to begin with. And now to reduce their benefits to me is unconscionable.”
Manley defended the 2013 law that excluded SSDI recipients from the unemployment insurance program.
“SSDI is intended to compensate somebody for their loss of earning capacity based on a disability,” he said. “And unemployment is supposed to compensate somebody through the loss of their earnings because they were laid off or their job was eliminated or some other reason that’s no fault of their own. So, that’s why the policy decision was made in the first place that we wouldn’t allow people to have both benefits.”
While the court ruled against a blanket exclusion from unemployment compensation for people getting SSDI, Manley argued that offsetting their jobless pay by a portion of their disability income is comparable to existing provisions that offset unemployment benefits based on other wage income.
But SSDI is not like a wage, said Forberger, whose lawsuit overturned Wisconsin’s SSDI jobless pay ban.
“SSDI is essentially getting your Social Security benefits early,” Forberger testified. While Social Security payments are based on lifetime earnings at retirement age, he said, unemployment is based on a recent job loss, and unemployment benefits are based on earnings in the last year and a half.
The average SSDI benefit in Wisconsin as of December 2023 was about $1,400 per month, he said. SSDI recipients take part-time jobs because their disability income “is not enough to support themselves,” Forberger said. “They need additional money to make ends meet.”
The federal Social Security Administration, which administers the disability program, encourages recipients to work so they might make a transition back to the workforce and no longer need benefits. “Essentially, what Wisconsin is saying to disabled folks here is . . . ‘We don’t want you working anymore,’” Forberger said.
Several other items in the advisory council bill previously were part of Republican bills that Evers vetoed in the past when they reached his desk.
One would require DWD to establish a website where employers could report unemployment compensation recipients who “ghosted” job interviews or didn’t show up for the first day on the job after an offer.
Another would require audits of 50% of all work searches by people collecting jobless pay. In 41% of work search audits that DWD conducted, “claimants failed to fulfill weekly work search requirements,” said Brian Dake of Wisconsin Independent Businesses. “We believe this data justifies the need for more audits.”
A third provision stipulates specific checks that DWD should make to ensure that a person who makes an unemployment claim isn’t stealing another person’s identity or engaged in some other fraudulent activity.
The bill also would mandate electronic filing of payroll information for business owners with fewer than 25 employees.
Forberger, in his testimony, rejected all those provisions as ineffectual or unnecessary.
“Ghosting interviews is already illegal in this state,” he said, with stiffer penalties than outlined in the bill. Employers, he added, are unlikely to go to the trouble of filing a report and take the time for the hearings that would follow.
Forberger observed that the department already consults a wide range of databases in checking out claims. And he said small employers have sought his help after making mistakes and getting in trouble with the department in filing required payroll documentation.
“To mandate online-only filing is just going to make it that much harder for these employers,” Forberger said.
(According to DWD communications director Haley McCoy, in 2024 about 97% of taxable employers with fewer than 25 employees submitted their wage reports electronically. “Fewer and fewer employers file on paper every quarter with current figures showing less than 3% filing by paper,” McCoy told the Wisconsin Examiner.)
Forberger said the bill’s work search audit requirement was redundant, because DWD already conducts work search audits of every person who is approved for benefits. He said he’s heard from many people who don’t understand what constitutes a work search and how to report it.
“When they’re getting audited, they’re getting disqualified,” Forberger said. “If you really want to improve the system, DWD needs to start doing some training and helping people how to navigate the system.”
This report has been updated to clarify that work search audits are conducted for people who are approved for unemployment benefits.
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The Wisconsin Department of Health Services recently applied for $1 billion in federal funds to support three areas of rural health care: workforce, technology and care coordination services.
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