Colbey Decker, a WILL client who alleges her white son who struggles with dyslexia faced racial discrimination in the Green Bay Area School District, testified in favor of a proposed amendment to the state constitution outlawing government programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Two constitutional amendment proposals that could be on Wisconsinites’ ballots in November received public hearings on Tuesday, including one to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs from state and local governments and one to bar the governor from issuing partial vetoes that increase taxes. 

Constitutional amendment proposals in Wisconsin must pass the state Legislature in two consecutive sessions and receive majority approval from voters to become law. Each proposal is on its second consideration, meaning if they pass the Senate and Assembly, each would appear on voters’ ballots in November alongside a slate of consequential races including for governor, Congress and the state Legislature.

One of the proposed constitutional amendments, SJR 94, takes aim at DEI programs throughout state and local government in Wisconsin. Republicans have been targeting DEI programs for years and have at times found success, including when they elicited concessions from the University of Wisconsin system in 2023. 

If the proposal passed the Senate and Assembly, voters will see on their ballots the question “Shall section 27 of article I of the constitution be created to prohibit governmental entities in the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting, or public administration?”

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) told the Senate Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs Committee that the proposal would “ensure that we hire, promote, select, and admit people to our unit, public universities, schools and government agencies the same way we choose people for our Olympic team, military and sports teams — through merit, character, ability and hard work without regard to race, sex color, ethnicity or other immutable characteristics.” 

Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) asked the authors of the proposal how they define “preferential treatment” and whether they know about the types of programs the amendment would eliminate.

“I don’t know how deep it is in hiring, contracting… I would say if the criteria for making your choice deals with race or sex, then that’s not appropriate,” Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville) said.

Drake brought up the state’s Supplier Diversity Program, which was established in the 1980s and certifies minority-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned and woman-owned businesses to provide better opportunities for them to do business with the state of Wisconsin. 

“Everyone should have access to opportunity. The reality is that our state historically has not shown that. That [program] was created because we have minority-owned businesses that were seeking opportunities for state contracting and they weren’t getting them, and that was based on relationships, it was based on race… and so this was implemented as a protective measure to ensure that people weren’t being discriminated against,” Drake said. “We’re pushing this forward when we still haven’t addressed what’s happening. If we’re doing this based on merit, then I would argue that there’s plenty of different minority-owned businesses that would be more than qualified, but they don’t get them, and you have to ask why.”

“They may be qualified, but are they the most qualified?” asked Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield). “And what this does is it takes away… the sex, the gender all of those items that the U.S. Constitution lays out as this is something that you can’t discriminate against. If you discriminate against a male because he’s a male, that’s still discrimination.” 

Dan Lennington, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty’s managing vice president and deputy counsel, said the bill would help to ensure that Wisconsin is “color blind.”

Lennington leads the conservative legal organization “Equality Under the Law Program,” and spoke to the number of lawsuits they’ve engaged in on the issue.

“We sued [former President] Joe Biden 12 times. We have five lawsuits pending against President [Donald] Trump right now based on race discrimination. We have a lot of things in the pipeline against the state of Wisconsin… We’d love to sue over the Minority Supplier Program. We haven’t gotten to it yet” Lennington said. “A constitutional amendment would, especially a new attorney general, would wipe all this clean and enforce the law as it’s already written, and would really help bring this to an abrupt end. Otherwise, there’s going to be decades more of this litigation.” 

Colbey Decker, a WILL client who alleges her white son who struggles with dyslexia faced racial discrimination in the Green Bay Area School District, testified in favor of the proposed amendment. The Trump administration launched an investigation into the school district over the allegations last year. 

Decker told the committee that her son wasn’t able to receive reading services because he is white, saying that she found that the school’s “success plan” included a policy related to “prioritizing resources to First Nations, Black and Hispanic students.”

“When an educational system’s moral compass is calibrated by a child’s skin color, the system has fundamentally failed. Our family’s story has forever changed after witnessing firsthand the casual callousness of sorting my son, color-coding him and then deprioritizing him based on his race,” Decker said. “The brutal reality of DEI is that it robs all children of the dignity and respect of individuality.” 

Curtailing executive partial veto power

SJR 116 would limit the governor’s partial veto power by prohibiting any vetoes from “creating or increasing or authorizing the creation or increase of any tax or fee.”

Lawmakers introduced the proposal last session in response to Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto on the last state budget that extended school revenue increases for an additional 400 years. He did so by striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425. The action was upheld by the state Supreme Court in April 2025. 

Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said the school revenue increases that are resulting from the partial veto are “unaffordable” and “unsustainable” for Wisconsinites.

“No governor, Republican or Democrat, should be able to single-handedly raise taxes on Wisconsin families with the stroke of his pen. The governor is not a king,” Nedweski said. “This constitutional amendment reigns in that power, restores the proper balance between the branches of government and ensures taxpayers are protected from runaway tax increases in the future.”

A recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report found that Wisconsin property taxpayers’ December bills included the highest increase since 2018 and warned property taxpayers could see similar increases to their property taxes in the future.

“We did all get a kick in the pants with property taxes this year… we’re gonna get another wack in 2026 in December,” Nass said during the hearing. 

Drake said the bill appeared to be a “grab for power.” 

Kapenga, one of the proposal authors, pushed back on the comment, saying if he were governor, he would sign a bill from Drake eliminating the governor’s ability to levy such a veto. 

“I do not like the power that the governor has in this state, regardless of who it is,” Kapenga said. “The power of the people should be vested in the Legislature, not in the executive branch.”

The question voters would see is: “Shall section 10 (1) (c) of article V of the constitution be amended to prohibit the governor, in exercising his or her partial veto authority, from creating or increasing or authorizing the creation or increase of any tax or fee?”

Constitutional amendments have been used to limit the partial veto power in a couple other scenarios, including in 1990 when voters approved the prohibition of the “Vanna White” veto, or eliminating single letters within words, and in 2008, when voters approved, eliminating the “Frankenstein veto” — or the ability for governors to create new sentences by combining parts of two or more sentences.

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An empty high school classroom. (Dan Forer | Getty Images)

Wisconsin property taxpayers are expected to see the largest increases in local government levies on their December bills since 2018, according to a recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Much of that increase is driven by levies from K-12 schools, which are estimated to increase by 7.8%. Preliminary data from the state Department of Revenue (DOR) shows the property tax levies for K-12 school districts are expected to rise by about $476.1 million to $6.58 billion on December tax bills. 

County property taxes are set to rise 3.1% — an increase more in line with recent years. 

According to the report, the increase in school levies is the result of decisions made in the last two state budgets, including increases to school revenue limits while keeping state general aid flat, as well as voter approval of school district referendum requests. 

During the 2023-25 state budget, lawmakers included a $325 increase to schools districts’ revenue limits in each year along with two years of funding for the increase. Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto allowed school districts to raise the additional $325 per pupil annually for the next 400 years, but did not include the funding.

Evers and Democratic lawmakers advocated for the state to provide additional state aid, but Republicans, who hold the majority, rejected those calls.

“Typically, a portion of the per pupil revenue limit increase is covered by rising state general school aids,” the report states. “This time, state leaders instead kept the funding for these payments flat, leaving property taxes as the sole means by which school districts collectively could access the allowed $325 per student increase.”

State leaders did provide additional funding to schools for their special education costs, though initial estimates show that the state money set aside will not be enough to bring the reimbursement rate to 42% of special ed costs as leaders promised in the budget.

The report notes that state leaders decided to use the state budget surplus to cut income taxes instead of  providing school funding to limit property tax increases. It said that is in line with “a trend since 2011 in Wisconsin of falling spending on K-12 education as a share of personal income” and “means that the responsibility for paying for local government services, especially schools, is shifting more heavily to property taxpayers this year than it otherwise might have.”

School districts get to make a choice about whether they take advantage of additional school revenue authority by taxing the maximum amount.

“Rising pressure on both revenues and expenditures, however, appears to have prompted many districts to levy at or near the maximum amount,” the report states. “These pressures include rising teacher salaries and inflation, revenue limit increases in recent years that lagged the rate of inflation, and decreased funding associated with declining student enrollment and the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds.”

According to the report, 28.7% of school districts have a levy increase of more than 10% in 2025. This includes some communities that have levy increases of more than 30% including Wauwatosa, a large suburban district, and Bruce and Markesan, which are small rural school districts.

One example highlighted in the report is the Beloit School District, whose levy tripled in 2025 from $5.6 million to $16.2 million.

The school district lost $9.8 million in state general school aids this year. The Department of Public Instruction reported in October that 71% of public school districts would receive less general school aid this year, which was in part because general state aid remained flat. Schools that lose state aid are able to make up for the reduction by increasing their levy.

The report notes that the “sharp rise in property taxes therefore does not represent a correspondingly sharp increase in core district revenue, which still only rose by the allowable increase under the revenue limit.”

School referendum requests are also making up part of the increase as school districts continue to turn to voters to help meet costs in lieu of state funding increases.

Wisconsin had the largest amount of school referendum requests passed in state history in November 2024, raising property taxes by over $3.4 billion that year. In 2025, Wisconsin voters also approved the largest number of school referendums in an off year since 2015. 

Madison Metropolitan school district’s levy increased by $81.1 million from the large referendum it passed in 2024. It also lost $11.9 million in state general aid, allowing it to increase property taxes to make up for that loss. The report notes that Madison’s increases alone make up 17% of the overall K-12 levy increase, though “without Madison’s increase, statewide tax levies would have increased by 6.9%, which would have been the third highest rate in the last 25 years.”

The report warns that property taxpayers could see similar increases to their property taxes in coming years.

“State law will provide another $325 per pupil revenue increase [next year] but again no increase in state general school aids or property tax credits. The increase in special education aid will also be smaller than this year,” the report states. “Absent some special action by the state Legislature and governor early next year, property taxpayers will likely see more of the same in December 2026.”

Some lawmakers want to get rid of revenue increase, others propose overhauling system

As property taxpayers receive their December bills, lawmakers have been proposing ways to prevent further hikes and cut property taxes, though it’s unclear whether the proposals will lead to concrete changes before the close of the legislative session next year.

Republican lawmakers are still seeking the elimination of the annual school revenue increases. 

A bill coauthored by Rep. Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) would stop the $325 annual increases for school districts starting in the 2027-28 school year. It received a public hearing last week.

A memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau found that 58 school districts levied less than the amount they could — meaning that 363 of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts levied the maximum amount in 2025.

“To those who think districts aren’t going to automatically increase revenue limits each year, you are believing a lie,” Maxey said in written testimony. “The 400-year veto is going to be extremely destructive to almost every homeowner in the years to come.”

Maxey said the bill would “restore balance and accountability” by giving control to lawmakers and taxpayers.

“Decisions about raising property taxes should be made by the people who pay them, not imposed by executive action,” Maxey said.

Evers has stood by his partial veto, making it unlikely he would sign the bill.

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) is less bothered with the 400-year increase, calling it a “parlor trick” that “just provided the additional capacity for local governments to lean more on property taxes to fund education, which is inequitable.” Last week, he proposed a package of bills meant to overhaul the way Wisconsin K-12 schools and local governments bring in revenue as a way to cut property taxes. 

“I’m less inclined to demonize a $325 a year potential increase than to attack the actual problem, which is this over reliance on property taxes to fund K-12 education,” Clancy said. “The problem is distinctly Republican. The state has been starving schools of resources. It’s been starving local government of resources. When you do those things then schools and local governments have to ask for money in the way of property taxes, because that’s the only mechanism available to them.”

Clancy told the Examiner that he sees the state’s reliance on property taxes to fund schools “inherently inequitable” as it determines funding based on the size and costs of houses nearby.

“In Wisconsin, we have an extremely ridiculous and complex funding formula that tries to provide a little bit more aid to make up that gap, but it doesn’t fit the bill, and it’s really been kind of a terrible system,” Clancy said.

Clancy said that he’s heard from community members, especially from older adults on fixed incomes that they want to chip in to help with schools, but it’s getting to where they “cannot afford to live in this community anymore.”

“We’ve been talking to folks who have left Milwaukee and sometimes left the state because they cannot afford the property taxes on their homes that they worked their whole lives to afford, and in some cases, they’ve lived in these homes for generations, and yet, the property tax burden from our very regressive property taxes is just too much for a lot of people around the market,” Clancy said. “We can change that, and we should.”

Clancy’s package of bills aim to bring down property taxes by eliminating school districts’ reliance on property taxes by increasing income taxes on the state’s wealthier residents.

Clancy said the bill would lead to on average a 44% cut to people’s property taxes.

“Generally, if you look at the median across the state, 44% of your property tax bill goes to K-12 education. That percentage is actually a little bit higher in Milwaukee, so Milwaukee residents will see a greater savings from this,” Clancy said.

According to a draft, which is still being finalized, the bill would increase the tax rate for Wisconsin’s fourth income tax bracket to 8.85% by taxable year 2026. It would also create a new fifth tax bracket with a rate of 17.7% by taxable year 2026 on those making at least $750,000 for single taxpayers and $1 million for married couples filing jointly. The revenue from the income tax hikes would be used to pay for education costs including boosting the special education reimbursement rate to 90%.

“The problem of inequity in education is a massive structural problem. We’re not going to fix that by nibbling around the edges of it… We could do half measures. We could say, you know, a 5% reduction in property taxes,” Clancy said. “Ultimately, that doesn’t fix the problem.”

Clancy is also proposing allowing local governments the option to implement a local income tax and reimplementing the estate tax in Wisconsin, which would tax transfers of property that take place upon a person’s death.

Clancy said the proposal would address the ways “Wisconsin has been starving our municipalities and counties of their own share revenue for a long time now.”

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