“This budget has involved an awful lot of compromise, both between the houses as well as with the governor's office,” Joint Finance Committee Co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting. “A budget is a compromise and this budget is certainly one of those.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee advanced the budget deal announced by lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers Tuesday, with the full Senate and Assembly scheduled to take up the budget Wednesday. The committee also passed a  $2.5 billion plan for capital projects, which included a measure to start work on a project that will allow for the  closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution by 2029. 

The agreement announced Tuesday morning was negotiated by Evers, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein over the last several months and will invest over $1 billion in education and child care and cut taxes by about $1.3 billion. The deal also includes funding plans for the Department of Transportation, including funding for roads, and changes to the state’s hospital assessment to help cover Medicaid costs.

The committee’s action comes a day after the end of Wisconsin’s fiscal year. Wisconsin’s government continues to run under the current budget until a new one is signed into law. 

Legislators on both sides of the aisle had similar reactions saying the deal did not contain everything they wanted with some signaling support for the bill and others saying they will vote against it.

“This budget has involved an awful lot of compromise, both between the houses as well as with the governor’s office,” Joint Finance Committee Co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting. “A budget is a compromise and this budget is certainly one of those.”

The committee voted 13-3 with Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) joining Republicans in favor of approving the deal. It also voted 12-4 along party lines to approve the entire budget bill to advance it to the Senate and Assembly floor.

Capital budget includes plan to close Green Bay prison 

The over $2.5 billion capital budget plan grants funding for projects at the UW system, within the Department of Corrections, Department of Health Services, Department of Military Affairs and the Department of Natural Resources.

Over $480 million — or about 18% — of the capital projects plan is for projects at campuses across the UW system and was negotiated as part of the budget deal. 

The plan also includes $225 million for the Department of Corrections, including $15 million for construction project planning for realignment of facilities and the closure of Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI) by 2029. 

Marklein said lawmakers were investing across Wisconsin and the DOC plans would help to start to “right-size” the state’s corrections system. 

As the state has faced a growing prison population and aging facilities, Evers had proposed a DOC capital budget of over $630 million that included renovating Waupun Correctional Institution and making it a “vocational village” as well as several other prisons. The plan culminates in the closure of the Green Bay facility. GBCI, which was originally opened in 1898, is one of the state’s oldest facilities and houses 381 more people than its intended capacity. 

Lawmakers have been interested in closing GBCI for years, but were skeptical of Evers’ plan to make that happen.

Co-chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) signaled that the action in the budget is just the beginning of a years-long process.

“I think that this stuff will all be figured out over several budgets,” Born said in response to questions about the capacity of the state’s prison and Waupun. “These fiscal capital projects don’t happen in two years, and they won’t in this case, either.” 

Lawmakers who represent parts of the Green Bay area said the inclusion of the GBCI closure date in the budget is a major step forward.

“Formalizing a decommissioning date into state law will ensure decisive action is taken to solve this long-standing issue and prevent the bureaucratic delays which have plagued this situation for far too long,” Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere) said. 

Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) called GBCI “unsafe, unstable and unsustainable” and said he is thankful for the step forward.

Alluding to Evers’ plan, Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha), meanwhile, said there is a plan that lawmakers could have moved forward. He said the item in the budget seemed like a plan that was “kicking the can down the road.” 

The budget deal also includes $130 million for a Type 1 juvenile facility in Dane County. The planned 32-bed facility is the second one meant to replace youth prisons Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake — old facilities initially scheduled to close by 2021. The Department of Administration has estimated that with full funding ($124 million in bonding authority) the project could be completed by 2029. 

Lawmakers, advocates have mixed reaction to deal on K-12, higher education and child care 

Evers repeatedly said investing in Wisconsin’s K-12 and higher education systems as well as child care were his top priorities. Republican lawmakers said they were opposed to continuing state payments to child care facilities, supported cutting the UW budget and only supported incremental increases for the state’s public schools. The deal includes investment in each area.

Several Democratic lawmakers, nonetheless, had mixed feelings about the concessions Evers  and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) got from the majority party. During committee, Democrats proposed investing over $500 million in the UW system, $200 million in child care grants and expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage, though Republicans rejected those ideas. 

Under the deal, the University of Wisconsin system will get a $250 million increase, according to Evers’ office. The motion approved by the committee includes investments for general program operations, mental health, staff recruitment and retention and $94 million for staff wage adjustments.

The increase comes despite threats from Republican legislators to cut the UW system by tens of millions and as federal uncertainty, which has led some campuses to tell departments to prepare cuts

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said lawmakers were short-changing the UW system, despite it contributing heavily to the state’s economic successes.

“What they are getting is about 5% of what they said that they needed,” Roys said. Evers and the system proposed an $855 million budget increase over the biennium. “We’re going to continue to see tuition hikes, we’re going to continue to see campus closures. We’re going to continue to see the doors of opportunity closing for our kids here in Wisconsin, and they’re going to have to go out of state or go without access to higher education and I think that’s wrong.” 

Roys voted against the budget in committee, saying it would have needed to do more for the state’s kids to get her vote. “Ultimately, I want a Wisconsin, where every child, no matter who you are or where you’re from, have the opportunity to thrive,” Roys told reporters.

Stakeholders in the UW system also reacted to the budget deal on Tuesday. 

UW President Jay Rothman said on social media he is grateful for the support of Evers and the Legislature. 

“Today’s budget agreement marks the largest overall increase in investment in the UWs over two decades. For generations, Wisconsinites have invested in the UWs to provide affordable and accessible higher education. They should take great pride in what Wisconsin has built,” Rothman said. “With these new investments, the UWs can do more to provide the educational opportunities students deserve and parents expect.”

Public Representation Organization of the Faculty Senate (PROFS), the nonprofit organization of UW-Madison faculty, said it was “heartened” by the funding increase but worried about some of the concessions that Republican lawmakers got.

“We are concerned, however, that the agreement between Republican legislative leaders and the governor includes teaching-load requirements for faculty and instructional staff, which has always been the purview of the universities themselves, not the Legislature,” the organization stated. 

Under the agreement, faculty will be required to teach no fewer than 24 credits per academic year. The UW Board of Regents will have to develop a buyout policy for positions not meeting the minimum credit requirements. The budget will also include a similar policy for the Wisconsin Technical College System. 

The UW portions of the agreement will also include a cap on the number of positions that the system can have funded through general purpose revenue and program revenue and no institution will be allowed to designate more than 10% of its faculty and 10% of its academic staff to administrative duties.

Born said it was part of the compromise that Assembly Republicans made.

“It is a positive number, and most of our caucus on the Assembly side… is not happy about that because they know that there are major problems in that system that need work,” Born said. “We worked through that compromise and gave them $50 million as opposed to $800 million… to get some of those reforms.”

Child care providers will get a $330 million investment under the deal, including direct payments to continue once the Child Care Counts program lapses. A “Bridge” program will provide $110 million to help child care facilities stay open, though it will only last for a year. It also includes funding to kickstart a state-funded child care program targeted at supporting facilities serving 4-year-olds. 

“The reality is this is a small amount of money in terms of the need, and it is only for year one, so all that’s happening here is we’re kicking the can down the road on massive child care closures a year from now… I don’t count that as a huge victory,” Roys said. “To get that money there have been agreements to functionally deregulate child care, to increase ratios, to make it less safe to take away the important protections.”

Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), who said he plans to vote for the budget on the floor, said the investment would help make child care in the state more affordable and increase access. 

“While it’s not perfect, this is where we’re at with divided government,” Testin said “Maybe it’s not as far as some would like but it’s a step in the right direction.”

Funding for K-12 education will increase the special education reimbursement rate to  42% in the first year of the budget and 45% in the second year. Republican lawmakers initially approved a maximum increase of 37.5%, while Evers had proposed a 60% increase. 

There will be no general aid increase for public schools. School districts will only be able  to increase their school revenue annually by $325 per pupil by going to local property taxpayers through the referendum process.

Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said it was a “little sad” Evers “had to drag the Legislature kicking and screaming to a place that is frankly insufficient for our needs.” He said the increase to special education funding likely wouldn’t end school districts’ reliance on raising revenue through  property taxes increases.

Some Democratic lawmakers and advocates said Evers needed to negotiate higher increases for schools and said the lack of general aid increase in the deal is a reason to reject it. 

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) said no general aid increases for Wisconsin’s public schools is “unacceptable,” calling the budget “Republican-led” and urging people to call their Democratic legislators and Evers’ office to tell them to vote against it. 

“This budget fails to meet the needs of our children and working-class communities,” Hong wrote in all caps on social media. “This budget is guaranteed to raise property taxes and pit students and communities against one another.” 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said he would vote “no” on the budget for similar reasons. 

“The final product falls far short of what our neighbors need and frankly what they have demanded since the beginning of this process,” Larson said, noting the lack of general aid, the school revenue increase that doesn’t keep up with  inflation and the special education rate. “For these reasons and many more, I will be voting ‘no,’ unless massive changes are adopted,” Larson said. “Democrats will be offering several amendments in pursuit of a budget that meets this moment.” 

The Wisconsin Public Education Network sent out a similar message, and called for people to call Senate lawmakers and urge them to vote against the budget.

“The compromise on the table provides $0 (none, not one pencil’s worth) in new state aid for public schools in both years of the biennium — in exchange for a welcome but inadequate increase to the special education reimbursement rate,” the organization said. “A vote for this budget is a vote for widening our gaps. Public schools will close. We will see another two years of record rates of referenda.”

Asked about advocates’ desire to try to negotiate for a general aid increase for schools, Evers said on Tuesday that there were some policies that just weren’t going to happen. He spoke to the Wisconsin Examiner Tuesday afternoon after attending a Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. event in Middleton to announce a business expansion at Catalent, a bio-health company.

“We have the largest amount of money that we’ve ever sent to our public schools coming to them, and so I know there are people that wanted everything, and when you’re in a situation where you have Republicans and Democrats [who make up] about same size of part of the government, you’re going to you’re going to have to compromise,” Evers said. “I do wish we could have put another $5 billion into it of course, but that wasn’t going to happen.”

Democrats say new maps led to budget deal, pledge to do more in majority

The budget needs 17 votes to pass in the Senate and will likely find it from a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Marklein said he was “confident” that there would be enough votes.

Slim margins in the Senate and  several Senate Republicans who said they were inclined to vote against the spending package, even ahead of the announcement of a deal, led to Democratic Minority Leader Hesselbein becoming involved in negotiations, which previously have only involved Republican legislators. Republicans have passed the budget before with only votes from their caucus, but in the Senate this year, the caucus can only afford to lose one vote.

Several Senate Democrats, including several who are serving their first term, said the budget deal was the result of new legislative maps that took effect for the first time in 2024. Under those maps, Democrats in the Senate flipped four seats, trimming the Republican majority from two-thirds to a margin of 18-15.

Freshman Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) said the state would be moving in the right direction with the budget agreement and Senate Democrats helped make it “palatable.” 

“To be clear, this budget is not ideal, but in the spirit of bipartisanship and forward progress, I am pleased to be a part of what Senate Democrats were able to do on behalf of all Wisconsinites,” Keyeski said. 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) said the deal reflects “bipartisanship and progress.” 

“I am proud to see it move forward,” said Habush Sinykin, who is also in her first term. “What we are seeing playing out in this budget is the consequence of Wisconsin’s new fairer maps — legislators working together to find compromise and make meaningful progress for the people of Wisconsin.”

Two other Democrats in their first term highlighted local allocations in the budget. Sen. Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) celebrated $30 million that was included in the budget for a new railroad bridge at Red Maple Road between American Boulevard and Lost Dauphin Road in West De Pere and Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) highlighted some of the items in the budget that will help her district, including the $137 million investment for UW-Oshkosh’s Polk Learning Commons.

“The new, fair maps created a balanced government, and this is the result: a government that can work together to reach an agreement where everyone walks away wishing they’d gotten more but no one leaves feeling kicked in the teeth,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “I’m hopeful that we can work together to get this over the finish line and move Wisconsin forward, together.”

Senate Democrats also said they would do more should they win a majority in future elections. 

“Because of the negotiations that we had for this budget, the outcomes were a lot better than they would have been had those individuals not been at the table, had our voices not been at the table,” said Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee). “And I just want to say that going forward for every budget. It should be like that, and don’t worry, when we’re in the majority, it will be like that, which will be in 2026.”

She told reporters she is leaning towards voting for the budget, but added, “we’ll have to see.” 

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) also said electing more Democratic legislators made a difference.

“I am thankful that Governor Evers and my Senate Democratic colleagues were at the negotiating table on our state budget and have gotten some real wins for the people of Wisconsin,” Neubauer said. “There are critical investments in education, child care and the priorities of Wisconsinites in this budget, but we also know that due to years of underfunding by the GOP majorities, there is a lot that remains to be done.”

Andraca praised the new maps in the committee meeting, saying that a nearly 50-50 split in the Senate and Assembly has spurred conversations in a new way.

“Congratulations on the bipartisanship. I think this budget does a lot of good,” Andraca said, but added,  “I’m not sure it does enough to earn my vote at this time.”

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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.

The deal comes after months of negotiations (and multiple breakdowns in communication) among Gov. Tony Evers and Senate and Assembly leaders. Gov. Tony Evers delivers his 2025 state budget address. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers and Republican and Democratic legislative leaders have reached a tentative agreement on the 2025-27 state budget, agreeing to invest hundreds of millions in the University of Wisconsin system, to create new grant and payment programs for child care facilities, further boost investment in special education and cut $1.3 billion in taxes.

The deal comes after months of negotiations (and multiple breakdowns in communication) among Evers and Senate and Assembly leaders. Each leader highlighted pieces of the deal in statements.

Evers focused on the investments in education and child care, saying it is “a pro-kid budget that’s a win for Wisconsin’s kids, families, and our future.” 

“What was at stake is no secret — Republican lawmakers had long indicated this budget would not invest in child care providers, would provide no new increases for our K-12 schools, and would cut nearly $90 million from our UW System. But I never stopped believing we could work together to reach consensus and pass a bipartisan budget, and I’m proud of the months of work that went into getting to where we are today,” he said. 

Evers thanked Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) for coming to the table to get a deal done. 

“The people of Wisconsin expect their leaders to show up, work hard, and operate in good faith to get good things done,” Evers said. “We’ve shown we’ve been able to get good things done for Wisconsin when people put politics aside and decide to work together to do the right thing. I look forward to signing a bipartisan budget that makes these critical investments in our kids, families, and communities across our state,” Evers said. 

Evers has also agreed not to utilize his partial veto power — previous uses of which have been both limited and sustained by the state Supreme Court in recent weeks — on parts of the budget included in the deal.

Vos said in a statement that he appreciated Evers’ willingness to work with lawmakers to find a bipartisan agreement.

“This budget delivers on our two biggest priorities: tax relief for Wisconsin and reforms to make government more accountable,” Vos said. “This deal brings those investments and reforms together and creates a Wisconsin that works for everyone.” 

JFC co-chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said legislators worked hard to find compromise while staying “committed to our core principals.” 

“We are proud to have worked diligently to craft this budget, listened to the priorities of our constituents and look forward to sending the bill to [Evers] later this week,” Born said. 

LeMahieu and budget committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said in a statement that tax relief for middle-income Wisconsinites has been their top priority during the entire process.

“This compromise will provide meaningful tax relief for retirees and the middle class, stabilize the child care system without making pandemic-era subsidies permanent and strengthen our schools by reimbursing special education at a higher rate,” the Senate leaders said. 

Hesselbein  said she has “been at the table fighting hard on behalf of Senate Democrats to help hammer out a bipartisan budget agreement.” Her involvement in negotiations comes amid slim margins in the Senate.

“Remember where we were a week ago: Republicans proposing $87 million in cuts to the UW, a mere 5% increase for special education and no direct payments to child care providers. Elections matter: the fact that Democrats gained four Senate seats and are close to taking the majority means that Senate Democrats were able to make this budget agreement better for the people of Wisconsin,” Hesselbein said.

Last session, the state Senate passed the budget bill with only Republican votes even after a couple of Republicans voted against the proposal. This session the Republican Senate caucus would only be able to lose one vote if it were going to pass the bill with only GOP support, yet, even prior to a deal announcement, a handful of Republican members had publicly expressed concerns about the spending in the bill. Among them was Sen. Steve Nass who, in a statement last week, laid out requirements for a budget that he could support, Sen. Rob Hutton who, in a Friday opinion piece, and Sen. Chris Kapenga who, in a post on Monday, drew their own lines in the sand.  

It is unclear how many Senate Democrats will vote for the budget when it comes to the floor this week. Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) earlier told WISN UpFront that the caucus was sticking together and members were “not willing to be picked off one by one.”

The Joint Finance Committee is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. Tuesday to vote on the rest of the budget before sending it to the full Assembly and Senate. 

Child care funding 

Child care providers, who have dealt with staffing shortages, high costs and declining state support, will receive a $300 million investment under the deal.

Evers had proposed spending an additional $480 million to continue funding Child Care Counts, a program that was funded using federal pandemic relief. With that funding running out, Evers had said the state should pick up the costs to continue supporting child care providers, while Republican lawmakers said they were opposed to providing checks to facilities.

Under the deal, the Child Care Counts program will be phased out, but the state will invest $110 million to support direct monthly payments and monthly per-child investments to child care facilities for a bridge program. That will continue helping providers to remain in business, cut child care wait lists and lower costs for families. The money will come out of the state’s federal interest earnings. 

The state will also invest $66 million in general purpose revenue for a “Get Kids Ready” initiative, which will be targeted at supporting child care providers serving 4-year-olds. This will be the first child care program in state history to be funded solely by general purpose revenue. 

Another agreed-upon budget item creates a $28.6 million pilot program to help support child care capacity for infants and toddlers. 

Under the program, providers are to receive $200 per month for every infant under 18 months and $100 per month for every toddler between 18 and 30 months.

Other child care investments include a $123 million increase in the Wisconsin Shares program, $2 million over the biennium for the creation of a competitive grant program aimed at supporting child care facilities seeking to expand their capacity and $2 million in Wisconsin’s Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies to help parents find child care and provide training to providers.

The deal also makes changes inspired by solutions that Republican lawmakers have advocated for including creating “large family care centers” that will be allowed to serve up to 12 children and standardizing the minimum age for an assistant teacher in a child care facility at 16. 

No cuts for University of Wisconsin system 

The University of Wisconsin system will get an investment of more than $256 million in the state budget under the deal — a significant compromise as Evers and the system had requested an $855 million investment, while Republican leaders in recent weeks were considering an $87 million cut to the system. Evers had threatened to veto the budget if it came to his desk with a cut. 

The funding includes $100 million to support UW system campuses statewide. Some of the funding would be distributed to campuses according to a formula. Of this, $15.25 million each year would be distributed to campuses with declining enrollment over the last two years and $11.25 million each year through a formula dependent on the number of credit hours undergraduates complete.

There will also be $7 million across the biennium to provide 24/7 virtual telehealth mental health services across UW system campuses, $54 million to support retainment and recruitment of faculty and staff, $94 million to increase wages by 3% in the first year and 2% in the second year for UW system employees and $1 million for UW-Green Bay’s Rising Phoenix Early College High School Program. 

The UW system will also be required to maintain the number of positions funded with general purpose revenue and program revenue at January 2024 levels. 

The system will also get over $840 million for capital projects. Other parts of the capital budget, including the Green Bay Correctional Institution, were not addressed in the deal. 

• $194 million for UW-La Crosse to complete the construction of the Prairie Springs Science Center and to demolish Crowley Hall 
• $189 million for UW-Milwaukee to renovate the Health Sciences and Northwest Quadrant complex
• $137 million for UW-Oshkosh to demolish a library facility, renovate and add a brand-new replacement addition 
• $10 million for UW-Madison to renovate and build a new addition to Dejope Residence Hall 
• $98 million for UW-Stevens Point to renovate and build a new addition to Sentry Hall
• $800,000 for UW-Milwaukee to plan for renovations at Sandburg Hall East Tower 
• Nearly $32 million for UW-Stout to renovate and build a new addition at its recreation complex
• Nearly $19 million for UW-Madison to renovate the Chadbourne Residence Dining Hall, $5 million to plan for relocation and demolition of the UW-Madison Humanities Building and $160 million for renovation of UW-Madison’s Science Hall

K-12 special education funding up to 45% 

The deal also makes changes to the budget that Republican lawmakers on the budget committee passed in mid-June, boosting the special education reimbursement rate to 45% by the second year of the budget. 

The state’s special education rate was one of the crucial issues discussed by education advocates with many saying a significant investment would help alleviate some of the financial stress schools have faced and ease districts’ reliance on property taxes. 

Some advocates had called for a 90% investment, while Evers proposed a 60% rate. Republican lawmakers had initially approved raising the rate to 35% in the first year of the budget and 37.5% in the second year. 

Under the deal, the total investment in the special education reimbursement will be over $500 million. The rate will rise to 42% in the first half of the biennium and 45% in the second. It will remain at a sum certain rate, meaning the amount of money allocated is finite and will not increase based on expanding demand. 

The budget deal will also invest $30 million for comprehensive school-based mental health services.

Department of Health Services changes

The deal would also increase the hospital assessment rate to help maintain the state’s Medicaid costs. The Wisconsin Hospital Assessment is a levy from certain hospitals that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) uses to fund hospital access payments, hospital supplemental payments and reinvestment in the Wisconsin Medicaid program. 

Wisconsin hospitals currently pay an assessment rate of about 1.8% of their net patient revenue to the DHS. That would rise to 6% under the deal with 30% of the funds being retained in the Medical Assistance Trust Fund, which supports Wisconsin’s Medicaid program. The rest of the funds will be used to invest in hospital provider payments and is estimated to provide over $1.1 billion in additional investments in Wisconsin hospitals. 

The changes use federal funding to increase hospital reimbursement while decreasing the amount of general program revenue for the Medicaid program.

Evers’ office noted that federal reconciliation legislation proposals have included provisions that would prohibit or limit the policy change in the future, meaning that this budget could be the last for Wisconsin to make these types of changes.

The state will also fund the current Medicaid program under the deal. 

The budget will also increase investments in free and charitable clinics by $1.5 million.

The deal does not include Medicaid expansion, which Evers continued to advocate for in the budget but Republican leaders have fervently opposed. It also doesn’t include the smaller postpartum Medicaid extension, which would allow postpartum mothers to receive Medicaid coverage for up to a year after giving birth. 

Wisconsin is one of 10 states not to take the Medicaid expansion and one of two not to take the postpartum expansion. 

Roads improvement program gets additional investment 

A couple of projects created in the last budget to help with road improvement will get additional funding under the deal

The state will allocate $150 million in the Agricultural Roads Improvement Program, which was created in 2023 to support local agricultural road improvement projects statewide. Of the additional funding, $30 million will go towards improving and repairing deteriorating bridges across the state.

According to Evers’ office, the program has so far funded 92 projects across the state. 

The deal would also generate nearly $200 million in additional revenue to improve the sustainability of the transportation fund, allocate $14 million for municipal service payments, invest $50 million to continue the Local Projects Program (also created in the 2023 budget), which supports local communities with construction projects that serve statewide public purpose, allocate $15 million for repairs and modifications to the Echo Lake Dam, invest $5 million for the Browns Lake dredging project and invest $30 million for the De Pere railroad bridge.

$1.3 billion in tax cuts

Evers has also agreed to support the tax cuts that lawmakers approved in committee in mid-June. 

Under those changes, more people will qualify for the state’s second tax bracket with a rate of 4.4%. For single filers, the qualifying maximum income will increase from $29,370 to $50,480. For joint filers, the maximum will increase from $39,150 to $67,300 and for married separate filers, the maximum will increase from $19,580 to $33,650.

It’s estimated that this will reduce the state’s revenues by $323 million in 2025-26 and $320 million in 2026-27.

The cut will affect 1.6 million Wisconsin taxpayers and provide an average cut of $180. Under Wisconsin’s tax system, people pay the first-bracket tax rate on the portion of their income that falls into that bracket, the second-bracket rate on their income up to the maximum of the second bracket and so on. Thus even high-income earners will get a tax break through adjustments to the lower bracket rates.

The proposal also included an income tax exclusion for retirees. It is estimated to reduce Wisconsin’s revenues by $395 million in 2025-26 and $300 million in 2026-27. This will allow Wisconsinites 67 and older to exclude up to $24,000 for single-filers and $48,000 for married-joint filers of retirement income payments. Those filers will see an average cut of about $1,000 per filer.

The deal will also include the elimination of the sales tax on household utility bills, which is estimated to cost the state about $178 million over the biennium and create a film tax credit similar to one that Republican lawmakers have been advocating for.

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The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled — to vote on a fraction of the budget areas it had originally planned and to release part of the literacy funding that is set to expire next week.  

Legislative leaders have been working behind closed doors over the last week to negotiate with Gov. Tony Evers and work out the details of the state budget as the end of the fiscal year approaches next week. 

Areas of the budget still left to take up are at the center of negotiations including the University of Wisconsin system, where Republicans have considered cuts, and the Department of Children and Families, which is responsible for the state’s Child Care Counts program. Evers has said he would veto a budget without funding for the program, which will run out of federal money soon. The committee also still needs to take up the Department of Health Services, the Department of Transportation, the capital budget and more. 

The committee co-chairs did not take questions from reporters ahead of the meeting, but as the meeting started Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the other agencies “will be taken up at a later date.” He didn’t specify when that would be.

The budget committee did approve the budget for several state agencies including the Department of Natural Resources, part of the Department of Justice, the Higher Education Aids Board, the Department of Administration and the Tourism Department. Each action the committee did take passed along partisan lines.

Portion of $50 million for literacy released

The committee voted unanimously to release $9 million of the nearly $50 million left in funding for literacy initiatives that was first allocated in the 2023-25 state budget. The majority of the money has been withheld by lawmakers since 2023 and is slated to lapse back into the state’s general fund if not released by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Lawmakers said action on the other $40 million will be taken soon. 

“This has taken a long time to get here. One of the things that this bill was originally about was to make it so that kids could read. We want to help kids read. We want to give schools the tools to be able to do that,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said. “Unfortunately, it’s taken this Legislature a tremendous amount of time to allocate the funds for that, and ultimately, that’s simply not acceptable.” 

Born said he is glad lawmakers were releasing part of the money Friday and would have further motions on it in the future. He also said the delay on the funding was Evers’ fault. Lawmakers were holding the funding back due to a partial veto Evers exercised on a bill related to the literacy funding. The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday that partial veto was  unconstitutional and restored the original language of the law.

“We’re glad that justice has been done, and we’re here now with the proper accounts and able to do these two separate motions here in the next couple of days in the committee to get this program that was a bipartisan program moving along,” Born said. 

Certain projects funded in DNR budget, Knowles-Nelson not 

Noticeably missing from the Republicans’ Department of Natural Resource motion was funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, which allows the agency to fund the purchase of public land and upkeep of recreational areas.

Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said lawmakers were missing an opportunity by not funding the program in the budget. 

“There’s a lot of individual pet projects in here that seem to be of interest to individual legislators, but there aren’t a lot of park projects that are of interest to Wisconsinites, particularly Knowles-Nelson,” Andraca said.

The committee approved funding in the budget for an array of projects including $42 million to help with modernization of the Rothschild Dam, $500,000 to go towards the repair of a retaining wall for the Wisconsin Rapids Riverbank project, $2.2 million environmental remediation and redevelopment of Lake Vista Park in Oak Creek, $70,000 for a dredging project in Manitowoc River in the Town of Brillion, $1.75 million for dredging the Deerskin River and $100,000 for assistance with highway flooding in the Town of Norway in Racine County. 

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), who is the author of a bill to keep the program going, said lawmakers are working to ensure it handles the program in the best way, which is part of why the funding is not in the budget as of now. 

“We actually have until 30th of June of 2026 to work on this. It’s something that Sen. [Patrick] Testin and I have been working on along with our staff over the last six months. It’s something that is a bipartisan effort. We’ve met with so many different stakeholders, so many different groups, so many fellow legislators on getting this done,” Kurtz said. “We are committed to get it done.” 

Kurtz said that the hearing on the bill was “good” and there will be “a lot more coming up in the future” when it comes to Knowles-Nelson. 

The committee also approved raising nonresident vehicle admission sticker fees, nonresident campsite fees and campsite electricity fees. 

Office of School Safety, VOCA grants get state funding

The Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety will get 13 permanent staff positions and $1.57 million to continue its work. That’s about $700,000 less than what the agency had requested, but is about what Evers had proposed for the office. 

The office serves as a resource for K-12 schools — helping them improve security measures by providing training on crisis prevention and response, grants for safety enhancements, threat assessment training and mental health training. It also operates the Speak Up, Speak Out tipline where students can anonymously report safety concerns.

The Wisconsin DOJ will also get help filling funding gaps for Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants left by federal funding cuts. 

Wisconsin’s federal allocation for VOCA grants has been cut from $40 million to $13 million. Domestic violence shelters and victim services organizations along with the state DOJ have been navigating the limited funding for over a year. The organizations that receive VOCA grants help people who are the victims of a crime by assisting them with finding housing, providing transportation to and from court appearances and navigating the criminal justice system.

The Republican-approved motion will provide $20 million to cover the federal funding loss. It will also provide $163,500 for two staff positions, which will expire in July 2027. The Wisconsin DOJ had requested an additional $66 million in the budget to make up for the funding gap. 

McGuire noted the funding would be significantly less than what the state agency had requested and would essentially create a two-year program rather than an ongoing one.

“[This] maintains the Legislature’s level of input, but it doesn’t actually maintain the same level of service because of the declining revenues as a result of the federal government,” McGuire said. “While we can’t fix all the things that are the result of what the federal government is doing wrong … this is something that will have an impact on communities across the state. It’s going to have an impact on people who’ve had the worst day and the worst week in the worst month of their life. It’s gonna have an impact on people who have been harmed by violence who have been in toxic, abusive relationships. It’s going to have an impact on people who desperately need services through no fault of their own. These are really vulnerable people and they should receive our support.  

Wisconsin Grants to get slight infusion, UW budget postponed 

The committee did not take up the budget for the University of Wisconsin system. It’s been one of the key issues for debate as Republican lawmakers have considered cuts, while Evers and UW leaders have said the university system needs $855 million in additional funding. Evers has said that in negotiations he and lawmakers were discussing a “positive number.”

The committee did take up the Higher Educational Aids Board, which is the agency responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s student financial aid system, investing in the Wisconsin Grant Program. The program provides grants to undergraduate Wisconsin residents enrolled at least half-time in degree or certificate programs.

The Wisconsin Grants program would receive an additional $5.6 million in 2025-26 and $11.9 million in 2026-27 under the proposal approved Friday. The UW system, private nonprofit colleges and Wisconsin Technical College System would receive equal dollar increases. It also includes a $75,000 increase for tribal college students.

Evers had proposed 20% increases for the Wisconsin Grants for the state’s public universities, private nonprofit colleges and technical colleges — a total $57.7 million investment.

The Wisconsin Technical Colleges System had requested $10.8 million in each year of the biennium, saying there has been a waitlist for the grants for the first time in 10 years and that list is projected to grow.

The committee also approved $3.5 million in 2026-27 in a supplemental appropriation for emergency medical services training costs to reimburse training and materials costs. 

“Recruiting volunteer EMS personnel is a challenge all over the state of Wisconsin — certainly is in my Senate district,” Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said. “We believe that this will remove one barrier to recruitment of volunteers in our EMS units all across the state.” 

Other portions of the budget approved Friday evening include: 

• $30 million to the Tourism Department for general marketing, and an additional $1 million in the second year of the budget, as well as about $113,000 for state arts organizations and two staff positions and funding for the Office of Outdoor Recreation. The motion includes $5 million for Taliesin Preservation Inc. for restoration projects at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin home located in Spring Green supporting private fundraising for an education center, the restoration of visitor amenities and the stabilization of some buildings.
• $193,700 to the Wisconsin Elections Commission with over $150,000 of that going toward information technology costs and the remaining going towards costs for the Electronic Registration Information Center.
• $20.9 million and 147 positions for 12 months of personnel related costs for a Milwaukee Type 1 facility, which is meant to serve as a portion of the replacement of youth prisons Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, which the state had been working to close for years. The 32-bed facility in Milwaukee has a planned completion date in October 2026.
• The WisconsinEye endowment received $10 million to continue video coverage of the Legislature.
• The committee also approved $11 million for grants to nine of Wisconsin’s 11 federally-recognized tribes. The committee has been excluding two tribes — the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa — from the grant funding for several years due to disputes over roads. The exclusion “strikes me as inappropriate,” McGuire said. He added that it’s “an insult to those people.” 

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During the 2022–23 school year, book bans occurred in 153 districts across 33 states, according to a PEN America report. (Getty Images)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers overstepped his partial veto power by exercising it on a bill to implement new literacy programs in the state. Evers scolded the decision, while lawmakers said it upheld the balance of power and that they plan to release the funds now. 

The decision reverses a lower court, which ruled Evers hadn’t overstepped his power but held that the court did not have the power to compel the Legislature to release the funds. 

The case, Wisconsin State Legislature v. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, involves 2023 Wisconsin Act 100 — one part of a series of measures meant to support the creation of new literacy programs in Wisconsin. 

In the 2023-25 budget, lawmakers and Evers approved $50 million for new literacy programs but the funding went into a supplemental fund, meaning it required the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee to approve its release to the Department of Public Instruction before it could be used.

2023 Wisconsin Act 20  created an Office of Literacy within the Department of Public Instruction, which would be responsible for establishing an early literacy coaching program and awarding grants to schools. Act 100  was a separate law to create a way for the agency to expend the money transferred by the Joint Committee on Finance.

Evers exercised a partial veto when signing Act 100 into law to expand it from covering a “literacy coaching program” to covering a “literacy program.” The action led to lawmakers withholding the funding, saying he didn’t have the authority to change the law’s purpose, the argument at the center of their subsequent lawsuit. Evers’ administration had argued the bill was an appropriation, and therefore it was within the governor’s powers to partially veto it, and that the Legislature was not within its right to withhold the money.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the Legislature had not been improperly withholding the funding from DPI and that Act 100 was not an appropriation, so Evers overstepped the boundaries of the veto power given to him in the Wisconsin State Constitution. The decision overturns part of the ruling of a Dane County judge.

The state constitution gives the governor the power to sign or veto bills in full, and a 1930 amendment gave the governor the power to partially veto “appropriation bills.” Wisconsin’s executive partial veto power is one of the strongest in the country, though it has been limited over the last several decades by constitutional amendments and through Court rulings.

The state Supreme Court’s 7-0 ruling Wednesday reigns in Evers’ partial veto power.

Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in the majority opinion that the bills “did not set aside public funds for a public purpose” but rather “created accounts into which money could be transferred to fund the programs established under Act 19 [the state budget] and Act 20, and it changed other aspects of the ‘literacy coaching program.’”

“The bill, however, does not set aside any public funds; in fact, it expressly states that “$0” was appropriated,” Bradley wrote.  

Bradley said it was within the Legislature’s authority to pass the bills in the way that it did, and the Constitution only gives the governor power to “veto in part only appropriation bills — not bills that are closely related to appropriation bills.”

“Although the executive branch may be frustrated by constitutional limits on the governor’s power to veto non-appropriation bills, the judiciary must respect the People’s choice to impose them,” Bradley wrote. “This court has no authority to interfere with the Legislature’s choices to structure legislation in a manner designed to insulate non-appropriation bills from the governor’s exercise of the partial veto power.” 

Under the ruling, the law will revert to what it was when the Legislature passed it.

Another recent state Supreme Court ruling upheld another of Evers’ partial vetoes that extended school revenue increases for 400 years, though that decision was split. In that ruling, the Supreme Court said lawmakers could avoid the partial veto power by drafting bills separate from appropriation bills. Republican lawmakers have been considering for years ways to limit Evers’ veto power, and it remains an issue of controversy in the current budget process as lawmakers pass bills without funding attached. 

Evers called the Supreme Court decision “unconscionable” and urged lawmakers to release the nearly $50 million.

“Twelve lawmakers should not be able to obstruct resources that were already approved by the full Legislature and the governor to help get our kids up to speed and ensure they have the skills they need to be successful,” Evers said in a statement. “It is unconscionable that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is allowing the Legislature’s indefinite obstruction to go unchecked.” 

Evers said he would accept the Court’s decision.

“A basic but fundamental responsibility of governors and executives is to dutifully comply with decisions of a court and the judiciary, even if — and, perhaps most importantly, when — we disagree,” Evers said. 

Evers said lawmakers failing to release the funds would be “reckless” and “irresponsible.” 

“Stop messing around with our kids and their futures and get it done,” Evers said. 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said in a joint statement that the ruling is a “rebuke of the Governor’s attempt to break apart a bipartisan literacy-funding bill and JFC’s constitutional authority to give supplemental funding to agencies.”

“While the Governor wanted to play politics with money earmarked for kids’ reading programs, it is encouraging to see the Court put an end to this game,” Vos and LeMahieu said. “Wisconsin families are the real winners here.”

The end of the state’s fiscal year and deadline for getting the next state budget done is June 30, and if the money isn’t released, it will lapse back into the general fund going back to the state’s $4 billion budget surplus.

Co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said in a joint statement they plan to release the funds now that the Supreme Court has ruled on the issue

“The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision confirmed what we already knew: the Governor’s partial veto of Act 100 was unconstitutional. We are happy to see that the court ruled in favor of the Legislature as a co-equal branch of government and provided us much needed guidance,” the lawmakers said. “Now that there is clarity, we look forward to releasing the $50 million set aside to support kids struggling to read and help implement these important, bipartisan reforms. It is unfortunate that the Governor’s unconstitutional veto has delayed this funding needed by kids and families across the state.”

At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee called for lawmakers to meet before Monday to release the funds. 

“Unless the Joint Finance Committee acts before Monday, those kids and those school districts will not see another dime. Wisconsinites are tired of Republicans playing politics with our public schools,” Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said. She noted that Evers had requested an additional $80 million for literacy in his budget proposal, but lawmakers have so far not included that. 

Republican lawmakers have approved the K-12 portion of the state budget, which includes an increase for the state’s special education reimbursement rate from about 32% to 37.5% and a 90% rate for high cost special education in the second year of the budget, along with funding for other priorities. Democrats and education advocates have been critical, saying that the budgeted amounts are not enough to ease the financial burdens public schools are facing.

Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said Democrats haven’t heard from Republican lawmakers about working on the budget.

“We are ready to work,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said. “We would like to see immediately some action on the funding that is going to disappear if it’s not spent by June 30th, particularly the literacy funding. The Joint Finance Committee has also refused to release other funds, including $125 million to combat PFAS and $15 million to support Chippewa Valley hospitals.

Roys said it was “great to hear” that the co-chairs said they would release the funds and that she hopes he “stands by his word.” 

State Superintendent Jill Underly also urged the release of the funds, saying part of the compromise struck by Evers and lawmakers was “to provide districts with funding to implement new strategies and change practices” and districts have been working to implement the literacy changes but have yet to see funding.

“It is devastating that despite bipartisan agreement on how to proceed, we have been stuck in neutral,” Underly said. 

Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers’ union, said in a statement that Republican lawmakers are “bent on using schools as pawns for political payback” and are giving “lip service to literacy, while leaving educators without funding to do our job.” 

“On the cusp of another state budget, these same politicians again threaten to underfund public schools instead of working across the aisle for the good of students,” Wirtz-Olsen said, adding that WEAC will continue to advocate for funding from the state.

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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.

The playground at Learning Ladder Preschool and Childcare center, which closed in August 2024 after over 30 years in business. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The budget process hit another roadblock as Assembly and Senate Republicans appeared to split over budget negotiations with Gov. Tony Evers — leading to the cancellation of the budget committee’s meeting Thursday and disappointment from child care advocates who had traveled to the Capitol that day.

The June 30 deadline for the 2025-27 state budget is quickly approaching and lawmakers still have major portions of the bill to put together. The GOP-led Joint Finance Committee was scheduled to continue its work by voting on sections related to child care, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Department of Justice as well as the capital budget. As the start time of 1 p.m. approached, a cancellation notice was released. 

Legislative leaders then put out statements saying negotiations with Evers had resumed this week, but were going south again. Negotiations had previously broken down with Evers saying he had agreed to GOP tax cuts but Republicans wouldn’t make concessions on spending for education, child care and other parts of the budget. Republicans said Evers wanted to spend too much. 

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said in a statement about the cancellation Thursday that negotiations between legislative leaders and Evers had been “good faith” with each party seeking “to do what’s best for the state of Wisconsin” since they restarted this week.

“However, these discussions are heading in a direction that taxpayers cannot afford,” LeMahieu said. “Senate Republicans are ready to work with the State Assembly to pass a balanced budget that cuts taxes and responsibly invests in core priorities.” 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) also put out a statement describing conversations over the last couple of weeks as being in good faith, saying work on a budget that “cuts taxes, puts more money into K-12 schools to stave off higher property taxes, and funds childcare and the university system in exchange for meaningful reforms” has been productive. But said Senate Republicans were the party that left the negotiations. 

“We have chosen to work together so our tax reductions actually become law, schools continue to be funded, Medicaid patients continue to receive care, and road construction projects do not stop,” the Assembly lawmakers said. “This is the most conservative and the most responsible option… We hope Senate Republicans will come back to the table to finish fighting for these reforms and complete the budget on time.”

Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback wrote in a post on social media about the meeting cancellation that “ultimately, the Senate needs to decide whether they were elected to govern and get things done or not.” 

Republicans have a narrow 18-15 majority in the Senate, meaning the caucus can only lose one vote if they want to pass a budget without Democratic support. Two Republicans — Sens. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) and Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) — have publicly expressed their concerns about the budget as it stands. Kapenga has said he would prefer for the state to not pass one at this point.

Nass said in a statement that Senate Republicans have been advocating for “tough but fair spending decisions” and the outline of the deal from the negotiations includes “too much spending, special interest pork and the creation of a structural deficit.” He said some legislators want to cut a “bad deal” for taxpayers.

Nass said there is “nothing preventing the Republican majority in the Legislature from passing a conservative state budget except for the lack of willingness at the highest levels in the Assembly.”

Democrats said that the breakdown in communication is the result of “extremists” in the Republican caucuses controlling how they have approached the budget talks. 

“Weeks ago, legislative Republicans walked away from negotiating with the governor in order to attempt to pass this budget through by again giving in to the desires of the most extreme members of their legislative caucuses, and instead they find themselves here again — unable or struggling to pass a budget and needing to talk with the governor about ways that they can finally do what Wisconsinites have been asking them to do all along,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said. 

When it comes to the potential for Democrats to vote for the budget, Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said Republicans need to talk to them. 

“Ultimately, what we really need is for Republicans to pick up the phone for the Senate Majority Leader [LeMahieu] to decide that he is not willing to risk his majority and his more vulnerable members to kowtow to the most extreme voices… so it’s really just his willingness to pick up the phone and accept the reality of the caucus that he’s built,” Roys said. 

If a new budget isn’t passed by the deadline, Wisconsin continues to operate under the current budget. 

Child care advocates frustrated 

Child care advocates had traveled to the state Capitol Thursday in anticipation of the meeting, including Brynne Schieffer and Erin LaBlanc of the Faith Lutheran Child Care Center located in Cameron, Wisconsin. They traveled three-and-a-half hours to Madison and said they jumped through “a lot of hoops” to make it there, including asking some of their families to keep their children home so the ratio of children to staff remained adequate. 

Schieffer said they wanted to be able to advocate for the inclusion of child care investments in the budget. They support Evers’ $480 million request to continue funding the Child Care Counts program, which used federal dollars from pandemic relief to support staff wages without increasing tuition costs to parents.

“The meeting not happening — it’s definitely disappointing,” Schieffer said. “Our elected representatives [are] not doing their job. Can’t they get along? We can come in and mediate. That’s what we do.”

Schieffer said the families were supportive because they understand the stakes.

“We came down not only for us, but for them, for the child care industry,” Schieffer said. 

One in four Wisconsin child care providers could close their doors if the state support for centers ends in June, according to a survey of child care providers commissioned by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) and produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Schieffer said that the center would need to raise its costs by $28 per child per week to make up for a lack of Child Care Counts funding. She said that if there is funding they plan to put that in the contracts that families have.

“We need direct funding. We need to be considered on the same level as our public schools,” Schieffer said. “The direct funding comes in and goes directly towards the operation of the center, operational budget including staff wages.”

Corrine Hendrickson, owner of Corrine’s Little Explorers and co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN) said she wanted to be available if lawmakers had any questions ahead of the meeting and because she thinks it’s important that they look at the people who are affected when they take action on the budget. She closed her center for the day to be at the Capitol and isn’t sure she’ll be able to do so again when the committee eventually takes up child care. 

“It’s incomprehensible to me that they, as elected officials, can just walk away and not do their job when all kinds of… people were here to witness this, and they just can decide 30 minutes before that they don’t actually have to do their jobs,” Hendrickson said. “It’s also frustrating because these conversations should have taken place already and should be a basic agreement before they decide to schedule the hearing.”

Child care providers said Republicans’ plans so far for child care aren’t sufficient for addressing the crisis. 

Assembly Republicans announced their plans on Wednesday for child care including allowing 16-and 17-year-olds to staff child care facilities as assistants and to count towards staff to child ratios, increasing the number of children that a family provider can have from 8 to 12 and creating a zero-interest loan for child care providers and a 15% tax credit for the business expenses at a child care facility. Vos had said they didn’t agree with the approach of providing money directly to centers.

Hendrickson said they are the same ideas that Republicans introduced last session.

“We came out vehemently against [those] and told them exactly why this wasn’t going to work,” Hendrickson said, adding that since then they have spoken with the lawmakers championing those proposals including Reps. Karen Hurd (R-Withee) and Joy Goeben (R-Hobart)

“It didn’t feel like they were listening. It felt like they were trying to convince us that they were correct,” Hendrickson said. 

“A grant is something that you don’t have to pay back, and so you can use it to get yourself started. Because our profit is so low, there’s no way that we can take on that loan when our home is our collateral. If I take on a loan and my home is collateral and I can’t pay it back then, that means I lose my house.”

Schieffer said there are problems with the changes Republicans want to make to ratios. She said increasing the number of children per staff member could impact the quality of care and that minors don’t have the work and education experience that other staff members have.

“I work in a center where every teacher holds a degree in early childhood,” Schieffer said. “To be able to put 16-year-olds and say they can do that job without the education piece, the experience piece, life experience, I feel like that it devalues what we do.” 

Democrats highlighted the strain on child care facilities — and potential closures — that could result from the end of funding for Child Care Counts and argued that the state should have some type of grant program for them at a press conference Thursday morning. 

Democratic members of the Joint Finance Committee and Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) met at the Learning Ladder Preschool and Childcare center in Cottage Grove. The facility closed in August 2024 after over 30 years in business. 

“There are no tricycles in the playground. There’s no uncontrollable laughter among children, and the sweet sound of toddler feet running across the classroom is not here,” Ratcliff said while standing in a room full of bins of children’s books left over after donations and sales. 

The owners wrote in a letter about the closure in August that the solution would have been “Child Care Counts” funding, fair access to 4k funding and care and consistent regulations across child care providers. 

“Unfortunately, our foundation has been slowly chipped away and we can no longer afford to remain open. After COVID, governmental grants and assistance programs helped prop us up for a while, but those programs have, or are about to end,” the Kudrna family wrote on Facebook at the time.

Democrats slammed Republicans for their rejections of funding for Child Care Counts.

“It is totally unacceptable that my Republican colleagues on the Joint Finance committee have, again and again, said to child care providers ‘your work doesn’t matter, it isn’t worth it,’” Roys said. “That’s what Republicans did when they stripped out the Child Care Counts funding that was keeping so many child care centers afloat and is helping bridge the gap between what parents can afford to pay and what providers need to keep the doors open in this time of high inflation and rising costs.”

Roys said lawmakers should be working on solutions that keep child care centers stable, not coming up with new proposals. Democrats on the committee said they had intended to introduce a proposal to provide grants to centers. 

“New theoretical ideas that Republicans want to propose are essentially wish-casting,” she said.  “We need to keep the centers that we have and the slots that we have open. We need to get more classrooms open, more early childhood educators to come back into the field.” 

“To try to start something from scratch is going to take way longer, it’s going to cost way more when we could just keep what we have stable,” Roys added.

Evers had also urged investment in child care on Thursday. In coordination with the Department of Children and Families, he released a survey that found that 90% of Wisconsin residents, including those without kids, said that finding affordable, high-quality child care in the state is a problem. Over 75% of respondents said they support an increase in state funding to help.

“This is an issue that impacts everyone in Wisconsin. It’s pretty simple, and as leaders, we have an obligation to the nearly 80% of Wisconsinites who want us to do something about it and expect their elected officials to show up, act in good faith and work together across the aisle to solve problems,” Evers said. “I’m urging Republican lawmakers to join me in supporting real, meaningful investments to bolster providers, cut waitlists and lower costs for working families.”

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“Republicans would rather have a talking point and try to portray themselves as tough on crime, when really what they are is very stupid and wasteful on crime," Sen. Kelda Roys said. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

GOP lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee approved a proposal for the Department of Corrections that includes an additional $62.9 million in state spending in 2025-26 and $73.8 million in 2026-27 as well as 18 new staff positions. The proposal was less than a third of the $500 million corrections proposal released by Gov. Tony Evers earlier this year, which he argued was necessary to pass in full in order to accomplish  the closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.

Evers’ plan, when released, included plans to overhaul the state’s correctional facilities, including closing GBCI, closing Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls and renovating other facilities as well as expanding earned release and taking steps to address recidivism rates.

Committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said GBCI, which was built in 1898, won’t be discussed until the committee takes up the capital budget later this week. He said the last budget helped reduce staffing shortages and that legislators want that work to continue with the portions of the budget taken up on Tuesday.

“As I’ve talked to the prisons in my district, they’re happy to see that their recruit classes are much larger, and the vacancies are about half of what they were prior to the last budget, so we think that’s working well,” Born said. “The next phase of this is to talk about the capital budget investments, which will happen on Thursday.” 

The proposal passed by committee Republicans also includes additional investments in the state’s adult institutions, including $65 million across the biennium for inmate costs, $4 million for contract beds, $5 million for fuel and utilities costs and $292,600 for body cameras. Fox Lake Correctional Institution would get 2.1 million in funding and 16 health care related positions. 

Democrats on the committee said the money allocated wouldn’t be enough to lay the groundwork for major reforms to Wisconsin’s correctional system, including shutting down the GBCI. They had introduced a motion that would have added $268.9 million in spending to corrections and 59 staff positions.

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) noted that previous budgets have spent more on incarceration than on the state’s public universities, and that Republicans’ proposal is half of what Democrats wanted to spend on community reentry. 

“Wisconsin is woefully behind the times when it comes to public safety reform and on criminal justice reform,” Roys said. “What’s disappointing about this is to see that we are going to continue to fall far behind. We spend so much money incarcerating people, and that means less money for all the other important things that we want to do in the state.”

Centers dedicated to community reentry will get an additional $1 million under Republican’s proposal.

The centers, Roys said, are a “proven way to reduce recidivism” meaning “reducing the crime as people move back into society.” She also added that the proposal included “no money for supported housing, which we know is one of the biggest barriers for people who are coming out of incarceration and re-entering the community.” 

Roys told reporters after the meeting that the state is incarcerating too many people, and said Evers’ plan would have helped address policy changes that need to be made to progress towards closing GBCI. 

“We don’t have the capacity and the programming and the staffing and the facilities to allow people to successfully reenter and we’re also taking [people] back out of the community after they’ve already re-entered for really minor technical violations. There are a lot of different things that we can safely do to help reduce and right size the prison population… The governor has proposed these things,” Roys said. “Republicans would rather have a talking point and try to portray themselves as tough on crime, when really what they are is very stupid and wasteful on crime.” 

Born said the budget proposal voted on Tuesday was focused on the services already provided by the state and not inserting policy into the budget. He said the committee was doing what it needed to to invest in public safety.

“It’s super expensive, and it is what it is because it is a super important part of public safety,” Born said. “Nothing to be sad or upset about and as I would hope most folks know the discussion on the future is in the [capital budget].” 

The committee also took up the budgets for district attorneys and public defenders. 

The Republican proposal approved on Tuesday adds 42 new assistant district attorney positions, costing $3.5 million in 2025-26 and $2.7 million in 2026-27. The counties with the most new positions include Brown with seven new positions, Waukesha with six positions and Fond du Lac with four. Milwaukee County would get no new positions and Dane County would get one additional position. 

Republican lawmakers on the committee said the proposal was based on a workload analysis of the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association and should bring the state up to 80% of the staffing in the study. Roys disputed this, noting that Evers based his proposal on the same study, finding that 47 positions would be needed to bring the staffing to 70%.

Roys said the motion was a “nod in the right direction” but said it was missing commensurate increases for public defenders.

“You can have prosecutors charging and charging and charging all day, but if you don’t have defense attorneys, then people are going to languish in jail,” Roys said. “These cases are going to continue to sit there and not get resolved, and we’re going to see that backlog increase.” 

Roys also criticized the motion for including no new positions for Milwaukee County, the state’s most populous county, and only one new position in Dane County, the second most populous county. She also expressed concern that Republicans were not considering that federal funds that are currently supporting 30 assistant district attorneys across 28 counties are set to be expended in July. 

“The loss of federal funding, I think in some counties, this is going to be very problematic,” Roys said. 

“It’s like a 10% increase. What other agencies here are we giving a 10% increase?” Born said. “This is a priority. This is a key investment. I think it’s a positive thing that we were able to do there, but I’m not gonna cry over all our buddies that got ARPA money, [but] didn’t get it now.”

The positions would be anticipated to start in October.

The Republican motion also included investments of nearly $2 million in 2025-26 and nearly $4 million in 2026-27 for pay progression increase for assistant district attorney and deputy district attorneys. The State Public Defender’s office would get $1.9 million in 2025-26 and $3.8 million in 2026-27 for pay progression.

Other investments for district attorneys and public defenders included $3.5 million to upgrade the case tracking system for prosecutors and $858,400 and $922,4000 and 12.5 positions to address workload issues.

The committee also took up the portions of the budget for the Department of Military Affairs, the Public Service Commission and the budget management. 

UW budget delayed as deadline approaches

The committee did not take up the budget for the University of Wisconsin system, even though it had been scheduled. 

Marklein said leaders “decided not to take it up today” and the co-chairs declined to comment on rumors that lawmakers were preparing a significant cut to the system’s budget.

Roys said she had also heard that Republicans were preparing an $87 million cut to the system and said it would be a “non-starter” for Democrats on the committee.

“The university over the last generation has seen their budget shrink and shrink. They have not gotten inflationary increases, and they’ve had cuts,” said Roys, whose district includes the UW-Madison campus. “What they had asked for in this budget session would help make them whole from the cuts that they have endured over the last 15 years.” 

Roys also said that she thought Republicans were having “difficulty deciding whether they want to walk the plank on making cuts to education.” 

“When we do not fund public education, which is again the No. 1 thing that Wisconsinites have asked for consistently over the years, we are going to end up with a state where nobody wants to live,” Roys said. “We can fund prisons all we want, but ultimately, funding early childhood, funding education, funding higher [education] is how we make Wisconsin a great place to live.”

Marklein said he and his colleagues are trying to get the budget passed before the June 30 deadline. 

Republicans will be facing a small vote margin if they try to pass the bill with only Republican support. Two members of the Senate have already expressed concerns about the budget crafted so far by the Joint Finance Committee. 

Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) said that he sees three options: accepting Evers’ budget, approving the one being drafted by the Joint Finance Committee or leaving the current budget in place. 

“Unless something improves, I am going with option #3,” Kapenga wrote. 

Kapenga said the JFC budget so far includes “unnecessary spending without any reforms that would improve the budget process or dig into wasteful spending currently in place” and said that it would be a major risk to send the budget to Evers because the state Supreme Court hasn’t curbed his veto power.

Kapenga said letting the current budget stand would mean “the lowest spending increase in a decade” and would “have no veto pen risk.” 

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) had already encouraged the state Legislature last month to either pass no new budget or “a very small mini-budget.” He has a history of voting against the state budget.

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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.

Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

After many delays, the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee met Thursday evening to approve its plan for K-12 education spending that included a 5% increase to special education funding for schools and its $1.3 billion tax plan that targets retirees and middle-income earners. 

Lawmakers on the powerful budget-writing committee went back and forth for nearly three hours about the plans with Republicans saying they made significant investments in education and would help Wisconsinites while Democrats argued the state should do more for schools. 

Over $220 million for special education, no additional general aid for schools

The committee approved a total of about $336 million total in new general purpose revenue for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools — only about 10% of Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $3.1 billion in new spending.

Special education costs will receive the majority of the allocation with an additional $220 million that will be split between the general special education reimbursement and a subset of high-cost special education services. 

The special education reimbursement funding includes $77.2 million in the first year of the budget, which will bring the rate at which the state reimburses school districts to an estimated 35%, and $151 million in the second year bringing the rate to an estimated 37.5%. It’s well below the $1.13 billion or 60% reimbursement for special education that Evers had proposed and that advocates had said was essential to place school districts back on a sustainable funding path. 

Education advocates spent the last week lobbying for the additional funding — and warning lawmakers about the financial strain on districts and the resources the students could lose. Ahead of the meeting Thursday, Democrats and a coalition of Wisconsin parents of students with disabilities spoke to the urgent need for additional investment in the state’s general special education reimbursement rate. 

“Everywhere we’ve gone in the state of Wisconsin, whether it’s rural school districts, urban school districts, whether it’s school districts that have passed referendums and those that haven’t, they all say the same thing — 60% primary special education funding is absolutely necessary for our schools to succeed,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said at the press conference.  “You can see that we have had a cycle of referendum throughout Wisconsin, and that cycle has to end.”

The special education reimbursement peaked at 70% in 1973, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. After falling to a low of 24.9% in 2015-16, the state’s share of special education costs has been incrementally increasing with some fluctuations. 

The Republican proposal represents, at maximum, about a 5% increase to the current rate by the second year. According to budget papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the investment lawmakers made last session was meant to bring the rate to 33.3%, but because it is a sum certain rate — meaning there was only a set amount of money set aside, regardless of expanding costs  — the actual rates have been 32.4% in 2023-24 and an estimated 32.1% for 2024-25.

Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.”

“The governor’s budget has always [had] reckless spending that the state can’t afford, and so we’re choosing to make key investments and priorities, and these investments today will be some of … the largest investments you’ll see in the budget,” Born said. 

The committee also added $54.5 million to bring the additional reimbursement rate for a small number of high-cost special education services to 50% in the first year of the budget and 90% in the second year. The high-cost special education program provides additional aid when costs exceed $30,000 for a single student in one year. According to DPI, in 2025 only 3% of students with disabilities fell in the high-cost special education category.

In 2024-25, the program only received $14.5 million from the state. Evers had proposed the state invest an additional $18.5 million. 

Republicans on the committee insisted that they were trying to compromise and making a significant investment in schools — noting that education likely will continue being the state’s top expenditure in the budget. Meanwhile, Democrats spoke extensively about the need for higher rates of investment, read messages from superintendents and students in their districts and said Republicans were not doing what people asked for. 

“High needs special education funding only reaches about 3% of Wisconsin’s special education students,” Rep. Deb Andraca said. “You’re getting a couple good talking points, but you’re not going to get the kinds of public schools that Wisconsin kids deserve.” 

During the committee meeting, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) criticized Democrats for saying they would vote against the proposals. He said Democrats would vote against any proposal if it isn’t what they want. 

“If we all voted no, we would return to base funding, which was good enough by the way for the governor last budget because he signed it,” Bradley said. “There would be no increases, but instead we’ve introduced a motion which will increase funding.”

McGuire responded by saying he wouldn’t vote for a proposal that is “condemning the state to continuing the cycle of referendum,” which he said Republicans are doing by minimally increasing the special education reimbursement rate and not investing any additional money in general aid. 

“Wisconsinites across the state are having to choose between raising their own property taxes” and the schools, McGuire said. 

The Kenosha School District, which is in McGuire’s legislative district, recently failed to pass referendum to help reduce a budget deficit. School leaders had said a significant increase in the special education reimbursement would prevent the district from having to seek a referendum again.

“They had a $19 million budget gap, and if this state went to 60% special education funding, you know roughly where we promised we would be, that would’ve gone down to $6 million,” McGuire said, “…$13 million of those dollars are our responsibility. That’s been our failing, and we should live up to that.”

“What are we arguing about? We’re putting more money in,” Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) said.“I would think that when this gets to his desk, Evers would sign this because it is a bigger increase than any of what he proposed while he was state superintendent.”

McGuire said the investment in the high-cost special education is also good, but only applies to a small number of schools and students. 

“You know, what would benefit all school districts in the state and will benefit all students who need special education? The primary special education reimbursement rate, which you put at 37.5[%], but everyone says should be at 60[%].” McGuire said. “I don’t think this is your intention, but I don’t believe that we should be exchanging children who need our assistance for other children who need our assistance. Why can’t we just help all of the kids who need our help?”

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the increase for high-cost special education will have a significant impact on some schools, especially smaller ones, and students, even if it’s not many of them.

“To get 90% for them is huge for any of our rural districts. One child, which deserves an education, can break the bank for our small districts,” Kurtz said. “Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but we have to stay within our means.” 

Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) echoed Kurtz’s comments saying that there will be “a lot of districts that are going to be awful happy about that.” 

“They’ve been worried about sometimes, a student moves into the district, and it’s of incredibly high, high needs,” Marklein said.

The committee also declined to include additional general aid for school districts. Republicans on the committee said  there was already a $325 per pupil increase to districts’ revenue limits built into the budget from last session due to Evers’ partial veto. The increase gives districts the option to raise property taxes, though it doesn’t require them to, and does not include state funding for the increase.

Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) told lawmakers not to forget about the increase, saying the “insulting part about that is that everyone gets it.

There are schools that don’t need that,” Quinn said. “72% of my districts spend less than [the schools of] my Democratic colleagues on this panel.” 

School Administrators Alliance Executive Director Dee Pettack, Wisconsin Association of School Boards Executive Director Dan Rossmiller, Southeast Wisconsin School Alliance Executive Director Cathy Olig and Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance Executive Director Jeff Eide said in a joint letter reacting to the proposal that lawmakers failed to hear the voices school leaders, parents and community and business leaders.

“While the $325 revenue limit authority exists, it is not funded by the state. Instead, it is entirely borne by local property taxpayers. In addition, school districts will not see the requested support in special education,” the leaders stated. “Because of the lack of state support in these two critical areas, school districts will be left with no choice but to ask their local taxpayers to step up and shoulder the costs locally, regardless of their ability to pay.” 

The leaders said the state was investing minimally and school districts will continue to struggle to fund mandated primary special education programs.

State Superintendent Jill Underly called the Republicans’ proposal “irresponsible” in a statement Friday and said it “puts politics ahead of kids and disregards educators and public schools when they need support the most.”

“Our public schools desperately need and deserve funding that is flexible, spendable and predictable,” Underly said. “This budget fails to deliver on all three. Once again, those in power had an opportunity to do right by Wisconsin’s children — and once again, they turned their backs on them.” 

The committee also approved $30 million for the state’s choice school programs, $20 million for mental health services in school, $250,000 for robotics league grants, $750,000 for a single school, the Lakeland STAR Academy (a provision that Evers vetoed last session), $100,000 for Special Olympics Wisconsin, $3 million for public library system aid, $500,000 for recovery high schools and $500,000 for Wisconsin Reading Corps. 

Over $1 billion in tax cuts 

Republican lawmakers also approved tax cuts of about $1.3 billion for the budget Thursday evening after 8 p.m., including changes to the income tax brackets and a cut for retirees in Wisconsin.

Born and Marklein said the cuts would help retirees and other Wisconsinites afford to stay in the state.

“These are average, hard-working people in our state that will benefit from our tax cut,” Marklein said. 

The income tax change will allow more people to qualify for the second tax bracket with a rate of 4.4% by raising the qualifying maximum income to $50,480 for single filers, $67,300 for joint filers and $33,650 for married-separate filers. This will reduce the state’s revenues by $323 million in 2025-26 and $320 million in 2026-27. 

People currently eligible for the second tax bracket include: single filers making between $14,680 and $29,370, joint filers making between $19,580 and $39,150 and married separate filers making between $9,790 and $19,580.

Wisconsin Republicans have been seeking another significant tax cut since the last budget cycle when Evers vetoed their proposals. After the rejection, Republicans started to narrow their tax cuts proposals to focus on retirees and a couple of other groups with the hope of getting Evers’ approval. When negotiations on this year’s budget reached an impasse, Evers had said he was willing to support Republicans’ tax goals, but he wanted agreements from them, too. 

The proposal also includes an exclusion from income taxes for retirees that would reduce the state’s revenues by $395 million in 2025-26 and $300 million in 2026-27.

“This isn’t a high-income oriented kind of thing,” Marklein said during the meeting. “It just helps a lot of average people in the state of Wisconsin, so it’s very good tax policy.” 

Democrats appeared unimpressed with the tax proposal. 

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau told lawmakers that the income tax change would lead to about a maximum impact of $253 annually for married joint filers, $190 annually for single filers and $127 for married separate filers. 

“So roughly $5 a week for a married couple,” McGuire said. 

McGuire said that Democrats just have the perspective that Wisconsin could invest more in the priorities that residents have been expressing. 

“We heard from a lot of people about what they need,” McGuire said in reference to school districts. “We also know that as they’ve been attempting to get those funds they’ve had to go to referendums across the state, and… we think that’s harming communities and making it more difficult for people. As a perspective, we believe that that’s a good place to invest in dollars.” 

Tech colleges

The committee also voted to provide additional funding for the Wisconsin technical colleges, though it is, again, significantly less than what was requested by Evers and by the system.

The proposal will provide an additional $13 million to the system. This includes $7 million in general aid for the system of 16 technical colleges, $2 million in aid meant for grants for artificial intelligence, $3 million for grants for textbooks and nearly $30,000 to support the operations of the system. 

Evers had proposed the state provide the system with $45 million in general aid

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said the differences between Evers’ proposals and what Republicans offered were stark. 

“We hear my GOP colleagues talk about worker training all the time and this is their opportunity to make sure that our technical colleges have the resources that they need to make sure that we are training an adequate workforce,” Johnson said, noting that the state could be short by 1,000 nurses (many of whom start their education in technical colleges) by 2030. “I’ve never had an employer complain about having an educated workforce, not once, but I have heard employers say that Wisconsin lacks the skill sets and educational skills they need. It seems my Republican colleagues are more concerned with starving our institutions of higher education, rather than making sure they have the resources they need.” 

Testin said the proposal was not a cut and that Republicans were investing in technical colleges. 

“We see there’s value in our technical colleges because they are working with the business community … getting students through the door quicker with less debt,” Testin said. “Any conversations that this is a cut is just unrealistic. These are critical investments in the technical system.” 

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A rally goer rolls out a scroll with the names of every school district that has gone to referendum since the last state budget. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

Education advocates are making a push for more investment in public schools from the state as the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee plans to take up portions of the budget related to K-12 schools during its Thursday meeting.

The issue has been a top concern for Wisconsinites who came out to budget listening sessions and was one of Gov. Tony Evers’ priorities in his budget proposal. Evers proposed that the state spend an additional $3.1 billion on K-12 education. Evers and Republican leaders were negotiating on the spending for education as well as taxes and other parts of the budget until last week when negotiations reached an impasse. 

Evers has said that Republicans were unwilling to compromise on his funding priorities, including making “meaningful investments for K-12 schools, to continue Child Care Counts to help lower the cost of child care for working families and to prevent further campus closures and layoffs at our UW System.” He said he was willing to support their tax proposal, which Republicans have said included income and retiree tax cuts. 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said on WISN 12’s UpFront that Evers “lied” about Republicans walking away from the negotiating table.

“We’re willing to do it, just not as much as he wanted… When you read that statement, it makes it sound like we were at zero,” Vos said. “We were not at zero on any of those topics. We tried to find a way to invest in child care that actually went to the parents, and to make sure that we weren’t just having to go to a business. We tried to find a way to look at education so that money would actually go back to school districts across the state. It just wasn’t enough for what he wanted.” 

Public education advocates said school districts are in dire need of a significant investment of state dollars, especially for special education. After lobbying for the last week, many are concerned that when Republicans finally announce their proposal it won’t be enough. 

State Superintendent Jill Underly told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview Wednesday afternoon that she is anticipating that Republicans will put forth more short-term solutions, but she said schools and students can’t continue functioning in that way. 

Underly compared the situation of education funding in Wisconsin to a road trip.

“The gas tank is nearly empty, and you’re trying to coast… you’re turning the air conditioning off… going at a lower speed limit, just to save a little fuel and the state budget every two years. I kind of look at them as like these exits to gas stations,” Underly said. “We keep passing up these opportunities to refuel. Schools are running on fumes, and we see the stress that is having an our system — the number of referendums, the anxiety around whether or not we’re going to have the referendum or not in our communities. Wisconsin public schools have been underfunded for decades.” 

The one thing lawmakers must do, Underly said, is increase the special education reimbursement rate to a minimum of 60%, back to the levels of the 1990s. 

“It used to be 60% but they haven’t been keeping up their promise to public schools,” Underly said. “They need to raise the special education reimbursement rate. Anything less than 60% is once again failing to meet urgent needs.”

The Wisconsin Public Education Network is encouraging advocates to show up at the committee meeting Thursday and continue pushing lawmakers and Evers to invest. Executive Director Heather DuBois Bourenane told the Examiner that she is concerned lawmakers are planning on “low balling” special education funding, even as she said she has never seen the education community so united in its insistence on one need.

“We’re familiar with the way they work in that caucus and in the Joint Finance Committee,” DuBois Bourenane said. “The pattern of the past has been to go around the state and listen to the concerns that are raised or at least get the appearance of listening, and then reject those concerns and demands and put forward a budget that fails in almost every way to prioritize the priority needs for our communities.” 

While it’s unclear what Republicans will ultimately do, budget papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau includes three options when it comes to special education reimbursement rate: the first is to raise the rate to 60% sum sufficient — as Evers has proposed; the second is to leave the rate at 31.5% sum certain by investing an additional $35.8 million and the third is to raise the rate to an estimated 35% by providing an additional $68.6 million in 2023-24 and $86.2 million in 2024-25. 

The paper also includes options for investing more in the high cost of special education, which provides additional aid to reimburse 90% of the cost of educating students whose special education costs exceed $30,000 in a single year. 

The School Administrators Alliance (SAA) sent an update to its members on Monday, pointing out what was in the budget papers and saying the committee “appears poised to focus spending on High-Cost Special Education Aid and the School Levy Tax Credit, rather than significantly raising the primary special education categorical aid.”

SAA Executive Director Dee Pettack said in the email that if that’s the route lawmakers take, it would “result in minimal new, spendable resources for classrooms and students.”

Public school funding was one of the top priorities mentioned by Wisconsinites at the four budget hearings held by the budget committee across the state in March. 

“I just think it’s time to say enough is enough,” DuBois Bourenane said. “We’re really urging people to do whatever they can before our lawmakers vote on this budget, to say that we are really going to accept nothing less than a budget that stops this cycle of insufficient state support for priority needs and demand better.” 

Pettack and leaders of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Southeast Wisconsin School Alliance and the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance also issued a joint letter Tuesday urging the committee to “meet this moment with the urgency it requires,” adding that the budget provides the opportunity to allocate resources that will help students achieve.

The letter detailed the situation that a low special education reimbursement has placed districts in as they struggle to fund the mandated services and must fill in the gaps with funds from their general budgets.

“The lack of an adequate state reimbursement for mandated special education programs and services negatively affects all other academic programs, including career and technical education, reading interventionists, teachers and counselors, STEM, dual enrollment, music, art and more,” the organizations stated. “While small increases in special education reimbursement have been achieved in recent state budgets, costs for special education programming and services have grown much faster than those increases, leaving public schools in a stagnant situation.” 

“Should we fail in this task, we are not only hurting Wisconsin’s youth today but also our chances to compete in tomorrow’s economy,” the leaders wrote. 

If the proposal from Republicans isn’t adequate, Underly said Evers doesn’t have to sign the budget. Republican lawmakers have expressed confidence that they will put a budget on Evers’ desk that he will sign. 

“There’s that, and then we keep negotiating. We keep things as they are right now. We keep moving forward,” Underly said. “But our schools and our kids, they can’t continue to wait for this… These are short term fixes, I think, that they keep talking about, and we can’t continue down this path. We need to fix it so that we’re setting ourselves up for success. Everything else is just really short sighted.”

WPEN and others want Evers to use his veto power should the proposal not be sufficient. DuBois Bourenane said dozens of organizations have signed on to a letter calling on Evers to reject any budget that doesn’t meet the state’s needs and priorities.

“What we want them to do is negotiate in good faith and reject any budget that doesn’t meet the needs of our kids, and just keep going back to the drawing board until you reach a bipartisan agreement that actually does meet those needs,” DuBois Bourenane said. “Gov. Evers has the power to break this cycle. He has the power of his veto pen. He has the power of his negotiating authority, and we expect him to use it right and people have got his back.”

The budget deadline is June 30. If it is not completed by then, the state continues to operate under the 2023-25 budget. 

“Nobody wants [the process] to be drawn out any longer than it is,” DuBois Bourenane said. “Those are valid concerns. But the fact is we are in a really critical tension point right now, and if any people care even a little bit about this, now is the time that they should be speaking out.” 

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Wisconsin’s budget committee voted unanimously Thursday to increase the bonding authority of the Safe Drinking Water Loan Program and the Clean Water Fund Program by $732 million, which could provide increased assistance to Wisconsin communities for wastewater treatment infrastructure projects.

The vote was the only unanimous decision at the Joint Finance Committee meeting, approved just after Republican lawmakers halted budget negotiations with Gov. Tony Evers Wednesday evening.

The Clean Water Fund Program provides subsidized loans for local governments to plan, design, construct and replace waste or drinking water projects. Demand for the clean water fund program exceeded available funds by almost $90 million in 2025, according to the Department of Natural Resources. 

Before the vote, JFC co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, addressed the need for water treatment infrastructure across Wisconsin.

“I look at some of the unfunded projects around the state, and I’ve got several in my district, so this is going to be very good for a lot of our local communities when it comes to clean water,” Marklein said. 

In a Thursday statement, conservation organizations, including the Wisconsin Conservation Voters, celebrated the JFC’s unanimous decision. 

“Every Wisconsinite deserves equitable access to safe, affordable drinking water,” said Peter Burress, government affairs manager. “Increasing the revenue bonding authority of the Safe Drinking Water Loan Program and the Clean Water Fund Program is a smart, substantive way to make progress on this goal.” 

Catch up on previous bite-sized reports on the state budget here.

Wisconsin budget committee unanimously approves increasing bonding authority for water infrastructure grants 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.

Local advocacy organization JOSHUA held a prayer vigil outside Green Bay Correctional Institution. | Photo by Andrew Kennard for Wisconsin Examiner

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers included a prison accountability office in recommendations for the upcoming state budget. That proposal was tossed out by the state Legislature, along with hundreds of others made by Evers. And so far, prison reform advocates haven’t found a Republican sponsor for a separate bill. 

The proposed Office of the Ombudsperson for Corrections would conduct investigations, inspect prison facilities and make recommendations to prisons in response to complaints. The proposal would cost about $2.1 million from 2025-2027. 

Deaths of prisoners, staffing problems and lawsuits have drawn attention to serious problems in Wisconsin’s prison system. 

“How many more millions of dollars are we going to spend in fighting lawsuits, dealing with litigation?” said Susan Franzen of the Ladies of SCI. The prison reform advocacy group wants to see independent oversight of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. 

“We’re willing to spend that money, but we’re not willing to take a million dollars to put something in place that can help start addressing these things and eventually get proactive, so we don’t have all this litigation going on against the Department of Corrections,” Franzen said.

“Unfortunately, [Evers] sends us an executive budget that’s just piles full of stuff that doesn’t make sense and spends recklessly and raises taxes and has way too much policy,” Joint Finance Committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said in May, after the committee killed more than 600 items in Evers’ budget proposal. “So, we’ll work from base and the first step of that today is to remove all that policy… and then begin the work of rebuilding the budget.”

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has already partnered with Falcon Correctional and Community Services, Inc., a consulting and management firm, for a third-party review. 

The Falcon partnership includes a comprehensive study of the Division of Adult Institutions’ health care program, behavioral health program, correctional practices and restrictive housing practices, the Examiner reported. The study was projected to take six months. 

What Republican lawmakers are saying

In February, Gov. Tony Evers laid out a plan for changes to the prison system, including closing Green Bay Correctional Institution and updating Waupun Correctional Institution.

Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond Du Lac), vice chair of the Assembly Committee on Corrections, said “our first priority” is addressing staff shortages in various areas, ranging from guards to social workers. 

For the most recent pay period, the DOC reported a vacancy rate of 16% for correctional officers and sergeants at adult facilities. Columbia Correctional Institution has the highest vacancy rate among adult facilities, at 35.4%. Waupun and Green Bay Correctional Institutions have vacancy rates over 20%. 

The second priority O’Connor listed in an email to the Examiner is the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for facility reorganization. 

“Based on the pressing financial requests for address[ing] critical staffing shortages and housing issues, I do not see [the governor’s recommendation for an ombudsperson office] getting passed or funded,” O’Connor said.

Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) criticized the potential structure of the ombudsperson’s office, Wisconsin Public Radio reported in February. 

“De facto lifetime appointments (which the ombudsperson appears to be), almost a dozen new bureaucrats, and millions of dollars are not creative solutions,” Felzkowski said, according to WPR.

Would the ombudsperson be independent? 

To Franzen, “it feels like we’re back to square one, with the original plan of trying to get a bill, and we’ll keep trying,” she said. 

Ladies of SCI Executive Director Rebecca Aubart said she is still hopeful about finding a Republican to sponsor an ombudsman office. 

Aubart said she’s heard support for oversight of the DOC, , “but it just appears that nobody’s willing to stick their neck out to be the one to sponsor it,” she said. 

The Examiner reported in October that 20 states had an independent prison oversight body. Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, wrote about independent oversight in an essay published by the Brennan Center in 2021. 

“They can identify troubling practices early, and bring these concerns to administrators’ attention for remediation before the problems turn into scandals, lawsuits, or deaths,” Deitch wrote. “They can share best practices and strategies that have worked in other facilities to encourage a culture of improvement.”

The proposed Office of the Ombudsperson for Corrections was described in a summary of the governor’s corrections budget recommendations. It would be attached to the Department of Corrections. 

Officials in the Evers administration said the office would operate in a “‘functionally independent’” manner, Wisconsin Public Radio reported in February.

Franzen said she’d rather it be completely separate from the DOC, but would support any movement toward some type of oversight at this point. Aubart said independence is a “cornerstone to any ombudsman.”

What would the office do?

The proposed office’s powers include conducting investigations, having witnesses subpoenaed, inspecting facilities at any time and examining records held by the DOC.

If the ombudsperson made a recommendation to a prison regarding a complaint from a prisoner at the facility, a warden would have 30 days to reply. The warden would have to specify “what actions they have taken as a result of the recommendations and why they are taking or not taking those actions.” 

If there was reason to believe a public official or employee has broken a law or requires discipline, the ombudsperson could refer the issue to the appropriate authorities. 

The ombudsperson would report to the governor at the governor’s request. Each year, the ombudsperson would submit a report of findings and recommended improvements to policies and practices at state correctional institutions, as well as the results of investigations. 

Mark Rice, transformational justice campaign coordinator at the advocacy coalition WISDOM, said he also wants to see an additional mechanism to hold the Wisconsin Department of Corrections accountable. 

“Currently incarcerated people, and people who have loved ones who are currently incarcerated, need to really be more at the center of decision-making,” Rice said. 

The co-chairs and vice-chairs of the Joint Committee on Finance did not respond to the Examiner’s requests for comment. 

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The Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS), the agency responsible for licensing about 200 credentials, including in health care, business and the trades, would face a 31% staff cut starting Oct. 1 under the budget Republicans advanced in committee last week. 

The reduction would mean longer wait times for licenses and worse call center customer service, DSPS Communications Director John Beard said.

During Thursday’s Joint Finance Committee meeting, Republicans rejected the agency’s proposal to add 14 full-time call center positions and 10 licensing positions for DSPS to replace the temporary positions funded through federal stimulus set to expire this fall.

DSPS warned lawmakers that without the additional staff, licensing wait times could double from about eight to 16 days and answer rates at the call center could fall below 40%, reaching pre-pandemic lows. In 2018 only a little over half of the calls were answered.

Gov. Tony Evers granted DSPS federal stimulus funding in 2023. At the time, licensees were stuck waiting months at a time to receive their licenses. After DSPS used the stimulus to hire additional, temporary staff, they saw those wait times decline sharply, now averaging about 2-5 days to review application materials.

The agency’s recommendations highlighted the impact additional staff members would have on the agency, including maintaining high answer rates for the agency’s call center and minimizing wait times for licensees. 

If the agency were to fall back into a similar backlogging crisis from 2023, DSPS warns it could lead to drastic reductions in licenses issued to Wisconsin workers.

“That’s a staffing shortage in our clinics, in our hospitals, and it’s a problem for us individuals who are depending on these individuals to be licensed as quickly as possible and move onto the floor,” Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, said during the budget committee meeting. 

The day before the meeting, the Wisconsin Medical Society and health care providers and institutions sent letters to lawmakers, urging them to vote in favor of the agency’s budget proposal, which Evers included in his budget recommendation. 

“If the DSPS request is not approved, we fear a return to increased license processing times, longer call center hold times, and less responsiveness overall,” Wisconsin Medical Society Chief Policy and Advocacy Officer Mark Grapentine wrote. “These types of delays in the past resulted in applicants choosing to practice in other states due to languishing frustrations.”

DSPS said more efficient licensing created $54 million in additional wages for Wisconsin workers in 2023, compared with a projected $2 million annual cost to create the permanent positions.

Wisconsin Watch previously reported on an alcohol and drug counselor from Minnesota who waited 16 months before being told she had to take additional courses through University of Wisconsin-Superior to be eligible. 

The DSPS legislative liaison at the time boiled it down to inadequate staffing, reducing the efficiency of the agency. 

The Republican-controlled committee approved only five limited term positions for the agency. The JFC co-chairs said in a press release Thursday the committee voted to fund important government services, while limiting spending.

“We provided funding for DSPS call center staff who work to help credential holders and the public navigate licensure platforms. This investment ensures the department can operate effectively and provide these critical services to professionals,” Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, and Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, said. 

Republican lawmakers have previously rejected Evers’ recommendations to add staffing to the agency, even though the funding comes from department licensing fees — not taxpayer dollars. As a result, the agency’s surplus of unspent licensing fees increased from $4.4 million to $47 million, all while its services deteriorated.

In 2021, the committee approved two of the 13 positions Evers recommended. In 2023, the committee granted 18 of the 80 positions Evers requested. 

Evers used federal stimulus funding for temporary positions, including adding additional project positions. But the funding for those temporary positions will run out this year. 

Beard said by Oct. 1 the call center staff will go from 28 to 11 positions and total staff will go from 58 to 40. 

Republicans also voted to transfer $5 million in program revenue — the money collected from the fees paid when applying for, obtaining and maintaining a license — to the general fund, which is expected to have a $4.2 billion surplus at the end of the month.

At the end of the last fiscal year, the DSPS surplus was around $39 million, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Despite having the huge surplus of program revenue — including money accumulated from fees applied to permit and license applications — DSPS can’t use those funds to hire more staff without JFC approval.

“Licensees pay fees so that they can be appropriately regulated, and what we are doing is starving that system and making it harder for every single one of us to access needed professional services,” Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said in support of adding 24 permanent positions using program revenue.

Republican budget plan could pour sand back into licensing agency gears 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.

State Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) argues Thursday in the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee for including the full budget request from the state Department of Safety and Professional Services in the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget. (Screenshot/WisEye)

Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee rejected a proposal Thursday to add permanent staff to the state agency responsible for ensuring that a range of professionals have licenses they need to do their jobs.

Instead, the Joint Finance Committee voted along party lines to extend five contract positions for three more years as well as add a handful of other positions.

The 2025-27 state budget marks the fourth one in which Gov. Tony Evers has been rebuffed after urging lawmakers to increase staffing at the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) to speed up the agency’s license and permit administration.

There was no debate during the 45-minute meeting Thursday.

All four Democrats on the committee spoke up, either to advocate for their proposal for the agency or to criticize the GOP proposal as inadequate. None of the Republicans, however, made arguments for their plan for DSPS or against the Democrats’ alternative.

In addition to issuing professional licenses in health care, personal services, professions such as accounting or architecture and for skilled tradespeople such as plumbers and electricians, DSPS also oversees a variety of building and other public safety licenses and permits.

Starting more than three years ago, Republican lawmakers raised criticism of the agency amid heavy backlogs in the licensing process for a wide range of professionals.  

Democratic lawmakers — as well as some outside groups representing licensed professionals — have charged the backlog was a result of the Legislature’s failure to authorize more positions at the department.

The department is almost entirely self-funded through the fees it collects from license applications, but the size of its staff requires the approval of the Legislature.  

In the 2023-25 draft state budget, Evers requested 74 new positions at DSPS, but the final spending plan drafted largely by the Republican majority on the finance committee added 17.75 positions.

Evers redirected pandemic relief funds to DSPS to hire more contract workers to help manage the licensing process. In the last couple of years, the backlog has been reduced so that on average a license is issued in two weeks, according to state Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay), a finance committee member.

In his 2025-27 budget draft, Evers requested 30 new positions at the agency. On Thursday, Democrats on the finance committee proposed adding 31 positions, including 14 to staff the department’s call center serving license applicants and nine additional employees to process license applications.

Authorizing fewer people than DSPS has requested “has a tremendous risk of causing significant delays or or even just making it a little bit harder for people to be able to get their license,” said Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha). “We want people to be able to get the licenses that they need so they can go to work. We want people to get the renewals that they need so they can continue working.”

State law requires about 10% of the fee revenue from professional licenses in health and business professions to be transferred to the state budget’s general fund.

“We have been pulling funds out of an agency that’s almost basically self-sufficient and dumping the money into the general fund, all while the demand for licenses is exploding,” said Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee).

Johnson warned the committee that if the licensing process gets bogged down again, shortages in fields such as health care in particular are likely to worsen.

Falling short of funding the department’s full request “impacts every single person in the state, whether you’re a licensee or not,” said Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). “What we are doing is starving that system and making it harder for every single one of us to access needed professional services.”

The Democratic proposal failed on a 4-12 vote, with all the Republicans on the 16-member committee voting against it. 

The Republican measure passed 12-4, with only Republicans’ support.

It extends five contract call center positions that expire Sept. 30 for another three years.

The GOP motion omits three lawyers and three paralegals the department had requested for professional regulation compliance and for the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.

The motion also transfers $5 million from DSPS revenues to the state budget’s general fund, in addition to the annual 10% from license fees. 

The Republican measure authorizes a consultant for pharmacy inspections that was part of the original budget draft. It also includes funding to continue a youth firefighter training grant that was in the original request and the Democratic proposal.

The committee’s co-chairs, Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), released a joint statement later Thursday declaring that “Joint Finance Republicans voted to invest in important government services while holding the line on spending.”

The statement cited funding for DSPS call center staff “to help credential holders and the public navigate licensure platforms” and said the funding “ensures the department can operate effectively and provide these critical services to professionals.”

Immediately after the final vote, however, Andraca told her colleagues that the outcome was a missed opportunity.

“We could be sitting here claiming a bipartisan success story, because today the median time to get a license is only 15 days,” Andraca said. “We should be continuing the success story and taking a victory lap, and instead we’re chipping away the progress that we’ve made — and that’s very disappointing.”

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Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said during a press conference ahead of a Senate floor session Thursday that Evers’ office has had lawmakers’ plan for a tax cut since March and that they have asked Evers for a list of specific items that he would want in the budget to agree to cutting taxes. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

State budget negotiations were top of mind for lawmakers Thursday, even as the Senate took action on a variety of bills, with Senate Republicans calling for a meeting with Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats calling on Republicans to support Evers’ budget requests. 

The Wisconsin Legislature is in the process of writing the next biennial budget, and Republicans are intent on passing a tax cut this session after failing to get Evers’ approval for a proposed cut last session.

Republican leaders have said they want an agreement on the tax cut before allocating spending to other priorities, and are waiting for Evers to schedule an in-person meeting with them to work it out.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said during a press conference ahead of a Senate floor session Thursday that Evers’ office has had lawmakers’ plan for a tax cut since March and that they have asked Evers for a list of specific items that he would want in the budget to agree to cutting taxes. However, LeMahieu said they haven’t been given any details in the last several weeks.

“Speaker Vos and I provided the governor with a series of times [to meet] into next week as a last-ditch effort to preserve these good faith negotiations,” LeMahieu said. “I hope sincerely that he accepts… one of those dates next week. It’s imperative that we meet by the end of next week at the latest to stay on schedule to pass a budget by the end of the fiscal year. It’s as simple as that. Time’s ticking… and if we’re going to work to get a budget passed, we need to meet with the governor next week.”

LeMahieu said GOP tax goals include exempting income for retirees in Wisconsin to encourage them to stay in the state and increasing the second-tier tax bracket, similar to a bill the governor vetoed last session. LeMahieu said the new tax bracket won’t reach as high up the income ladder as the vetoed one.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said on Tuesday that work on the budget is “on pause” until legislators get an in-person meeting with Evers and that their preferred option is “to be able to get an agreed upon tax cut so that we know we have X dollars to invest in schools and health care and all the other things that are important.” 

LeMahieu said that the latest Legislative Fiscal Bureau report would also be pivotal in negotiations because it will help lawmakers understand “what kind of tax cut we can afford” and “what kind of other investments we can afford.”

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected in the fiscal estimate released Thursday afternoon that the state will finish the 2023-25 fiscal year, which ends June 30, with a $4.3 billion budget surplus, which is slightly higher than the estimate from January. However, the estimate also found that tax collection will likely be lower over the next two years.

“While we are not surprised by these new estimates, we remain cautious as we work to craft a budget that invests in our priorities, funds our obligations, and puts the State of Wisconsin in a strong fiscal position for the future,” Joint Finance Committee Co-chairs Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said in a statement. 

The lawmakers said that the estimates are a sign that they need to continue to approach the budget in the same way they have in the past. They also called on Evers to “take these revenue re-estimates seriously” and to “come to the table with legislative leaders and work with us to craft a reasonable budget that works for Wisconsin.” 

Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee said in a statement that the estimate is a sign of the decline the economy could face due to Trump administration tariffs. 

“Now, more than ever, Wisconsinites are struggling to put food on the table and maintain a roof over their heads. This projection shows it’s going to get even worse, especially when our communities start to feel the direct impact of the Trump regime’s trade war around the globe,” the lawmakers said. “Together, we need to ensure Wisconsinites have the resources to get through the chaos and uncertainty that lies ahead.” 

Ahead of the floor session, Democratic lawmakers called attention to Evers’ budget requests, saying that the various non-budget bills the Senate took up Thursday don’t address the issues that Wisconsinites are most concerned about. 

“It’s been 87 days since [Evers] has introduced his budget. It invests in essential priorities — K-12 funding, child care education, mental health, helping the environment and putting much needed funding in the university system. What have Republicans done in those 87 days? Well, they stripped essential items in that budget….” Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said at a press conference. “What the Legislature should do is debate the budget.”

Wisconsin Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee cut over 600 items from Evers’ proposal last week , saying they were taking the budget “back to base.” 

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) noted that lawmakers recently traveled across the state to hear from Wisconsinites about their priorities for the state budget and then failed to act on any of those priorities. She then listed several bills on Thursday’s calendar. 

“We’ve got a bill on changing the name on the name-change process for people convicted of violent crimes; a bill that gives big businesses their own private courts; a bill tweaking surcharges for electric vehicles,” Johnson said. “I’m not saying that these bills aren’t important to someone, but we sure didn’t hear about these issues when we traveled across the state at our listening sessions.” 

Johnson said that lawmakers need to ask if the bills “meet the moment” the state is facing. 

“Do they lower the cost for hard-working families? Do they help us hire nurses, teachers, child care providers? Do they clean our water and keep our streets safe [or remediate] lead contaminated classrooms?” Johnson asked. “If the answer is no, then why the hell are we here?” 

Democrats, including Hesselbein, have said they think Democratic votes will be necessary to pass a budget, but they don’t necessarily expect to be in the room for budget negotiations between legislative Republicans and Evers.

Asked if Democrats are requesting to participate in a sit-down between Evers and Republicans, Hesselbein said she is “in consistent contact with Gov. Evers and his administration, and those conversations have been both before and moving forward.” 

Pressed on whether she wants to be in the room when the governor and Republicans meet, Hesselbein said “I’ll be honest, sometimes it’s hard to get all of us in the same room because of timing and schedules and things like that.”

Some of the bills that the Senate took action on Thursday include: 

• SB 33, which would make it a crime to share nonconsensual “deep fake” nude images and was introduced in reaction to the growing use of artificial intelligence to make fake images. It passed unanimously. 
• SB 125, which would require the Public Service Commission to conduct a study for a place to locate a nuclear power plant. It passed with bipartisan support from 28 Senators. Four Democrats and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) voted against the bill. 
• SB 96, which would exempt electric vehicle charging stations at a person’s home from the electric vehicle charging tax. It passed unanimously. 
• SB 146, which would bar someone convicted of a violent crime including homicide, battery, kidnapping, stalking, human trafficking and sexual assault from changing their name, passed 18-15 in a party line vote.
• The Senate also passed AB 73 in an 18-15 vote. The bill would create a specialized commercial court meant to handle business cases. It comes after the state Supreme Court discontinued a pilot program last year.

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The Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee used its first working meeting on the state’s next two-year budget to scrap Gov. Tony Evers’ recommended spending plan — but it offered clues to which of the public’s priorities remain in the mix and which are DOA.

Using committee rules, Republicans put a prohibition on committee members discussing certain ideas put forth by the governor — including proposals relating to some of the public’s top priorities: education funding, health care and child care — but left the door open to discussing some of his ideas even as they struck them from the budget document.

The Joint Finance Committee’s action marks the fourth time in four budget cycles that it has scrapped hundreds of the Democratic governor’s proposals — though some of them can return to the budget, in some form or another. GOP lawmakers on the committee have gotten used to “the way we have to manage Gov. Evers’ budgets,” committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, told reporters, adding that the governor’s plan called for too much state spending.

The committee’s first working meeting comes after it held four public listening sessions across Wisconsin in West Allis, Kaukauna, Hayward and Wausau. Lawmakers on the committee heard from the public about a range of issues, with education funding, health care and child care among those raised most frequently.

Democrats on the committee denounced their GOP colleagues for tossing Evers’ budget.

“People are struggling, and it’s a challenging world,” said Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha. “The one thing we should not be doing, the one thing that nobody votes for their legislator to do, is to make their life harder.”

Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, panned the idea that Evers’ proposals were the only way to address certain issues in the state.

“This idea that the door is closed on all these things is pretty ridiculous,” he said during the committee’s meeting.

There is more than “one way to address issues and those will all be debated and built over the next couple of months,” Born added.

Here are issues legislators will and won’t be able to discuss as the committee crafts a spending plan over the next two months.

Education funding

The committee closed the book on a number of education issues. That includes a $148 million proposal from Evers to make school meals free to all K-12 students in Wisconsin regardless of income. The program would have taken effect for the 2026-27 school year.

The committee also shut down a $500,000 proposal to fund a grant program for peer-to-peer suicide prevention programs, $5 million in funding to help school districts encourage people to pursue a career in teaching and $1 million to pay for feminine hygiene products that can be distributed to Wisconsin students at school.

Though the committee voted to scrap scores of other Evers proposals, it did not vote to end the discussion on certain issues that were priorities for the governor and raised by the public at committee hearings.

One thing scrapped by the committee but left open for discussion was Evers’ $1.13 billion request to have the state pay for 60% of Wisconsin school districts’ special education costs. The state currently covers a third of such costs for public schools and upwards of 90% of costs for some private voucher schools. Multiple public hearing attendees said their public school districts have transferred thousands of dollars from their general funds to their special education funds to cover costs that have not been reimbursed.

The committee also tossed out a $212 million proposal to increase general per pupil aid and a $168 million request to fund school-based mental health services, but left the door open for future discussion on both topics. 

The committee’s decision to definitively shut down some proposals but leave open others suggests lawmakers could increase spending for certain programs funded by Evers, just in different ways or amounts.

Health care

As it has throughout Evers’ time in office, the committee rejected a proposal to accept federal Medicaid expansion and used committee rules to block further discussion of the topic. Medicaid expansion has been a top priority for the governor during his six-plus years in office, but Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to expand the program.

Wisconsin is one of 10 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has defended that decision as insulating the state from the federal government scaling back Medicaid reimbursements.

Republicans on the committee also closed the door on a $100 million proposal from Evers to fund a program focused on lead hazard remediation. The funds would have been used to help low-income families remediate lead in homes built before 1950.

The committee also clipped a $1.4 million request from Evers to pay for a study to assess so-called “forever chemicals” and identify potential methods for limiting further human exposure. PFAS, as the chemicals are commonly known, have contaminated water sources across Wisconsin. Two years ago, the Legislature approved $125 million to help address PFAS contamination in the state. The funds have so far not been released, with Evers and Republicans at odds with how the money should be spent.

One key item lawmakers threw out but did not block future consideration of is postpartum Medicaid expansion. Wisconsin is one of two states that have turned down a federal expansion of Medicaid coverage for up to 12 months for new moms. Wisconsin’s coverage currently lasts 60 days after birth, far shorter than what health experts recommend. Evers’ proposal would have expanded coverage to one year.

A stand-alone bill that would provide Medicaid coverage to new moms for 12 months is currently working its way through the Legislature. It is co-sponsored by a majority of the Legislature’s 132 members. All six Senate Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee voted in favor of the stand-alone bill last month. Including it in the state budget could provide lawmakers a way to circumvent opposition from Vos, who has criticized the bill as welfare expansion.

Child care

Among the Evers provisions discarded by the committee without a possibility of future consideration were programs that would provide financial assistance to child care providers, assist workers with licensing and certification and pay down debt associated with child care accrued by certain qualifying families.

Child Care Counts was established in 2020 using federal funds to provide monthly stipends to child care providers to cover costs of their services and support the recruitment and retention efforts of child care workers in Wisconsin. But funding for the program is set to expire at the end of June.

Evers’ budget proposal would have allocated $442 million over the next two years to make the program permanent, funding annual payments to child care providers. The recommendation would also fund four new positions at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to oversee the program. 

Without continued state support for the program, around 25% of child care centers in Wisconsin face the threat of closing once current funding runs out. 

Another program removed from the budget would have provided a $4.5 million grant to Wonderschool — an organization aimed at meeting the demands of child care — to continue expanding child care in Wisconsin. The program also would provide $5.5 million to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association to support child care workers in the state, including assistance with the licensing and certification process.

Another cut program would have used federal funds to reduce child care debt for qualifying parents.

Child care access and affordability have been a persistent problem in Wisconsin, with some families expressing concern over how they will cover the costs of child care without state support. 

The Joint Finance Committee will continue its work on the budget throughout May and June. The state’s current fiscal year expires on June 30, but if a new budget isn’t yet in place, funding will continue at existing levels.

Republicans offer clues to which Tony Evers budget priorities could make final cut 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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At an April 1 hearing, in a sign of what the most contentious issues will be in this year’s state budget, the Republican-controlled budget committee only heard from two state agencies: Corrections and the Universities of Wisconsin system.

UW system President Jay Rothman told lawmakers he agreed with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ assessment that the 2025-27 biennial state budget is a “make it or break it” budget year for the public university system.

Evers’ budget request for the Universities of Wisconsin matched the agency’s ask of $856 million in additional funding over two years, which would be one of the largest increases in the university system’s history. Evers told reporters this funding, in addition to $1.6 billion proposed for capital projects, is essential even without the Trump administration’s threats to cut university funding.

Republican lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee asked Rothman to justify “administrative bloat” across the system’s 13 universities, as well as the sizable budget ask. Rothman said while the request is large, Wisconsin currently ranks 43rd out of 50 in state spending on public universities. Evers’ budget would add 214 state-funded positions to UW campuses. Rothman said that excluding UW-Madison, the universities have lost over 1,000 positions since 2019.

The share of the UW system budget that comes from state funds has decreased by about 15 percentage points in the last two decades, from 33% to 18%.

“If we get the budget funded, we will not have to raise tuition,” Rothman told the JFC. “If we don’t get funded at an adequate level, that’s one of the levers we have. We keep our branch campuses open, that’s another lever we have that I don’t want to have to use.”

But amid declining birth rates and enrollment in public schools across the state, Republican lawmakers questioned whether the $856 million ask is reasonable considering university enrollments may soon drop significantly. Five of the 13 campuses had enrollments shrink last year.

“You cannot cut your way to success,” Rothman told the committee. “You need to invest.”

State funding for UW-Madison — the state’s flagship university — in inflation-adjusted dollars was $644 million in 1974. Since then, it has declined by $93 million in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the university’s 2023-24 budget report. Figures aren’t available system-wide.

Republican Rep. Mark Born, co-chair of the committee, asked Rothman why the request called for 13 new staff positions — one on each campus — to support students who have aged out of the foster care system. He cited a UW system report that found there were 420 students in that program across nine of the campuses. He questioned why a position would need to be created at a school like UW-Platteville, which served nine of those students last year. The report also shows that the program didn’t serve all 570 students who qualify, including 23 on that campus.

“I think this is a shining example of the governor’s desire to grow government and your desire to grow your system, and it’s not focused on the reality of how you invest in this stuff,” Born told Rothman.

Rothman said the intent behind the positions is to expand the number of foster care students who could be served.

GOP lawmakers critique admissions process

Republican lawmakers have criticized enrollment and admissions at the state’s flagship university in recent years, citing constituents who say their high-achieving children have been rejected from attending UW-Madison. They have also raised concerns that the university is denying admission to in-state students in favor of out-of-state or international students.

Unlike some of the smaller Wisconsin campuses, UW-Madison has maintained high enrollment numbers likely due to its ability to attract out-of-state and international students.

If the university significantly increased its enrollment of in-state students from an already declining pool of applicants, enrollment at other UW system schools could be negatively affected, UW-Madison Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Derek Kindle told WPR.

During the April 1 hearing, Sen. Rob Stafsholt, R-New Richmond, said he adamantly believes in retaining Wisconsin-based students in the university system. He asked Rothman why one of his young constituents — who has a 4.3 GPA, 32 ACT score and a father who is a military veteran — was rejected from UW-Madison.

“How are we not serving our own kids, as they graduate, by admitting them to our universities before we spend taxpayer dollars and increase taxpayer dollars to attract people from other parts of the world?” Stafsholt asked.

Rothman said he didn’t have the specifics of that student’s case, but pointed to a bill signed into law last year that allows graduating high school students who rank in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class to gain admission to any UW system school and guarantees admission to UW-Madison for those in the top 5% of their class. The bill takes effect for college admissions starting next fall.

In fall 2024, UW-Madison admitted around 59.3% of in-state applicants, down from an average of 66.8% over the previous nine years. The out-of-state U.S. student admission rate was 46.5%, and the international student admission rate was 33.3%, compared to a previous nine-year average of 52.7% and 38.6% respectively.

The questioning was similar to a national talking point about high-achieving students being rejected from universities, which some Republicans have attributed to diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Right-wing activists like Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, have questioned whether the government should be funding higher education.

On the same day as the hearing, Kirk took to social media to share an example of a high-achieving student similar to the one Stafsholt spoke of.

“Why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to universities so stupid they won’t offer this kid an admission because of his skin color (and let’s be honest, that’s why he was rejected everywhere)?” Kirk wrote on X. “Defund the college scam.”

Slashes to federal funding loom over UW-Madison

Last month, the federal Department of Education notified UW-Madison that it was one of 60 universities across the country under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. The letter warned that the university could lose federal funding if it failed to protect its Jewish students.

The move was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses, which has involved detaining, deporting and terminating the visas of students with ties to the national pro-Palestinian protests last spring.

UW-Madison is also one of 45 universities being investigated for alleged racial discrimination related to its diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The Trump administration has made sweeping threats to pull federal funding from colleges that continue to consider race and diversity in their policies and programs.

But how much funding is at stake here?

According to the Associated Press, out of 50 public universities under OCR investigation, UW-Madison is among the top five that received the most federal revenue in 2022-23. The university collected more than $827 million in federal funds that year, which was just over 20% of its total revenue.

Republicans take skeptical view of UW system’s ‘make-or-break’ funding request 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.