State Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) argues in opposition to a bill that would repeal a 2023 partial veto by Gov. Tony Evers that extended an annual $325 per-pupil increase in public school revenue limits by 400 years. (Screenshot/WisEye)
The Legislature’s powerful budget committee voted on party lines Tuesday to endorse a bill repealing Gov. Tony Evers’ 2023 partial veto that enables Wisconsin public school districts to raise their revenue limits by $325 per pupil per year for the next four centuries.
The measure was the only legislation to get any significant debate during the two-hour session of the Joint Finance Committee, even as its outcome was a foregone conclusion: an 11-4 vote with only Republican support.
The state Senate version of the bill,SB 389, has alreadypassed that chamber on a party-line 18-15 vote. The Assembly version isAB 391.
The finance committee weighed in on the bill — along with the rest of nearly two dozen items it voted on Tuesday — under the Legislature’s rule requiring the panel to consider any legislation that appropriates money, provides for revenue or relates to taxation.
The committee’s action clears the bill for the Assembly floor, where it is likely to pass on a party-line vote before going to Evers to be vetoed.
In the 2023-25 Wisconsin budget, lawmakers agreed to increase schools’ revenue limits for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years by $325 per pupil each year.
In signing the budget Evers used his partial veto power to strike two digits and a dash from the years, extending the annual revenue limit increases through 2425. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in April 2025 that the maneuver was within Evers’ partial veto powers. The change didn’t funnel more money to schools automatically, but instead raised the annual ceiling in how much revenue they are allowed to collect.
The 2025-27 state budget approved in July 2025 did not include any general aid increase, so property taxes are the only source school districts have to pay for the additional $325 per pupil they were authorized to receive by Evers’ 2023 veto. The increase is not automatic; school budgets are controlled by individual school boards.
At a media session before Tuesday’s meeting and during the debate, the Joint Finance Committee’s co-chair, state Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), blamed Evers’ 2023 veto for property tax hikes around the state.
Past state budgets have increased school aid, sometimes with “record levels, massive increases,” Born said shortly before the committee’s vote.
But Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said that after adjusting those increases for rising costs, per-pupil funding is $3,400 below what it was in 2009. “We’re actually giving them less money in inflation-adjusted terms,” Roys said.
Democrats pointed to the spate of school funding referendum questions over the last two years in which school district voters have agreed to raise their own property taxes to cover funding gaps.
“Referendums were never meant to fund the core operations of our schools,” said Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee). “Yet we see districts year after year leaning more on referendums.”
Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) told Republican lawmakers that they could have prevented property tax hikes if they had increased general state aid to public schools in the current budget. By not doing so, “you chose to put that pressure on property taxpayers,” he said.
Tax credits after stillbirths
The only other item that produced any debate Tuesday wasSB 379/AB 373, creating a state income tax credit for the parents of a stillborn child. As originally created the legislation called for the tax credit — $2,000 for a couple filing jointly or $1,000 for each parent if filing separately or if they are unmarried.
As originally drafted the legislation calls for a refundable tax credit. A taxpayer whose total income tax liability is less than the amount of the credit would get a direct payment for the balance of the credit that exceeds their tax bill.
For example, a person who qualifies for a $1,000 credit but whose state income tax bill is $600 would get a check for the additional $400.
Finance Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) introduced an amendment Tuesday that would make the tax credit non-refundable. For a person with a tax bill of $600, the $1,000 credit would only be worth $600, while a person with a tax bill of $1,500 would get the full $1000 credit, reducing their tax bill to $500.
“It’s very expensive in this country to go through labor, delivery and postpartum, and when someone has a stillborn baby they still have all these expenses,” Roys said. “When you say you’re not making this credit refundable, you’re hurting the lowest-income people.”
The amendment would save the state $200,000, changing the tax credit’s cost from $600,000 to $400,000, a Legislative Fiscal Bureau analyst told Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay). That would “make it less useful,” Andraca said.
While the amendment passed 11-4, with all the Democrats on the panel voting against it, the amended legislation passed on a unanimous 15-0 vote.
“We obviously believe that giving the public access to see what we're doing is important, but… just blindly giving money to an organization that's asking us for money, but not giving us any answers, is certainly not the solution at this time,” LeMahieu said. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Senate passed three constitutional amendment proposals Wednesday, including one to eliminate DEI, one to limit the executive partial veto power and another to prohibit closures of places of worship during emergencies.
With WisconsinEye, the state government video streaming service, still offline, the first floor session of the year for the Senate was livestreamed with the help of the Legislative Technology Services Bureau.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) told reporters ahead of the session that after WisconsinEye halted its coverage on Dec. 15, the co-chairs of the Legislative Joint Audit Committee sent a letter with questions to the nonprofit organization. The letter had a Jan. 9 deadline to reply, but the organization did not provide responses until Jan. 21.
“We obviously believe that giving the public access to see what we’re doing is important, but… just blindly giving money to an organization that’s asking us for money, but not giving us any answers, is certainly not the solution at this time,” LeMahieu said.
LeMahieu said he had not yet reviewed the answers WisconsinEye sent on Wednesday morning. He said the livestream was not a way to explore replacing WisconsinEye.
The state Legislature set aside $10 million in 2023 to help the organization build an endowment. But that grant came with a requirement that WisconsinEye to raise enough money to match the funds in order to access the state dollars. As it ran out of funds, WisconsinEye asked the state to make money available for its operating expenses without the match requirement.
LeMahieu noted that the organization had three years to raise funds and request money from the Joint Finance Committee.
“We just want to figure out, really, what’s going on. It’s not proof that we don’t need WisconsinEye…,” LeMahieu said. “The point of today is just so that the general public can see us in action today.”
During the floor session, the Senate also took up bills on tax exemptions and education.
Constitutional amendments on DEI, partial veto and places of worship
The Senate passed three constitutional amendment proposals, each of which is on its second consideration, during its Thursday floor session. Constitutional amendment proposals in Wisconsin must pass two consecutive sessions of the Legislature before they go to the voters for final approval.
Republicans have relied on constitutional amendment proposals in recent years to bypass Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. According to a Ballotopedia review, Wisconsin voters decided on 258 ballot measures between the state’s founding in 1846 and April 2025. About 71% — or 185 — measures were approved and 28% — or 73 — were defeated.
In the last five years, Wisconsin voters will have decided on 10 constitutional amendment questions — a divergence from some points in state history when Wisconsin has gone years without a constitutional amendment going before voters.
If approved by voters, AJR 102 would amend the state constitution to “prohibit governmental entities in the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting, or public administration.”
Democratic lawmakers said the amendment would take the state backwards. They suggested amending the proposal to enshrine equality and same-sex marriage protections. Those proposals were voted down.
State Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus and has been working to call attention to the proposal over the last few weeks, likened the amendment to lawmakers rolling back Reconstruction efforts after the Civil War. She said the abandonment of Reconstruction efforts to bring justice to those who were enslaved, are the reason why the U.S. lived with Jim Crow laws for so long.
“Lawmakers made a decision to not protect [Americans],” Drake said. “Anything that was built was destroyed. It took nearly 80 years for our country to rectify that mistake with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and landmark Supreme Court decisions to undo that harm.”
Drake said the amendment would cause harm and eliminate measures that keep Wisconsinites safe.
“Republicans will send us back to the pre-Civil Rights era, possibly further,” Drake said.
Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) said the proposal is “long overdue” and would give Wisconsin voters the final say on “discrimination at all levels of government.” He said that programs including the Supplier Diversity Program, which was established in the 1980s and certifies minority-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned and woman-owned businesses to provide better opportunities for them to do business with the state of Wisconsin, and scholarships and loans within the state’s higher education system that consider race amount to discrimination.
“Past discrimination, however wrong, cannot be corrected with more discrimination,” Nass said, adding that merit, character and ability should be the only things considered when it comes to programs.
The Senate also voted on voice vote to pass SB 652, which would amend several programs offered in the University of Wisconsin system to focus on “disadvantaged” students as opposed to considering race. Some of those programs include the minority teacher loan program and minority undergraduate grants.
Bill coauthor Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) said the proposal will make it so people are able to receive help based on their specific life experiences, rather than having their life experiences presumed.
“We’ll finally make eligibility based on need,” Wimberger said.
Drake emphasized that several of the programs, including the Minority Teacher Loan Program that was signed into law by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, were bipartisan efforts at the time they were created. She said lawmakers were forgetting history and abandoning the previous work that was done to address the barriers that students face. She said that the only thing that has changed is the election of President Donald Trump, who has targeted DEI initiatives, and launched a “war against Black and brown people.”
“Shifting the policy solely to disadvantaged students without acknowledging racial, ethnic disparities risks eroding the progress made to address educational inequities,” Drake said. “That doesn’t solve anything, it covers up the issue.”
Curtailing partial veto powers
SJR 116, if approved by voters, would prohibit the governor from using the state’s partial veto power to create or increase a tax or fee. It passed the Senate 18-15 along party lines and still needs to pass the Assembly before it would be set to go to voters.
The proposal was introduced in reaction to Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that he exercised on the state budget in 2023 that extended annual school revenue limits for 400 years.
Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) spoke against the proposal, saying that the partial veto power is one of the only checks that can “correct harmful or irresponsible provisions that come from the Legislature” and will “weaken one of the few checks that protects the public.”
AJR 10 would prohibit the state from ordering the closure of places of worship during a state of emergency. The Senate concurred in the bill in a 17-15 vote, meaning it will officially go to voters in November.
The proposal was introduced in response to actions taken during a state of emergency declared by Evers during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was no debate on the floor about the measure.
Tax exemptions
The Senate concurred in AB 38, which would mirror federal policy to exempt tips from state income taxes, in a 21-12 vote. Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) joined Republicans in favor of the bill. The Assembly passed the bill last week, so it will now head to Evers for consideration.
The bill would allow tipped employees to deduct up to $25,000 in tips annually from their federal taxable income. Those earning more than $150,000 would not be eligible for the deduction.
The Democratic lawmakers who opposed the bill said it didn’t do enough to ensure that employees make a stable wage. Tipped employees in Wisconsin can currently make a minimum wage of $2.33.
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said that raising the minimum wage would ensure that a person’s wage doesn’t rely on “the mood that somebody is in” or “somebody’s willingness to be sexually harassed.”
“We should not put working people through that,” Roys said.
“You don’t get everything you want in life,” Jacque said. “I think this is something that is going to make life a little bit easier for those who work in the service industry.”
“We don’t make the employers pay these people fairly,” Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said. “These are the same people who have to rely on child care subsidies, who have to rely on Medicaid.”
Pfaff said in a statement that he voted for the bill because “hard working people continue to feel the pressure of rising costs every time they go to the grocery store, pay their rent and utility bills, and receive their new health insurance premium.”
SB 69, which will allow teachers who spend money on classroom expenses to claim a subtraction on their state income taxes of up to $300, passed unanimously.
Three education bills pass
The Senate voted 18-15 to concur in AB 602, a bill that instructs Evers to opt into the federal school choice tax credit program. It now goes to Evers.
A provision in the federal law signed by President Trump will provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 to people who donate to a qualifying “scholarship granting program” to support certain educational expenses including tuition and board at private schools, tutoring and books, but governors must decide whether to opt in and have until Jan. 1, 2027 to do so.
Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said during a press conference that the program would help provide additional funding to students without using state dollars. She emphasized that if the state doesn’t opt in, then Wisconsinites could still benefit from the credit by donating to programs in participating states, but those dollars would not go to Wisconsin students.
“We want to see those dollars stay in Wisconsin,” Felzkowski said.
Evers has previously said he wouldn’t opt the state into the program. He could veto the Republican bill instructing him to do so when it arrives at his desk.
Sex ed legislation
SB 371 passed 18-15 along party lines. It would add requirements for school districts that provide human growth and development programs to show high definition video of the development of the brain, heart, sex organs and other organs, a rendering of the fertilization process and fetal development and a presentation on each trimester of pregnancy and the physical and emotional health of the mother. It now goes to the Assembly for consideration.
Roys, the Madison Democrat, criticized the bill as being part of a “nationwide effort by some of the most extreme anti-abortion… to try to indoctrinate young children.” She noted that some of Wisconsin’s prominent anti-abortion organizations support the bill including the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, Pro-Life Wisconsin and Wisconsin Right to Life.
Felzkowski, the GOP author of the bill, said young people deserve to know “what happens to them, what happens to their body, what happens to a fetus… What are you afraid of? Why would a child having knowledge scare you?”
The Senate concurred in AB 457 18-15 and will now go to Evers for consideration. The bill would require Wisconsin school districts to submit their financial reports to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) on time before they can ask voters for funding through a referendum. It was introduced in reaction to Milwaukee Public Schools approving a large referendum and a subsequent financial reporting scandal in 2024.
DOC Secretary Jared Hoy (Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Jared Hoy, Secretary of the Department of Corrections (DOC), appeared before the Assembly Committee on Corrections Wednesday morning to discuss a third-party study of DOC facilities, policies and practices. “The report clearly shows our agency and our staff are working hard getting a lot right, but as expected we also learned of several areas we need to make improvements on,” said Hoy, calling the report conducted by Falcon Correctional and Community Services Inc. “a critical and necessary step forward” after he succeeded former Secretary Kevin Carr in 2024.
Hoy said that the Falcon Report focused on behavioral health, correctional practices, health care, employee wellness, leadership development, agency culture, recruitment of staff and problems in the restrictive housing unit, otherwise known as solitary confinement. The review lasted nearly a year, and highlighted a number of positive changes within DOC that Hoy listed, including:
Developing an objective custody classification system in 2023;
Restructuring the Bureau of Health Services in 2024,
Expanding the earned release program,
Transitioning the Waupun Correctional Institution to having all single cells,
Reforming restrictive housing in 2024 by enhancing training and increasing security rounds,
Implementing new systems to track the number and frequency of security rounds,
Retraining medication distribution and documentation,
Performing security audits,
Requiring supervisory meetings at Waupun at the beginning of each shift,
Implementing a new restrictive housing policy.
It wasn’t an entirely rosy picture, however. “As noted in the report, our agency is at a period of transition,” said Hoy. “We are not alone in navigating this unique point in time following the operational disruptions of the pandemic and the related staffing shortages that followed.”
Hoy urged people to view the report in that context as he went into the areas of improvement it suggested. High vacancy rates for staff at different institutions remains an issue, although the DOC has been able to fill more security positions due to pay raises approved by the state Legislature. This has created a “new and unique concern,” Hoy said, in that many staff are new and do not have much correctional experience. Additionally, many staff members were hired during the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus have skewed perceptions of what normal DOC procedures look like. The highly restrictive, atypical protocols intended to stifle the spread of COVID-19 became the formative experience of this new generation of DOC guards and staff.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Mental health needs among DOC residents was another area of concern. Hoy noted that “44% of male persons in our care and 91% of female persons in our care have a mental health condition.” As a result of the study, DOC is working towards updating its mental health classification system, creating specific mental health units, better monitoring and collecting mental health data, and improving conditions within the restrictive housing unit, otherwise known as solitary confinement, and increasing programming and recreation.
“So while the results of this study are both informative and valuable, they represent only the starting point,” said Hoy. “The true measure of our agency’s success will be determined by how thoughtfully and effectively we act upon the recommendations that follow.” DOC is currently planning another contract with Falcon to develop a framework to review the report’s key findings, and implement its recommendations. Although many of the changes will need to cover the entire DOC, Hoy said the state agency will also look at specific institutions to “reimagine” their functions, and begin implementing changes at five “pilot sites” before expanding to other facilities.
Hoy took questions from corrections committee members. Public comment in response to the secretary’s presentation was not allowed. Lawmakers pointed out that the DOC remains overcrowded, with over 23,000 people spread across various prisons. Some highlighted the need for more uniformity among DOC policies across facilities, as well as a need for increased and centralized data analysis.
Hoy acknowledged that there are ongoing problems with placing people in appropriate facilities, such as people who should be in minimum or medium-security prisons being placed in maximum security institutions, or people with severe mental health needs not being cared for adequately. He also noted that because DOC is generally a paramilitary organization, staff are often “craving” direction and vision from their leadership. Hoy said that there is more work to be done to change the culture among DOC staff, emphasizing that “we need to treat everybody with dignity and respect, to treat people as human beings, and see that person no matter whether they have a cap and gown and they’re graduating and ready to walk out the door, or if they’re sitting at rock bottom in restrictive housing, that they are still a human being.”
Hygiene and feminine product access in prison
The Corrections Committee also heard testimony on three bills which were open to public comment. One Republican bill (AB 297) would provide pay bonuses to DOC probation and parole officers based on their ability to increase employment rates among their clients under supervision. Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R – De Pere), the bill’s author and a member of the corrections committee, said the bill would help reduce the recidivism rate. Franklin was questioned by fellow lawmakers about whether the bill would adversely affect people who have small children at home, or who need to prioritize substance abuse treatment and mental health care over finding immediate employment.
There were also questions about how probation and parole officers might abuse the incentive structure such as by creating revolving doors where clients get and lose jobs, only to be hired somewhere else, earning another bonus for their probation agent.
The bill was backed by Cicero Action, a policy advocacy group whose board of directors is chaired by Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire co-founder of the data and surveillance company Palentir. Lonsdale has called for the use of public hangings to demonstrate “masculine leadership.”
Members of the public who attended the hearing, including members of the criminal justice reform advocacy groups Dream.org, Ladies of SCI, Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing, and others testified that people on probation and parole already have lives dictated by the whims of their agents. One woman gave an example of a formerly incarcerated loved one who had to take time out of their day for a three hour bus ride to check in with a probation agent for just a few minutes. Others shared firsthand experiences of being placed in unfulfilling jobs for which they were ill suited by their probation agents, or being discouraged from applying for certain kinds of work.
Rep. Shelia Stubbs (Left), Sen. LaTonya Johnson (Center), and Rep. Robyn Vining (Right). (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Two Democratic bills (AB 736 and AB 741) focused on increasing hygiene products across DOC facilities and expanding access to menstrual products for incarcerated women. Reps. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa) and Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) presented the bills to the committee.
Stubbs said that “good hygiene is both a matter of health and dignity, especially for those incarcerated.” AB 741 would require the DOC to provide culturally sensitive products ranging from shampoos to shaving cream, bar soap, natural conditioners, and other products through the commissary at no more than 125% of the price at the highest-grossing retail chain in Wisconsin, or no more than 100% of the sales price, depending on the product. Incarcerated people would also be given a $25 monthly stipend to help purchase hygiene products. The bill would also require sheriffs overseeing jails to provide a stipend and products to people held within jails.
During testimony, some formerly incarcerated people shared experiences of witnessing fellow incarcerated people fight because of bad hygiene. Family members of incarcerated people said that the costs to purchase commissary items, make phone calls and other expenses amount to unsustainable drains on their household budgets.
Jefferson County Sheriff Travis Maze shows Corrections Committee members a box of mensuration supplies that are provided to women in his jail. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
AB 736 would expand access to safe and appropriate menstrual products to incarcerated women. Although some prisons and jails take it upon themselves to provide such products to their residents, not all of them do so consistently nor do they provide a range of appropriate products. In some cases, women can bleed through their clothing in prisons and jails, creating embarrassing and awkward situations in which correctional staff may or may not be sympathetic to their needs.
“In this way, menstruation becomes a monthly cycle of humiliation solely borne by women simply because they are women,” said Johnson. “And that’s not fair.” Johnson called providing menstrual products to incarcerated women “a minimum standard of care in more than two dozen states,” adding that the federal prison system guarantees women access to tampons and pads in correctional facilities. “States that have implemented these policies report minimal cost and improved conditions including fewer medical complications, fewer grievances, and safer, more sanitized facility environments.”
Lawmakers, as well as members of the public, pushed the committee to consider providing menstruation cups as well as more common products like tampons, and to evaluate whether products are safe or if they come with a risk of exposing incarcerated women to toxins. Many in the committee pointed out that if public bathrooms — including those in the Capitol — provide women with menstrual products for free, then why can’t jails and prisons?
“For far too long meaningful conversations about menstruation have been avoided due to stigma, and it is my hope that as leaders in the state of Wisconsin, we can change that,” Vining said in a statement. “We need to talk about this issue now because women are one of the fastest growing populations in the U.S. And over the last 25 years, the number of women in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails has quadrupled. Our state jails and prisons, and their policies and programs, were simply not designed to safely and humanely incarcerate women.”
Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated for a bill to create a task force on to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
At a Tuesday hearing, Wisconsin Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated creating a task force on missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker.
Walker went missing in 2022 at the age of 15 in Milwaukee and has not been found.
“They refused to issue an Amber Alert to allow the community to help search for her. They were telling me Joniah did not fit the requirement of anything,” Stubbs said. Howard sat next to her with her eyes closed. “What are the requirements to get help from your local police department when your Black… daughter [is] missing?”
SB 404, coauthored by Stubbs (D-Madison), Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) and Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), would establish a 17-member task force to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls and produce a report.
“To help prevent other families from experiencing what my family and countless other families endured … this bill for missing and murdered African–American women and girls … needs to be passed into state law,” Stubbs read on behalf of Howard. “Help us. Find us. Give our families closure. We matter.”
This is the third legislative session in a row that Stubbs has introduced legislation to create the task force. She was inspired in part by the Department of Justice’s task force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, which was established in 2020 by Attorney General Josh Kaul after the Legislature failed to pass a bill to create that task force. Kaul has said that the funds don’t exist to take a similar path with this task force.
Stubbs said during the hearing in the Senate Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, Children & Families committee that the bill is “necessary to improve the mechanisms for preventing, investigating and healing for all forms of gender-based violence in our state, which impacts women and kids of all racial backgrounds, but which affect Black women and girls at the highest rate.”
Members of the task force would include four lawmakers and other stakeholders, including law enforcement representatives and representatives from advocacy or legal organizations that focus on Black women and girls.
The task force would be responsible for examining a number of issues related to the violence that Black women and girls face including systemic causes, the appropriate methods for tracking and collecting data, policing related to investigating and prosecuting crimes, measures that could reduce violence and ways to support victims and their families.
Under the bill, a final report would be due by 2027. It would need to recommend policies and practices that would be effective in reducing gender violence and increasing the safety of Black women and girls and help victims and communities to heal from violence.
Stubbs highlighted a 2022 report from the Guardian that found that in 2020 five Black women and girls were killed every day in the U.S. Wisconsin had the worst homicide rate for Black women and girls in the nation that year. Stubbs said data on the extent of the issue is incomplete, and the task force could help fill in the picture.
“We are lacking crucial data, especially in Wisconsin,” Stubbs said. “The data already gathered is insufficient and lacks critical detail to understand the circumstances of violence.”
Johnson said the bill is a “necessary step toward understanding why African-American women and girls are so vulnerable to violence and disappearance and where our public safety systems are falling short.”
Sheena Scarborough, mother of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was murdered last year, also testified at the hearing. Johnson noted that both mothers are from her district.
“I think that speaks volumes to how serious the issue is and how it impacts communities, not just in the city of Milwaukee but across the state, but disproportionately it affects African-American women, especially in the city of Milwaukee,” Johnson said.
The bill would provide one position in the Department of Justice to support the task force as well as $80,200 in 2025-26 and $99,500 in 2026-27 to fund it.
Last session, the bill passed the Assembly but never received a vote on the Senate floor. It received a public hearing but not without encountering roadblocks due to opposition from former Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville). Stroebel said he didn’t support the legislation because he didn’t support passing laws based on race or gender.
Snyder, who described himself as “the Republican who likes to do what is right” said the bill is “the right thing to do,” and expressed frustration with the bill getting hung up last session.
“I get really irritated when one person thinks that because they don’t like it, that they can kill it. That bugs me a lot,” Snyder said.
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) asked the lawmakers if there are other groups, noting Hmong and Indigenous groups, that face disproportionate amounts of violence and suggested changing the bill to include them.
“Instead of focusing on just one specific group… I would really love to see each one of these groups kind of meld together, so there’s representation so information can be shared,” Wanggaard said.
James, who is the only member of the Legislature actively serving in law enforcement, answered Wanggaard’s question by pulling from his own experience.
“Back at home, I mean, we have a high Hmong population. I don’t recall ever taking any cases involving any missing Hmong individuals to be honest with you. …I’ve had more white and African-American missing type cases,” James said. He said that a “caveat” to the issue is that “the data collection hasn’t always been prevalent and adequate… especially if we have agencies where they’re not even taking cases on missing persons, that data is not going to be collected.”
“My concern is that if they’re targeting young women — just young women in general, I’m not concerned what race they are — if they’re targeting these young women, is there a connection between some of the missing… say on the Menominee reservation as opposed to Milwaukee County,” Wanggaard said. “I’m just thinking about getting the most information to as many people as we can to help the process.”
Supporters of the bill addressed questions about why it was important to have a task force specifically focused on Black women and girls.
Madison Police Chief John Patterson was asked whether he saw any value in creating one big task force.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to be surgical at times when it comes to disparities that we’ve identified in our system and, certainly, I believe this is one,” Patterson said. “In my almost three decades, I can tell you work that started off being very focused and surgical in nature to try to address a disparate impact in our community has led to greater communication, greater collaboration across all communities.”
Barbara Sella, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, said it’s “so important to understand dynamics within communities and different communities have different dynamics.”
“To just say, well let’s include everybody — could make the task almost impossible… It’s really important to have a laser focus,” Sella said.
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