Browsing: State Budget

Gov. Evers’ 2025 budget proposal would reduce the General Fund balance to an amount equal to only 2 percent of annual General Fund state spending — well below the 16 percent that experts in state finance recommend.

Wisconsin’s governor talks of new 9.8% top tax rate — one that would wallop businesses that don’t flee.

A single-rate tax reform would change Wisconsin’s tax picture from a grave liability to an advantage.

Providing free breakfast and lunch for all Wisconsin schoolchildren will burden taxpayers with the cost of assisting households that likely do not need the benefits.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has renewed his proposal that legislators allow themselves to be cut out of the process of making state law and permit bills to be passed or statutes to be repealed by petition and referendum, an idea that the Legislature’s leaders dismissed as dead on arrival.

In the 12 years leading up to Act 10, school levies across Wisconsin rose 72%, compared to 31% in the dozen years after that up to and including 2024.

By the best estimate, the Act 10 reforms saved Wisconsin taxpayers between $18 billion and $31 billion since 2012.

In his new book, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch laments the vast expansion of the federal government into matters once left to the states, and he cites Badger Institute’s “Federal Grant$tanding” book, published in 2018.

In the 2023-24 school year, MPS schools called police 1,245 times for help with allegations of everything from armed robbery to sexual assault to felony theft.

MPS may regret its ongoing resistance to the state’s resource officer requirement the next time it comes to the Legislature looking for tax money.

Of the seven remaining two-year branch colleges in the Universities of Wisconsin system, three are within walking distance and the rest are within easy driving distance of technical colleges that now are offering many of the same liberal arts courses.

A legislative committee formed to study falling enrollment across the University of Wisconsin System could recommend putting an end to what’s left of a tottering two-year branch campus system.

Demand for legal cannabis products is elastic, so states must consider this fact when setting tax rates. If taxes are set too high, legalization will not deter users from exiting legacy illegal markets.

After a year-long disenrollment, there are still 163,221 more people on Medicaid in Wisconsin than there were before the start of the pandemic, at a cost to taxpayers of at least $50 million a year.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted 6-4 to instruct the state auditor to find out what has come of Gov. Tony Evers’ 2019 order to make “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, a central feature of agencies’ plans and to corral every state employee into “mandatory equity and inclusion training.” 

In both of the two most recent legislative sessions, Wisconsin legislators introduced just over 2,300 bills and saw less than 12% enacted.

A new bill in Madison could, if enacted, result in substantial property tax cuts in many school districts. It would also result in significantly higher state aid for many traditional public school districts where large numbers of children choose to attend independent charter schools or private schools in one of Wisconsin’s parental choice programs.

A formal agreement passed by the regents says that UW-Madison will seek philanthropic support to create an endowed chair that will focus on conservative political thought, classical economic theory or classical liberalism, depending on the donor’s interest.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced the state government finished its fiscal year business with a surplus of $1.83 billion. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a Republican tax cut.

A state Department of Health Services decision to take a year to remove ineligible people from Wisconsin’s Medicaid rolls — much slower than many other states — will cost federal and state taxpayers an estimated $745 million.