New Stats on W-2 Participation Contradict Rosy Assumptions in JFC Budget Will Wisconsin legislators help the people or the wealthy? When legislators take floor votes this week, they will decide whether and how much to cut spending for the Wisconsin Works (W-2) program, which aids unemployed low-income families, and whether they divert the savings to use [...]

Wisconsin is expected to begin the 2013-15 budget period with a solid General Fund surplus, estimated to be about $670 million; however, new figures from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) indicate that the biennial budget recommended by the Joint Finance Committee would leave the state with a potential deficit of $505 million in the following biennium. [...]

Marathon Back-room Negotiations Minimize Legislative Debate and Public Input   Keep that unsightly lawmaking to yourself! It is sometimes said that people who like laws and sausages shouldn’t watch either being made.  If that’s true, I suppose an argument could be made that GOP leaders were doing us a favor by spending the bulk of the [...]

I was surprised to read the following statement in a message that Governor Walker recently distributed via e-mail and tweet:   “ Including a tax cut in the 2013-15 budget will help those hit hardest by economic difficulties get back on their feet. ” It’s a great sentiment and I’d like to applaud the Governor for expressing [...]

A new tax package proposed this week would largely benefit the very highest earners. More than one-third of the proposed income tax cuts would go to the top five percent of earners, a group with an average income of $392,000. The new tax plan was proposed by Rep. Dale Kooyenga, a member of the Legislature’s powerful [...]

Conservative members of Wisconsin’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC) who support the Governor’s BadgerCare changes are in a tough spot.  On the one hand, they don’t want to add funding to the budget, and would like to free up as much funding as possible for income tax cuts.  On the other hand, they don’t want to take the enhanced [...]

The number of Wisconsin children who are from low-income families has climbed for the ninth straight year, according to a new report from the state’s Department of Public Instruction. In the 2012-13 school year, 42% of Wisconsin children were eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches. In the 2003-04 school year, just 30% of students [...]

#1: The tax cut leaves out low-income taxpayers. More than three-quarters of a million Wisconsin tax filers would not receive any benefit from the tax cut proposed by the Governor, including most people earning $30,000 a year or less. Low-income Wisconsinites typically pay a higher share of their income in state and local taxes than do those [...]

In his proposed budget, Governor Walker recommends setting aside a portion of education funding to distribute to schools based on their performance. While this proposal might sound attractive on the surface, it will result in significant funding increases for schools with few low-income students, disabled students, or English language learners. Schools with larger percentages of those [...]

Will Lawmakers Use the Increased Revenue in Ways that Reduce the Structural Deficit or Exacerbate It? State legislators working on the 2013-15 budget got some very good news today. A new paper from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates that tax collections in the current fiscal year (which ends on June 30) will be $215 million more than [...]

Budget reserves have been in the news recently, with the legislature sharply rebuking the University of Wisconsin System for maintaining a sizable reserve. The irony is that the state itself has a fiscal cushion that is far too small, according to a new analysis from the Wisconsin Budget Project . In general, budget reserves are a good thing, [...]

For more, go to http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org. It’s clear that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation faces challenges in properly administering the state’s economic development programs. What’s less clear is what, if anything, state policymakers are going to do about that. Numerous problems at WEDC came to light this week, with the publication of a scathing new audit of WEDC. The WEDC is a [...]

Several important aspects of the budget bill’s funding for public assistance programs have received little or no attention: The bill siphons off funding intended for low-income families and uses it for other purposes, such as tax cuts. The proposed budget eliminates the current $84 million balance in federal funds from the block grant known as Temporary Assistance [...]

Legislative Proposals Squeeze Local Governments from Many Directions For more, go to http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org. In Wisconsin and across the country, most government bodies finance the cost of post-retirement health benefits for their former employees on a pay-as-you-go basis. A number of Republicans in the legislature want to change that and begin requiring local governments, including school districts, to [...]

Senate Expected to Level Playing Field for Main Street Businesses Legislation that would allow states to compel internet retailers to collect sales taxes is expected to pass the U.S. Senate in the next couple days . Passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act would be a first step towards leveling the playing field between internet retailers and bricks-and-mortar businesses. [...]

Should We Wear Blue or Sing the Blues to Support Abused and Neglected Children? Governor Walker recently declared April to be Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness Month , and he encouraged all Wisconsin citizens to “Wear Blue to Work” on April 18 to promote awareness of child abuse prevention. I have nothing against this kind of symbolic gesture; [...]

An April 15 memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau explains the direct and indirect ways that the Governor’s proposal to expand school vouchers to at least nine new school districts would affect school financing across the state. It includes district–by-district examples of how various scenarios would directly reduce aid for the nine districts, would increase property [...]

Two federal tax credits are responsible for lifting tens of thousands of Wisconsin children out of poverty. Together, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit lift 136,000 Wisconsinites out of poverty, including 71,000 children, according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . The new CBPP report underscores how important [...]

The budget passed by the U.S. House of Representatives includes deep cuts in federal support for important services that state and local governments in Wisconsin provide. Under the proposed budget — sometimes referred to as the “Ryan budget,” after its author Rep. Paul Ryan — state and local governments in Wisconsin would have difficulty maintaining [...]

For more information, go to http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org. The income tax cut proposed for Wisconsin is more likely to hurt, rather than help the state economy, if past history in other states continues to hold true. Critics of the income tax cut have raised a number of concerns about the proposal, including: Half of the benefit of the tax [...]