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Pushing back on a Gov. Tony Evers veto protecting the University of Wisconsin System’s extensive diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is asking for legislative committee approval to again remove $32 million from the system’s budget unless it dismantles its DEI programs.

The 2023-25 state biennial budget signed by Gov. Tony Evers did not include the most effective measure to address gaps in oral care access in Wisconsin — dental therapy.

Governor Evers signed a budget passed by the Legislature that includes a more than 30% starting pay raise for assistant district attorneys and assistant public defenders and more flexibility for merit-based pay raises for attorneys currently in those roles. This makes the compensation for these roles more competitive and should reduce the high rates of turnover currently existing in District Attorney and public defender offices. 

Using his partial veto power, Gov. Tony Evers removed the Legislature’s first steps on tax reform for Wisconsin, canceling a simplification of Wisconsin’s income tax rates and a reduction in the rates covering much of the middle class and most of the state’s businesses.

Wisconsinites clearly got some wins in the 2023-2025 biennel budget. Now the task at hand is consolidate and expand those moving forward.

When and why did bringing internet access to every home and business in Wisconsin become the sole province of government, rather than the marketing mission of established private internet providers?

A plan passed by Wisconsin’s Joint Finance Committee saves taxpayers $3.5 billion over two years, money that came from them in the first place because they’re currently overtaxed. Gov. Evers would do well to sign off on that plan.

The Badger Institute supports a flat-rate individual income tax, a structure increasingly adopted by competing states. We have spent years researching options for reform that includes a single, low rate. But if that is out of the question as budget negotiations proceed, the priority should be Wisconsin’s top rate.

Among the bills Republicans are considering in the Legislature is one eliminating the last remnants of Wisconsin’s personal property tax. The bill, AB2, sponsored by Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown), would end property taxes on everything but real estate.The move is one the Badger Institute long has advocated.

The bargain struck Thursday between legislative leaders and the governor ensures the financial sustainability of the school choice and charter school programs but that also increases the low revenue ceiling for public school districts that are on the bottom of the revenue spectrum.

“This is good day for Wisconsin, and for anyone who cares about our children – parents who want more power over their kids’ education, teachers who work so hard, and school administrators who have long worried about sustainability,” said Badger Institute President Mike Nichols.

A deal that allows both the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to raise sales taxes also requires that 25 police officers be placed back in crime-ridden Milwaukee Public Schools.  

“This is a great victory for all the good kids in MPS schools who just want to learn, want to be safe, want a way up,” said Mike Nichols, president of the Badger Institute, which has been pushing for cops in schools for much of the last year.

Wisconsin and the other 49 states are positively swimming in broadband funding, all of it the result of the Biden administration spending bacchanal.

“Drowning” might be a better word.

Thousands of Wisconsin renters caught a break when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a moratorium on evictions in September 2020, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But Wisconsin landlords like Mike Cerns had already paid the price. Cerns estimates he lost between $60,000 and $80,000 in unpaid rental income and the cost of repairing property damage from bad tenants he could not evict. “The federal government essentially stole my property during the eviction moratorium and the courts were an accessory to the theft,” he says.

Amid a sustained outcry from frustrated occupational license seekers and a statewide worker shortage, Wisconsin lawmakers are advancing a universal recognition licensure bill and nearly a dozen more narrowly targeted reforms that would finally help remedy longtime bureaucratic dysfunction and over-regulation.

When Jalisa Hawkins decided to transfer her daughter from one Beloit public school to another, the state cut the sum taxpayers spend on the child’s education by about 40% for no good reason.

Progressive city councils across the country are being forced by violence in and near their public schools to rethink their bans on stationing police officers on those campuses.

The bare-knuckle, politicized State Supreme Court race that just shattered national spending records and obliterated traditional judicial norms has raised anew the question of whether justices should be elected the same way as partisan Republicans and Democrats. Alternatives in use in other states include appointments and independent commissions.

The Hop cost $15.03 per ride in operating expenses, never mind the cost of rails and wires — not a dime of it paid by passengers. It’s why the Legislature is doing Milwaukee a favor when it says, “enough.”

As the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee begins budget deliberations, Gov. Tony Evers is pushing for a $31.6 billion budget for Medicaid over the next two years, a $4.2 billion biennial increase. The $27.4 billion being spent on Medicaid in the current two-year cycle already represents nearly 30% of all state spending.

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