Browsing: Spending and Accountability

Plans for a municipally-owned grocery store in Madison is the perfect illustration of why government should stay out of an intensely competitive business it knows nothing about.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is facing a crisis of confidence after accusations of gutting academic standards, manipulating report cards, slacking on fiscal oversight and bungling oversight of sexual misconduct among teachers.

Republican candidates for Wisconsin governor are joining politicians across the country who are increasingly skeptical of tenure guarantees for professors.

The City of Milwaukee is willing to pay a new marketing and communications officer for The Hop, its little-used $128 million streetcar, up to $108,000 per year plus benefits.

Wisconsin taxpayers ought to be rooting hard for conservatives to hold the line during this current federal government shutdown and let the pandemic-era super-subsidies for the Affordable Care Act run out at the end of the year.

There’s more evidence in recent days that the federal government spends money in two ways — too quickly and too slowly.

Among Wisconsin’s most populous counties, Dane County pays the highest interest on government debt on a per-resident basis.

Among Wisconsin’s large counties, Jefferson County’s government spent the most per resident — more than twice as much as the lowest-spending county government, Waukesha.

State agencies have begun their rush through a regulatory back door that will almost certainly cost owners of businesses large and small in Wisconsin tens of millions of dollars.

School choice is 41 percent more effective in Racine, and in the rest of Wisconsin, money going to choice is spent 33 percent more effectively than in district schools.

Wisconsin’s tourism resurgence has been built, at least in part, by more than $160 million in federal bailout money and a record doubling of the tourism department’s budget.

A state Supreme Court decision wresting rulemaking authority from elected state representatives has opened the door to a barrage of new regulations and fees in Wisconsin.

There are 541 days until the next Legislature’s sworn in, and there’s plenty of unfinished business

A federal judge’s injunction is blocking the closing down Job Corps centers — including two in Wisconsin — that have an expensive and dismal record ostensibly training the young and disadvantaged for work.

Federal taxpayers will save at least $2 million in grant money to Milwaukee PBS alone if the U.S. Senate approves a $1.1 billion defunding of public broadcasting.

Even if one isn’t moved by rising dependency, bigger government or the appalling waste of human potential, that immunity to fiscal disaster is enough to make Wisconsinites think: Thank God Wisconsin’s Republicans had a spine on Medicaid.

Public subsidies turn journalists into sycophants, undermine true scrutiny of government excess, distort the market for news and entertainment, create unfair competition for privately funded media, and are a waste of tax dollars.

President Trump’s executive order to halt federal funding for public broadcasting will save taxpayers nearly $8.5 million annually in reduced federal outlays to public television and radio networks in Wisconsin alone.

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.

With fewer passengers and mostly empty seats, it’s time to shut down the Hop, Milwaukee’s $128 million streetcar.