Browsing: Spending and Accountability

Wisconsin’s largest school district, whose voters narrowly approved a quarter-billion dollar increase in funding last spring, is breaking the news to those voters that it may have to close some schools. But the process isn’t moving quickly.

How does Wisconsin’s spending compare to other states? It depends which ones you’re looking at and what sort of spending counts.

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.

Many Wisconsin independents and conservatives were hoodwinked this week into voting against the two constitutional amendments that together would have given legislators shared responsibility with the governor over big buckets of federal spending.

Passing the amendments would give Wisconsin’s 33 state Senators and 99 state Assembly members, elected by you, a say in where huge sums of federal money go. It doesn’t get much more democratic than that.

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.

Gov. Tony Evers remains silent on the call for him to intervene in the Milwaukee Public Schools meltdown and use his education background to set up a new governance structure.  

Gov. Tony Evers, a former state Superintendent of Public Instruction, has a unique opportunity given his skill set to take charge of the Milwaukee Public Schools, a former MPS superintendent said.

Wisconsin is handing out almost $79 million in federal funds to private businesses to build charging stations for electric vehicles at a make-or-break moment for both the EV and charging station industries.

The Social Development Commission, Wisconsin’s largest anti-poverty social services agency, abruptly closed its doors in late April after the latest in a series of scandals stretching back over more than 30 years.

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.” 

If voters approve two constitutional amendment questions this coming August, Wisconsin would join 34 other states whose governors and legislators have authority over major federal funding allocations.

When the president tells borrowers not to bother paying back what they owe, it isn’t relief in the way medicine relieves your pain — it doesn’t alter any painful underlying causes. It isn’t forgiveness in the divine sense, metaphysically washing away the stain. The stain remains in the form of blood-red ink on the federal books.

The number of tenured faculty in the University of Wisconsin System has fallen roughly in line with the decrease in student enrollment since 2015.

At the national level, recent studies show that small businesses are not contracting with the federal government as frequently as in the past. And those that do are becoming more concentrated in a handful of congressional districts around Washington, where rent seeking is the norm.

State Rep. Bob Donovan is seeking a state audit of the Milwaukee Public Schools.

The status quo is on the ballot come April 2. Milwaukee simply cannot afford more mismanagement from MPS.

Enrollment in schools run by Milwaukee Public Schools district is now down to 59,200 — a dramatic and larger decline than is often acknowledged in a district that is asking its voters for $252 million more a year in funding in an April 2 referendum.

The children in MPS deserve better. The city deserves better. There is no realistic argument that more money is the solution. To the extent a big influx of cash allows further complacency, it is more likely to hurt.