Browsing: Tracking the Trillions

After Gov. Tony Evers announced last week he was diverting $36.6 million in federal emergency pandemic funds for, among other things, a soccer stadium, a sports center and a railroad museum, state Sen. Duey Stroebel tweeted, “I struggle to see how any of these projects relate to pandemic relief.”

The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated this week that people who filed for unemployment insurance during the pandemic stole somewhere between $100 billion and $135 billion in benefits — just a portion of the estimated fraud across all federal pandemic programs.

Gov. Tony Evers has asked that Wisconsin spend another $750 million to expand broadband in the state without knowing the current status of nearly $100 million in broadband projects paid for with federal pandemic funds.

The public is unlikely to ever know how the state Department of Administration came to decide how to allocate and spend nearly $4 billion from three federal pandemic emergency spending bills.

Questioned by a sometimes frustrated Joint Legislative Audit Committee Tuesday at the Capitol, DOA leaders acknowledged that many of the decisions about how to allocate money to state agencies and local governments were made in phone conversations and emails with Gov. Tony Evers and his staff that were not documented.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has added the $500 million to his 2023-25 budget to address a “burgeoning crisis” in mental and behavioral health, particularly among Wisconsin children, created by the impact of the pandemic. In his State of the State address, he declared 2023 the Year of Mental Health.

The Legislative Audit Bureau criticized the state Department of Administration for its lack of openness in how it is deploying $5.7 billion in federal health emergency funds granted to Wisconsin.

The audit report, released Wednesday, comes months after the Badger Institute first called for a comprehensive audit of all state spending of funds provided through the CARES Act, American Rescue Plan Act and the Investment and Jobs Act.

Using billions of emergency pandemic bill dollars to plug gaping holes in their budgets, local governments across Wisconsin and the country are setting themselves up to ask for tax increases or slash services as basic as police and fire protection when the federal funding runs out. 

Twenty months after Congress passed a bill that rained $2.53 billion down on Wisconsin, the governor’s office in sole charge of administering the funding, as well as  legislative audit and budget officials, have almost no idea of how all that money is being spent.

Flummoxed by a staggering amount of money and by guidelines for how to spend it, Wisconsin counties and cities are spending tens of millions of dollars of American Rescue Plan Act funds to try to administer American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Awash in federal bailout cash, some Wisconsin cities ask for a property tax hike 

Turns out, as it always does when you look at where federal tax dollars end up in this country, Wisconsin is bringing up the tail end in the scramble for COVID cash.
January 13, 2022

By now, the health emergency has little to do with it

Sometime during the 2023 session, the Wisconsin Legislature is expected to approve a resolution proposing that voters consider amending the state constitution to restore long-lost legislative oversight of major federal spending initiatives in the state.

Wisconsin voters could make 2023 a watershed year for oversight of currently unchecked spending of billions of dollars of federal funding flowing into the state.

At the height of the initial COVID-19 outbreak, correctional and other public safety agencies in Wisconsin bought at least 55 disinfection robots at a cost of more than $2.2 million.

Milwaukee, Madison and Wausau plan to pay certain low-income families monthly stipends with no strings attached