MADISON — Gov. Tony Evers, together with Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA) Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld, today announced increased 2026 municipal services payments for Wisconsin municipalities. Thanks to increases secured by Gov. Evers in the 2025-27 Biennial Budget, prorated state payments will increase from 37.6 percent in 2025 to a total of 44 percent of costs incurred by municipalities in 2026. This is the first increase for the Municipal Service Payment Program in over two decades, and these payments reimburse a portion of expenses, including fire, safety, and waste services that municipalities incur for state buildings located around the state, including agency and University of Wisconsin System facilities.
“The state must be a partner in—not an obstacle to—our local communities’ success, and for far too long, our local communities have been forced to do more with less,” said Gov. Evers. “These increased payments will go a long way in helping our municipalities provide essential services and continue to do their good work to keep our kids, families, and communities safe, healthy, and well.”
Gov. Evers has championed efforts to increase support for local communities and shared revenue since he first took office over six years ago. As part of negotiations for the 2023-25 Biennial Budget, Gov. Evers was proud to work with Republican leadership to deliver on his promise to increase funding for local communities across the state. Thanks to these conversations, in 2023, Gov. Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 12, which provided a historic increase in support to local communities statewide and tied local government funding to the state sales tax going forward, allowing for future growth. In October 2024, Gov. Evers announced that an estimated over $1.5 billion in shared revenue was provided to local governments in 2025.
Building on this work, in his 2025-27 Executive Budget, Gov. Evers proposed an overdue increase of $17 million in fiscal year 2025-26 for the Municipal Services Payment Program, which would have increased its current funding level of nearly $18.6 million by over 90 percent. The governor’s proposal also would have increased the percentage the state pays for these local services back up to over 72 percent of the costs, the highest in over 15 years.
Despite being less than what Gov. Evers originally proposed, the final 2025-27 Biennial Budget invested $14 million in local communities across the state through municipal service payments to ensure local communities have the resources they need to meet basic and unique needs alike. Prior to the last state budget, funding for the Municipal Services Payment Program had not been increased since 2003.
“While Gov. Evers fought to nearly double funding for municipal expenses incurred from helping maintain our state buildings, our match would have dropped to 32 percent without this additional funding,” said DOA Secretary Blumenfeld. “Ensuring this modest increase will help communities as they face increased costs, and as our partners in providing high-quality services to Wisconsin residents.”
Additional information is available on the Municipal Services Payments Program website.
