A new home for the Budget Blog
As of May 2025, the Budget Blog is available exclusively for WisPolitics subscribers on the State Affairs Wisconsin platform.
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Posts from before May 2025 can be viewed below.
The Joint Finance Committee today voted to prohibit people in the future from entering into a type of domestic partnerships available only to same-sex couples under state law. Republicans pitched it as a fairness issue, noting that specific arrangement and the benefits
The committee unanimously approved providing less money to cover overtime costs at state prisons than Gov. Scott Walker proposed as Dems Republicans weren’t doing enough to boost pay and morale for guards. The committee’s action dropped the amount available for
The committee approved 12-4 Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to kill the the Local Government Property Insurance Fund, which has seen municipalities flee over the last two years, spooked by a 2015 attempt to kill it and a more than 70-percent
The committee voted 12-4 along party lines to go along with Gov. Scott Walker’s call to end providing domestic partner benefits to state and local public employees. The move would end all health insurance coverage for partners and dependents of
The committee unanimously signed off on giving state and UW employees raises in 2018 and 2019. Under the plan, non-UW state employees would get a 2 percent raise Sept. 30, 2018, and another 2 percent on May 26, 2019. To
The Joint Finance Committee today unanimously shot down Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to self-insure state workers, putting an end for now to an effort the Walker administration has studied for years. The committee rejected Walker’s plan on a bipartisan 16-0
After taking last week off, the Joint Finance Committee will meet Thursday to resume voting on the budget. But its agenda does not include the biggest sticking points left to work out, including transportation, taxes and K-12 funding. The committee
Speaker Robin Vos vowed today his caucus would not rubber stamp Scott Walker’s budget, while the guv and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald dismissed the Assembly GOP’s K-12 proposal as a non-starter. Backed by members of his caucus, Vos touted
The Joint Finance Committee will not meet tomorrow, according to the offices of the co-chairs. It’s the second planned meeting this week the committee has canceled amid a continuing standoff between Assembly and Senate Republicans on education funding, transportation and
Assembly Republicans today released final details of a plan that would invest about $580 million more into K-12 over the next two years compared to current levels. But that’s about $70 million less than Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal. And while
Republican divisions over the state budget took a twist today as Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald raised the prospect of his house doing its own version of the document. Bypassing the JFC would be unprecedented in the 106-year history of
The Joint Finance Committee is dropping plans to meet tomorrow with Assembly and Senate Republicans hitting an impasse on major pieces remaining in the budget such as K-12 funding, transportation and taxes, according to the offices of the co-chairs. JFC
The Joint Finance Committee will meet June 13 on whether it’ll approve the self-insurance contracts Gov. Scott Walker’s administration reached. JFC co-chairs John Nygren and Alberta Darling have said the committee will reject those contracts with six companies, taking issue
The committee approved giving the DNR secretary the authority to raise daily entrance fees at most state parks and forests by $5 and nightly camping fees up to $10 as the guv wanted. But it nixed his proposal to allow
The committee approved 12-4 earmarking $3.4 million from existing, unobligated stewardship bonding to aid five projects. The biggest two were $1 million each for Iron County to rebuild Saxon Harbor marina and campground and for the acquisition of a 13-mile
The Joint Finance Committee rejected Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to eliminate the DNR’s Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine. But the committee approved 12-4 publishing the magazine four times a year rather than the current six. The motion also designated the DNR
The committee approved repealing the requirement the DNR to establish a grant program to remove car-killed deer from Wisconsin roads and transfer the responsibility to the DOT. The Department of Transportation would be required to contract with private vendors, counties
The committee approved GOP earmarks through the Department of Tourism that include that include $7,500 for the city of Pittsville to put up a sign marking the geographic center of Wisconsin. The earmark would come from the Department of Tourism’s
The committee signed off on the guv’s plan to give Supreme Court justices and state judges a pay boost. But it rejected Scott Walker’s call to create a new method for determining judicial pay going forward. The guv called for
The Joint Finance Committee voted to cut the Parole Commission in half, but rejected the guv’s call to wipe it out. Walker wanted to eliminate the eight-member Parole Commission and instead rely on a new appointee in the Department of
