This week is shaping up to be the most consequential period in constructing the state’s two-year budget as the Legislature’s budget committee commits to funding plans for schools, highways, child care and public health.
In addition to the budget, Tuesday the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) will vote on two other bills to move ahead the deal that Gov. Tony Evers, Republican leaders in the Senate and the Assembly, Milwaukee’s mayor and the Milwaukee County executive reached last week over funding for local government and education. Both bills are outside the budget legislation, but they also affect how much the state spends.
Broadly, the local government funding bill provides for a 20% increase in state aid to local governments statewide along with a mechanism that will allow the city and county of Milwaukee to increase sales taxes. It also imposes numerous restrictions on local governments, many of them specifically focused on Milwaukee.
The Assembly passed its version of the local government funding bill, AB-245, on a party-line vote in May. Its Senate companion, SB-301, passed a Senate committee Monday, also on a party-line vote. Differences between the two versions and changes as a result of last week’s negotiations have yet to be incorporated in the legislation.
During Monday’s committee vote, senators from both parties acknowledged that there would be further changes. The timing of those revisions was unclear Monday.
Sens. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) and Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) voted against the bill in committee, but Spreitzer said he wasn’t ruling out a vote for it on the Senate floor Wednesday once it has been amended.
State Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee)
At the same time, two Milwaukee lawmakers have already announced they would oppose the legislation, calling instead for a “clean” shared revenue bill that would increase aid to Milwaukee and other local governments without imposing new restrictions.
“The solution to financial difficulties caused by a lack of shared revenue is not to continue to starve us of our own shared revenue,” Reps. Ryan Clancy and Darrin Madison, both Milwaukee Democrats, said in a joint statement released after they rallied with a coalition of social activist groups in the Capitol rotunda Monday morning.
School spending
A second bill, AB-305/SB-330, will reset the boundaries on funding for taxpayer-financed independent charter schools and private voucher schools in Wisconsin as well as increasing the revenue caps for public school districts.
The bill raises the state’s per-pupil payment to participating private schools by about $1,000 to $9,500 for K-8 students, and by about $3,000 per pupil for students at private high schools, to just under $12,000. Special needs vouchers are increased to just under $14,700 per student. Independent charter schools would get an increase of about $1,700 to just under $11,000 per student.
For public school districts, the legislation raises the minimum limit on revenue school districts can raise from local property taxes and state aid to $11,000 per student. (Total revenue limits can be higher as determined by a complex formula.)
At a Senate Education Committee hearing Monday, only groups in support of the bill — a collection of advocates for charter and voucher schools — gave testimony.
On Twitter Monday, Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) called the bill “a massive expansion of private school vouchers,” adding: “The hearing was held on short notice at 10am on a Monday when Milwaukee Public Schools is still in session, meaning teachers there had no ability to testify before the bill is set to be voted out of committee and brought to the Senate floor this week.”
An Assembly hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning at which critics as well as supporters have made plans to appear.
Republicans who make up the majority on the finance committee have kept their plans close to the vest throughout the process, but the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) budget will be shaped in part by the new school funding bill as well as the negotiations that produced that legislation.
The DPI budget and the budget for the University of Wisconsin System are on Tuesday’s budget agenda, along with the Department of Transportation (DOT), which includes funding for local road and bridge repairs, major highway projects as well as mass transit.
Funding for DOT projects has also become more challenging as gas tax revenue — the primary source — has grown flatter with the rise of more fuel-efficient as well as electric and hybrid vehicles.
Child care
On Thursday, the state’s child care crisis will take center stage as lawmakers consider the Department of Children and Families (DCF) budget. The Department of Health Services (DHS) and Department of Military Affairs will also be on the agenda.
Besides education, child care funding, administered by DCF, has been possibly the highest profile topic in budget lobbying and public hearings.
The immediate focus is on continuing the Child Care Counts financial stabilization program that began during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a related program providing grants for employers that purchase child care for their employees. Advocates have asked for up to $340 million to continue those programs, currently funded by federal pandemic relief money that will run out by early 2024.
On Monday, the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association announced that more than 18,000 letters have gone to state lawmakers in support of the funding, which child care providers used to avoid tuition hikes while raising wages for employees. The letters were part of a campaign, Raising Wisconsin, that the association launched to build support for stronger state support for child care.
Ruth Schmidt, executive director, Wis. Early Childhood Assn.
“We know a lot of legislators have talked about hearing from Raising Wisconsin and seeing the materials from Raising Wisconsin,” Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, told the Wisconsin Examiner.
The campaign has included a letter to lawmakers signed by business owners and business groups as well as additional letters by individual business operators, she said. Providers and advocates have called and visited lawmakers, and providers organized A Day Without Child Care to draw attention to the critical nature of child care services in making it possible for more people to go to work and more businesses to fill jobs.
On that day, May 8, “we saw very significant activity on social media,” Schmidt said — so much that the Raising Wisconsin Facebook page crashed for a time after being inundated with posts from “parents and educators just saying, this is enough — we really need this investment in child care.”
Even with all that work, “We have an uphill battle on our hands still, and we still need people to take action — to let, especially, members of the Joint Finance Committee know how critical ongoing funding for Child Care Counts is,” Schmidt said.
New projects that were not part of the state budget in previous years have had difficulty getting funded this time, she acknowledged. Nonetheless, she said she expects “an intense discussion” on child care during Thursday’s deliberations.
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originally published at https%3A%2F%2Fwisconsinexaminer.com%2F2023%2F06%2F13%2Frevenue-education-and-child-care-measures-will-make-for-a-climactic-state-budget-week%2F by Erik Gunn
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