The Wisconsin legislature adopts and the Governor approves a biennial budget covering the period from July 1 of one odd-numbered year through June 30 of the next odd-numbered year. The Governor is required by law to deliver the budget message to the new legislature on or before the last Tuesday in January, although the legislature can extend the deadline at the Governor’s request.
The Legislature then considers and revises the Governor’s proposed budget, approves its own version, and sends it to the Governor for final approval. The Governor has significant but not unlimited veto powers. To meet the state’s budgetary cycle, the budget should be signed and effective by July 1 of the odd-numbered year. If there is a delay, state agencies operate at their appropriation authority from the prior budget until the new budget is in effect.
As this is being written, the Governor and legislative leaders are negotiating the 2023–2025 budget. Because the Governor is a far-left progressive and a majority of the legislature consists of moderate Republicans and Democrats, budget negotiations are sometimes intense. During budget negotiations in 2021, the Governor proposed massive tax and spending hikes. The MacIver Institute reported,
Governor Evers originally proposed a gigantic $91 billion spending plan that, according to the Governor, would help Wisconsin recover from the ill effects of COVID-19 and his shutdown of the state’s economy. Just like the Governor’s first budget, his 2021–2023 budget sought to meretriciously increase the size, scope, reach and cost of state government. The Governor sought to increase spending by an eye-popping $7 billion, raise taxes by $1.6 billion on the many in order to hand out aid to the select few, add 300 more state employees to our already superabundance of taxpayer-financed bureaucrats, borrow a record-setting $3.6 billion in bonding, allow all local units of government to increase property taxes by at least 2% and create dozens of new initiatives to address critical race theory, white supremacy, equity and global warming.
The legislature responded by proposing more modest spending hikes ($5.2 billion) and tax cuts totaling $4 billion. See the table below.
The MacIver Institute article quoted above provides insight into the Governor’s priorities and the battles that take place in Madison. Unfortunately, nobody in Madison is talking about reducing the size and cost of government, rather than just debate how much bigger it should get. Why isn’t there a single state legislator willing to say “enough is enough!”
Links to the current biennial budget and past budgets can be found here:
https://doa.wi.gov/Pages/StateFinances/CurrentBiennialBudget.aspx
