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If Wisconsin state Rep. Jimmy Anderson wants to visit residents in some of the northern neighborhoods he represents, he first must leave his own district — twice.

From his Fitchburg home in suburban Madison, Anderson must exit his 47th Assembly District, pass through the 77th District, reenter the 47th District, then head north through the 48th District to finally reach a cluster of homes assigned like a remote outpost to his district.

Unusual? Yes. Inconvenient? Yes.

Unconstitutional? Perhaps.

Though the Wisconsin Constitution requires legislative districts “to consist of contiguous territory,” many nonetheless contain sections of land that are not actually connected. The resulting map looks a bit like Swiss cheese, where some districts are dotted with small neighborhood holes assigned to different representatives.

Wisconsin’s nationally peculiar practice of detached districts is cited as one of several alleged violations in a recent lawsuit seeking to strike down current Assembly and Senate districts and replace them before the 2024 election.

Like similar cases in states ranging from North Carolina to Utah, the Wisconsin lawsuit also alleges partisan gerrymandering is illegal under the state constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and free speech.

Though such claims have had mixed results nationally, Democrats hope the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new liberal majority will deliver a resounding rejection of gerrymandering that has given Republicans a lopsided legislative majority.

But the challenge to noncontiguous districts could provide judges a way to decide the case without ever addressing whether partisan gerrymandering is illegal.

“It could be that this gives the court a completely neutral basis for deciding the maps are no good,” said Kenneth R. Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

Wisconsin’s Assembly districts rank among the most tilted nationally, with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote, according to an Associated Press analysis. In other states, such as Nevada, Democrats have reaped a disproportionate advantage from redistricting.

Most states are guided by at least four traditional principles for reshaping state legislative districts after each decennial census. Those include districts being nearly equal in population, compact and contiguous and following the boundaries of cities and counties. “Contiguous” generally is understood to mean all parts of a district are connected, with some logical exceptions for islands.

In some states, mapmakers have gotten creative by using narrow strips of roads or rivers to connect otherwise distinct parts of a district. But few have gone so far as Wisconsin in treating contiguous as a loose synonym for “nearby.”

Wisconsin’s detached districts are ”profoundly weird,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount University Law School in Los Angeles who created the All About Redistricting website.

Anderson’s legislative district, for example, includes more than a dozen remote territories scattered around the Madison area that are disconnected from the district’s main portion in Fitchburg, McFarland and Monona. That makes door-to-door canvassing particularly challenging for Anderson, who uses a wheelchair that must be repeatedly loaded and unloaded from a van.

The situation also is confusing for his remote constituents whose neighbors are represented by someone else, Anderson said.

“It just doesn’t serve the people that live in those little bubbles to not have the same kind of community cohesion and interests being represented,” he said.

Gabrielle Young, 46, lives in one of the “land islands” Anderson represents. But until she was contacted by lawyers filing the redistricting lawsuit, Young said she had no idea Anderson had to travel through another district to campaign in her neighborhood. Young agreed to serve as a plaintiff in the lawsuit alleging the disconnected districts violate the state constitution.

“I could have gone the rest of my life living here not realizing it was happening, but that doesn’t make it OK,” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Among other things, the lawsuit cites an 1892 case in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court stated districts “cannot be made up of two or more pieces of detached territory.” Yet the practice proliferated over time, with 55 of the 99 Assembly districts and 21 of the 33 Senate districts now composed of disconnected portions, according to the lawsuit.

“Clearly, at some point, things sort of went awry,” said Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based group that helped bring the lawsuit.

“It seems pretty clear to me that you have to enforce the words as they are written,” Gaber added.

That has not always been the case.

In 1992, a federal judicial panel considering a Wisconsin redistricting lawsuit essentially endorsed detached legislative districts. Wisconsin’s Democratic-led Legislature and Republican governor had failed to agree on new districts following the 1990 census. The court was left to pick among various plans submitted by the parties. Republican plans proposed districts with literal contiguity, but the judges opted for a Democratic approach that did not.

The federal judges said legislative districts containing disconnected “islands” of land were similar to towns that had been legally permitted to annex noncontiguous areas.

“Since the distance between town and island is slight, we do not think the failure of the legislative plan to achieve literal contiguity a serious demerit,” the judges wrote in 1992.

The political roles are reversed 30 years later. Republicans, who now control the Legislature, proposed Assembly and Senate maps with disconnected districts that the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted last year. Democrats, who control the governor’s office, are backing the legal challenge.

“The districts are constitutional because they are legally contiguous,” Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in a statement to The Associated Press alluding to prior court rulings. He declined further comment.

Though contiguity requirements have a long national history in redistricting, they have not always been explicitly defined, thus leaving room for interpretation, said Micah Altman, a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose specialties include redistricting.

Criteria such as contiguous and compact districts must be balanced with other principles, such as distributing the population equally and not splitting municipalities and counties among districts, he said.

“Turning one knob on the system makes you have to turn down the other knob at least a bit,” Altman said.

In the case of Anderson’s district, the disconnected sections likely have not made much difference in the partisan composition of his voters. Anderson is a Democrat, and so are the majority of Madison-area voters.

But redistricting experts say there still is potential for politicians to rig the map to their favor by drawing remote sections of districts.

“When you allow mapmakers to draw districts that are noncontiguous, you give them even more flexibility to perpetrate abuse,” Levitt said.

Lawsuit targets Wisconsin legislative districts resembling Swiss cheese is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The conservative chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court accused her liberal colleagues of a “raw exercise of overreaching power” after they flexed their new majority Wednesday and fired the director of the state’s court system.

The four liberal justices, on just their second day as a majority on the court after 15 years under conservative control, voted to fire Randy Koschnick. Koschnick held the job for six years after serving for 18 years as a judge and running unsuccessfully as a conservative in 2009 against then-Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, a liberal.

“To say that I am disappointed in my colleagues is an understatement,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, now a member of the three-justice conservative minority, said in a lengthy statement after Koschnick was fired.

Ziegler said the move undermined her authority as chief justice. She called it unauthorized, procedurally and legally flawed, and reckless. But she said she would not attempt to stop it out of fear that other court employees could be similarly fired.

“My colleagues’ unprecedented dangerous conduct is the raw exercise of overreaching power,” she said. “It is shameful. I fear this is only the beginning.”

Fellow conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley blasted the move in a social media post, saying, “Political purges of court employees are beyond the pale.”

Koschnick called the move “apparently political.”

“I think that portends bad things for the court’s decision making going forward,” he said.

The court announced Wednesday evening that Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Audrey Skwierawski will serve as the interim director of state courts beginning Thursday. Skwierawski will take a leave from her position on the circuit court, where she has served since her appointment by former Gov. Scott Walker in 2018, it said.

The justices who voted to fire Koschnick did not respond to a request for comment left with the court’s spokesperson.

Ziegler noted that when conservatives took control of the court in 2008, they did not act to fire the director of state courts at that time, John Voelker. He remained in the position for six more years before resigning.

Ziegler praised Koschnick for his 18 years as a judge and his efforts as director of the state court system, a job that includes hiring court personnel and maintaining the statewide computer system for courts. She also applauded him for addressing the mental health needs of people in the court system, tackling a court reporter shortage and keeping courts operating during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Koschnick said he could have accepted his firing — and ensured a smoother transition with his successor — if the justices had waited to do it at a planned administrative meeting next month. Instead, he said, court workers are boxing up his personal belongings while he is in New York at a judicial conference.

“It creates a really unstable workplace,” he said.

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A lawsuit filed Wednesday asks Wisconsin’s newly liberal-controlled state Supreme Court to throw out Republican-drawn legislative maps as unconstitutional, the latest legal challenge of many nationwide that could upset political boundary lines before the 2024 election.

The long-promised action is backed by Democrats and was filed by a coalition of law firms and voting rights advocacy groups. It comes the day after the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped from a conservative to liberal majority, with the start of the term of a justice who said that the Republican maps were “rigged” and should be reviewed.

“Despite the fact that our legislative branch is meant to be the most directly representative of the people, the gerrymandered maps have divided our communities, preventing fair representation,” said Jeff Mandell, board president of Law Forward, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit.

The lawsuit asks that all 132 state lawmakers, including senators who were not scheduled to be on the ballot in 2024, be up for election that year in newly drawn districts.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said Democrats were “counting on judicial fiat to help them gain power.” He accused them of “coming to collect” from the newly elected liberal Supreme Court justice.

The Wisconsin lawsuit is just one of many expected or pending court challenges that could force lawmakers or special commissions to draw yet another set of maps before the 2024 election. In one of the most recent examples, Alabama lawmakers passed new congressional districts last month after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that its districts violated federal law by diluting the voting strength of Black residents. Voting rights advocates are challenging the new map as well, contending it still falls short.

All states were required to redraw voting district boundaries after the 2020 census. In states where one political party controlled that process, mapmakers often sought to create an advantage for their party by packing opponents’ voters into a few districts or spreading them among multiple districts — a process known as gerrymandering.

The latest challenge asks the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take the case directly, rather than have it work through lower courts, arguing that the state legislative maps are an unconstitutional gerrymander. Notably, the lawsuit does not challenge the congressional maps.

Dan Lenz, an attorney at Law Forward, did not rule out a future challenge to the congressional maps, saying targeting the legislative maps is a “first step.”

The petition filed with the Supreme Court argues that the current maps unconstitutionally retaliate against some voters based on their viewpoint and free speech; create non-contiguous districts that include scattered fragments of detached territory; treat some voters worse than others based on their political views and where they live; and violate the promise of a free government.

It also argues that by enacting maps that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed, that Supreme Court violated the state’s separation of powers principle and the governor’s constitutional authority to veto bills.

It would be up to the court to decide how new maps would be drawn and who would submit them, Mandell said.

Evers praised the lawsuit.

“Today’s filing is great news for our democracy and for the people of our state whose demands for fair maps and a nonpartisan redistricting process have gone repeatedly ignored by their legislators for years,” Evers said in a statement.

In addition to Law Forward, others who brought the lawsuit on behalf of Wisconsin voters are the Stafford Rosenbaum law firm, Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Campaign Legal Center, and the Arnold & Porter law firm.

In 2021, the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court decided that it would adopt maps that had the least amount of change as possible from the previous maps drawn in 2011 by Republicans. Those maps, which also survived a challenge that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, were widely regarded as among the most gerrymandered in favor of Republicans in the country.

In a sign of how much the 2011 maps entrenched Republican power in the Legislature, Democrats won every statewide race in 2018 and 53% of the statewide legislative vote. And yet, Democrats won just 36 of the state’s 99 Assembly seats.

Republicans currently hold a 64-35 majority in the Assembly and a 22-11 majority in the Senate.

The state Supreme Court in 2022 initially adopted a map drawn by Evers, plans that largely preserved the district lines favoring Republicans. But the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2022 rejected the legislative maps while it accepted the congressional map.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, on a 4-3 vote then adopted Republican-drawn legislative maps. The court’s three liberal justices dissented. They are now in the majority with the arrival of Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose 10-year term began Tuesday.

Protasiewicz ran with support from Democrats and other critics of the current maps and was outspoken during the campaign about her desire to revisit the issue.

“The map issue is really kind of easy, actually,” Protasiewicz said during a candidate debate. “I don’t think anybody thinks those maps are fair. Anybody.”

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A freshman Republican congressman from Wisconsin is refusing to apologize after he yelled and cursed at high school-aged Senate pages during a late night tour of the Capitol this week, eliciting a bipartisan rebuke from Senate leaders.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, speaking in a round of interviews Friday on Wisconsin conservative talk radio, did not refute reports of his actions or back down from what he did.

Van Orden used a profanity to describe the pages as lazy and and another to order them off the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday night, according to a report in the online political newsletter PunchBowl News. The pages were laying down to take photos in the Rotunda, according to the publication.

“I’m not going to apologize for making sure that anybody — I don’t care who you are and who you’re related to — defiles this House,” Van Orden said on “The Dan O’Donnell Show.” “It’s not going to happen on my watch, man.”

Van Orden said he was protecting the integrity of the Capitol Rotunda because it served as a field hospital during the Civil War and it’s where presidents have lain in state upon their deaths. He said the young people he confronted were “goofing off” and that Democrats were making it an issue.

“Would this be an issue if those young people did not have political connections?” Van Orden said on “The Jay Weber Show.” “Why do you think this is an issue, pal?”

A former Navy SEAL who was outside of the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, Van Orden also appeared to embrace the presence of alcohol in his office the same evening he encountered the pages. Images were posted on social media showing bottles of liquor and beer cans on a desk in his office. Van Orden said on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that the alcohol was from constituents.

And his spokeswoman Anna Kelly posted: “As the Congressman says, once you cross the threshold to our office, you are in Wisconsin!” She followed that with a beer mug emoji.

Van Orden represents Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, a GOP-leaning jurisdiction that comprises parts of central, southwestern and western Wisconsin, including moderate exurbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

On Thursday evening, just before the Senate left for its August recess, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rebuked Van Orden’s behavior and thanked the pages, high school-age students who serve as helpers and messengers around the Senate. Several of the pages were sitting on the Senate floor at the time, smiling and nodding as dozens of senators stood and gave them a standing ovation.

Without mentioning Van Orden by name, Schumer said he was “shocked” to hear about the behavior of a member of the House Republican majority and “further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people.” He noted that Thursday was the final day for this class of pages.

“They’re here when we need them,” Schumer said. “And they have served this institution with grace.”

McConnell said he associated himself with Schumer’s words. “Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way,” he said.

When asked about McConnell’s rebuke, Van Orden said Friday “I don’t know what it was because I honestly have not tracked any of this stuff.”

Van Orden was elected to Congress in 2022 after a losing bid in 2020. He has insisted that he did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and on Friday again condemned those who did, calling them “buffoons.” That didn’t stop fellow Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat, from invoking the Jan. 6 attack in criticizing Van Orden.

“Wonder if he told that to his fellow insurrectionists, who were beating police officers on the same ground?” Pocan said on X.

Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat who is running to challenge Van Orden in 2024, called him an embarrassment and a hypocrite. She called Van Orden a “serial harasser” and referenced an incident in June 2021 when Van Orden was upset about a display of LGBTQ+ books at a southwestern Wisconsin library and yelled at a teenager who was working there.

“For someone to perhaps drunkenly, and definitely belligerently, yell at these kids for enjoying our nation’s Capitol is just stupid,” Pocan said Friday. “He would be best to say it was stupid and just move on.”

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The Milwaukee County board voted Thursday to nearly double the county’s sales tax, two weeks after the city of Milwaukee approved a local sales tax increase as part of a bipartisan plan to avoid bankruptcy.

Both the city and county, which make up the state’s largest metropolitan areas, faced running out of money without additional revenue to pay for basic services such as police and fire protection, park maintenance and libraries.

Milwaukee leaders, together with a broad statewide coalition, successfully lobbied the Republican-controlled Legislature to increase funding for all local governments in the state by $275 million and tie future increases to state sales tax revenue under a plan signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

Under that plan, Milwaukee County and the city were allowed to raise additional money through local sales taxes. The Milwaukee Common Council earlier this month approved a 2% sales tax. And on Thursday, the county board voted to approve a 0.4% sales tax increase, nearly doubling the current rate of 0.5%. Combined with the state sales tax rate of 5%, the total tax rate in the city of Milwaukee will be 7.9%.

The higher rates will take effect in January.

Both city and county leaders warned of dire consequences without the additional money that the higher sales taxes will generate.

The additional money will allow the city and county to make additional payments to their underfunded pension systems. Milwaukee County alone faces a $760 million pension liability. City and county leaders also warned of reduced services, such as fewer bus routes, selling off public parks, less snow removal and potential library closures, and hundreds of layoffs of police and firefighters.

“Simply put, revenues fund public services,” Milwaukee County Board Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson said before the vote. “Without revenue, we cannot fund public services. … Failure is simply not an option in my mind.”

The higher county sales tax rate is expected to bring an additional $82 million a year to the county in the first year. That will allow the county to have a budget surplus instead of a projected $18 million deficit. But even with the additional sales tax revenue, the county is projected to have a $13 million funding gap in 2026.

Critics of the plan argued it would hurt lower income people. Opponents also objected to strings attached to additional state funding for the city of Milwaukee, including curbing spending on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

County Supervisor Ryan Clancy said if the sales tax increase had gone to a vote of the people, it would have failed in the face of opposition from the poorest and working class residents. He pushed unsuccessfully for delaying a vote until a more detailed plan for how the money is spent could be prepared.

The county board voted 15-3 to approve the sales tax increase. It required a two-thirds majority, or 12 of the 18 supervisors, to succeed.

The law requires the money raised from the sales tax to go toward paying off the pension debt and public safety. The additional sales tax would end after the pension liability is paid off.

Wisconsin state law does not allow for cities to declare bankruptcy, which means the Legislature would have to vote to allow the city or county to take that step if the city were to run out of money.

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Wisconsin’s Supreme Court will flip from majority conservative to liberal control in August and Democrats have high hopes the change will lead to the state’s abortion ban being overturned and its maps redrawn to weaken GOP control of the Legislature and congressional districts.

Democrats in the perennial battleground state focused on abortion to elect a liberal majority to the court for the first time in 15 years. The Democratic Party spent $8 million to tilt the court’s 4-3 conservative majority by one seat with the election of Janet Protasiewicz, who spoke in favor of abortion rights and against the Republican-drawn map in a campaign. Her April victory broke national spending records for a state Supreme Court race.

Still, there are no guarantees. Republicans were angered when a conservative candidate they backed in 2019 turned out to sometimes side with liberal justices.

While the court is widely expected to weigh in on abortion and redistricting, liberals also are talking about bringing new challenges to school choice, voter ID, the 12-year-old law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers and other laws backed by Republicans.

“When you don’t know the extent of the battle you may have to fight, it’s concerning,” said attorney Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. “It’s very concerning.”

Some issues could take years to reach the court, said liberal attorney Lester Pines, who like Esenberg has argued numerous times before the state Supreme Court. Unlike under the conservative majority, Pines said the new liberal court will be unlikely to rule on cases before lower courts have heard them.

“They’re not going to do it,” Pines said.

There is already a pending case challenging Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War era abortion ban, and a circuit court judge ruled earlier this month that it can proceed, while also calling into question whether the law actually bans abortions.

The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court within months. Protasiewicz all but promised to overturn the ban by repeatedly speaking out for abortion rights, winning support from Planned Parenthood and others.

“When you’re a politician and you’re perceived by the voters as making a promise, and you don’t keep it, they get angry,” Esenberg said.

There is no current redistricting lawsuit, but Democrats or their allies are expected to file a new challenge this summer seeking new districts before the 2024 election.

The state Supreme Court upheld Republican-drawn maps in 2022. Those maps, widely regarded as among the most gerrymandered in the country, have helped Republicans increase their hold on the Legislature to near supermajority levels, even as Democrats have won statewide elections, including Tony Evers as governor in 2018 and 2022 and Joe Biden in 2020.

Protasizewicz declared those maps to be “rigged” and said during the campaign they should be given another look. Democrats also hope for new congressional maps improving their chances in the state’s two most competitive House districts, held by Republicans.

“What we want to see is maps that are fair and that represent the will of the people and the actual make up of their state,” Democratic strategist Melissa Baldauff said.

Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point. The outgoing conservative court came within one vote of overturning Biden’s win in 2020. The new court will be in control to hear any challenges leading up to the election and in the months after.

That includes voting rules. Courts have repeatedly upheld Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement, in place since 2011, but some Democrats see a chance to challenge it again, particularly over what IDs can legally be shown. There is also a looming fight over the state’s top elections administrator.

“It seems to me that the most consequential topics that could come before the new court would have to do with elections,” said Alan Ball, a Marquette University Law School history professor who runs a statistical analysis blog of the court and tendencies of justices.

Considering comments Protasiewicz made during the campaign, “it’s really hard for me to imagine she would not side with the liberals on those issues,” Ball said.

A national Democratic law firm filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to undo a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling last year banning absentee ballot drop boxes. The case could make its way to the state high court before the 2024 presidential election.

Other sticky issues that have garnered bipartisan criticism, including powers of the governor, also could come before the new court.

Evers surprised many with a veto this year putting in place a school spending increase for 400 years. Republicans said a challenge was likely.

In 2021, the court struck down three of Evers’ previous partial vetoes but failed to give clear guidance on what is allowed.

A Wisconsin governor’s veto power is expansive and used by Republicans and Democrats, but the new court could weigh in on whether it should be scaled back. Esenberg, who brought the previous case challenging Evers’ veto powers, said he expected another legal challenge in light of the 400-year veto.

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Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that attempts to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years drew outrage and surprise from his political opponents, but it’s just the latest creative cut in a state that’s home to the most powerful partial gubernatorial veto in the country.

“Everybody will shout and scream,” said former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, “but he’s got ’em.”

Wisconsin governors have the most expansive partial veto power in the country because, unlike in other states, they can strike nearly any part of a budget bill. That includes wiping out numbers, punctuation and words in spending bills to sometimes create new law that wasn’t the intention of the Legislature.

That’s exactly what the Democratic Evers did on Wednesday with a two-year state budget passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The Legislature had language in the budget increasing the per pupil spending authority for K-12 public schools by $325 in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. Evers, a former state education secretary and public school teacher and administrator before that, vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425.

The change means that until a future Legislature and governor undo it, the amount schools can spend through a combination of property taxes and state aid will increase by $325 annually until 2425. That’s farther in the future — 402 years — than the United States has been a country — 247 years.

“It’s creative for sure,” said Bill McCoshen, a lobbyist who previously worked under former Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Creative, but not unprecedented.

Reshaping state budgets through the partial veto is a longstanding act of gamesmanship in Wisconsin between the governor and Legislature, as lawmakers try to craft bills in a way that are largely immune from creative vetoes. Vetoes, even the most outlandish, are almost never overridden because it takes a two-thirds majority of the Legislature to do it.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, during a Thursday interview on WISN-AM, vowed to try, though he admitted it would be difficult.

Vos called Evers’ 400-year veto “an unprecedented brand-new way to screw the taxpayer … that was never imagined by a previous governor and certainly wouldn’t by anybody who thinks there is a fair process in Wisconsin.”

Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2017 used his veto power to extend the deadline of a state program program from 2018 to 3018. That came to be known as the “thousand-year veto.” He also delayed the start date of another program by 60 years.

The Republican Thompson was known for his use of the “Vanna White” veto, named for the co-host of Wheel of Fortune who flips letters to reveal word phrases. Thompson holds the record for the most partial vetoes by any governor in a single year — 457 in 1991. Evers this year made 51.

Wisconsin’s partial veto is uniquely powerful because it allows the governor to change the intent of the Legislature, just as Evers did, said Kristoffer Shields, director of the Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University. Shields said he plans to cite the latest Evers veto when teaching about executive power.

“Many people in Wisconsin, I suspect, are surprised that the governor can do this,” Shields said. “And now that we know he can do this, that can lead to changes.”

Wisconsin’s partial veto power was created by a 1930 constitutional amendment, but it’s been weakened over the years, including in reaction to vetoes made by Thompson and Doyle.

Voters adopted a constitutional amendments in 1990 and 2008 that took away the ability to strike individual letters to make new words — the “Vanna White” veto — and eliminated the power to eliminate words and numbers in two or more sentences to create a new sentence — the “Frankenstein” veto. Numerous court decisions have also narrowed the veto power.

Rick Esenberg, director of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said he expected there to be a legal challenge to Evers’ 400-year veto.

“This is just a ridiculous way to make law,” Esenberg said.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with Esenberg’s group and undid three of Evers’ partial vetoes in 2020, but a majority of justices did not issue clear guidance on what was allowed. Two justices did say that partial vetoes can’t be used to create new policies. In August, the court flips from conservative to liberal control. That further clouds how it may rule on veto power, an issue that over the decades has drawn bipartisan support and criticism.

Even as questions about the legality of the veto swirl, conservatives are trying to benefit politically by arguing that the ever-increasing spending authority Evers enacted will open the door to higher property taxes.

“The veto would allow property taxes to skyrocket over the next 400 years,” Republican Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August said in a statement. “Taxpayers need to remember this when getting their tax bills this December.”

But Doyle, the former Democratic governor who issued nearly 400 partial vetoes over eight years, praised Evers for effectively restoring an automatic increase in school spending authority that had been in place starting in the 1990s. Doyle’s successor, Walker, and the GOP-controlled Legislature removed it.

“What Governor Evers did was masterful and really important and something that everybody should have expected him to do,” Doyle said. “I’m sure they’re kicking themselves over why they didn’t they see this little number thing.”

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Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed off on a two-year spending plan Wednesday after dramatically scaling back the size of a Republican income tax cut that would have moved the state closer to a flat rate.

Evers, a Democrat, also used his partial veto power to increase funding for K-12 public schools for more than 400 years unless undone by a future Legislature and governor. The move will increase how much revenue schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425.

Evers, a former state education secretary and teacher, had proposed allowing revenue limits to increase with inflation. Under his veto, which he achieved by striking a hyphen and two numbers, Evers said schools will now have “predictable long-term spending authority.”

“There are lots of wins here,” Evers said of the budget at a signing ceremony surrounded by Democratic lawmakers, local leaders, members of his Cabinet and others.

Republicans blasted the vetoes, accusing Evers of breaking deals he had reached with them.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said allowing the school revenue limit to increase effectively forever would result in “massive property tax increases” because schools will have the authority to raise those taxes if state aid isn’t enough to meet the per-pupil cost. He also said scaling back the tax cut put Wisconsin at an economic disadvantage to neighboring states with lower rates.

“Legislative Republicans worked tirelessly over the last few months to block Governor Evers’ liberal tax and spending agenda,” Vos said in a statement. “Unfortunately, because of his powerful veto authority, he reinstated some of it today.”

Vos did not say if Republicans would attempt veto overrides, an effort that is almost certain to fail because they would need Democratic votes in the Assembly to get the two-thirds majority required by state law.

Republicans proposed tapping nearly half of the state’s projected $7 billion budget surplus to cut income taxes across the board by $3.5 billion. Evers did away with rate reductions for the two highest brackets, which received the largest cuts under the Republican plan.

The remaining $175 million in tax cuts over the next two years are directed to the lowest two tax rates, paid by households earning less than $36,840 a year or individuals who make less than $27,630. Wealthier payers will also benefit from the cuts but must continue to pay higher rates on income that exceeds those limits.

Evers was unable to undo the $32 million cut to the University of Wisconsin, which was funding that Republicans said would have gone toward diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — programming and staff. The budget Evers signed does allow for the university to get the funding later if it can show it would go toward workforce development and not DEI.

Evers previously threatened to veto the entire budget over the UW cut. But on Wednesday, he noted that the university can recoup the cut, and he used his partial veto to protect 188 DEI positions at UW that were slated for elimination under the Republican plan.

Evers called cuts to UW funding “shortsighted, misguided and wrong for the workforce and wrong for our state.” But he also said he was confident UW would be able to work with lawmakers to get the $32 million later.

Another of Evers’ vetoes removed a measure that would have prohibited Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care. The governor accused Republicans of “perpetuating hateful, discriminatory, and anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric” with the proposal.

No Democratic lawmaker voted for the budget, but most stopped short of calling for a total veto.

Evers ignored a call from 15 liberal advocacy and government watchdog groups that had urged him to “fight like hell for our collective future” and veto the entire budget, which they argued would further racial and economic inequality. Groups endorsing the letter included the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Voces de la Frontera, Citizen Action of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals.

Evers said vetoing the entire budget would have left schools in the lurch and meant rejecting $125 million in funding to combat water pollution caused by so-called forever chemicals known as PFAS, along with turning down $525 million for affordable housing and pay raises for state workers.

No governor has vetoed the budget in its entirety since 1930. This marks the third time that Evers has signed a budget into law that was passed by a Republican-controlled Legislature. In 2019, he issued 78 partial vetoes and in 2021 he made 50. That year, Evers took credit for the income tax cut written by Republicans and used it as a key part of his successful 2022 reelection campaign.

This year he made 51 partial vetoes.

The budget also increases pay for all state employees by 6% over the next two years, with higher increases for guards at the state’s understaffed state prisons.

Tony Evers scales back GOP tax cut, extends K-12 funding growth in Wisconsin budget is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Here’s a look at what is and isn’t in the proposed Wisconsin state budget that the Republican-controlled Legislature is expected to pass next week:

TAX CUT: Income taxes would be cut by $3.5 billion and the state’s four brackets would be condensed to three. The wealthiest taxpayers would see the largest percentage rate reduction, while the average cut across all incomes would be $573 per year.

PAY RAISE: All state employees would get a 4% pay raise this year and 2% next year, while prison guards would get a $13-an-hour starting pay raise to $33 in an effort to address staffing shortfalls.

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: The University of Wisconsin System’s budget would be cut by $32 million, leaving UW nearly half a billion dollars short of funding it requested. Republicans cut the amount they say would be spent on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, over objections from UW leaders who say they may have to raise tuition and cut programs in response. The budget also does not include funding for UW’s top priority building project, $197 million to demolish and build a new College of Engineering building on the Madison campus. Republican leaders say there are ongoing discussions about funding that project.

K-12 SCHOOLS: The state’s public schools would get a $1 billion increase in funding, part of a deal struck by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans that also includes more money for private schools that take voucher students and a separate plan that increases state aid to local governments and allows Milwaukee city and county to raise local sales taxes.

EVERS PROPOSALS: Republicans removed more than 500 largely liberal proposals that Evers had in his original budget, including legalizing recreational marijuana; expanding Medicaid; paid family leave; renovating the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium; a 10% income tax cut targeting middle- and low-income earners; raising the minimum wage; implementing automatic voter registration, creating an election inspection division to combat fraud and abuse; and freezing enrollment in the state’s private school voucher program.

PFAS: The proposed budget allocates $125 million to combat pollution from PFAS, which are also known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t easily break down in nature. The per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are man-made chemicals that have contaminated water systems in communities across the state and been tied to a host of health problems.

BUILDING PROJECTS: About 60% of the state government and UW building projects proposed by Evers are funded, amounting to around $2.4 billion. Projects that are funded include replacing the Camp Randall Sports Center, also known as the Shell, with a new indoor practice field for the Badgers’ football team on the Madison campus; demolishing the science building at UW-Eau Claire and building a new facility to house several programs; and adding $60 million for the already approved construction of a new state history museum near the Capitol.

LICENSING DELAYS: Just short of 18 full-time-equivalent positions, all but five of them temporary, will be created to help speed up the processing of professional licenses, down from the 80 slots Evers wanted.

OFFICE OF SCHOOL SAFETY: No state money was included to replace federal funding that had been used to keep open an office in the state Justice Department that is used to investigate and address school safety concerns. Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, has been urging Republicans to reconsider, saying the office’s work is vital to keeping schools safe.

ELECTRIC VEHICLE FEES: Electric vehicle registration fees would increase from $100 a year to $175 a year.

PUBLIC TRANSIT: Funding for buses and other public transit options would increase 2% and compete come from the state’s general fund, which pays for the vast majority of all other state expenses, rather than the segregated transportation fund.

PROSECUTORS AND DEFENDERS: Starting pay for Wisconsin public defenders and assistant district attorneys would increase to $36 an hour, or about $75,000 a year, higher than what Evers proposed.

CHLD CARE: Funding for a pandemic-era child care subsidy program called Child Care Counts was killed over objections from Democrats and child care providers who said the move will decrease access.

TRANSGENDER CARE: Wisconsin residents who are transgender would be prohibited from using Medicaid health care coverage to pay for puberty-blocking drugs or surgeries.

PACKERS: $2 million is going to help stage the 2025 NFL draft in Green Bay.

Tax cuts and a UW squeeze: A look at the proposed GOP-backed Wisconsin state budget is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Income taxes would be cut across the board by $3.5 billion under a plan announced Thursday by Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature’s budget-writing committee, a proposal that Democrats assailed as being skewed to benefit the wealthy.

Republicans also plan to cut the University of Wisconsin System’s budget by $32 million despite a projected record-high $7 billion state budget surplus, leaving the university nearly half a billion dollars short of what it requested, GOP leaders announced Thursday.

The cut comes in reaction to Republican anger over diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs on the system’s 13 universities. Republican leaders have said the $32 million is what they estimated would be spent on those programs over the next two years.

“They need to refocus their priorities on being partners on developing our workforce and the future of the state and we’re hopeful that they’re going to be ready to do that as we move forward,” Republican state Rep. Mark Born, co-chair of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, said at a news conference.

Both plans, part of the larger state budget, must pass both the Senate and Assembly before going to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. He can make changes with his line-item veto power before signing the two-year spending plan into law.

The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee was scheduled to add both measures among the final pieces of the two-year state budget later Thursday. The budget will likely be passed by the state Senate and Assembly next week, sending it to Evers for his consideration. Evers can either sign the budget, veto it or make partial vetoes.

Top tax rate gets biggest cut

Under the income tax cut, which would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2023, the average reduction would be 15% for all filers or $573, Republicans said. The state would go from four to three brackets, with the lowest rate dropping to 3.5% and the highest rate being 6.5%.

Evers, who had proposed a tax cut primarily benefitting low and middle-income earners, criticized the GOP plan.

Evers “believes that when we deliver tax relief, it should be real, responsible and targeted to the middle class,” his spokesperson Britt Cudaback said on Twitter. “The GOP is doubling down on tax breaks for wealthy millionaires and billionaires instead of prioritizing relief for working families.”

The largest percentage point drop would be at the highest rate, paid by married couples who earn more than $405,550 or single people making more than $304,170. That rate would drop from 7.65% to 6.5%. The middle two brackets would collapse so all married couples earning between $9,210 and $202,780 would pay 4.4%. The lowest rate for the poorest taxpayers would drop only slightly, from 3.54% to 3.5%.

The income tax cut will be paid for by tapping the state’s projected $7 billion surplus. Republicans were also devoting $622 million to keep property taxes in check.

Some Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, had wanted even deeper cuts. LeMahieu proposed moving to a flat income tax rate of 3.25% by 2026, saying the state surplus offered a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to make generational tax reform. But fellow Republicans balked at that plan, which would have cost nearly $5 billion over two years.

Wisconsin’s total tax burden, which is total taxes measured as a share of personal income, fell to its lowest point in more than 50 years in 2022, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. It also found that that in recent years, Wisconsin income tax rates have declined more for higher income earners than they have for those with lower incomes.

Overall, however, when compared to national averages, rates in Wisconsin are higher for higher incomes and lower for lower incomes.

Republican Rep. Terry Katsma said the cuts were designed to keep Wisconsin competitive with neighboring states with lower rates, like Illinois, which has a flat tax of 4.95%.

“We have to be competitive with the states around us,” Katsma said.

But Democrats objected, saying the tax plan would make the state less competitive when combined with GOP budget decisions to end funding for child care programs and cut spending for the University of Wisconsin.

“Those issues were ignored, denied, for this, what they came out with today, which was primarily a tax cut for the very wealthy,” said Democratic Rep. Tip McGuire.

“They are making Wisconsin a place that is unattractive and inhospitable to women and to families,” said Democratic Sen. Kelda Roys.

The last state budget, passed by the Republican Legislature and signed by Evers in 2021, cut income taxes by more than $1 billion.

UW warns of budget cuts, tuition hike

The proposed $32 million cut to the UW System comes despite warnings from UW President Jay Rothman of tuition increases and possible campus closures if the system’s budget was cut.

Rothman said in a statement that the cut “will diminish student access and affordability at our public universities. This is a missed opportunity and a significant setback to Wisconsin’s efforts to win the war for talent.”

The university system could get the $32 million back at a later date if it shows how it would be spent on workforce development efforts, and not diversity, equity and inclusion programs, lawmakers said.

Evers, a former member of the UW Board of Regents, threatened to veto the entire state budget if the university’s budget was cut. Evers has said that cutting the university’s budget given the state’s surplus would be “irrational.”

Republicans earlier this month rejected the university’s top building project — a new engineering building on the flagship Madison campus. Born left open the possibility that the project could be funded later, saying discussions about that would continue.

University leaders asked for a nearly half-billion dollar funding increase, citing financial difficulties stemming from a decadelong tuition freeze and inflation.

Evers proposed a funding increase of more than $300 million for the university system, an amount that already had university leaders saying they would have to consider raising tuition to make up the difference from what they requested.

Democrats on the committee slammed the cuts as the latest in a series of budget decisions they say will hurt the state’s economy.

“We reject the entire concept of what they’re doing, that the university system would be cut at a time of surplus,” Democratic Rep. Evan Goyke said. ”I don’t see in the budget any initiatives that will catch the attention of young people to either come here or to stay here.”

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has been the loudest critic of the university’s diversity efforts, saying at the state party convention on Saturday that he was embarrassed to be a UW alum because of it.

He called DEI “the single most important issue that we are facing as a people, as a nation and as, really, humanity.”

Vos calls the efforts a waste of taxpayer money that only sow racial division.

“For people on the left, (DEI) has become their new religion,” Vos told reporters last week. “They no longer go to church on Sunday, but boy, are they trying to make sure that everybody is evangelized on campus, that there’s only one acceptable viewpoint. That’s not what I think taxpayers should be funding.”

The university should not be “forcing these students to view the world through a lens of race, gender or economic class just to obtain one of these degrees,” Republican state Rep. Alex Dallman said when announcing the cut.

“UW System ought to be teaching them different things, such as critical thinking and problem solving, teamwork and collaboration, professionalism and communication skills,” Dallman said.

Rothman, speaking after a WisPolitics.com event prior to the vote, said at times that DEI efforts can sometimes go too far. Last month, Rothman ordered campuses to stop asking job-seekers to supply statements on their applications describing how they would support equity and diversity.

“This is an evolving process,” he said Thursday.

The fight reflects a nationwide cultural battle over campus diversity efforts. Republican lawmakers this year have proposed more than 30 bills in 12 states to limit diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in higher education, an Associated Press analysis found in April.

Republicans seek $3.5B tax cut favoring top earners, $32M reduction for UW System is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

The Wisconsin Legislature on Wednesday passed a bipartisan plan to prevent Milwaukee from going bankrupt that also sends more state aid to every community in the state, a long-sought-after funding increase agreed to by Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

The measure is part of a larger deal struck by Evers and Republican legislative leaders after months of talks that also increases K-12 education funding, including private voucher schools, by more than $1 billion. It was the highest profile deal reached between Evers, in the first year of his second term, and Republicans, who have found little common ground on most issues.

The local government and education funding bills, which passed both the Senate and Assembly with bipartisan support, now head to Evers.

Milwaukee leaders warned of dire consequences and catastrophic budget cuts as the city faces bankruptcy by 2025. Milwaukee is struggling with an underfunded pension system and not enough money to maintain essential police, fire and emergency services.

“We cannot let our largest city fail,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Spreitzer before the Senate passed it on a bipartisan 21-12 vote. The Assembly passed it later on a bipartisan 68-26 vote.

Evers, speaking Wednesday on WTMJ-AM before the vote, heralded the deal as “really, really important” both for Milwaukee city and county but also children due to the increase in funding, including more for mental health.

“We’ve met the issue square on,” Evers said. “Each side gave up on some things that are important to them. That’s how compromise is made.”

Both the Milwaukee proposal and the corresponding school funding bill have their Republican and Democratic detractors, despite the bipartisan deal.

Conservatives deride the Milwaukee bill as a bailout for the state’s largest and most Democratic city and say local sales tax increases should need voter approval. The state teachers union doesn’t like increasing voucher payments to private schools that are a part of the education funding plan and called on Evers to veto it.

“This is no compromise,” said Democratic Sen. Lena Taylor, who argued that the deal did not do enough to help Milwaukee. “This is grand theft.”

Democratic senators also objected to various parts of the bill that weren’t related to state aid, like a ban on local communities from placing advisory referendums on the ballot and limiting how long local health officials can order businesses closed during a health emergency.

“This Frankenstein monster of a bill should be slaughtered,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Larson, of Milwaukee.

Republican Sen. Mary Felzkowski said the bill was not perfect, “but let’s not let perfect get in the way of very, very good.”

The deal resolved the largest sticking point over who could determine whether Milwaukee city and county can raise the local sales tax to pay for pension costs and emergency services. Under the bill, that power rests with the Milwaukee County Board and the Milwaukee Common Council. Some Republicans wanted to require voter approval before taxes could be raised.

The long-sought-after proposal to stave off Milwaukee’s bankruptcy also sends more money to all of Wisconsin’s towns, villages, cities and counties.

The roughly $1.6 billion in aid to local governments — known as shared revenue — would be paid for by tapping 20% of the state’s 5-cent sales tax. Aid would then grow along with sales tax revenue.

Shared revenue to local governments has remained nearly unchanged for almost 30 years and was cut in 2004, 2010 and 2012.

Evers and Republicans have praised the deals as transformational wins for Milwaukee and local governors, as well as the state’s schools, while conceding that there are elements they oppose.

Evers, a former state superintendent, has long opposed expanding the state’s private school voucher system, which allows public school students to attend private schools for free. Under the deal, payments that private schools receive to accept public school students would increase. That would lower costs to allow private schools to expand the number of non-voucher students they accept.

“This is a historic attack on public education,” Democratic Rep. Ryan Clancy, of Milwaukee, said of the voucher school funding boost.

Advocates for voucher schools say the additional funding will help slow the closure of cash-strapped voucher schools. More than 40% of private schools that received vouchers have closed since the program began in Milwaukee in 1990. That was the first voucher program in the country. It expanded statewide in Wisconsin in 2013, but there are enrollment caps that would not grow under the deal.

The Senate passed the school funding bill on a bipartisan 24-9 vote, with two Democrats joining all Republicans in support. The Assembly passed it 62-31, with two Democrats joining Republicans in support.

Local funding, K-12 education deal passes Legislature is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Wisconsin has handed cash-strapped Milwaukee a lifeline to stave off bankruptcy, allowing the city to raise sales taxes without voter approval as part of a larger local government and K-12 schools funding plan, according to a bipartisan deal announced Thursday by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers.

Evers called it a “transformative” deal that will rescue Milwaukee from the threat of bankruptcy, “something that would have devastating consequences for communities in every corner of our state and our state economy as a whole.”

As part of the deal, the GOP-controlled Legislature agreed to spending an additional $1 billion on K-12 schools, along with increasing payments to families whose children attend taxpayer-funded private voucher schools. Evers, a former state superintendent of education in the first year of his second term as governor, has made spending more on education a cornerstone of his time in office.

The much-discussed local government funding plan has taken on urgency in the Legislature this year. Milwaukee officials have warned about dire consequences and deep cuts as the city faces bankruptcy by 2025. Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson warned lawmakers of “catastrophic budget cuts” if a deal for more funding wasn’t reached.

Milwaukee, the state’s largest city and a Democratic stronghold, faces an underfunded pension system. Milwaukee has increasingly become reliant on federal pandemic aid to fund its essential services, which city leaders have said cost $150 million more per year to maintain.

The largest sticking point in reaching a new funding deal had been who would determine whether Milwaukee city and county can raise the local sales tax to pay for pension costs and emergency services.

Milwaukee officials, Senate Republicans and Evers wanted the decision to rest with local governing boards. But Assembly Republicans passed a bill last month that would require voters to decide whether to raise sales taxes.

Under the deal announced Thursday, local governing boards in the city and county could approve raising the sales tax with a two-thirds majority vote. Milwaukee is the only city of its size in the country that is not allowed to have its own sales tax.

Roughly $1.6 billion in aid to local governments— known as shared revenue — would be paid for by tapping 20% of the state’s 5-cent sales tax. Aid would then grow along with sales tax revenue.

The plan would increase funding to counties, cities, towns and villages with under 110,000 population by at least 20%. That could only be spent on police and fire protection, emergency medical services, emergency response communications, public works and transportation. The city and county of Milwaukee would see a 10% increase, but could ask voters to raise the local sales tax for more money.

Shared revenue to local governments has remained nearly unchanged for almost 30 years and was cut in 2004, 2010 and 2012.

The bill would also cut aid to communities that reduce the number of police officers and firefighters and ban public health officials from ordering businesses closed for more than 30 days, with the local governing body able to extend that once for another 30 days.

It would also ban local advisory referenda questions on everything except those for certain projects that would be funded with property tax money. The bill would not allow questions on hot-button issues like whether voters support abortion rights or legalizing marijuana.

Democrats, health leaders and others have criticized those provisions, which have long been a part of the plan. But with Evers on board, the proposal was likely to speed through the Legislature on Wednesday and be signed into law.

The agreement also calls for spending $50 million more on reading and literacy programs in schools, increasing special education funding by 33% and spending $30 million on mental health in schools. It also eliminates a tax on business equipment and furnishings known as the personal property tax.

The deal was announced a month before the 10th anniversary of Detroit’s filing for bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. Detroit emerged from bankruptcy in December 2014, having restructured or wiped out $7 billion in debt. The city was forced to follow a state-monitored spending plan and has been able to build cash surpluses.

Wisconsin state law does not allow for cities to declare bankruptcy, which means the Legislature would have to vote to allow Milwaukee to take that step if the city were to run out of money.

Bipartisan deal boosts municipal revenue, K-12 funding, vouchers is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.