State Budget

A two-year $72.7 billion dollar state budget is now awaiting the signature of Gov. Scott Walker. After a two hour delay because of a bomb threat, and about 12 hours of debate, Assembly lawmakers passed the spending plan just before 1 a.m. 

Eleven Republican broke rank and voted along with Democrats against the package, but it wasn’t enough to derail what many Democrats have referred to as a “crap” budget.

For months, they’ve expressed concern over the impact they believe this budget will have on public education.

As the Wisconsin State Assembly takes up the proposed state budget today, the Senate passed the budget by an 18-15 vote late last night. The substantial last-minute additions to the budget bill, called Motion 999, last Thursday led to an uproar on both sides of the aisle for its proposal to overhaul the state’s open records law.

Republicans who control Wisconsin's Senate worked late into the night and passed a $73 billion budget that will dictate state spending for the next two years.

The vote was 18-15, with Republican Rob Cowles joining all 14 Democrats in voting against the measure. It will go to the state Assembly on Wednesday.

Besides weakening Wisconsin's open records law, other last-minute items Republican legislators inserted into the proposed state budget on Thursday include allowing a seven-day work week and requiring municipalities with water and sewer utilities to service neighbors who need it.

Milwaukee County supervisors hope the public takes note of another addition. It would transfer more power to the county executive, including authority over county land along Milwaukee's downtown lakefront.

GOP leaders stood side-by-side on Wednesday to announce they had broken their impasse. It involved whether the state should help fund a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks, whether Wisconsin should change its prevailing wage law, and how much the state should borrow to pay for transportation projects.

Republican leaders have decided to take two of those three items out of the proposed state budget. It could move forward Thursday.  

One of Wisconsin’s legislative leaders seems to want to shake his Republican colleagues into action. The Legislature has been at an impasse for weeks over the state budget. 

Some state employees are one step closer to receiving pay increases for the 2015-2017 fiscal year while others could bring home less money. The states Joint Committee on Employment Relations voted on two different provision on Tuesday now on their way to the legislature.

Under the plan, state troopers would see a 3 percent raise during both the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years. Gregory Gracz is director of the Office of State Employee Relations. He says the hope is that the raise would reduce turnover within the organization.

The Legislature’s budget committee hasn’t met since late May. While Republicans control both houses, the GOP appears to be stuck on a few items, including how to pay for transportation.

Wisconsin has experienced budget gridlock in the past. One way it was solved, was to sweeten the pot for everyone.

Update: Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling, co-chair of the Joint Finance committee, said Wednesday the panel will not meet this week.

She says lawmakers are still wrestling over which road projects would be affected by an $800 million cut in transportation funding.

Darling says she hopes the panel will resume budget deliberations next week.

Republicans in Madison are still trying to agree on a new budget for Wisconsin. There’s talk that the Joint Finance committee may return to the table on Thursday or Friday.

As the fiscal year comes to a close, one of the biggest questions that remains is the fate of transportation funding.

Currently, the Wisconsin legislature has significant work to do with Governor Walker's proposed biennial budget, which plans to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for various highway projects. However, one program that this new budget affects especially are Wisconsin's transit programs. 

The Legislature's joint finance committee voted in support of Gov. Walker's plan to eliminate 18.4 researchers within the Bureau of Science Services. The DNR says that amounts to 31.5 percent of the authorized positions within the team.

Todd Ambs is one of the people upset about the cuts.

He heads the Healing Our Waters -  Great Lakes Coalition and served as as Water Division Administrator at the Wisconsin DNR from 2003 to 2010,