David Michael Miller
What will Gov. Tony Evers do? That’s the $81.5 billion question. The Republican-controlled budget committee has finished its version of the state budget and passed it on to the full Legislature, where it won’t get any better. Evers has until July 1 to sign or veto the two-year spending plan. Make no mistake, despite Republican claims about “investing” in schools, roads and health care, the GOP budget represents a stark rejection of all of Evers’s priorities.
The Republicans rejected $320 million in Affordable Care Act money Evers wanted to use to cover Medicaid costs and free up state funds for other priorities.
They rewrote Evers’ tax plan, reducing revenue by more than $150 million per year, giving back tax credits to manufacturers, and offering the average taxpayer a $75 tax break in 2019 as opposed to the $216 tax break in Evers’ plan.
But the biggest contrast between Evers’ budget and the Republican version is on education, where the Republicans cut $900 million from the governor’s proposal.
“When you adjust for inflation, the budget on the table right now is actually worse than the last Walker budget,” says Heather DuBois Bourenane of the Wisconsin Public Education Network.
You wouldn’t know it if you listen to the Republicans talking about their “historic investment” in schools. That’s because they’re deliberately obscuring the facts.
Wisconsin is now more than $3.5 billion behind where we would have been had we continued funding our schools at 2009 levels, according to the Wisconsin Budget Project.
The Republicans are spinning their proposal as an “increase” by ignoring the fact that it only restores a portion of the $200-per-student annual inflationary increase that was standard under Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, but has been frozen for the last 10 years.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos add together inflation-level increases of $200 per student in year one and that same $200 plus an additional $204 in year two and announce a “historic” $604 per pupil increase. See how they did that?
The Evers budget addressed the structural problems that got us here. Republicans in the Legislature threw it out — and, in some areas, made the problems worse.
Take state special education funding.
Special ed is a mandated cost — school districts are legally bound to pay for it no matter what. As the state has steadily reduced its share of special ed costs, school districts have had to dip into their general funds to cover the difference.
Wisconsin has one of the lowest special ed reimbursement rates in the nation, at 25 percent. Recognizing the strain this puts on local school districts, Evers proposed increasing the state share to 30 percent in the first year of his budget, and 60 percent in the second year, with a goal of eventually covering 90 percent of the $1 billion gap between state and local spending on special ed.
The Joint Finance Committee cut that to 1 percent in year one and 30 percent in year two.
But that’s not the worst part. School districts are required to fund special ed not just for their own students, but also for private-school students. The rise of voucher and charter schools across the state is causing an even bigger drain on resources. So what do Republicans in the Legislature do? Kowtowing to the school-choice lobby, they set the special ed reimbursement rate for voucher schools at 90 percent, in the same budget that caps the rate for public school students at 30 percent.
This will be particularly hard on rural districts, where nurses and counselors are already driving among multiple schools, spread too thin to do their jobs well.
“They’re basically taking essential money away, then calling it a gift and getting angry when people don’t clap,” DuBois Bourenane says.
Vos, acting as Wisconsin’s de facto governor, has declared that Evers must sign the Republican budget or the Legislature won’t take it up again until Oct. 15.
That puts schools in a terrible position, since they need to know what their budgets will be by September. And it sets up a dilemma for Evers.
“At a moral level, it’s a no-brainer: You veto that budget,” says DeBois Bourenane. “But the most prudent thing might be to just take the offer. Because people don’t believe we’ll ever get a better deal. It scares people out of advocacy.
“All of the democracy has been removed from the process,” DeBois Bourenane adds. “Because of gerrymandering and backroom bargaining, legislators don’t even pay attention in public hearings. Unless you’re a lobbyist, you’re shut out.”
The Wisconsin Public Education Network is organizing a march on the Capitol June 22-25 — just as the Legislature is scheduled to vote on the budget.
“It’s time to say, ‘Enough! Stop selling our kids short and pretending you’re not,’” DuBois Bourenane says.
The group plans to publicize how legislators vote and what the specific consequences are in their districts, to hold them accountable. But first, voters have to understand what’s really in the budget.
Ruth Conniff is editor-at-large for The Progressive magazine.
