(The Center Square) – Republicans are attempting to cut a “back-room tax deal” amid the Wisconsin budget negotiations, Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee said at a news conference Tuesday.
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, alleged that Republicans are hurting Wisconsinites by quietly moving forward a tax cut for the wealthy before the June 30 biennial budget deadline.
The backlash comes after Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee cut more than 600 items from Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal.
“What we’ve seen Republican counterparts doing is trying to cut an unpopular tax deal behind closed doors. That’s a slap in the face of Wisconsinites. They didn’t elect us to do that,” Roys said. “Not a single person asks for more tax breaks for the wealthiest, biggest corporations. Republicans refuse to put their ideas for tax cuts into writing and haven’t introduced a bill.”
Roys did not offer details on the alleged tax cuts, only stating they are being pushed in private and would give tax breaks for the wealthy.
Rep. Alex Joers, D-Middleton argued a concerning sign is that Republicans have not yet introduced Senate Bill 1, the tax bill they said would be a priority for the 2025-26 session and would have been introduced in February.
“Despite rejecting Gov. Evers’ budget, they have not introduced SB 1 yet, even though they had promised back at the beginning of the year that it would be submitted,” Joers said. “They even stated they would save the number ‘SB 1’ for their tax bill because of how high it was on the priority list.”
Joers said Evers’ budget would actually have lowered taxes for 74% of Wisconsinites.
According to Roys, the Republicans’ budget and tax cuts are happening at the behest of the party leadership in Washington, D.C.
“Right now, unfortunately, our Republican colleagues in the state legislature seem to be following the lead of the Trump regime,” Roys said. “They have seemed laser-focused on more budget-busting, tax cuts for the very wealthiest among us that will do nothing to lower costs for families.”
However, Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, a member of the Joint Finance Committee, fired back, saying there are no back-room deals regarding tax cuts that Democrats wouldn’t already be aware of.
“Leadership and Gov. Evers are currently conducting high-level meetings regarding the budget. If there is a hidden back-room deal on taxes, the Democrats are in on it and it’s not hidden very well,” Wimberger told The Center Square. “I think most people would consider what’s going on as ‘both sides working together,’ and it appears Democrat extremists want to derail that.”

(The Center Square) – A public hearing will be Wednesday for a bill claiming Gov. Tony Evers’ administration kept $172 million in taxpayer dollars from interest earned on unspent funds since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The interest came from a 2023 audit from the Legislative Audit Bureau with an updated number reported to the co-chairs of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.
“Under current law, unless specifically provided by law, miscellaneous receipts collected by a state agency, such as interest earnings, must be credited to general purpose revenues of the general fund,” the bill text says.
Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, is a co-chair of the committee and co-author of the bill along with Rep. Robert Wittke, R-Calendonia.
The public hearing will come at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development.
Melissa Schmidt, attorney for the Wisconsin Legislative Council, determined in a January 2024 memo that the interest must be reported as general purpose revenue and be sent to the state’s general fund.
The interest comes on $3 billion worth of federal funds received related to COVID-19 relief between 2021 and 2022 with $1.5 billion in May 2021, $1.3 billion in May 2022, and $205.8 million in June 2022.
“In the absence of any federal requirement for how the interest earnings on CSLFRF payments must be spent, and because this interest is not funding ‘received from the federal government’ … the interest must be recorded as GPR and deposited into the general fund,” Schmidt wrote.
Federal rules specifically allowed states to deposit the relief funds into interest bearing accounts but stated that the interest is not subject to COVID-relief fund rules.
“When there is no provision specifically providing for the appropriation of GPR, including miscellaneous receipts like interest earnings on advanced CSLFRF payments, the state law provides that moneys must be deposited into the general fund, lose their identity, and are then eligible for the Legislature to appropriate,” Schmidt concluded.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s juvenile correction facilities could lean towards rehabilitation and accountability as an alternative to detention in the near future, according to a new report.
While youth crime in Milwaukee County has grown back to pre-pandemic levels, at roughly 1,450 referrals to the youth justice system in 2024, the severity of crimes and frequency of repeat offenders has increased, the report by Wisconsin Policy Forum states.
Half of referrals to the youth justice system in the county last year involved repeat offenders, while the county’s youth detention center faces overcrowding.
In response, Milwaukee County is assessing the effectiveness of the rehabilitation program as opposed to costly detention facilities.
One such program is the Milwaukee County Accountability Program.
“MCAP was designed in part to respond to concern with the treatment of youth at state-run detention facilities, as well as a desire to keep Milwaukee County youth closer to home and provide them with more robust services,” the report said.
To be eligible for MCAP, a youth must be considered at high risk for reoffending and not be designated to a state-run detention facility by a judge.
In contrast to Wisconsin’s detention facilities, the report notes, “MCAP youth receive intensive supervision, structure, support, and skill building for up to 180 days, after which they transition to the community for at-home supervision, case management, and behavioral intervention for up to 180 more days.”
MCAP’s annual admissions have doubled since 2018 (with 65 admittees in 2024) while commitments to Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools, two of Wisconsin’s primary juvenile detention facilities, have decreased considerably (109 in 2015 to 40 in 2024).
The taxpayer cost to enroll youth in MCAP is significantly less than the cost to incarcerate youth in a detention facility.
The current daily rate to incarcerate each youth at a state-run detention facility is $1,268, or $462,820 per year, while the cost to enroll each youth in MCAP is about one-third of the taxpayer cost at $460 per day depending on the services provided, according to information first reported by Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum report concludes MCAP could be used as a model for alternative correctional facilities in the state if it demonstrates success on two metrics: program completion and recidivism, the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend.
“Standardizing methods by which the county and state track recidivism could help determine if rehabilitative and non-secure care alternatives produce better outcomes compared to sentences to state juvenile facilities,” the report finds.
This determination would be particularly valuable as Milwaukee County transitions to a new youth correctional facility in Wauwatosa, set to open in 2026.
However, the report indicates MCAP only tracks youth activity up to one year following program completion. According to information from MCAP, 60 out of 383 youth have reoffended within one year of discharge, at a recidivism rate of 16%.
This makes it difficult to compare MCAP’s success rate to data from Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools since those facilities can track a repeat offender’s relapse up to three years after discharge.
The lack of long-term assessment of MCAP’s success with rehabilitation and prevention of recidivism could hinder its adaption to juvenile correctional facilities in the future, the report says.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s higher education leaders are warning of dire consequences because of the federal student aid changes included in the House’ reconciliation package.
UW President Jay Rothman, Wisconsin Technical College System President Layla Merrifield and Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities President Eric Fulcomer warned that thousands of students in Wisconsin could lose access to Pell Grants or other federal aid options under the new plan.
“Our 13 public universities together have nearly 31,600 Pell Grant recipients who are depending on financial aid to get the educational opportunities that will be life changing,” Rothman said. “It makes no sense for the U.S. to narrow opportunities if our country wants to win the global war for talent.”
The reconciliation package requires students to be full-time students in order to qualify for a Pell Grant. That would mean 15 credits, or five classes, per semester.
Merrifield, with the Technical College system, said that would hurt thousands of part time students who take classes in her schools.
“We have serious concerns about the numbers of students who would lose Pell Grant eligibility entirely,” she said.” We think, according to our preliminary analysis, at least 6,000 students would lose eligibility entirely. Many thousands more would lose portions of their grants, as they would be prorated based on the number of credits that the students are able to take.”
“I’m dumbfounded that cutting educational opportunities would even be considered when our economic vibrancy is at stake,” Rothman said.
The three higher education leaders said more than 70,000 students across Wisconsin use Pell Grants to help pay for their education.
All three said they hope the U.S. Senate makes changes to the reconciliation plan when they take it up next.

(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Department of Health Services estimates cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could cost all Wisconsin residents $314 million each year.
The cuts to SNAP funding, included in the budget bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, are now on their way to the U.S. Senate for consideration.
The DHS report says SNAP cuts would shift the cost to the state of Wisconsin and counties, eliminate healthy eating education programs, limit geographic waivers of work requirements for certain counties and territories and expand work requirements.
Overall, DHS estimates 700,000 Wisconsin residents currently benefit from SNAP, and the cuts could cause 90,000 people to lose benefits entirely.
“Wisconsin runs one of the best SNAP programs in the country,” Wisconsin Medicaid Director Bill Hanna said in a statement. “The cost of these cuts is over a quarter billion dollars each year that Wisconsin couldn’t use for our health care, our roads, our schools or our economy.”
However, SNAP is “100% funded by the Federal government, resulting in minimal incentive for states to control costs, enhance efficiencies, and improve outcomes for recipients,” the House Committee on Agriculture said in a statement.
The committee concluded that complete reliance on federal funding has allowed states to discourage work and expand benefits for those the program was not intended to serve, causing costs to balloon.
“States are going to have to accept the fact that if they are not administering this program efficiently, they’re going to have to pay a portion of the program that is equitable, and it makes sense and it is scaled,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisconsin, previously said at a Agriculture Committee markup.
To correct misusage of SNAP, the proposed cuts will cost more for states that improperly issue SNAP benefits, while states with a lower percentage of payment error will pay less.
“If [the states] improve, they’re going to pay less and that’s going to encourage a responsible bureaucracy so every single dollar that is allocated to these programs goes to the hungry child, to the senior, to those most in need,” Van Orden said.
Because of Wisconsin’s 4.41% payment error – one of the lowest in the country – the state would only have to cover 5% of SNAP costs, according to the Committee on Agriculture’s fact sheet.
However, the DHS report argues Wisconsin taxpayers would have to cover 15% of SNAP costs, contrary to the Agriculture Committee’s 5% estimate.
The DHS criticizes the cuts as punishing Wisconsin taxpayers despite the state’s record low payment error.
“Wisconsin’s payment errors are not fraud,” the DHS report said. “They are errors like unexpected changes to a person’s income or accidental errors that occur when determining if someone qualifies for the program. For the first time ever, Congress is proposing an extreme, zero tolerance policy for payment errors that harms states like Wisconsin who consistently keep error rates low.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin saw the unemployment rate drop in all 13 metropolitan areas in April from a month before but those rates were up from April 2024.
The rates also went down in 31 of the state’s 35 largest cities month to month while 33 of those cities saw a year over year unemployment rate increase.
Those rates came out as the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development published updated workforce profiles of all of the state’s 72 counties.
“Improving economic success and building a 21st Century workforce is important in every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties,” Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Secretary Amy Pechacek said in a statement. “The 2025 county workforce profiles reflect the expertise that our regional economists can offer employers, community leaders, education providers, and many other workforce partners to meet current and future workforce needs, This work helps advance local and regional efforts that are critical to the entire state’s success.”
The unemployment rates went down in 69 counties on a monthly basis while the rates rose in three counties.
Over the year, 66 counties saw an unemployment increase.

(The Center Square) – U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is calling for a Wisconsin judge facing federal charges of allegedly helping a foreign national avoid federal officials to be barred from her role as judge.
Tiffany, a Republican, made the comments after video was released of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan walking a defendant through the court building past Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers there to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.
Flores-Ruiz was ultimately arrested outside the courthouse after Dugan is accused of concealing Flores-Ruiz, who was previously deported and came back to the U.S., where he was facing charges in Milwaukee of domestic battery and abuse.
“Hannah Dugan should be barred from ever serving as a judge again,” Tiffany wrote on social media. “A judge who puts criminal illegal aliens above victims has no place in our courts.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin declined to comment Friday on the release of the video.
The video depicts Dugan speaking with ICE officers in the hallway outside her courtroom and Flores-Ruiz walking through a back hallway with a person identified in an affidavit as his attorney before heading to an elevator and then being chased down and arrested on the street outside of the courthouse.
Dugan has a trial date set for July 21 after pleading not guilty.
She is charged with obstruction of a federal proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent discovery or arrest. The obstruction charge could lead to up to a $100,000 fine and a year in prison while the second concealment charge can lead to up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Tiffany had previously called for Dugan’s ouster in late April.
“Wisconsinites deserve law-abiding judges, not activists,” Tiffany wrote on April 29. “Dugan should be removed permanently.”

(The Center Square) – The story about home sales in Wisconsin is becoming a pattern. The state’s Realtors Association says April saw another double-digit drop in sales, and a more than 7% jump in prices.
“For a second straight month, home sales fell by a substantial margin while prices increased. Existing home sales slid 10.4% when compared to April 2024, and the median price increased 7.3% to $322,000 over that same 12-month period,” April sales report stated.
The report was released Thursday, but was almost identical to March’s report.
March, the association said, saw a 10.2% drop in year-over-year sales, and a 3.7% price increase over March 2024.
Chris DeVincentis, chair of the Realtors Board of Directors, said there simply aren’t enough homes for sale in Wisconsin.
“It’s still a strong seller’s market statewide,” DeVincentis said. The report said while there are a few more homes in some parts of the state, overall, Wisconsin is far away from the sought after six-month supply of available homes.
“Statewide, housing inventories saw a slight improvement, increasing 5.9% to a 3.6-month supply in April,” the report added. “Yet this remains considerably below the six-month supply indicative of a balanced market, which would necessitate a 67% increase in current listings.”
The low inventory and high prices look even worse, association CEO Tom Larson said, because last April’s sales numbers were much, much better.
“We need to remember that April of last year was a very strong month for sales,” Larson added. “In fact, closings spiked 27.7% in April 2024
compared to April 2023. This was the strongest annual growth seen since late 2020.”
The median price for a home in Wisconsin, according to the report, is now $322,000. The association said prices are, of course, higher in the Madison area of south central Wisconsin. The median price there is $375,000.
Prices are also above the median in Milwaukee and the WOW counties. The median price for southeast Wisconsin, according to the Realtors, is $335,000.
Those are also the areas of the state with the most home sales.
The report notes that the Milwaukee-area and Madison-area account for more than 59% of all home sales in Wisconsin.

(The Center Square) – Democratic lawmakers introduced Thursday a $480 million child care plan to address care affordability and education staffing shortages in Wisconsin.
The legislation was introduced after Republicans cut more $480 million in child care from Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal.
“Federal funding has been essential in continuing successful programs that support our early educators, child care providers, parents, and most importantly, our kids,” Rep. Alex Joers, D-Middleton, said. “With this impending deadline, childcare providers and early educators are faced with the impossible decision to either raise rates or have to close altogether.”
The Democrats’ plan would roughly equal the more-than $480 million for the Child Care Counts Program that Republicans cut from Evers’ proposal.
In Wisconsin, 48,000 children are on the waitlist for child care, according to Joers, and without legislation 78% of providers will have to raise rates for infant care.
“If nothing changes, parents will have to find an additional $2,600 in their yearly budget to provide for their families,” Joers said.
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, claimed the plan addresses both affordability and staffing shortages in the state.
“Over 60% of child care classrooms are empty or have slots to fill because they don’t have the teachers to fill them,” Roys said. “This is a supply problem, and you can’t fix that with more money. You need to have more teachers in the workforce, and that’s where the state has to step in.”
Joint Committee on Finance co-chairs Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, previously said some items cut from Evers’ budget proposal weren’t bad but should have instead been separate legislation introduced through the normal legislative process, including public hearings and separate votes from different Assembly committees.
After the budget cuts, Born had said the next step to push cut items through correctly would be to introduce them through the legislature.
Now that child care funding is being introduced as legislation and not a budget item proposal, some Democrats have expressed hope that Republicans can help pass the bill before federal funding runs out.
“Republicans can either join us in figuring this out now, or otherwise we have this proven solution right here that goes to waste,” Joers said.
Republican legislators did not respond for comment at the time of publication.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin bill would give a blanket exemption for all future data centers in the state that would allow the projects to be part of tax capture districts even if that means that more than the state-allowed 12% of property in a community is part of a tax increment financing district.
The 12% rule is in place related to local property taxes because the exemptions mean that businesses in a TIF aren’t paying into the local property tax base yet are using local resources. Therefore, companies are able to retain the funds to spend on future improvements of their facilities.
Last year, the Wisconsin Legislature approved a bill exempting materials that are used to build, operate or renovate large-scale data center facilities from taxes.
There are currently multiple bills in the Wisconsin Legislature that would exempt specific projects from the 12% limit – including for data centers in Pleasant Prairie, Beaver Dam and Port Washington – but Senate Bill 241 would allow all future data centers to be exempt from the 12% limit.
“We thought it would be a good idea, since we have already defined what this data center is with the tax exemptions in the last session, we thought it would be a good idea to just make a blanket exemption for these so we don’t have to come back and save resources, save energy, save time so we don’t have to come back and approve every one of these individually as it goes along,” Sen. John Jagler, R-Watertown, told the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development.
Jagler said that data centers are being singled out for the tax incentives because they create a situation where TIF limits are so far exceeded.
“While that 12% cap is there for a reason and well-meaning, these data centers are so big and so valuable and such a prize for a community that it really creates a problem,” Jagler said.
Data centers are becoming increasingly necessary as cloud-based memory and computing capabilities increase but tax incentives for those centers are questioned due to the lack of long-term jobs at the sites, the energy needs and the potential increase in consumer energy bills that accompany those data centers.
A least 10 states are currently losing $100 million or more in taxes from data centers, according to an April report from Good Jobs First.
Meanwhile, the average American’s energy bill could increase from 25% to 70% in the next 10 years without intervention from policymakers, according to Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Jack Kemp Foundation.
The Wisconsin Senate recently approved a $2.25 million nuclear study to increase the state’s energy capacity while EnergySolutions announced it was beginning planning and looking for a permit to reopen Kewaunee Power Station in Kewaunee County while working with WEC Energy Group.
During discussions of the nuclear siting, Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, said that a new Microsoft data center in Mount Pleasant would use the same amount of energy as the city of Madison and the Cloverleaf project in Port Washington would use the same amount of power as the entire city of Los Angeles.
Jagler said that a Meta data center planned for Beaver Dam is coming but the TiF will allow it to expand in the future.
“In Beaver Dam, they are going to build this data center but, they basically have no ability to grow or use their TIF to grow,” Jagler told the committee.
The cost, however, is the impact on property tax and energy bills for consumers.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last month that the increase in data centers across the country will strain utilities, leading to higher utility costs, a need for more power lines, and annexing more “green space” and water.
He warned that energy bills could increase “by up to $276 a year,” saying they could double within seven to 10 years to power the data centers.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s hospitals say they are trying, the best
they can, to solve their own workforce needs across the state.
The Wisconsin Hospital Association testified before lawmakers at the Capitol in Madison on Wednesday about the 2025 Wisconsin Health Care Workforce Report.
“The WHA Workforce report is not a static document that just sits on a shelf for us,” WHA Senior Vice President Kyle O’Brien told lawmakers. “This is a living breathing document for us, in the sense that we use the data in the document to affect public policy.”
The overall report said Wisconsin needs more frontline health care workers.
Hospitals say a demographic boom means a lot of veteran nurses and other health care workers will retire in the coming years, just as Wisconsin’s population hits the “silver tsunami.”
The report, in particular, points to problems with rural health care, and a lack of potential workers.
That’s where O’Brien said the WHA has turned its focus.
“You will hear a lot today about hospitals and health systems throughout the state using what we call ‘grow our own’ or ‘grow from within’ workforce strategies to try to get the workforce that we need to actually provide access to care to patients,” O’Brien added.
He explained that many of the successful strategies for hospitals in 2025 started years ago, as a result he said, of programs from the legislature.
“I want to specifically highlight some matching grant programs that we established over a decade ago, that over time, the legislature and the governor have built upon over the last decade,” O’Brien said. “They have provided up to $100 million dollars in private and public investment across the state in getting more physicians, more advanced practice clinicians,
and more allied health professionals training in rural and urban Wisconsin communities.”
The full 2025 WHA Health Care report explains in further detail the needs for the future, including more health care workers, and new state laws or regulations to help with better rural care.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin bill that would allow retired police officers and firefighters to return to work while still collecting their retirement pensions is headed through Assembly committees.
There is a block currently on allowing those professionals from working more than two-thirds of full time or becoming a contract employee without suspending their retirement benefits. Bill sponsor Sen. Andre Jacque, R-New Franken, said the purpose Assembly Bill 36 is to fill a need for those public service positions.
Multiple committee members asked jailers to also be added to the list of employees who could return without a suspended pension.
“This bill is about common sense,” Jacque said in a statement. “We are facing unprecedented shortages in law enforcement, firefighting, and public sector instruction. AB 36 ensures that dedicated public servants who still want to serve their communities can do so—right here in Wisconsin—without being penalized for collecting the retirement benefits they’ve already earned.”
The bill repeats policies that were created due to employee shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the policy is supported by law enforcement groups including the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association, Badger State Sheriffs’ Association, Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Fire Chiefs Association, Milwaukee Police Association and Wisconsin Towns Association.
A fiscal note on the bill said that it cannot estimate the taxpayer cost of the potential policy change, which passed the Assembly Committee on Workforce Development, Labor, and Integrated Employment and would need to pass the Assembly, Senate and be signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers before becoming law.
“Law enforcement officers, along with other retired state and local government workers, can already get another job after retirement anywhere without suspending their annuity, except with an employer that uses the state retirement system,” Jacque said. “For Wisconsin government employers, that effectively blocks our law enforcement and firefighters from even considering returning to work to again protect and serve in Wisconsin.”
The employees would not be eligible to earn a new pension if they come back to the workforce.
“Currently, nothing prevents an officer from retiring and getting a job at a place like Menard’s, in private security or elsewhere,” Jacque said. “But unfortunately, having to suspend their pension payments to take vital public safety positions in Wisconsin often sends these professionals across our state line.”

(The Center Square) – A bill that would criminalize participating in riots in Wisconsin is on the table, but lawmakers disagree on whether it’s actually moving forward.
Assembly Bill 88, which would make it a Class I felony to promote or instigate a riot, has been criticized as containing broad, vague and even unconstitutional language.
While the bill was referred to the Assembly Committee on Judiciary, it was missing from the agenda for Wednesday’s executive session.
Democratic lawmakers argue the bill’s absence indicates the committee has dropped it.
“I’m ecstatic that Republicans have abandoned this badly written, unconstitutional bill for now,” Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, said in a statement. “In reality, this isn’t an ‘anti-riot’ bill: it’s a threat to free speech, expression and assembly disguised as a public safety measure.”
Critics argue the bill’s language could lead to people not even involved with a riot being arrested.
“This legislation contains contradictory and unclear language and chills the constitutional rights of speech,” ACLU Wisconsin told The Center Square. “The Constitution does not allow people engaged in lawful protest to be punished for the actions of others, but this bill is attempting to do just that.”
Similar concerns were voiced by lawmakers and citizens at the bill’s contentious first public hearing May 7.
In light of the bill’s absence from the executive session, Clancy and Rep. Andrew Hysell, D-Sun Prairie, released statements crediting the bill’s alleged dropping to testimonies from themselves and others at the hearing.
Republican lawmakers even seem to disagree on whether the bill has been dropped and how it will move forward, if at all.
Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers, the bill’s author, contends it has not been dropped and is still set to be voted on in the Assembly Judiciary Committee and receive hearings in the Senate.
“To be clear, the chair never pulled the bill because he has not officially scheduled a vote on it yet after receiving a hearing two weeks ago,” Sortwell said in a statement. “I am in discussions with colleagues on the committee, which is standard practice for bill authors after a public hearing.”
Rep. Ron Tusler, R-Harrison, chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, however, argued differently.
“Assembly Bill 88 is not on the agenda because, in its current form, it fails to be good legislation,” Tusler said in a statement to The Center Square. “I wanted to give the bill author a chance to explain the bill out of respect for Rep. Sortwell and the victims of the riots. But in its current form, this bill has constitutional, common-sense, and enforcement issues.”
Tusler concluded the bill in its current form is never going to be scheduled for an executive session until those problems are addressed.
At the time of publication, the bill still appeared as an item in committee on the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s and Senate Judiciary Committee’s websites.