(The Center Square) – A proposed bill seeking to address Wisconsin’s school bus driver shortage could soon be moving through the state Legislature.
If signed into law, the legislation would change how often bus drivers more than 70 years old would need to take their commercial driver’s license tests, from every two years to every four years.
According to bill co-author Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers, almost a quarter of school bus drivers are 65 years or older.
“The lack of school bus drivers is causing significant harm to our communities,” Sortwell said in a statement. “Wisconsin has lost about 20% (more than 3,000) of its school bus drivers in the last two decades. Less drivers can cause several problems for schools, such as delay or cancellation of classes, compromised safety from overcrowded buses, and parental uncertainty, which can affect their travel to employment.”
Sortwell said mandatory CDL tests every two years and the current medical review process are an “overregulation” that his legislation seeks to eliminate.
An “S” endorsement on a CDL signifies that the holder is authorized to operate a school bus and has completed the necessary training and qualifications to safely transport students.
Under the bill, if a driver’s “S” endorsement is canceled for medical reasons that require review board approval, the endorsement could be automatically reinstated if a licensed health care provider certifies that the driver is fit.
The endorsement would remain valid unless the medical review board later rules otherwise.
Furthermore, the bill would expand the pool of health care providers that can serve on the medical review board by allowing physician assistants and advanced practice nurses.
Current law requires medical review boards to consist only of licensed physicians or optometrists, to be appointed by the state secretary of transportation.
According to a February report by Wisconsin Policy Forum, while statewide school enrollment has decreased for years, the number of licensed school bus drivers has seen a steeper decline.
The number of public and private school students in Wisconsin per licensed school bus driver was about 59.5 in 2007 but rose to 68.5 in 2022, the report found.
Sortwell’s bill is seeking co-sponsors until Aug. 4, after which the legislation is expected to be formally introduced.

(The Center Square) – A pair of Wisconsin Democrats are filing legislation to limit how much legislative leaders can spend on private attorneys without approval.
The bill would require a vote of the full Assembly and Senate before leadership can enter into contracts with private attorneys.
Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner, D–Green Bay, and Sen. Chris Larson, D–Milwaukee, cited a report from the Milwaukee Journal-Sential that said the Legislature has spent more than $26 million on private attorneys since 2017.
“This is about restoring trust and transparency,” Rep. Rivera-Wagner said in a statement. “Right now, Majority Leaders in the Assembly and Senate—can spend unlimited public dollars on private law firms without input from the rest of us or the people we represent. That’s not how democracy should work.”
The lawmakers say that the bulk of that spending happened after Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats, were elected after legislative leaders passed laws to give themselves the authority to retain outside legal counsel.
“This is a perfect example of actual waste, fraud, and abuse that I’d like to root out of our government,” Larson wrote on social media.
Rivera-Wagner said that $5 million has been spent in the last year alone on what he categorized as politically motivated cases including an ethics investigation into former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman and redistricting legislation.
“These are resources that could have gone toward helping keep shelters for homeless veterans open or funding classrooms and mental health services across Wisconsin,” Rivera-Wagner said.

(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Supreme Court showed its progressive majority but did not do it with reckless abandon, according to a new session review from the Institute for Reforming Government.
The court overturned the state’s 1849 abortion ban, allowed for Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year school funding partial veto and blocked much of the administrative review power that the Wisconsin Legislature previously held.
But the court also turned back an attempt to overturn the state’s congressional maps, blocked Planned Parenthood from attempting to establish a right to abortion and another Evers attempt at expanded veto power.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s 2024-2025 term showed that the new majority is the most progressive majority the court has seen since 2008,” IRG General Counsel Jake Curtis said. “But unlike the politically reckless 2008 progressive majority, the current majority is delivering wins in a more controlled manner. Time will tell if this majority’s political calculations will help them retain power while issuing the most progressive decisions Wisconsin has seen in well over a decade.”
IRG said that it was clear the abortion ruling received the most attention but the ruling about administrative rules is also highly impactful as polling has showed the public would prefer to have elected officials make important decisions instead of those who are unelected and part of state bureaucracy.
“In terms of delegating authority to state agencies, they are going to have to be a little more careful,” Curtis said.
He noted that a ruling for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which allows for broad DNR authority to enforce contamination rules, could place a burden on the regulated community without requiring the DNR to prove and show what chemicals it believes are involved.

(The Center Square) – As Wisconsin’s education spending lags behind the national average, school boards may soon begin proposing higher property taxes to fill the gaps, according to a new report.
The report by Wisconsin Policy Forum finds that Wisconsin spent $14,882 per pupil on public elementary and secondary education in the 2023 fiscal year, the most recent year for which U.S. Census Bureau data are available.
This was 9.9% less than the national average of $16,526 per pupil.
“While the amount of spending on preK-12 is not the only factor that enables schools to provide a quality education, it plays a key role,” the report finds. “Our analysis makes clear that Wisconsin’s national rank on education spending continues to decline.”
State-imposed caps on school district revenues from the 2021-23 budget caused Wisconsin’s inflation-adjusted per pupil spending to decline 0.8% from 2020 to 2023, even as it rose nationally.
Despite having been ranked 11th in the nation for per pupil education spending in 2002, Wisconsin ranked 26th among the 50 states in 2023, spending about 3.3% of personal income on education, compared to about 3.5% nationally.
The report notes that state tax cuts and general enrollment declines may have played a part in the downward trend.
Despite state lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers recently agreeing to a $1.4 billion increase in K-12 school funding, the report says it may not be enough.
Other factors, such as the slowing of referendum voter approval rates, the U.S. Department of Education freezing $72.6 million of federal funds for Wisconsin schools, and the state budget’s lack of general aids for school districts will make school boards have to weigh the possibility of increasing property taxes to make ends meet.
“While increasing revenue limits provides districts a pathway to bolster their funding, it will need to come through increasing local property taxes rather than additional state general aid,” the report says. “Some areas of the state may be willing and able to pay more property taxes to support their schools, while others may lack that willingness or may struggle financially to do so.”
“It should also be noted that school boards will have to decide whether to increase property taxes – the tax base for which is primarily residential property – at a time when more people are struggling to afford the cost of housing,” the report concludes.
A June poll by Marquette University Law School reported that a majority of Wisconsin voters (57%) said they would prioritize reduced property taxes over K-12 public school spending increases, while 43% said they would not.
However, the majority opinion flipped when the question was framed around the K-12 schools in a voter’s own local community, with 52% saying they would approve a referendum to increase taxes for their local schools and 46% opposing it.

(The Center Square) – Union leaders representing Milwaukee’s bus drivers are heading back to the bargaining table to negotiate for a new contract with the county’s transit system today.
The negotiations are set to continue despite 91% of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 members voting against MCTS’ most recent proposal Friday, which would have offered drivers a one-year contract, according to union vice president Michael Brown.
Rather, union members are seeking the standard three-year contract offer and higher pay raises, as well as stronger bus fare enforcement.
“We’ll go back to the table and try to talk and see if they want to talk, you know, and then, if not, then we make other arrangements,” Brown told Urban Milwaukee. “So we’ll try to go back for a full three-year contract.”
While negotiations have been underway since January, MCTS has recently cited its $10.9 million budget deficit as a constraint on what it can offer, stating that “excessive” overtime is a major factor in the deficit.
However, Brown rejected that notion, saying, “They want to attack all the overtime for all operators, for all the hours that they work, and we weren’t gonna allow that.”
ATU has been asking for stronger enforcement and security around bus fares, as fare evasions have contributed to nearly $4 million annually in lost revenues that have directly contributed to the deficit, according to MCTS.
Although MCTS is planning to cut a total of 20,000 bus service hours by August 24, Milwaukee County’s board of supervisors has signaled its desire to plug revenue leaks before resorting to cutting bus service hours.
MCTS said in a statement that they are open to resuming talks with ATU to avoid a strike.
“We’re disappointed that a contract has not been reached, but we respect the rights of our employees,” MCTS said. “Our goal hasn’t changed – we want a fair, sustainable agreement for our bus operators, mechanics, and cleaners/tankers that allows us to keep MCTS running smoothly for the riders who depend on us.”
Previously, 98% of union members voted to authorize a strike that could occur anytime until the current contract ends July 31. This means leaders could legally strike at any time as soon as August.
The last strike ATU members went on lasted for three days in 2015, stopping about 150,000 daily rides.

(The Center Square) – Bill Berrien says he’s got a shot at getting President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the race for Wisconsin governor.
Berrien was a guest on UpFront over the weekend and said despite his past criticisms of Trump, and his support for Nikki Haley in the last presidential race, he thinks he has a “great chance” of getting Trump’s support.
Berrian said he’s had conversations with “various members of [Trump’s] orbits” and said he is keeping the Trump team up to date, updated on where we’re going.”
Berrien is focusing on his career as a businessman, and his hope to strengthen Wisconsin’s manufacturing economy.
“I had the vision for making Wisconsin literally ground zero for the industrialization that he’s trying to leave in the country,” Berrien said. “We’ve got a 125-year-old manufacturing ecosystem. We have a highly trained, highly trainable workforce. You have the tariffs that are incentivizing businesses to consider investing in the country. And now you have the One
Big, Beautiful Bill Act that, it’s like a Black Friday sale, a factory expansion, no coupons required, between all the business incentives in manufacturing.”
Berrien also leaned on some of Trump’s themes in his campaign launch video.
But Berrien was a Nikki Haley backer in the 2024 election. He was vocal in both his support of Haley, and his criticism of Trump.
Berrien tried to walk that line over the weekend.
“To sort of set the record straight, since 2016, my wife and I have supported Donald Trump in every election — 2016, 2020, 2024,” Berrien said. “Voted for him and financially supported.”
Berrien is running against Washington County executive Josh Schoemann, though everyone expects at least one other Republican to jump into the 2026 race.
It remains to be seen which Democrat will be in the race. Gov. Tony Evers has not said whether he will run again next year.

(The Center Square) – Cities that host the NFL Draft have seen small increases in hotel revenue in recent years but those gains are far smaller than what is claimed by teams, the National Football League and the marketing and tourism departments in local government have claimed.
The first three cities to host the draft after it left New York saw insignificant changes in hotel stays during the event while host cities since 2019 have seen between $4 million and $6 million in hotel revenue increases due to the event, according to a new paper provided to The Center Square from economist E. Frank Stephenson from Georgia’s Berry College.
Green Bay hosted the event in 2025 while Pittsburgh will host in 2026 and Washington, D.C. in 2027. All three claimed that large economic impacts would occur when hosting the event.
“The net gain in room rentals in the 2019-2024 host cities varies greatly from a decrease of nearly 20,000 room nights in Las Vegas to an increase of about 9,000 room nights in Nashville, but in all cases is a small fraction of the claimed number of people attending draft-related events,” Stephenson wrote. “Thus, the overwhelming majority of visitors are local residents or day-trippers and much of their spending is likely redirected from other local entertainment or dining options rather than being economic gains for the host cities.”
Stephenson wrote the paper hoping to shed light on annual claims by entities involved of large economic impacts related to hosting the event, used to justify spending on the event.
The paper comes as Experience Greater Green Bay and the Green Bay Packers claimed last week that there was an economic impact of $73 million in Brown County and nearly $105 million statewide.
Green Bay relied on surveys from marketing firm Sportsimpacts, which claimed that 50% of those attending the draft were from Brown County or day-trippers while 31% of attendees were from outside Wisconsin and 24% paid for overnight lodging with 29% staying in Brown County and 21% in Outagamie County.
Stephenson’s hotel data analysis ran through 2024, when Detroit hosted the draft. But the data consistently showed smaller impacts despite claims that hosting the draft had more than a $200 million impact on the Detroit area.
Wisconsin leaders claimed the event would have an economic impact of $94 million in the state and $20 million in the Green Bay area when attempting to divert public funding to the event.
“Every year these bogus economic claims about the NFL draft come out,” economist J.C. Bradbury wrote about the Green Bay tourism estimates heading into the event. “Economists haven’t studied it directly because it makes no sense. But we really could use an actual serious study to counteract this BS PR.”
The Las Vegas decrease in hotel stays for the draft are similar to when the city hosted the Super Bowl and Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, when it saw an increase in hotel rates but not occupancy.
Kansas City saw an increase in hotel rates and stays for the night before the draft and first two nights of the draft but then saw drops in hotel stays the third night of the draft and the night after that, what economists call the hangover effect of deterring regular guests after a large event.
“The cumulative effects … indicate a net gain of 4,416 room rentals and $4.98 million in hotel revenue,” Stephenson wrote. “While the effects in Kansas City are relatively large compared to all other host cities except Nashville, they do not support claims of a $60 million increase in lodging spending.
“As for other events, the Kansas City Chiefs increase room rentals by about 8,900 rooms and hotel revenue by $1.9 million per home game.”
The Detroit draft, meanwhile, led to a net increase of 2,800 room nights and approximately $5 million in additional hotel revenue compared to an increase of about 900 room nights and $450,000 in hotel revenue for each home Detroit Lions game.
“While a few host cities—Nashville, Kansas City, and Detroit—experience positive hotel occupancy effects, they are far short of claims about the event’s economic impact,” Stephenson wrote. “Moreover, even the modest positive hotel occupancy increases found in some cities are subject to leakages and may not benefit the host city’s economic conditions.”

(The Center Square) – A plan to use $9 million in settlement money to fund opioid initiatives in Milwaukee is being pushed through by County Executive David Crowley and could be given the OK as soon as next week.
The funds would support a seven-part plan to expand treatment, prevention and harm reduction by the opioid epidemic in Milwaukee County through 2028, according to Crowley.
The Milwaukee County Board Committee on Finance approved the plan unanimously recently, and the full county Board of Supervisors is set to vote on it at their meeting Thursday.
“My administration continues to deploy opioid settlement dollars across Milwaukee County,” Crowley said. “These upstream investments are proving to be effective, but we know there’s more work to do in expanding substance use prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery efforts.”
Milwaukee County alone is expected to receive $111 million over 18 years from recent national opioid lawsuit settlements, according to Crowley.
Already, $34 million has been allocatedto a handful of funded in the county.
This proposal would allocate more than $9 million to Crowley’s opioid initiatives only for fiscal years 2026-2028.
The seven programs Crowley will be asking the Board of Supervisors to approve are to include residential room and board funding for people receiving substance abuse treatment, door-to-door outreach to older adults and disabled individuals, supporting organizations partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services, and funding other staffing positions in the Medical Examiner’s office.
Milwaukee County has seen a continual upward trend in fatal and non-fatal opioid overdoses, with the Medical College of Wisconsin reporting a 495% increase in heroin-related deaths in the county since 2005.
“This funding will allow DHHS to continue the life-saving work that began with the initial round of opioid settlement funds,” said Shakita LaGrant-McClain, executive director of the county’s DHHS. “We are seeing promising trends and look forward to continuing our prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery work, including ensuring residents have access to harm reduction supplies, targeted community outreach, and collaboration with community partners.”

(The Center Square) – The State Bar of Wisconsin will remove diversity, equity and inclusion language from its programs in a shift that is expected to reshape how the organization structures trainings and educational requirements in the future.
In the federal lawsuit settlement with Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, the Bar also agreed to change its definition of diversity by no longer considering race, religion, sex or “other characteristics” when determining eligibility for its programs, according to WILL.
WILL Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington said the result is that DEI has been effectively removed from all Bar programming in an announcement.
“For now, DEI is dead at the State Bar of Wisconsin,” Lennington said. “Race discrimination should play no role in the regulation or training of Wisconsin’s lawyers, and it no longer does. We will continue to monitor the Bar closely and challenge race-based programs wherever we find them.”
In December 2023, WILL filed a federal lawsuit against the Bar for promoting DEI practices, specifically its “Diversity Clerkship Program,” which offered internship opportunities based primarily on race.
The plaintiff, Daniel Suhr, a trial and appellate attorney in Wisconsin, objected to mandatory bar dues, which all practicing lawyers with a Wisconsin license are required to pay, being used for race-based programming.
While the lawsuit was partially settled in April 2024, the Bar had only changed their definition of “diversity” while keeping the program mostly intact. This settlement, according to WILL, finally resolves the entire lawsuit.
In the settlement, the Bar agreed to the following:
The Bar will not alter its definition of “diversity” to include “any consideration of race, ethnicity, color or national origin.”The Bar will remove DEI language from its Leadership Development Summit.The Bar will remove DEI language from its Leadership Academy program.The Bar will not consider race, ethnicity, or other immutable characteristics when considering applicants for the Leadership Development Summit or Leadership Academy.The Bar will be more transparent on how it spends mandatory dues, publishing an annual charge or chargeable activities.
During the lawsuit, WILL said Bar leaders were found to have used race-based DEI policies throughout several programs and application processes.
According to WILL, even when a Bar leader’s essay nominating an attorney for the Leadership Summit did not overtly mention race or sex, a chart compiled by the Bar included a column clearly identifying many nominees’ “ethnicity/gender/age.”
The changes to the Bar policies are expected to be made effective immediately.
The Bar did not immediately respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s elections managers are walking away from their investigation into nearly 200 uncounted absentee ballots in Madison.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission closed its investigation into former Madison City Clerk Marybeth Witzel-Behl, and the 193 ballots she didn’t count in November, without asking for any criminal charges.
“This is not a criminal investigation,” Election Commission chairwoman Ann Jacobs said. “The focus of this investigation has been discovering what happened, and making sure it doesn’t ever happen again.”
Jacobs, and Republican Commissioner Don Millis, found that Witzel-Behl broke the law by ignoring the missing ballots once they were found, and then doing nothing to count the ballots in the weeks and months after.
“The lack of curiosity. The testimony that, you know, ‘Oh there might have been ballots there, but I didn’t ask for a full month,’ was not plausible. Or if that was the truth, it was a rather shocking dereliction of just ordinary responsibility,” Jacobs said. “Nobody likes admitting mistakes are made, and we recognize that that’s a very human thing. But in this case nobody took responsibility for these ballots.”
Instead of recommending criminal charges, Jacobs and the Election Commission are recommending a series of new requirements for Madison’s elections office.
Madison city attorney and interim clerk Michael Haas said while the city doesn’t dispute the findings of the WEC investigation, he’s not sure the new requirements are “appropriate, feasible, or legal.”
“In addition, the proposed orders are framed as directing that those specific policies continue permanently into the future, regardless of any other developments such as changes in the law, technology, or improved best practices,” Hass added. “The recommended orders also do not take into account the steps that have already been taken by the city.”
WEC commissioners voted to give Haas an extra three weeks to review the orders and offer feedback. The Commission is expected to finalize its recommendations at its Aug. 15 meeting.

(The Center Square) — The latest snapshot of Wisconsin schools shows many schools are seeing fewer students, while others continue to spend more and get worse results.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty opened its 2025 School Scorecard Dashboard on Thursday.
The dashboard is an interactive way for parents and policy makers to see how schools across the state are doing.
WILL said the dashboard tracks several things, including:
● An interactive map of Wisconsin’s school districts
● Enrollment by grade level
● Absenteeism
● Disciplinary Incidents
● Math and reading test scores
● Local school spending
“WILL’s School Scorecard Dashboard gives parents, taxpayers, and stakeholders key data on school district performance,” WILL’s research director Will Flanders said. “With this updated tool, Wisconsinites can hold districts accountable and make better informed decisions about education in their communities.”
The dashboard paints a dire picture of Wisconsin’s enrollment crisis.
“…298, or 70.6%, of districts have seen enrollment decline since 2015,” WILL noted. “Statewide, first-grade enrollment is only 76% of the size of 12th-grade enrollment.”
But fewer kids doesn’t mean less spending for many public schools in Wisconsin.
WILL’s dashboard shows “Milwaukee Public Schools spend more per student (up 19%) but teach less students (enrollment down 13.4% since 2015), and academic achievement continues to lag the rest of the state with Math and ELA proficiency below 25%.”
Wisconsin’s enrollment bright spot remains school choice.
“Choice enrollment is up 389% from 2016 in Sheboygan Schools,” WILL’s numbers show. “Choice enrollment is up 556% from 2016 in Oshkosh Schools.”
You can find the dashboard, and see your local school’s performance, at KnowMySchoolWI.com.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives have launched an effort to urge the state Supreme Court to shut down the latest challenge to congressional maps before it can even start.
The lawsuit, filed by Law Forward on behalf of Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy and others, alleges the state’s current congressional district maps are “anti-competitive gerrymanders” that disadvantage voters by protecting incumbents, The Center Square previously reported.
However, unlike previous unsuccessful challenges to the current maps, Law Forward filed the lawsuit in the Dane County circuit court, not in the state Supreme Court.
They want the court to appoint a three-judge panel to hear the case and potentially redraw the maps before the 2026 midterm elections.
Wisconsin GOP House members are arguing that the Wisconsin Supreme Court should defend the current maps and consider delaying action on the new lawsuit before appointing a panel to hear the challenge.
“This Court should order the parties–as well as any proposed intevenors–to address, inter alia, whether this Court should dismiss this case because an inferior tribunal cannot lawfully adjudicate the constitutionality of the relief that this Court issued in Johnson II,” wrote Misha Tseytlin, the attorney representing the representatives and other individual voters.
“Johnson II” refers to the current maps adopted by the court in 2022 in Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Because the state constitution provides that the state Supreme Court is the “court of last resort,” Tseytlin argues that a lower court isn’t allowed to overrule or revisit the decision in Johnson II.
Although Law Forward wants the court to appoint a three-judge panel after receiving a challenge, that process has never been completely used before.
Law Forward attorney Doug Poland said the panel could be used to address the issues raised by House Republicans to avoid “miring” the court in “endless briefing.”
“This Court can, and should, use this opportunity—nearly six years before redistricting in the wake of the 2030 decennial census—to establish a thoughtful, measured, and procedurally proper template for future invocations of these untested venue statutes unique to redistricting actions,” Poland told WisPolitics.

(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to give $21 million for improvements to Milwaukee’s PurpleLine transit in the near future.
The BUILD grant award, announced by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley on Wednesday, will invest in one of the county’s most heavily utilized bus routes, serving more than 1.2 million riders each year.
According to Crowley, revisions to corridors will allow people to connect to more than 50,000 jobs and access to services throughout the county.
“I will partner and collaborate with anyone to deliver results and investments for Milwaukee County. That’s why I am proud we are bringing home federal funds to support our residents who are traveling to work, school, healthcare, and other essential services,” Crowley said in a statement.
PurpleLine, which operates for 18 miles primarily along 27th street, connects municipalities like Milwaukee, Greenfield, Franklin, Oak Creek and Glendale.
New improvements also include traffic signal updates, new bus shelters at almost 70 bus stops, 15 of which currently have no bus shelters, raised transit platform heights for disabled passengers, and other pedestrian and bike-friendly features.
Full implementation is anticipated in 2027.
The grant comes at a challenging period for the Milwaukee County Transit System amid the surprise announcement of the system’s $10.9 million budget deficit, leading to the resignations of two Milwaukee transportation leaders and MCTS’ decision to use remaining COVID-19 relief funds to help fill the deficit through 2025.
MCTS has an overall structural deficit of $12 to $18 million.
The operating deficit – and operating cuts to service hours that may occur because of it – are largely separate from investments like the BUILD grant, which is a competitively awarded infrastructure project.
The BUILD grant supports long-term infrastructure, not daily operations, and is funded through a separate federal channel with different application criteria.
However, persistent budget instability could weaken Milwaukee County’s competitiveness for future federal grants if operational constraints begin to undermine project feasibility or stakeholder confidence.