(The Center Square) – A pair of Wisconsin bills that would create treatment courts and commercial courts along with expand access to grants for diversion courts for non-violent offenders related to mental health passed a Senate committee this week.
Senate Bill 153 would make treatment alternatives and diversion grants from the Department of Corrections and the Department of Health Services available for treatment programs for those with a mental illness in cases that don’t involve alcohol and other drug treatment.
Currently, those grants must only go to alcohol and drug treatment programs.
“This bill expands this program to include those who have a mental health diagnosis,” Sen. André Jacque, R-New Franken, said in a statement on the bills he authored. “According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, 97% of TAD graduates stayed out of state prison after completing their TAD program.”
Senate Bill 80 would allow offenders to voluntarily participate and receive drug treatment services instead of a jail or prison sentence.
While the Wisconsin court system began a pilot commercial court program in 2017, the bill would establish commercial court in state law.
Several varieties of cases must be assigned to the court, including cases regarding governance or internal affairs of a business, the sale of transfer of securities, intellectual property rights, unfair competition or antitrust claims, disputes between franchiser and franchisees, disputes involving the Uniform Commercial Code of $100,000 or more, receiverships over $250,000, real estate or construction disputes over $250,000 and more.
“The lack of specific authorization by state rule or statute leaves their future uncertain,” Jacque said in a statement. “Legislative action to recognize these courts within state statute will put in place a permanent system proven to aid the efficient resolution of commercial disputes and help provide more certainty for our economy.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin is one of 47 states with a teacher apprenticeship program, but its size doesn’t compare with other states and it is a large issue in Wisconsin’s struggle to retain teachers, a new report says.
The Institute for Reforming Government has long been an advocate for a teacher apprenticeship program while Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly has advocated for increased teacher pay as a solution.
Wisconsin’s pilot program includes paying for 50% of the tuition for apprentices along with gaining four years of experience while still graduating in four years.
“States across the nation, red and blue, are solving their educator shortages with teacher apprenticeships. But Wisconsin remains far behind due to a failing pilot program, and it hurts our students, schools, and future educators,” Quinton Klabon, IRG Senior Research Director, said in a statement. “Wisconsin can and should grow its own teacher workforce: solving shortages for schools, lowering costs for teachers, and improving outcomes for kids.”
A recent report from DPI showed that average total compensation for teachers in the state is down $22,000 per year since 2010 in inflation-adjusted dollars while only 26.1% of teachers remained at the same Wisconsin public school for their first seven years of teaching.
There were 3,334 educators who completed the teacher preparation program in the state while there were 2,187 retirements in 2022-23. Of those who competed the program, 79.3% were certified as teachers and 66.6% went on to teach in Wisconsin public schools.
Wisconsin Senate Bill 917 sought to formalize an apprenticeship program and passed the Wisconsin Legislature in the 2023-24 session but the bill was vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.
Wisconsin currently has zero active teacher apprentices while Tennessee has 610, Nevada has 860, Missouri has 359 and Iowa has 439, according to data used in IRG’s report.
“Wisconsin’s teacher shortage has reached a crisis level,” IRG’s report said. “Rural districts are giving local jobs to out-of-state virtual providers. Urban schools are recruiting overseas. Suburban schools are receiving fewer qualified applicants. Choice schools are closing their doors.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s Joint Committee on Finance took 612 items out of Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal Thursday, including Medicaid expansion in the state, department creations and tax exemptions.
Evers and Democrats on the committee pointed to the policy items as spending important to Wisconsin residents on items such as child care, health care, corrections and more.
But Joint Committee on Finance co-chairs Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, said that the items taken out of the budget weren’t all bad ideas but many should instead be separate legislation that goes through the normal legislative process, including public hearings and separate votes from each section of the Wisconsin Assembly.
“Unfortunately, he sends us an executive budget that is just piled full of stuff that doesn’t make sense and spends too much, spends recklessly and raises taxes and has way too much policy,” Born said. “So we’ll work from base and the first step of that today is to remove all of that policy in a take-out motion and then have a motion to take us to base and begin the work of rebuilding the budget with a legislative budget for all of Wisconsin.”
Committee member Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, said that the budget subtractions showed that the Republican Party’s signature both in the state and nationally is to make life more difficult for regular Wisconsin residents.
While the committee began its work, Evers sent out a statement regarding the gutting of his proposed budget, pointing to specific policy items that he believes would help Wisconsin residents.
“While Wisconsinites struggle to keep up with rising costs, Republicans are rejecting my plan to lower out-of-pocket costs on everything from utility bills to over-the-counter medication, including voting against over half a billion dollars in property tax relief to prevent property taxes from going up statewide,” Evers said. “While Wisconsinites are struggling to afford the life-saving healthcare and prescriptions they need, Republicans today are gutting my plan to crack down on health insurers and prescription drug companies, combat prescription drug price gouging, and cap the cost of insulin.
“While working families are struggling to find and afford child care, Republicans today are going to axe my plan to help lower the cost of child care, cut wait times, and get more kids into available child care slots.”
Born pointed to Evers’ plan to spend $325 million to realign the state’s correctional institutions, including closing the Green Bay Correctional Institution in 2029, as the start of a plan that could make sense due to Evers’ acknowledgement that the Green Bay facility should be closed.
But Born also called the actual plan “half-baked” and said that it needs more thought before being implemented.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s Republican U.S. Senator says President Donald Trump’s tax cut package and budget deal is “big” and “a bill,” but “it’s not beautiful.”
Senator Ron Johnson told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber on Thursday that there is no way he can vote for the “big, beautiful, bill” that Republicans in Congress are crafting.
“I’m not the only one saying I’ve got real problems with this bill,” Johnson said. “But my problem with it is principles.”
Specifically, Johnson said the proposal spends too much.
“I would think one criteria for the one big, beautiful bill would be we wouldn’t add to the deficit,” Johnson added. “Right now, this bill would increase deficit spending. It’s not going to decrease it. It’s going to increase deficit spending.”
Johnson also called the savings in the plan, a “rounding error,” and said the real goal should be for the federal government to get back to pre-pandemic spending levels.
“In 2019 we spent $4.4 trillion, this year we’ll spend over $7 trillion,” Johnson explained. “That’s a 60% increase, basically.”
Johnson’s criticism, and his opposition to more federal spending, aren’t new. He’s been saying the same thing for months.
“You can’t pick off a couple programs, make a few tweaks, do a CBO score, clap your hands, and say ‘We’re done.’ No, you have to literally go through the budget line-by-line-by-line. We don’t do that, obviously we don’t,” Johnson added. “I mean what DOGE has exposed was not only the waste, fraud, and abuse, but how oblivious everyone is to the waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Johnson, however, said he’s ready to support pieces of the ‘big, beautiful bill’ on their own.
“I’ll vote for the border spending, I’ll vote to extend the tax law, but I’m not going to vote on massive new tax cuts that explode our deficit further,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he is not optimistic that the plan will be finalized and passed by the July 4 deadline.

(The Center Square) – The Madison Police Department has arrested the father of the Abundant Life Christian School shooter and have charged him with contributing to the delinquency of a child and providing a dangerous weapon to someone under 18 resulting in death.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, was arrested in the early morning hours Thursday and his arrest record was unsealed in the afternoon.
Both 42-year-old teacher Erin West and 14-year-old student Rubi Vergara were shot and killed at the school on Dec. 16 along with the shooter, who died from self-inflicted wounds.
Police determined the freshman shooter opened fire in a mixed grade study hall classroom. Two guns were found at the school but only one – a handgun – was used in the shooting, according to Madison Police.

(The Center Square) – A new lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s congressional maps has been filed with the Wisconsin Supreme Court with Elias Law Group representing nine Wisconsin voters.
The challenge claims that the current maps are gerrymandered, leaving the state with two Democrats in Congress despite Democrats winning state offices such as governor and a recent state supreme court race.
“Wisconsin voters deserve congressional districts that ensure all voices and viewpoints are fairly represented,” Elias Law Group partner Abha Khanna said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Wisconsin’s current congressional map has unfairly rewarded Republicans with a significant electoral advantage and will continue to do so for the remainder of the decade. Wisconsin voters should not have to endure another election cycle under unconstitutional district lines, and we are proud to represent voters who are calling on the court to strike down this illegal map.”
The challenge was expected by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which wrote a statement in early April about how such a challenge would be unconstitutional.
“The narrative that Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election would determine control of the House of Representatives was created by political operatives on both sides for fundraising and to drive turnout in the election,” WILL wrote in a memo on the topic. “Now that the dust has settled, while it is certainly a possibility that the Wisconsin Supreme Court will again be asked to re-draw Wisconsin’s congressional district maps before the next census, it is clear that such a legal challenge would have to overcome a number of significant hurdles.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, claims the maps violate equal protection.
“Wisconsin’s congressional map is antithetical to virtually every principle necessary to sustain a representative democracy,” the lawsuit says. “It impermissibly disadvantages voters based on their political views and partisan affiliation, systematically disfavoring Democrats because they are Democrats.”

(The Center Square) – A bill that would create a tax benefit extension for a potential data center project in Port Washington will now also include Beaver Dam.
Assembly Bill 175 allows for an exception to the 12% rule related to tax increment financing districts, which allow business owners within the district to keep the additional property taxes they would have paid for building out a project and use those funds toward building improvements.
The rule says that not more than 12% of the property value in a district can be part of a TIF. A new potential $80 million Cloverleaf data center is being discussed for the area.
Currently, just less than 8% of the property value in Port Washington is in a TIF, allowing for more than $137.7 million of value under current state law.
Meta is discussing a nearly $1 billion data center in Beaver Dam, Bloomberg reported.
Incentives for data centers are often opposed because, despite the large amount of money spent on the buildings, they do not require much staff and they take a large amount of energy.
A group of Republican lawmakers in the state are pushing a $2.25 million nuclear study to increase the state’s energy capacity.
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.
Pat Garofalo, the director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project, recently compared states losing money on TV and film tax credits to those now offering tax incentives for data centers.
He wrote that “some of the earliest adopters, most prominently Virginia (which has been subsidizing data centers since 2008), looking at costs that are set to spiral out of control and negative knock-on effects in the local communities that host data centers multiplying.”
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.
“As the end users of building materials, machinery, and equipment, data center companies would normally pay sales and use taxes,” the report states. “States, however, exempt those purchases, making these exemptions the costliest state subsidies for data centers. Because server farms are extremely capital intensive and require replacement of servers every two to five years when they wear out, these exemptions are lucrative for companies and costly for states and localities.”

(The Center Square) – The plan to shield Wisconsin police officers from a second chance at a prosecution for an officer-involved shooting is facing a lot of pushback at the Capitol in Madison.
Dozens of activists turned out Wednesday to oppose AB 34, which says if “the district attorney determined there was no basis to prosecute the officer, a court may not issue a complaint against the involved officer unless there is new or unused evidence presented.”
Julie Mankowski said there’s no reason why police officers should have extra protections in officer-involved shootings.
“When we talk about people in positions of power, we must hold them to the highest possible standards. That means police officers. That means elected officials. That means your boss at work. It means everyone,” Mankowski told lawmakers. “I do also think that it is necessary that we all open our hearts and our minds to the pain of those who’ve been harmed by the actions of those in positions of power, including police officers.”
The legislation is inspired by the trial of former Wauwatosa Police officer Joseph Mensah for a deadly shooting back in 2016.
Milwaukee County prosecutors originally declined to file charges in the case, but in 2021 Milwaukee County Judge Glenn Yamahiro appointed special prosecutors to the case, and charges were filed.
A jury cleared Mensah in the case one year later.
Police officials told lawmakers the legislation is necessary to protect officers from after-the-fact prosecutions for in-the-moment decisions.
Advocates, like Katherine Johnson, pushed back.
“They have framed the worst day of a family’s life, parents’ life, siblings’ life, friend’s life, everyone that someone who is murdered by police has touched. The worst day of their lives, as a hard day on the job for a cop, who had to make a hard decision” Johnson said.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s Joint Committee on Finance is scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. on Thursday to eliminate a long list of items from Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal.
The group is then set to introduce an amended budget as it starts proceedings on what will ultimately become the state’s biennial budget.
The list of budget removals includes a list of funding, department creations, tax exemptions and items such as the full expansion of Medicaid in the state.
Democrats in the legislature and progressive groups spoke out against the budget removals that were listed.
The budget deliberations come after a series of listening sessions on the budget across the state.
“Especially with the unprecedented level of chaos and uncertainty created by the Trump-Musk regime, Wisconsinites are looking for support and stability from their state elected officials,” according to a statement from four Democratic committee members including Sens. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, and Kelda Roys, D-Madison, with Reps. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, and Deb Andraca, D-Whitefish Bay. “However, this motion shows that JFC Republicans once again plan to turn their backs on working families by removing broadly popular policy proposals in pursuit of a massive tax giveaway to their ultra wealthy donors.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said a starting point has to be a balanced budget with a clear view of the anticipated revenue from tax collections for the two-year budget period.
“It’s going to have to have a tax cut in it, just like I think we’re accepting that there’s gonna have to be some investments that are made so that bipartisan support can be earned,” Vos said.
An analysis from Badger Institute showed that Evers’ proposal would increase Wisconsin state government spending by more than $3 billion a year compared to now through spending the state surplus and increasing taxes by $4.6 billion over two years.

(The Center Square) – A proposed 30% film tax credit is being pushed as a separate bill with a 25% tax credit scheduled to be removed from Gov. Tony Evers budget.
The tax credit is co-sponsored by Rep. Dave Armstrong, R-Rice Lake, whose full-time job is the Economic Development Director in Barron County, something Armstrong brought up in a Wednesday public hearing on Assembly Bill 231, which calls for a $10 million tax break for filmmakers and $199,300 in financial year 2027 and $254,000 the next year to fund three full-time employees in a film office.
Wisconsin is one of four states without film credits after prior film credits were allowed to sunset in 2013, Armstrong said. Armstrong noted that a 30% credit would put Wisconsin in the top 10 states in the country in terms of film tax credit percentages.
“How many of you, like me, get a little peeved when you are watching the credits and see the Georgia peach?” Armstrong asked. “I want a piece of that.”
The Georgia film tax credits, however, have been panned by economists as a tax cost that isn’t worth it for taxpayers.
Economist J.C. Bradbury of Georgia’s Kennesaw State University extensively studied Georgia’s larger film credit program, writing in a peer-reviewed paper that the state spent $230 per household on foregone tax revenue because of the initiative, which has cost taxpayers the equivalent of $110,000 per full-time job in the industry without bringing the promised benefits from the program.
Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, said he is “a big supporter of this.”
“We really need to do this,” O’Connor said. “It’s almost like free money.”
O’Connor played a video of his wife singing karaoke at a Door County bar with Director John Stimpson of the upcoming holiday film “A Cherry Pie Christmas” during the public hearing on the tax credits.
Economists who have studied film credits don’t agree while supporters of the bill point to economic impact numbers from tourism departments to back the tax credits.
As Bradbury has pointed out, those economic impact numbers are pushed by economic development departments but they are produced by marketing groups that do not follow economic study principals and are not reputable.
“Viewing what ‘economic impact’ consultants do to be economics is like considering horoscopes to be astronomy,” Bradbury wrote.

(The Center Square) – Republicans and Democrats at the Wisconsin Capitol on Tuesday said their advance practice nurse reform package will become law as soon as it gets to Gov. Tony Evers desk.
“Despite a couple of setbacks for the last couple sessions, we’ve had very productive conversations with the various stakeholders along with Gov. Tony Evers,” Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, said. “And we have a deal in place that if and when this bill reaches his desk, it will get signed into law.”
The proposal, officially known as the Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Modernization Act, would allow AP nurses in Wisconsin to see patients, order tests, prescribe medicines and manage care all without the supervision of a doctor.
Supporters say the reforms would allow nurses to work at the “top of their scope.”
Testin said the reforms could help lessen Wisconsin’s health shortages.
“We are all acutely aware that the workforce challenges that we face here in the state are dire when it comes to our frontline medical professionals. And by empowering our APRNs to operate the highest scope of their practice there is no question that they are going to stand up and deliver top quality health care for the patients in every corner of the state, especially in our rural and underserved areas,” Testin added.
Rep. Lisa Subek, D-Madison, said it took a while to work out the details, and reformers tried for years to get an APRN package through the legislature. Now that there’s an agreement, Subek said Wisconsin can move forward.
“We all agree that we need better access to health care. We all agree that folks should have access to quality health care. And we all agree that nurses should be able to practice to the top of their scope,” Subek told reporters. “And this is a bill that, at the end of the day, ensures that we can expand access to health care without compromising quality and I think that’s really key.”
Testin and the others introduced the plan on Tuesday.

(The Center Square) – A pair of Wisconsin Republican lawmakers are looking for more transparency on the ballot related to school referendum, requiring information on how much an initiative would cost an average taxpayer in property tax payments.
Opponents representing school administrators in the state say that information would be tough to figure and make accurate when ballot language is due and it’s better to provide that information to taxpayers in informational meetings.
Senate Bill 58 is similar to school referendum transparency bills that made their way through the Wisconsin Legislature the past two years but added stipulations requiring estimates on interest related to bonds for capital referendums as well.
“The point is simply to give voters the information they need so they can make informed choices, said Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, a bill sponsor.
Allen and Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, testified in front of the Senate Committee on Education along with opponents of the bill.
“I have no problem funding things, I just want to know what the true cost of that would be,”
Cabral-Guevara noted, saying a school district in her district held a referendum without fully telling voters the cost of interest on bonds, noting there were $55 million in interest payments alone related to the referendum.
The proposal comes after 169 out of 241 school ballot referenda in 2024 elections were approved by voters at a cost of $4.4 billion to taxpayers.
It’s unclear if the changes would make Gov. Tony Evers receptive to the bill or if he would exercise his veto power to prevent it from becoming law.
“What I like about referendums is, at its purest, it’s democracy in action,” Allen said.
But Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, continued to point toward the rise of school referenda and the reason for that rise as local school district funding asks are related to both state and federal funding and state reimbursement amounts for services such as special education.
White Lake School District Administrator Lance Bagstad said the required information and timeframe would muddy up the informational process for voters and, what they really want to know is how much a referendum would cost them year-by-year individually, something that districts can provide through informational meetings and communications rather than on a ballot in concise form without context.
“That’s the information, quite frankly, that taxpayers want to know,” Bagstad told the committee.
Allen said that, as a realtor, an essential part of the job is doing the math on property taxes and future property taxes so that potential home owners can figure out their ability to make mortgage payments.
“It’s about making good decisions,” Allen said.