(The Center Square) – A University of Wisconsin name, image and likeness athletics bill that would send $15 million to the universities for facilities and remove most college athletics spending from being a public record passed the state’s Joint Committee on Finance 8-5 on Wednesday.
Republican Sens. Julian Bradley, Patrick Testin and Rob Stafsholt opposed the bill along with Democratic Sens. Kelda Roys and LaTonya Johnson.
The Republican-sponsored proposal is about NIL changes and rules while its impact goes beyond NIL. The bill passed the Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development earlier 3-2.
The bill will next head to the full Senate after it was approved 95-1 by the Assembly.
UW-Madison Athletics Director Chris McIntosh said in committee that the $14.6 million in funding annually to the school’s athletic department for facilities debt is essentially for the athletic department to remain competitive and supporting 23 sports and 600-plus athletes.
UW-Madison athletics operated with a $4.3 million surplus in its most recent annual NCAA financial report released earlier this year covering the financial year that ended in June 2025.
The football program accounted for 80% of the program’s revenue, equaling $113.6 million last fiscal year, according to the NCAA report, which showed the football program brought in $72 million in excess during the year.
“In the event that this legislation is not passed, we will be forced to reconcile our revenues with our liabilities, like we always have,” McIntosh told the Senate committee. “And that will come through a series of painful reductions, further emphasis on increasing our revenues.
“And, what I fear is, that through those reductions in support of our sport programs, all of our sport programs, all 23 of our sport programs, we’ll be left in a situation in which it will be difficult to say the least, for us to be competitive in the sports that generate in excess of 80% of the revenues. And it will also be difficult to be competitive.”
The Wisconsin Newspaper Association, meanwhile, warned lawmakers and the public that a public records stipulation in the bill could have a sweeping unintended impact that goes well beyond NIL records.
The bill would exempt records related to the “generation, deployment, or allocation of revenue generated by an intercollegiate athletic program.”

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin Senate bill would require local governments to approve a solar or wind project before it can be approved by the state’s Public Service Commission.
Senate Bill 3 will first receive a Senate committee vote before going in front of the full Senate. The bill did not reach the Assembly before it ended its session.
Bill authors say it is about local control while those opposing the bill say that it adds an additional step to make creating new renewable energy more difficult.
“This bill would simply provide our municipalities, our townships with the ability to stop any wind or solar projects that are objectionable to the citizens who live there,” said Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green.
Marklein said that wind and solar projects are different than data centers in that there is no local control on the projects.
“Wisconsin’s energy future depends on scaling up affordable clean energy options quickly and responsibly, but SB3 risks delaying or blocking these projects before the Public Service Commission can act,” the Clean Economy Coalition of Wisconsin said in a statement. “At a time when Wisconsinites across the state are concerned about rising utility bills, lawmakers should be finding ways to expand affordable, reliable, clean energy. Legislation like Senate Bill 3 would inject uncertainty into the approval process and send the wrong signal to companies looking to build new projects in Wisconsin.”
Rep. Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City, said that the utilities have done a great job ensuring that Wisconsin has reliable power but that he feels it is the Legislature’s job to ensure that power is affordable and that residents are happy with how the power is generated.
Tranel said that he wants to ensure that Wisconsin’s rural communities are not covered with wind and solar in places where the community doesn’t want that to occur.
“I would challenge you to come to southwest Wisconsin or any part of Wisconsin where they are proposing these 1,000-acre solar farms or these wind turbines that are going to be 600 feet tall or taller, start knocking on doors and asking people if they support them or not,” Tranel said. “I would submit that the only people that you will find that support them are the people that are going to directly benefit monetarily from them by hosting them on their property.”

(The Center Square) – Voters across Wisconsin now have a bit more information on the nearly quarter-billion dollars in school referendum questions they will see on ballots next month.
The Institute for Reforming Government on Tuesday released its School Referenda Transparency Tool.
“Funding schools sufficiently is important, but taxpayers deserve clear information about district spending and staffing trends when considering new referenda,” IRG’s Quinton Klabon said. “IRG’s tool provides simple, helpful information for anyone seeking to understand this April’s proposals.”
The tool lists all 74 school referendum questions on the April ballot. They total $225 million.
The tool breaks down the cost of the proposed tax increase through 2033, as well as whether the referendum is for building new buildings, maintaining old buildings, or paying day-to-day bills.
The institute also tracks how many students each school district asking for money has added, and how many employees they have added.
“Taxpayers now have clear, consolidated information in one place, helping inform them about local school referenda,” the institute said.
The institute is also sharing its latest school funding report. That report details the final $1.4 billion in federal COVID-19 funding. It questions whether local schools are “investing wisely.”
“After sending $860 million to help Wisconsin public schools manage through spring 2021, Congress sent a final $1.49 billion to get students back on track,” the report writes. “The goal? Do whatever it takes to catch kids up by September 2024. The problem? No one knows how schools have directed it or not directed it … until now.”
That report allows parents to look at how schools spent their COVID-19 money, breaking it down by category like student spending, teacher spending, mental health spending, and transportation spending.
The institute says the goal is to give Wisconsin taxpayers a fuller view of how much money is headed to their local schools. It comes as Gov. Tony Evers continues to insist that the state needs to spend money on public schools, and as a lawsuit over school funding in the state begins its likely journey to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The Institute for Reforming Government says its “main focus will be to remove the onerous barriers and red tape separating the individual from an efficient and functioning government.”

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin bill headed to the Senate would require the University of Wisconsin-Madison admissions to be predominantly based on standardized testing.
Bill sponsors say the goal is to have high and fair standards for the flagship school in the state.
The bill passed the Assembly 52-45 and passed a Senate committee before it heads to the full Senate.
The bill works along with the Wisconsin Guarantee, which says that the top 5% of students in each public, private or tribal high school after their junior year based upon grade-point average will be guaranteed admission to UW-Madison.
“We have one of the best university systems in the entire country and we should be doing everything that we can to raise standards so students meet those standards,” said Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point. “We’re doing the best we can to prepare these students for life after college and hopefully they stay right here in this state.”
The Universities of Wisconsin testified on the bill, stating that the term “predominantly” is not defined in the bill and that the school prefer to use other factors, such as high school grade point average.
“Substantial higher education research demonstrates that high school grade point average is a strong and consistent predictor of student success, reflecting sustained academic engagement, growth, and perseverance overtime,” the universities Office of Government Relations wrote in testimony. “Research, including findings from UW-Madison’s Student Success Through Applied Research (SSTAR) Lab, shows that standardized test scores add limited additional predictive value beyond high school performance.”
A letter from UW-Madison, meanwhile, says the school’s current process of allowing but not requiring ACT or SAT test scores is a better process to be open to more students in the Midwest with many high schools not requiring the tests.
“These legislative proposals have the potential for negative consequences,” UW-Madison wrote in testimony. “Research shows that test scores are highly correlated to family income. Students from higher-income households are more likely to access extensive test preparation resources, participate in multiple test administrations, and otherwise engage in practices that may elevate standardized test performance. Furthermore, ACT scores of students in rural areas are typically lower across income distributions compared to students in urban areas.”
The bill sponsors, however, say GPA standards vary widely in different schools and a high-performing student in one school could be a much better candidate than a student with a good GPA at a school with lower standards.
“This reestablishes merit-based admissions back within higher education,” Testin said.

(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin lawmakers are looking to ensure the state shares information on recipients of the Supplementation Nutrition Assistance Program with the federal government.
The bill comes as Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has joined 21 other attorneys general in suing the federal government to avoid sharing the information, which includes the immigration status of recipients.
The SNAP bill passed the Assembly 54-39 and will have a public hearing in a Senate committee on Wednesday morning.
“Complying with President Trump’s White House should be no different than complying with President Biden, or any other administration,” Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, wrote in testimony on the bill. “The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution requires this.
“We cannot allow the disregard of law in our society. This is an increasingly disturbing trend in our country, yet it is not the first time we have seen this in human history. Every major civilization has gone through this disturbing trend right before they ceased being a civilization.”
In filing the lawsuit, Kaul said that he believes the U.S. Department of Agriculture is incorrectly limiting SNAP eligibility for refugees, asylum recipients and others admitted under humanitarian protection programs.
The largest issue in the bill becoming a law will be that Gov. Tony Evers has said he is against sharing Wisconsin’s SNAP data with the federal government.
Assembly Bill 1027 would also require Wisconsin to follow federal changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to SNAP requirements that included raising the upper end of the definition of “able-bodied” for SNAP work requirements from 50 years old to 65 and lowers the age of the care-taker restriction from those with an 18-year-old in their home to a 14-year-old.
“It is also important to be clear about what this bill does not do,” Rep. Nate Gustafson, R-Omro, said in testimony. “AB1027 does not change who is eligible for FoodShare, how benefits are calculated, or how the program is administered. It doesn’t expand or restrict the program. It is focused solely on compliance with existing federal requirements so that funding continues without disruption, and Wisconsin citizens can keep receiving the benefits they have been promised.”
Evers has requested that lawmakers send $69.2 million to the Department of Health Services to administer FoodShare, the state’s SNAP program. He said the funding is necessary to keep the state’s program under the 6% error rate that triggers a penalty.
Wisconsin’s SNAP error rate was 4.41% in 2024.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s learning gap for students is greater than the national average in part because of poverty and not just race, says a report released Tuesday.
“Beyond Race: What Really Drives Wisconsin’s Achievement Gap,” authored by Dr. Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, examined academic achievement gaps between Black and white students.
“Wisconsin continues to lead the nation in the racial achievement gap between white and African American students,” the report says. “According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress in fourth grade reading, Wisconsin’s 45-point gap is the largest in the country – 13 points greater than the next grouping of states such as Louisiana, Michigan, and South Carolina.”
The report again points out that over 78% of Black students in the state fail to meet state standards in reading and writing, compared to just 37% of white students.
“According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2015, children from families below the poverty line scored between 4 and 7 points lower on standardized tests on average,” the report says of an 11-year-old finding.
“As the percentage of African American students in a school goes from 0% to 100%, the proficiency rate on the Forward Exam would be expected to decline by 39.2%,” the report says. “A school with 100% African American students would be expected to have poverty rates 69.1% higher than a school with no African American students, and high poverty is in turn correlated with a 40.8% reduction in proficiency rates. All told, approximately 42.1% of the relationship between African American students and achievement is mediated” by poverty.
The report also looks at the rise in disabled students, and the impact of geography on poor school performance. It also explores family structure as a third cause for the learning gap.
“Research has shown that students who come from two-parent families are more likely to have academic success than those from other family situations. A particular key here is the presence of a father in the home,” the report notes. “As the family situation becomes more unstable, the risk of depression, anxiety, and dropping out of school entirely increases significantly according to research…This is relevant here because Wisconsin has the lowest rate of married African American adults of any state in the country according to the most recent analysis by the Census Bureau.”
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty bills itself as a nonprofit public interest law firm working on matters of “free speech, workers’ freedom, open government, good government, and other individual rights.”

(The Center Square) – Milwaukee’s school superintendent says she can save tens of millions of dollars by cutting hundreds of non-classroom jobs.
Superintendent Brenda Cassellius plans to ask the city’s school board to cut more than 260 positions in the next Milwaukee Public School budget. The savings could net $30 million.
“Protecting classrooms and supporting high‑quality instruction remains our top priority throughout this budget process,” Cassellius said. “These changes will be hard, but by reducing positions outside the classroom amid our budget challenges, we can put more resources where they matter most: in the classroom.”
Many of the layoffs that Cassellius is eyeing are vacancies.
In addition to protecting classroom teachers, Cassellius’ plan would also protect counselors, social workers, psychologists and nurses.
“Recently completed financial audits confirmed the structural deficit, including a $46 million gap at the end of last school year,” Cassellius’ office said in a statement.
While classroom teachers would be protected in Cassellius’ plan. Central office workers would not be.
“The approximately 263 position reductions include bout 116 positions from the offices of Academics; Communications; Family, Community, and Partnership; Finance; Human Resources; Operations; Schools office; and the Superintendent’s office,” the superintendent’s office said. “About 147 positions, including assistant principals, deans of students, and implementers.”
Casselius will ask the school board to support her plan during a special school board meeting on Monday, but her layoffs proposal is already facing opposition.
Milwaukee’s teachers union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, says it doesn’t want to see any job cuts.
“No rank-and-file worker should face the possibility of losing their job, and the board should not blindly trust this administration to act in the best interest of MPS students,” President Ingrid Walker-Henry said.
The union has asked for a specific, job-by-job list of positions that could be cut.

(The Center Square) – Conservative Wisconsin state Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler announced on Monday that she will not be seeking reelection.
Ziegler first was elected to the court in 2007 and was reelected in 2017 without opposition, the only time that has occurred in two decades.
“While I will not be a candidate next year, my appreciation for the people of Wisconsin and the judicial system I have been privileged to serve in remains as strong as ever,” Ziegler said in a statement. “I look forward to finishing out the rest of my term on the court and handing the baton to a new justice in 2027.”
The ideological makeup of the court has been a high-stakes issue in the state in recent years with record spending last year in the race won by Susan Crawford over Brad Schimel that left the court with four liberal justices and three conservatives.
Conservative Maria Lazar and liberal Chris Taylor are set for an April 7 election to fill the seat of conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley.
Before reaching the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Ziegler was a judge in Washington County and then a District III Deputy Chief Judge.
Before that, Ziegler was an assistant U.S. attorney, and a special assistant district attorney as well as working in private practice following her graduation from Marquette University Law School.
“I am incredibly proud that in all my elections I had support from a broad spectrum of legal, civic, law enforcement and political leaders – both Democrats and Republicans – who believed in my commitment to fairness, ethics and the rule of law,” Ziegler said. “I am also grateful to my colleagues on the Supreme Court, both past and present, for their faith in me by choosing me to serve as chief justice for two terms.”

(The Center Square) – Only 9% of University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty identify as conservative while 70% identify as liberal, according to a new faculty poll from the school’s Department of Political Science and Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.
The poll also showed that junior faculty were more likely to identify as liberal than senior faculty, meaning the ideological gap could expand in the future.
“The findings paint a picture of an environment where conservative faculty feel marginalized and face differential treatment,” said Center Director Alex Tahk, an associate professor of political science. “But there are also grounds for optimism: large majorities of faculty, regardless of ideology or race, believe it is important for both underrepresented racial groups and conservatives to feel included on campus.”
The survey was sent to 2,388 faculty members with 633 completed responses sent back. Incomplete responses were not included in the results. The survey was first sent Nov. 19 and responses were accepted through Jan. 23.
The poll is in line with what bill sponsor Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, said while pushing a campus free speech law. The proposal would carry a punishment of two academic years of frozen tuition if a school violates any of the requirements of the bill multiple times in a five-year period.
Nedweski cited during testimony a report from The College Fix showing that more than 99% of donations from UW system professors went to Democrats, not Republicans, using 2021-22 Federal Election Commission data.
“We designed this study to move past assumptions and get rigorous evidence,” Tahk said. “I don’t think the findings will entirely fit anyone’s preconceptions.”
The survey also found that race was not the main factor in ideology. Faculty of color where slightly more conservative than their white colleagues.
In terms of hiring, faculty showed that they were up to 38 percentage points more likely to penalize a conservative view than a liberal one.
“Further proof that there is little intellectual diversity in higher education today,” former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wrote on social media.
Further proof that there is little intellectual diversity in higher education today. https://t.co/lBZlK895no— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 9, 2026
Liberal faculty were also more likely to express controversial views while conservative faculty reported experiencing consequences at a substantially higher rate. Conservative faculty also reported feeling less comfortable expressing their views and felt less welcome on campus with less confidence that their speech rights would be protected.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin bill would ban student cell phone use throughout the school day, expanding on a previous law that requires all school districts to approve a plan to prohibit cell phones during instructional time by July 1.
Assembly Bill 948 passed the Assembly on its final day of session and passed the Senate Committee on Education with a 4-1 vote on Friday after a public hearing earlier in the week. The full Senate would then have to approve the measure before it would head to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk.
If approved, the full school day cell phone ban would go into effect on July 1, 2027.
Lawmakers have discussed proposing an item in the next state budget that could include reimbursement for $20 to $30 pouches to keep cell phones unusable until the school day ends.
The bill includes an exception for students that need a cell phone for special education programming that have an individual education plan.
Several groups, including the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, registered against the bill while the American Diabetes Association registered its support.
Rep. Linda Brill, R-Sheboygan Falls, said that she was part of a task force that had an off-site day in Oostburg and was told by Superintendent Kevin Bruggink that the new rules are leading students to spend more time on their phones during non-instructional time due to the ban.
“Now they’re late to classes, they’re taking 15-minute bathroom breaks, kids aren’t talking at lunch, there’s actually a term for it called silent lunch,” Brill said during the public hearing. “Kids are getting to lunch and they’re literally in their phones and they’re not even talking to one another.”
The disciplinary action in response to students breaking the cell phone ban will be up to the school district, Brill said.
“I feel like we already took a kick at the cell phone ban and pushing for the schools to go in that direction,” said Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee. “I’m just curious at why we’re kicking that again without going to the other side. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, I’m just curious why we’re not … trying to limit social media access to youth because of the damage.”
Brill said that the task force has 10 bills including some that address social media but also one that addresses increased resources for the Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
“I think this is an important piece of making a safer state for our children,” Brill said in response.
Sen. John Jagler, R-Watertown, said that he met with superintendents in his district and they asked for state legislation requiring cell phone bans in schools rather than leaving it entirely up to local control.
“They were too cowardly to do it themselves,” Jagler said.

(The Center Square) – School leaders in New Richmond, Wisconsin could soon be answering questions from federal investigators about their school bathrooms.
The U.S. Department of Education announced an investigation into New Richmond’s bathroom policy that allows biological males to use the girls or women’s restroom.
“Young women should never be forced to share intimate spaces with boys and men because school leaders care more about radical gender ideology than protecting girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy. School board members who ignore these allegations are failing the families they serve. This Administration will investigate this complaint fully and address any violations it discovers promptly,”
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement.
New Richmond’s school board last month voted down a proposal to change its bathroom policy. Dozens of New Richmond students, almost all of them young women, told school leaders how worried or uncomfortable they are about biological males in their bathrooms.
In response, New Richmond Schools told those young women that they can use a single-stall restroom on the other side of the school building.
Republican congressman and candidate for governor Tom Tiffany took to social media on Thursday to cheer the federal investigation.
“The U.S. Dept. of Ed is launching a Title IX investigation into the New Richmond School District for allowing men in girls’ bathrooms. It’s sick that @GovEvers refuses to stand up for female students,” he wrote. “As governor, I will protect girls’ spaces and put an end to this nonsense.”
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which offered New Richmond Schools a new bathroom policy, also weighed in.
“For too long, school districts in Wisconsin (and across the country) have allowed policies that force young girls to share private spaces with biological males. Really great news to see the U.S. Department of Education taking action to enforce Title IX as intended,” WILL’s Cory Brewer said.
There is no word from the Department of Education as to when the investigation will start, or when it may question local school leaders.
New Richmond’s school board has not responded to the investigation. The school board there is set to meet again March 16.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed bills Friday to define grooming as a crime and requiring school districts to define appropriate communication between staff and students.
Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, said she was compelled to propose the grooming bill after the Kenosha grooming case of a teacher that led to 12 misdemeanors and sentence of 450 days in jail and three years of probation.
During that case, Nedweski said prosecutors were looking for an enhanced charge and she began working to create a specific grooming law.
The case also led to Nedweski’s sponsoring of the bill on appropriate communications between students and staff.
The Kenosha case involved former teacher Christian Enwright, who was convicted of the misdemeanors after evidence of thousands of text messages over two school years with a then-12-year-old student were shown in court.
“Keeping our kids safe, especially while they’re in our schools, must be a top priority for us, whether it’s addressing grooming, gun violence, bullying, or other harmful behavior,” Evers said in a statement. “We have an important obligation to make sure our kids can feel secure, supported, and cared for by educators and staff in our schools—adults they should be able to trust and depend on—while also providing more clarity about what interactions with students are inappropriate and unacceptable and enhancing punishments for adults who violate that sacred trust,”
The new law would make grooming a felony charge that could lead to 10 years in prison, with further penalty if the offender was in a position of trust over the victim, if there are multiple victims, or if the victim has a disability.
The bill defines grooming as “a course of conduct, pattern of behavior, or series of acts with the intention to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child for the purpose of engaging in sexual intercourse or sexual contact or for the purpose of producing, distributing, or possessing depictions of the child engaged in sexually explicit conduct.”
“Defining grooming is a critical step to give law enforcement and local school districts the tools they need to hold bad actors accountable for hurting our kids, and I’m glad the Legislature took this seriously this session and passed bipartisan legislation to get this done,” Evers said.
The communication bill requires school districts to adopt a policy by Sept. 1 that includes punishments, up to firing, for those employees and volunteers who violate the policy in their official capacity.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin lawmaker charged with disorderly conduct is scheduled to have her initial court appearance Friday afternoon in Milwaukee County where several judges will be recused from the case.
Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, a Democrat who is not part of the caucus, was charged after a Sept. 2 phone call where she reportedly threatened another member of the Assembly that she would “tell the press negative personal information” if she was not included in writing a Joint Resolution honoring Latino veterans.
Ortiz-Velez left the caucus after the incident.
The charge is a misdemeanor that could lead up to a $1,000 fine and up to 90 days in jail.
Ortiz-Velez’s attorney, Michael Chernin, told The Center Square on Thursday that he could not comment on the case before it was completed.
The complaint states that Ortiz-Velez felt she was intentionally left out of writing the resolution despite the fact that her late husband was a Latino veteran.
The complaint was filed in Milwaukee because both representatives live in Milwaukee and both were in Milwaukee when the phone call occurred.
“These were personal attacks regarding Witness 1 that were outside the bounds of political response,” the complaint said. “The statements were indecent and tended to disrupt the good public order.”
Rep. Jim Piwowarczyk, R-Hubertus, wrote that he was denied the records when he sent a public records request to the state’s Department of Administration for Capitol Police records related to the incident because the “continued confidentiality is material to that prosecution and release would harm the prosecution.”

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin name, image and likeness bill that would send $15 million annually for athletic facility debt to the University of Wisconsin system could soon reach the Senate floor after passing the Assembly.
But, the Wisconsin Newspaper Association is warning lawmakers and the public that a public records stipulation that could have a sweeping unintended impact that goes well beyond NIL records.
The bill would exempt records related to the “generation, deployment, or allocation of revenue generated by an intercollegiate athletic program.”
“As drafted, it looks to create a sweeping exemption for any financial record connected to a public university’s athletic program,” WNA Executive Director Beth Bennett wrote in testimony. “Public universities are taxpayer-supported institutions. Athletic departments generate and spend millions of dollars in public and quasi-public funds. Decisions about how revenue is raised, allocated, and spent directly affect students, taxpayers, and the broader public.”
UW-Madison Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs Nancy Lynch told a Senate committee this week that the intention is to codify what the university is currently doing by denying NIL records by citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, saying the goal is to “protect our ability to remain competitive by not releasing documents that would provide information about the strategy, the approach and how we’re managing things on an NIL basis.”
Amending the bill would mean the Assembly would need to concur with any changes. The Assembly has completed its session but Gov. Tony Evers has called lawmakers back for a special session on redistricting.
UW-Madison Athletics Director Chris McIntosh said that the $14.6 million annually to the athletic department for facilities debt is essentially for the athletic department to remain competitive and supporting 23 sports and 600-plus athletes.
UW-Madison athletics operated with a $4.3 million surplus in its most recent annual NCAA financial report released earlier this year covering the financial year that ended in June 2025.
The football program accounted for 80% of the program’s revenue, equaling $113.6 million last fiscal year, according to the NCAA report, which showed the football program brought in $72 million in excess during the year.
“In the event that this legislation is not passed, we will be forced to reconcile our revenues with our liabilities, like we always have,” McIntosh told the Senate committee. “And that will come through a series of painful reductions, further emphasis on increasing our revenues.
“And, what I fear is, that through those reductions in support of our sport programs, all of our sport programs, all 23 of our sport programs, we’ll be left in a situation in which it will be difficult to say the least, for us to be competitive in the sports that generate in excess of 80% of the revenues. And it will also be difficult to be competitive.”
Athletic department officials and bill sponsors cited a 2022 marketing report from Philadelphia-based Consult Solutions that claimed each UW-Madison football game brings $19 million of economic impact to Dane County.
Those types of hired marketing reports, however, are consistently rejected by sports economists who point out the flaws in the math used and how they do not factor in items such as diverted spending, crowding out effects and the costs related to large events and facilities.
Sports teams and athletic programs then use those marketing reports to justify public spending, the UW-Madison athletics officials are doing with AB 1034, which does not have a fiscal estimate attached yet.

(The Center Square) – The front-runner to manage Wisconsin’s Medicaid system has a history of missing deadlines, inflating costs and a “questionable track record.”
Wisconsin is finalizing a $1.4 billion contract for a new single fiscal employer agent for Medicaid’s self‑directed care program. The New York-based company Public Partnerships LLC is seen as the front-runner.
But the company has a history that includes some questions.
The state of New York tapped PPL to take over its Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, but the company missed several key deadlines, including last April’s deadline to begin management.
There were also allegations in New York that that state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, improperly steered its Medicaid management contract to PPL.
“It has been brought to light that the Hochul administration has handed a de facto sole-source contract – under the guise of Medicaid reform, with only the illusion of competitive bidding – to PPL while at the same time receiving consultation about Medicaid reform from PCG, whose executives just happen to have a 25% ownership interest in PPL,” New York Democrat Congressman Ritchie Torres wrote in a letter to federal Medicaid managers in January of last year.
There are also questions about PPL’s performance.
The Legal Aid Society in New York sued PPL over allegations of not paying personal Medicaid assistants. The complaint accused PPL of paying some workers weeks late – or not paying at all for certain periods – and that contacting PPL for resolution was difficult.
In Wisconsin, there are worries about moving from three current Medicaid managers to just one.
Melanie Cairns, managing attorney at Disability Rights Wisconsin, said she worries about poor communication with agents at times and a lack of timeliness when it comes to returning calls and working out resolutions.
“It’s already extremely difficult for IRIS participants to hire workers,” she said. “When there is a delay in getting paid, it’s more likely that they will lose those workers and need to start over.”
Wisconsin has finalized the bids for its new Medicaid manager but has not yet announced which company it will go with. The new contract is supposed to begin in April 2027.

(The Center Square) – There are lots of words of support from Democrats at the Wisconsin Capitol for Gov. Tony Evers special session on redistricting, but the state’s Democratic leaders are measuring their words.
Evers on Tuesday ordered lawmakers back to the Capitol in Madison in April to “ban partisan gerrymandering.”
“Here’s the rub: new maps are redrawn every 10 years, and while Wisconsin has fair maps today, we have no guarantee we’ll continue to have fair maps in the future,” the governor said. “If the Legislature doesn’t act now, our maps could go right back to being rigged, and Wisconsinites could go right back to living under undemocratic maps – we cannot let that happen.”
Evers threatened to call for a special redistricting session during his State of the State speech last month.
Just a few weeks ago, however, he said he did not have buy-in from top Democrats at the Capitol. He said it again Tuesday.
“I feel confident that Democrats feel we are in a good position with fair maps, and I believe they’ll be supportive,” Evers added. “Are there some that may want to see something a little different, a little shaded this way or that way? But at the end of the day, everybody knows that fair maps means what it says.”
Immediately folllowing Evers’ threat in the State of the State, Republicans rejected the idea.
“Purely political and downright hilarious that he’s calling for a special session to ban partisan gerrymandering after he gerrymandered our maps,” Sen. Juian Bradley, R-New Berlin, told The Center Square after the speech. “In 2023, the legislature passed a bill giving him a redistricting commission, and he vetoed it after nearly every Democrat voted against it.”
Evers has proposed redrawn political maps in the past, including the People’s Maps.
Wisconsin Republicans agreed to a new set of legislative maps in 2024, though it was largely because they feared what the liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court would do if they got to draw the maps. The court is currently waiting on a three-judge-panel to make suggestions for Wisconsin’s congressional maps.
Wisconsin’s top legislative Democrats, on Tuesday, mostly talked around the governor’s specific request to end gerrymandering, while claiming to support the idea of “fair maps.”
“The fair maps we passed two years ago have made a difference in Wisconsin,” Democratic Senate Leader Dianne Hesselbein said in a statement. “We now live in a time when the Trump administration has shown its utter disregard for our courts and our democratic system. In Texas, Trump showed he is focused on doing everything he can to create Republican advantages in critical upcoming elections. I am a fighter and my commitment is to make sure the people of Wisconsin have a strong voice in their democracy and that Democrats have the resources and tools to fully participate in whatever redistricting processes may occur in the future.”
“Many of us as Legislative Democrats served under Republicans’ gerrymandered maps for years,” Assembly Democratic chief Greta Neubauer added in a statement of her own. “We deeply understand the importance of competitive maps and remain committed to supporting a redistricting process where the voters’ voices are heard.”