Governor Evers Signs State Budget

Thursday, July 6th, 2023 -- 10:00 AM

(AP) Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed off on a two-year spending plan Wednesday after dramatically scaling back the size of a Republican income tax cut that would have moved the state closer to a flat rate.

Evers, a Democrat, called the Republican-authored budget “imperfect and incomplete” but stopped short of vetoing the entire plan, which would have required the Legislature to start over. “There are lots of wins here,” he said at a signing ceremony surrounded by Democratic lawmakers, local leaders, members of his Cabinet and others.

Evers also used his partial veto power to increase funding for K-12 public schools for more than 400 years unless undone by a future Legislature and governor. The move will increase how much revenue schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425.

Evers, a former state education secretary and teacher, said that will give schools “predictable long-term spending authority.” Republican legislative leaders did not immediately say whether they would attempt to override any of the vetoes.

They don’t have enough votes in the Assembly to do that without Democratic support. Republicans proposed tapping nearly half of the state’s projected $7 billion budget surplus to cut income taxes across the board by $3.5 billion.

Evers reduced the size of the cut to $800 million by doing away with rate reductions for the two highest brackets. Evers was unable to undo the $32 million cut to the University of Wisconsin, which was funding that Republicans said would have gone toward diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programming and staff.

The budget Evers signed does allow for the university to get the funding later if it can show it would go toward workforce development and not DEI. Evers previously threatened to veto the entire budget over the UW cut.

But on Wednesday, he noted that the university can recoup the cut, and he used his partial veto to protect 188 DEI positions at UW that were slated for elimination under the Republican plan. One of Evers’ vetoes removed a measure that would have prohibited Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care.

The governor accused Republicans of “perpetuating hateful, discriminatory, and anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric” with the proposal. The tax plan Evers signed into law cut the two lowest tax rates, paid by households earning less than $36,840 a year or individuals who make less than $27,630.

Wealthier payers will also benefit from the cuts but must continue to pay higher rates on income that exceeds those limits. Republicans’ plan would have directed the largest tax cuts to the two wealthiest brackets.

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