With years of continued gridlock between the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic governor, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has become the arbiter over some of the most heated election rule debates — from redistricting and drop boxes to the status of the state’s top election official. 

That’s what makes April’s Supreme Court election a race to watch. It features two candidates with a stark ideological divide, competing for the seat of a retiring liberal justice and the chance to secure a majority in the current 4-3 liberal court. And it could determine how voters cast ballots in elections for years to come.

Conservative Brad Schimel is a Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general. Liberal Susan Crawford is a Dane County judge and former assistant attorney general under a Democratic administration. While the court is technically nonpartisan, both candidates are running with the support of their respective state parties, with partisan politicians providing endorsements on both sides.

“We don’t know what cases are going to come forward or what the facts or the arguments would be,” said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor and founder of the Elections Research Center. “But Crawford versus Schimel being on the court does send it in a different ideological direction.”

There are several election-related disputes the new justice may help settle. Fights over electronic voting, Wisconsin’s membership in the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center, and election officials’ ability to access citizenship data are brewing in lower courts. 

More lawsuits may yet be filed if conservatives retake control of the court. Since liberals gained a majority in 2023, they have overseen a case that led the Legislature and governor to redraw the state’s previous Republican-drawn legislative maps in a way that didn’t give either party a built-in advantage. They also legalized drop boxes, which the conservative court banned in 2022.

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Another pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court election offers two familiar outcomes

Either liberals will cement their control through 2028 or Justice Brian Hagedorn will regain the pivotal swing vote.

A victory for Crawford would probably give liberals the final say on election issues for the next two years. That’s because the next two seats up for grabs — one in 2026 and one in 2027 — are both currently held by conservatives.

A Schimel victory would give conservatives the majority, but not as much security. One of the justices providing that majority would be Justice Brian Hagedorn, a sometimes swing voter whom Burden called “the least predictable justice.”

So a court with Schimel wouldn’t be “as reliably conservative as a 4-3 liberal majority would be reliably liberal,” Burden said.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court could have an outsized role in the coming years given the apparent willingness of President Donald Trump’s administration to defy some federal court orders, said Eileen Newcomer, voter education manager at the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. That dynamic could send more issues to state instead of federal court, Newcomer said.

One of the most crucial roles the winning candidate may have during his or her tenure is participating if the court settles disputes over election results. In 2020, the then-conservative court narrowly rejected Trump’s lawsuit to overturn that year’s presidential election, which he lost.

Two candidates diverge on election law

The clearest difference between the candidates on election law is their stance on requiring photo IDs for voting. Crawford was among the lawyers to represent the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Network in its challenge to the requirement soon after it became law in 2011. She later called the law “draconian.” 

Schimel, on the other hand, said the requirement kept Wisconsin elections secure, crediting the law for President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory in the state. Schimel’s campaign has pointed out Crawford’s past opposition to the law.

Whoever wins may have a chance to weigh in on the photo ID issue.

The April ballot also has a question that could put the photo ID requirement in the state constitution.

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Wisconsin’s voter ID ballot question: Here’s what you need to know

A proposed constitutional amendment on Wisconsin’s April ballot would enshrine the state’s existing photo ID requirement for voting, but leave some room for lawmakers to modify it.

If voters approve the question — which is likely given widespread support for the law and a muted campaign against the ballot measure — overturning the requirement would be all but impossible. Still, experts say, the court or Legislature may still be able to provide some exceptions to the requirement. That means the Supreme Court’s majority could decide just how broad those exceptions could be.

If voters elect Schimel and approve the measure, Burden said, the requirement would be secure. But if voters reject the proposal and elect Crawford, he added, “it’s very likely that some group brings a challenge to the voter ID law.”

Cases that the justices may weigh in on

One lawsuit that appears headed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court is over whether voters with disabilities should be allowed to receive, mark and return ballots electronically. Currently, that privilege is reserved for military and overseas voters. Voters with disabilities in Wisconsin allege that their lack of access to electronic voting violates their rights. 

Another issue that could come before the court is the legality of ballot drop boxes. The court under a conservative majority banned them in 2022, but liberals lifted the ban after they took over the court. A conservative group could bring a case seeking to ban them again if Schimel wins, Burden said.

“They seem very willing to entertain new arguments about the same issue,” Burden said.

Newcomer, from the League of Women Voters, said revisiting settled issues and reversing precedent a third time would “undermine people’s confidence in the court.”

Still more battles are taking place over noncitizen voting, an issue that Republicans are seeking to draw attention to, despite scant evidence that it actually happens in any widespread manner. As part of their campaign, Republicans have been seeking access to Department of Transportation data showing the citizenship status of registered voters. Much of the department’s information is outdated, but some conservatives have sued for access nonetheless to understand the scale of noncitizen voting in the battleground state.

“If that’s what conservatives want, they’re going to be dissatisfied,” Burden said. “But they might still go to the court and try to get some kind of relief or action if they feel like a bunch of officials around the state are not doing all they can to weed out noncitizens from the voting rolls.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

How the Wisconsin Supreme Court race could decide future of election law is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers unveiled his 2025-27 biennial budget proposal last week — a two-year plan totaling nearly $119 billion compared to the $100 billion budget currently on the books.

Republicans lawmakers who control the powerful budget writing committee immediately vowed to throw out the governor’s spending plan this spring. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said Evers’ proposals are “dead on arrival.”

Many of the governor’s recommendations have been reviewed and rejected by GOP lawmakers in previous budgets, like his plans to expand Medicaid or legalize marijuana.

But in this year’s budget address, he introduced several new items. Here are four examples from the governor’s fourth state budget proposal. 

No tax on cash tips 

“No tax on tips” quickly became a Republican mantra on the 2024 campaign trail after it was heavily touted by President Donald Trump. But Democrats have followed suit, coming out in support of the popular policy.

For the first time, Evers is seeking to eliminate income taxes on cash tips in the budget, a proposal that mirrors a Republican-authored bill in the Legislature. The plan would reduce state revenue by just under $7 million annually — a paltry amount compared to the roughly $11 billion in individual income tax the state expects to collect each year. 

“Interesting. @GovEvers wants to eliminate tax on tips (great idea, swear I heard it somewhere before) but not a single Democrat co-sponsored the bill that Sen. (Andre) Jacque and I authored to create tax exemption for tips. I’m glad we can count on Evers’ support,” state Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, wrote on X.

Service industry workers might shrug when they discover that the tax exemption would only apply to tips left in cash and would not exempt the majority of tips, which are left on a credit card. But that’s not the only reason why Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, says the proposal would have little impact.

“Many of the lower wage workers who receive tips may not have to pay any state income taxes as it is,” Stein told Wisconsin Watch. “There are other policies like the earned income tax credit that would benefit low-wage workers…they’re more industry-neutral. They’re profession-neutral.” 

Free college tuition for Native American students

In another new proposal, Evers recommended providing full tuition waivers for any student who is a Wisconsin resident, a citizen of any of the state’s 11 federally recognized tribal nations and enrolled at a Universities of Wisconsin System or Wisconsin Technical College System school. The governor’s office could not confirm the cost of this specific proposal, but noted it is part of a $129 million effort to increase affordability in the UW System over the next two years. 

The proposal mirrors the Wisconsin Tribal Education Promise already in place at UW-Madison, which covers all educational costs for Native students who are citizens of a tribal nation. That program began last fall, is not tied to household income and is funded in part by philanthropy rather than state funds.

The program was announced in December 2023, shortly after Universities of Wisconsin regents struck a deal with Republican lawmakers to end diversity hires across their campuses in exchange for previously approved employee raises and project funding. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said the program is a testament to the university’s commitment to diversity.

Universities in other states have launched similar initiatives in recent years, granting in-state tuition for Native students.

Auditing health insurance companies 

Evers wants Wisconsin to be the first state in the nation to audit insurance companies that frequently deny health care claims. But the details of this plan, such as how frequently an insurance company would have to deny claims to be audited, are slim. 

“If an insurance company is going to deny your health care claim, they should have a darn good reason for it. It’s frustrating when your claim gets denied and it doesn’t seem like anyone can give you a good reason why,” Evers said. “If an insurance company is denying Wisconsinites’ claims too often, we’re going to audit them. Pretty simple.” 

The plan would cost $500,000 in program revenue, potentially from new fines, for two full-time positions over the next two years “to establish a framework for auditing high rates of health insurance claim denials among insurers offering plans in the state over which the office has regulatory authority.”

The new office would set the percentage of claim denials that would warrant an audit. The office would then enforce “corrective action” through fines or forfeitures. 

New tax bracket for millionaires

Evers is also seeking new ways to increase state revenue. This includes his plan to “ensure millionaires and billionaires in Wisconsin pay their fair share” through a new individual tax bracket of 9.8% that would apply to income for single and married joint filers above $1 million. For married couples filing separately, income above $500,000 would also fall under this tax bracket.

The new tax is estimated to generate nearly $1.3 billion over the next two years. 

The current top income tax rate is 7.65%, covering married joint filers with an income above $420,420 and individuals with an income above $315,310.

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Here are four items in Gov. Tony Evers’ $119 billion budget that he hasn’t previously proposed is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers unveiled his 2025-27 biennial state budget proposal. The nearly year-long process is now picking up speed, but the next two-year budget is still far from being finalized. 

Over the next few months, the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee, controlled by Republicans, will make significant changes to Evers’ proposals before approving a final budget bill. During this time, the politically divided executive and legislative branches will wrestle over funding for public schools, child care, higher education, Medicaid expansion and much more. 

Another budget surplus expected

Wisconsin ended its 2024 fiscal year with a more-than-expected $4.6 billion budget surplus and is on pace to end the current fiscal year with a $4.2 billion surplus. Republicans want to reduce the surplus by passing income tax cuts before the budget debate begins, while Democrats are urging more funding for things like K-12 education.

The Legislature must pass a budget signed by the governor every two years in order to use up state revenues for government operations. A budget period begins on July 1 of each odd-numbered year and concludes on June 30 of the next odd-numbered year. The last two-year budget totaled nearly $100 billion. 

Here’s what this hectic process will look like: 

The process involves three main entities that work to both create and pass the budget: the governor, the Legislature and state agencies. 

State agencies like the Department of Public Instruction and the Department of Natural Resources calculate their financial needs for the upcoming cycle and submit formal funding requests, which were due to the State Budget Office back in September. The Department of Administration then analyzes and compiles the requests for the governor. 

The governor then spends months crafting an executive budget proposal based on these requests, and community listening sessions are held across the state in December. On Tuesday he will give his budget address, which he is legally required to deliver to the new Legislature. Proposed funding for state agencies will be made available. 

Soon after that — likely in March — Evers will reveal his capital budget proposal, which includes spending plans for long-term projects like new UW System buildings. 

Then, the Joint Finance Committee will review and revise Evers’ budget. Under a divided government since 2019, the committee has scrapped the governor’s proposals and written its own. In 2023, GOP lawmakers began this process by stripping nearly 550 of his proposals.

Lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee typically hold their own community listening sessions in April.  The committee typically completes its revisions by the end of May.

Then, lawmakers in both houses of the Legislature — the Republican-controlled Senate and Assembly — have until the end of the fiscal year on June 30 to pass the budget before it heads to Evers’ desk for signing. Here, he can use his controversial partial veto power to remove specific appropriations from the budget bill, also allowing him to delete large sections of language and manipulate words or numbers.

In 2023, Evers made national headlines after he manipulated punctuation in the Legislature’s budget to extend school funding for 402 years. A case challenging the partial veto is pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In the meantime, Republican lawmakers have introduced a constitutional amendment that would strip away the governor’s partial veto power.

If the budget is not signed into law by July 1, the state will continue to operate under the previous budget passed in 2023 until the new one is signed.

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Gov. Tony Evers this week will propose a significant overhaul of Wisconsin’s corrections system, pushing a plan that would close one of the state’s two oldest prisons, renovate the other and convert the state’s youth prison into a facility for adult men. 

The proposal, which totals just shy of $500 million, will be included in the governor’s budget proposal, which he will unveil on Tuesday night. The governor shared details of the plan with reporters Friday morning.

The “domino series of facility changes, improvements and modernization efforts,” as Evers described them, would take place between approval of the budget and 2031. The proposal is the solution to the state’s skyrocketing prison population, Evers said, adding there is “not an alternative to my plan that is safer, faster and cheaper.”

The first step would be building a facility for youth offenders in Dane County, allowing the state to close its current beleaguered juvenile prison complex in Irma, home to Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls. The cost would be $130.7 million.

Completing the juvenile Dane County facility would be the latest step in a years-long effort to shutter Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. A similar facility opened in Racine County earlier this month, with another juvenile facility in Milwaukee poised to open next year. With the addition of the Dane County facility, the state would be able to move youth offenders out of Lincoln Hills in early 2029, according to the Evers administration.

The Lincoln County complex would then undergo $9 million in renovations to be converted into a 500-bed, medium-security institution for men.

Another key piece of Evers’ plan would be converting Stanley Correctional Institution into a maximum-security facility for $8.8 million. That would allow the state to renovate Waupun Correctional Institution, the state’s oldest facility, where at times inmates were confined to their cells for months and denied medical care, according to an investigation by Wisconsin Watch and The New York Times. Waupun staff also have faced criminal charges following the deaths of five inmates. 

The estimated $245 million renovation would involve demolishing the prison’s existing cell halls and replacing them with new, medium-security facilities known as a “vocational village” — the first in Wisconsin based on a model used in other states. The facility would be “designed to expand job and workforce training to help make sure folks can be stable, gainfully employed and can positively contribute to our communities when they are released,” Evers said.

Under the plan, the John Burke Correctional Center in Waupun would also be converted to a 300-bed facility for women “with little to no capital cost,” said Jared Hoy, secretary of the Department of Corrections.

Green Bay Correctional Institution, constructed in 1898, would close under the proposal sometime in spring 2029 at a cost of $6.3 million. Many have pushed for the closure of the prison due to overcrowding, poor conditions and staffing issues.

To compensate for the lost beds, the last project in the “domino” series would add 200 beds to Sanger B. Powers Correctional Center in Brown County.

The governor’s budget will guarantee Green Bay staffers a role at another DOC facility to account for the prison’s closure, the Evers administration said. The facility would likely then be sold, the governor told reporters.

In totality, the plan aims to avoid building a new prison in Wisconsin, which the governor’s administration estimates would cost $1.2 billion and take a decade to construct. Evers said Friday that he had not discussed the plan with Republican lawmakers, but implied he was slated to meet with them over the weekend.

The state’s adult institutions were locking up more than 23,000 people as of Feb. 7. That’s more than 5,000 above the design capacity of Wisconsin’s prisons and more than 3,000 above levels four years ago when COVID-19 actions shrunk prisoner ranks.

Justice reform advocates have argued that Wisconsin can’t substantially improve conditions without decarceration, including releasing more inmates and diverting others to programs rather than prisons. 

Other states — some led by Republicans and some by Democrats — have managed to close prisons by adopting rehabilitation-focused reforms that cut thousands from the population. 

The governor is also seeking some policy changes that could trim the population. For example, he wants to expand the capacity of the state’s existing earned release program for nonviolent offenders with less than 48 months remaining on their sentences, allowing more inmates to access vocational training and treatment for substance use disorders.

Evers noted there are 12,000 inmates on a waiting list to access vocational programming, and expanding the earned release program would likely make another 1,000 inmates eligible for the program.

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Tony Evers to propose $500 million prison overhaul, closing Green Bay facility by 2029 is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Forcing county sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials or risk losing state funding. A tax cut for service industry worker cash tips. Banning “foreign adversaries” from owning Wisconsin farmland. The GOAT committee. 

The first few weeks of the Legislature’s new session have been dominated by ideas inspired, at least in part, by President Donald Trump, as Wisconsin Republicans bring ideas pushed in Washington to Madison.

The localization of Trump’s agenda — which helped the president secure a slim but significant victory in November — comes as Republican lawmakers continue to set the legislative agenda in Wisconsin.

But Democratic legislative leaders are pushing back on that agenda, unlike many of their counterparts at the national level.

“These are not serious proposals,” said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine. “They are political; they are for the right-wing base. But they are simply not addressing the problems that the people of Wisconsin are facing.”

Immigration crackdown

Last week, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, unveiled legislation to mandate cooperation between Wisconsin law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

The bill would require “sheriffs to request proof of legal presence status from individuals held in a county jail for an offense punishable as a felony,” according to analysis from the Legislative Reference Bureau. It also compels sheriffs to “comply with detainers and administrative warrants received from the federal department of homeland security regarding individuals held in the county jail for a criminal offense.”

If a sheriff shrugs the law, the sheriff’s county would face a 15% cut in state aid in the following year, according to a draft of the bill. But the bill isn’t about targeting places like Dane and Milwaukee counties — where leaders have pledged not to cooperate with federal authorities — said Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Lake Geneva. “It’s about just ensuring that every county is operating the same and that there isn’t a refuge for these violent criminals.”

While introducing the bill, flanked by two dozen of his GOP colleagues, Bradley said the legislation should garner bipartisan support, pointing to the Laken Riley Act — a similar crackdown on theft and violent crime committed by unauthorized immigrants — that received some Democratic support in Congress. It was the first bill signed into law under the new Trump administration.

“Only far-left extremists in this country believe that someone here illegally that commits a felony should be allowed to stay,” Bradley said.

No tax on tips 

State Sen. Andre Jacque, R-De Pere, is one of four Republican lawmakers circulating a bill that would eliminate taxes on cash tips earned by service workers — a proposal Trump heavily touted on the campaign trail. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, later announced support for the policy as well. 

Jacque and a group of bipartisan lawmakers last introduced the bill in 2019, but it never became law. He said it’s heavily favored by those in the hospitality industry.

Trump’s push to enact a similar policy at the federal level made this the ideal time to reintroduce the bill in Wisconsin, Jacque said.

“Having a federal administration that is putting some political capital towards making that part of the equation happen certainly adds a lot of fire to being ready to be aligned at the state level,” Jacque said.

In 2019, the bill, which only would have exempted cash tips from taxation, was estimated to reduce the state’s revenue by nearly $4.7 million annually. A fiscal estimate of the current bill has not yet been released. It would not exempt the majority of tips, which are left on a credit card. 

Banning ‘foreign adversaries’ from owning land

Another state bill introduced by Republicans last month would prevent “foreign adversaries” from “countries of concern” from acquiring forestry and agricultural land in the state. 

The legislation mimics Trump’s campaign promises in January 2023 to ban Chinese nationals from buying farmland and owning other “vital infrastructure,” citing national security concerns. Jacque, an author of the bill, said he wasn’t aware of Trump’s previous support for a similar proposal. 

Jacque introduced similar legislation in 2023 that never became law. He pointed to bipartisan congressional support for similar “foreign adversary” bills introduced at the federal level. It’s a “common-sense concern” that “resonates with the public,” Jacque said. 

GOAT Committee

The Government Operations, Accountability and Transparency Committee is new to the Assembly this legislative session. Like DOGE, the federal Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk, it’s named after a pop culture meme (GOAT is shorthand for greatest of all time; DOGE is named after a meme turned cryptocurrency).

The committee’s chair, Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, said the committee will work “to identify opportunities to increase state government efficiency and to decrease spending.” 

“The people of Wisconsin want to see their hard-earned tax dollars being spent on services that directly affect them, not on the expansion of programs that benefit only select groups of people,” she said in a written response to questions from Wisconsin Watch. “GOAT will investigate ways in which the state can reallocate revenues away from excessive wants and funnel them more into critical needs without increasing spending.”

One motivating factor for her 2022 Assembly run was “to bring my professional experience in process improvement to the public sector because so many glaring inefficiencies in state agencies were exposed during the pandemic,” Nedweski said, noting she wanted to improve “fiscal accountability” for the state long before DOGE was a concept.

The committee was created in response “to an outpouring of demand from the people,” Nedweski said, adding that “DOGE is making fiscal conservatism cool and accessible to more people.”

“The performance of state agencies under the current administration has often been subpar under this administration relative to the tax dollars invested,” she said. “If the (state) agencies are not going to take honest looks in the mirror as to how they can better serve Wisconsinites, GOAT will. Whether or not the Governor chooses to work with us is up to him.”

GOAT serves a different role than the Legislative Audit Bureau, Nedweski said, noting that a “top objective of GOAT is to be responsive to real people facing everyday challenges with state government.” 

While the committee may work with LAB and the Joint Audit Committee, “the function of GOAT will be less technical than Audit and more directly responsive to a wide range of stakeholder concerns,” she said.

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A year and a half after Wisconsin lawmakers earmarked $125 million to clean up toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, the funds have yet to flow to contaminated communities.

That’s due to a legal and philosophical debate over the limits of government power and the potentially harsh consequences of a decades-old environmental law.

Lawmakers continue to hash out the rules to guide who would receive the money and, more importantly, the legal risks for entities that request it.

The Legislature’s GOP-controlled finance committee won’t transfer the cash designated to address Wisconsin’s PFAS problem to the state Department of Natural Resources, so it continues to accumulate interest in a trust fund.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is now trying again — this time, embracing an idea penned by the Republican legislators with whom he sparred.

Evers’ plans, to be included in his upcoming budget proposal, include a cash infusion that expands the trust fund balance to $145 million, along with a provision contained in a GOP-authored PFAS bill that Evers vetoed last year.

That measure, introduced in 2023 by Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, created grants for municipalities and owners of PFAS-contaminated properties — so-called “innocent landowners” — who didn’t cause their pollution.

It also truncated the DNR’s power to mandate cleanups.

But in his new budget proposal, Evers hopes to carve what appears to be a narrow liability exemption.

It would only apply to cropland that was polluted with PFAS when the owner unknowingly received contaminated fertilizer derived from sewage sludge. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources already has said it doesn’t enforce its cleanup policy under those circumstances.

What are PFAS?

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a family of more than 12,000 compounds commonly found in consumer products like food wrappers, nonstick pans and raincoats along with special firefighting foam that can extinguish the hottest of blazes.

The intractable chemicals are turning up in drinking water around the country. In 2022, the EPA released health advisories, suggesting virtually no amount of several PFAS is safe for consumption.

The DNR is currently monitoring PFAS contamination at more than 100 sites.

What are state cleanup requirements?

State rules require reporting and environmental restoration by parties that pollute air, soil or water or discover past contamination on their property even if they aren’t directly responsible.

The DNR holds parties liable for PFAS contamination they didn’t cause but also exercises discretion to force past spillers to clean up instead of current property owners. The law also under certain circumstances exempts neighbors of contaminated properties from liability when a spill crosses property lines.

The department’s authority comes from Wisconsin’s spills law, passed in 1978. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed that legislators intended to see pollution cleaned up regardless of who caused it. Failing to do so, it said, is just as, if not more, dangerous to human health than the initial spill.

The power of Wisconsin’s spills law has come under scrutiny in recent years as the scale of PFAS cleanup costs comes to light.

What do the Senate bill’s backers dislike about current policy?

Last session’s Senate bill would have prevented the DNR from enforcing provisions of the spills law when the responsible party qualifies as an innocent landowner and allows the department to clean up its property at the agency’s expense.

Wimberger said the measure would prevent the financial ruin of landowners who seek help from the department to address PFAS pollution or obtain clean water, without which their “application for a grant is a self-incriminating statement they have a polluted property and are an emitter.”

The threat of enforcement against the owner of a contaminated property might cause banks to think twice about refinancing a loan or even require a borrower to pay up in full, he said. Looming enforcement could increase the difficulty of selling a property.

At its most pernicious, the law might drive property owners to avoid testing for pollutants, risking their health for fear of the financial consequences.

Is this actually happening to landowners?

Wimberger has often portrayed innocent landowners as homeowners or farmers who unknowingly had PFAS-containing inputs spread atop their fields.

But last year, Midwest Environmental Advocates, which opposed the bill, reviewed each of the 130 PFAS spill cases the department reported online.

The firm determined only seven cases applied to individuals and none concerned farmers whose contamination originated from PFAS-contaminated fertilizer. Most concerned businesses like chemical and energy companies, defense contractors and salvage yards.

What impacts would the Republican proposal have?

Wimberger said department promises to exempt farmers don’t suffice, and throwing money at the problem is ineffective unless lawmakers enact enforcement guardrails.

Although the GOP bill would have protected individuals, liability exemptions also could extend to businesses like private landfills or paper mills that spread pulp and industrial sludge onto farm fields.

A list of more than 20 potential innocents compiled by one of the bill’s co-authors includes an electric transmission company whose transformer exploded in 2019 and the city of La Crosse, which the state currently holds responsible for PFAS contamination caused by the city’s fire department at its municipal airport. The bill’s backers say the property owners lacked a choice when firefighters sprayed the PFAS-containing foam.

Attorneys from the nonpartisan Legislative Council told lawmakers PFAS manufacturers and companies that test those chemicals likely wouldn’t qualify as innocent landowners. 

However, the proposal would have prevented the DNR from enforcing cleanup laws against companies based on PFAS samples taken from company properties unless the department could show the contamination exceeded a government standard.

But Wisconsin lacks PFAS standards for groundwater, and GOP-backed bureaucratic hurdles, including a 30-month time limit on the rulemaking process, have encumbered efforts to create them.

The state’s second attempt will expire in March. 

Evers recently jump-started a new effort to create PFAS groundwater rules and proposed an exemption from the usual holdups.

“Safe drinking water should not be a partisan issue, and yet it has been,” said Marinette City Council member and clean water advocate Doug Oitzinger, whose county is coping with PFAS contamination linked to a firefighter training site owned by Johnson Controls International. “We have failed utterly as a state to have environmental laws that protect us when it comes to PFAS.”

What does Evers say he’ll include in his upcoming budget?

Evers’ proposal would transfer money to the DNR for PFAS testing and removal at public drinking water systems, testing of private wells, grants to stem the release of PFAS into the environment, research into PFAS destruction methods and statewide PFAS testing. Evers also would allocate $7 million to innocent landowners for testing and cleanup.

He continues to call for the release of the PFAS trust fund money, the balance of which now stands at $127.1 million, including unspent funds from a state firefighting foam cleanup program.

“We cannot afford more years of inaction and obstruction,” Evers said in a statement. “I urge Republicans and Democrats to work together to do what’s best for our kids and Wisconsin’s families by investing in critical efforts to improve water quality.”

But potential spills law impacts remain unknown until the governor’s budget clarifies the scope of liability protections Evers hopes to create.

“I’ve been waiting for months for the governor to clarify his definition of an ‘innocent landowner,’ and he has refused to respond to my requests,” Wimberger said in a statement.

Evers’ staff have said the governor remains opposed to limiting department authority, and if Republicans present a proposal identical to last session’s bill, he might veto it again.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled Friday that the state’s chief election official, Meagan Wolfe, can stay in her job even though her term has expired, heading off a yearslong effort by some Republicans to oust her.

The court found that although Wolfe’s term expired in 2023, the Wisconsin Elections Commission had no duty to reappoint or replace her because her position isn’t vacant. The decision relied largely on a 2022 precedent that continues to bitterly divide justices.

“I am thrilled because Meagan Wolfe is an outstanding administrator and we are lucky to have her at the helm of the agency,” said Ann Jacobs, the chair of the election commission and a Democrat.

After the ruling, Wolfe said she was “excited to continue to work with elections officials around the state” and praised clerks for the work they do.

What was the dispute?

Wolfe became the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s administrator in 2018 after working for the agency and its predecessor in other roles and has been a holdover appointee since the summer of 2023. She is considered one of the most respected — and scrutinized — election officials nationwide, but she became a Republican target after President Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in the 2020 election and took heat for the commission’s decisions in administering that election. 

The case focuses not on Wolfe’s performance as administrator, but rather on the legality of appointees staying on after their terms expire. 

Wolfe’s four-year term expired in July 2023, and the Republican-led state Senate appeared poised to reject her confirmation if the Wisconsin Elections Commission had voted to reappoint her. All three Republicans on the commission voted to reappoint Wolfe, but the Democratic commissioners abstained from the vote. They cited a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling stating that appointees can stay in their roles past the end of their terms. That meant Wolfe wasn’t formally reappointed and therefore not subject to another Senate confirmation proceeding. Still, Senate leaders took a vote to fire her.

Who were the plaintiffs and defendants? 

After the Senate voted to fire her, Wolfe and the Wisconsin Elections Commission sued Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, a Republican who pushed for the ouster. The lawsuit, first filed in Dane County Circuit Court, also names former Senate President Chris Kapenga and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, both Republicans, as defendants.

What were they asking for? 

Wolfe and the commission asked the court to declare that she was properly continuing in her role and that the commission didn’t have to appoint an administrator just because her term had expired. Republicans asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to require the commission to appoint an administrator, a move that could have led to Wolfe’s ouster. 

“WEC does not have a duty to appoint a new administrator to replace Wolfe simply because her term has ended,” conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Annette Ziegler said.

What happens now? 

The decision means Wolfe can stay on until the commission chooses to reappoint her or appoint somebody else, or until she chooses to leave.

After the 2024 election, Wolfe told Votebeat that she has “no immediate plans to leave” if she wins this case and continues having commissioners’ approval. She said she would reconsider that if her position makes it harder for the commission to operate or receive state financial support in the upcoming budget.

In a concurring opinion Friday, three liberal Supreme Court justices signaled that they’re open to reviewing the 2022 case that was the basis for the ruling. In that case, the court had a conservative majority and ruled that appointees can legally stay in office past the expiration of their terms until the state Senate confirms a successor. At that time, the court’s liberal justices dissented.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Meagan Wolfe can stay on as Wisconsin’s top election official, state Supreme Court rules is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Overshadowed by the state Supreme Court race, the Feb. 18 primary for Wisconsin’s top education official could significantly affect the future of K-12 schools but lacks a candidate with a traditionally conservative background — despite Republican sentiment that voters are trending rightward on education issues.

Three candidates are jostling to be state superintendent of public instruction. Incumbent Jill Underly, who was elected in a landslide four years ago, is seeking a second term in the job. She faces two challengers: Jeff Wright, superintendent of the Sauk Prairie School District, and Brittany Kinser, an education consultant from Milwaukee. The top two vote getters on Feb. 18 will advance to the April 1 general election. 

The superintendent leads the state Department of Public Instruction, serving as Wisconsin’s top education official. A constitutional officer, the superintendent has uniquely broad authority: Wisconsin is the only state that elects its top education official but lacks a state board of education, according to the conservative Badger Institute. That means whoever leads the department “reports to nobody except the voters every four years.”

Underly drew fire after DPI last summer changed the threshold for what is considered proficient performance on state tests. Republican lawmakers and her opponents accused her of “lowering” standards. She stood by the changes in an interview, arguing they better reflect what students are learning in Wisconsin classrooms. 

Underly has the backing of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and wants to continue being “the number one advocate for public education in Wisconsin,” she said. To do so, she said she’ll continue to “set the standard” on issues like funding — DPI requested a $4 billion boost in state aid in the state’s next budget — because “this is what our public schools need.” 

The state also needs a seasoned leader to grapple with the wave of changes coming out of Washington, Underly argued. “Do (voters) want somebody who has been proven to be able to manage this work?” she said. “Or do they want somebody to come in (that) has no idea what they’re doing and have to build a team and then meanwhile we’re getting bombarded with all these actions from the federal government?”

“I think that there’s something to be said for a strong incumbent and continuity,” Underly said.

Unusually, she faces a challenger from both sides.

Wright, who hails from battleground Sauk County and has twice run for the state Assembly as a Democrat, is stressing his ability to work with both parties. The political action committee of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, has recommended supporting Wright, though it has stopped short of a full endorsement. “I don’t have a political establishment with me,” he told CBS58. “But I have a lot of the state’s educators with me.” 

Wright’s campaign didn’t respond to multiple requests to schedule an interview for this story.

Kinser, meanwhile, is touting her support for school choice programs as she tacks to the right. She has worked as a special education teacher in Chicago during the early 2000s and the principal of a public charter school in Milwaukee and, until January 2024, served as CEO of Milwaukee education nonprofit City Forward Collective. 

She has previously called herself a “Blue Dog Democrat” and donated to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s 2024 reelection campaign. But last week, she described herself on “The Benjamin Yount Show” as a moderate. “It shouldn’t matter what party we’re in,” she said. “We need to be focusing on teaching our kids how to read, write and do math.” Kinser’s campaign also did not make her available for an interview.

But how can the race lack a clear conservative candidate in 2025 — especially as Republicans feel like voters are trending toward them on education issues? 

The simplest explanation: the stakes of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, one conservative education reform advocate told Wisconsin Watch.

Recruiting a high-quality candidate to run for statewide office without guarantees of financial support is challenging, said the advocate, who works closely with policymakers and was granted anonymity to offer a candid evaluation of the race. And with the outcome of the court race determining ideological control of the court, Republican donors are focusing their resources elsewhere.

More clear-cut conservative-aligned candidates, like Deb Kerr in 2021 and Lowell Holtz in 2017, have been on the ballot in past cycles. But just because the race lacks a prototypical conservative doesn’t mean conservatives are giving up on it. 

Kinser herself has been running to the right as the campaign has picked up. She addressed Republican Party chapters throughout the state and, more recently, on at least two occasions spoke at events alongside conservative state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel. That could help give her the political base she needs to advance from the primary, the advocate said. 

“If you’re talking about a three-person primary and there’s two lanes, and Underly and Wright are basically fighting over one of the lanes and the other lane is wide open, it makes sense to me to go talk to as many people as you can,” the advocate added.

And just because Kinser isn’t a traditional conservative candidate doesn’t mean she can’t appeal to conservatives, said CJ Szafir, CEO of the Institute for Reforming Government, a conservative think tank. He added that she “is right on all the issues and she’s aligned with conservatives and the conservative base.

“I don’t think there’s any real daylight between what conservatives want in the DPI and what Brittany wants to do at the DPI,” he said. “Brittany’s the one candidate that … is very focused on being pro-child, focused on the core issues and how to overhaul the DPI to better address the concerns of parents.”

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Five years ago, Mike Crowley lacked the courage to serve as a living kidney donor for family — let alone for an absolute stranger, he said.

But on Jan. 8, Crowley — a Waukesha County supervisor and CEO of the National Kidney Foundation of Wisconsin — had surgery to do just that, a decision he now sees as decades in the making.

That’s due to his personal and professional experiences. Twenty-six years ago, his then-2-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, often called juvenile diabetes, a condition in which the pancreas makes little or no insulin. If left untreated, it can cause a range of complications, including damage to the kidneys or other organs. 

While his son’s case was found early and he continues to receive treatment, many people with diabetes don’t see such outcomes. People with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes make up over a quarter of those waiting for an organ transplant in Wisconsin. People needing a kidney account for nearly 80% of those on the transplant list.

When Crowley took the helm of the National Kidney Foundation of Wisconsin, he gradually learned much more about kidney disease, including connections to diabetes. And last March, he visited three dialysis clinics in Wisconsin to distribute care bags to patients.

“I cried when I got back to my truck after doing the delivery at each one because what I saw was hopelessness,” Crowley said. “They need a kidney, they’re most likely not going to get a kidney transplant in their lifetime.”

Last year 43 people in Wisconsin died while waiting for a kidney transplant. Another 65 became too sick to receive a transplant.

Crowley wanted to be a part of the solution. He knew he was healthy enough to do so. On his 60th birthday last August, he rode his bicycle 102 miles from Wisconsin to Iowa in less than eight hours as part of a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. When he crossed the finish line, he looked at the Mississippi River and wept as he reflected on how amazing he felt after the grueling ride. If he could pass the strict medical, social, mental health and financial assessments, “why wouldn’t I be a kidney donor?”

Two days later, he logged onto a UW Health portal and began the process. After four months of extensive testing, he was approved to be an altruistic kidney donor, meaning he would donate to a stranger on the transplant list. 

“You don’t need to be a match to anybody in your immediate family or a friend,” he said, calling the decision “the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Obviously, having kids, getting married, buying a house, those are all, you know, great experiences,” he said. “But this takes the cake.”

Phil Witkiewicz was placed on the transplant list a decade after being diagnosed with a rare liver disease. He had long managed the symptoms with liver stents, but he became nearly bedridden when they stopped working. That flipped his family’s life upside down, his wife Emily said.

Witkiewicz was just 43 when added to the transplant list last July. 

Most people needing an organ transplant in Wisconsin are 50 or older, although those waiting for pancreatic transplants or dual pancreas and kidney transplants are usually younger.

Witkiewicz was called in twice for a potential transplant, only to find that the donated liver wasn’t viable.

But through those disappointments, Witkiewicz and his wife Emily held out hope that one of their friends could donate. The friend passed a battery of blood tests, MRIs and dental screenings only to discover his liver was 3% too small to donate. 

“That was like the ultimate blow,” Emily said.

Last December, almost five months after being put on the transplant list, Phil finally received a liver from someone who had died, flipping life back to a new normal. Witkiewicz still undergoes routine blood testing and takes numerous medications to prevent infections and keep his body from rejecting the organ, but he’s just happy to be alive.

Emily said she recognizes the duality of her husband’s relief: What was the best day of his life was the end of someone else’s. Emily is registered to be an organ donor, as is her 16-year-old son. Wisconsin residents can register when getting their driver’s license or through the Wisconsin Donor Registry.

“Seeing what it did for my husband, and knowing somebody’s sick in bed waiting for an organ and my tragedy could turn into somebody’s best day,” she said, “that would be worth it.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

DataWatch: Many die awaiting kidney transplants in Wisconsin, so this man donated his is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

The vast majority of America’s local election administrators would not encourage their children to do the same job, and a shrinking share of them say they would be proud to tell others about their work.

The findings come from a survey conducted every federal election year by the Elections & Voting Information Center, an academic research group. While it contains small bright spots — election administrators largely find the job personally rewarding, for example — the number willing to encourage their children to follow in their footsteps has decreased by nearly half in the past two election cycles. In 2020, 41% said they would do so. In 2024, that number dropped to 22%.

The full survey results will be released next week. The survey was fielded from early August to late October.

The negative outlook on election work continues a trend researchers say they began observing in 2020, when increasing scrutiny, threats and misinformation fanned by supporters of President Donald Trump began reshaping the profession. Public confidence in elections hit new highs after the November 2024 presidential election — which had a clear outcome despite narrow margins — but election administrators are still pessimistic.

“There are still a lot of cracks in the system, and if things had been closer we would have seen a different reaction,” said Paul Manson, EVIC research director and research assistant professor at Portland State University in Oregon. “Job satisfaction hasn’t gone up — underneath the hood, the people who run elections are still nervous.”

Many election administrators and experts believe the public’s increased confidence in elections is fragile and would look different if Trump had lost again, if the election had been closer or if the results had been contested as they were in 2020. After a grueling few years, the survey found, the administrators remain on edge, a finding that could affect whether communities around the country can find qualified candidates for critical election administration positions.

Survey finds a mix of pride and frustration

Paul Gronke, EVIC director and professor of political science at Reed College, said the center began conducting the survey in 2018, hoping to learn more about the field and the people in it, rather than just about how Americans were casting ballots. Until that point, said Gronke, surveys treated “administrators as if they were just cogs in a system.”

In 2020, as the pandemic worsened and Trump intensified false rhetoric against election officials, the survey became a valuable window for political scientists and the media into how election administrators experienced that shift, said Gronke.

Gronke and Manson say they’ve uncovered a strikingly complex picture over the years.

While election administrators express confidence in their own abilities and say they personally enjoy the work, they struggle to leave their problems at the office.

“While many of us in election administration view our jobs as incredibly important, and we value the choices we have made in our lives, we look at the wasteland that is our lives and we think, ‘We wouldn’t want this for our kids,’ because election administration is so hard,” Judd Choate, Colorado’s election director, told Votebeat.

Choate — who teaches in the election administration program at the University of Minnesota and has helped craft questions for the survey over the years — said his own 17-year-old daughter has become more interested in elections, but still has no interest in doing the same job.

“I’m perfectly fine with that,” he said. “Please, become a doctor. Become a lawyer. Be a mathematician. Don’t do this. One hundred percent, that is the way I view this job.”

Training sessions feel ‘like group therapy’

Melissa Kono is the part-time clerk for Burnside, a 500-person town in western Wisconsin. There, clerks are elected members of the town board. It’s a part-time job, paying only $6,000 a year. Kono is also a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches courses on community resource development.

For her, the combination makes sense — her professorship pays the bills, and the two jobs align nicely. As part of her work for the university, she travels around the state training other election administrators. But she understands that for many others, the bad is starting to outweigh the good.

“The pandemic and the volume of absentee ballot requests coupled with unnecessary criticism is what has led to this fatigue — just saying, ‘I’m done with this,’” she told Votebeat. “People who I never thought would give up have left their positions because of the pressure and criticism and dealing with irrational people.”

All of the anxiety and pressure have led some of her training sessions to feel “like group therapy,” she said.

The survey also shows that election officials in small counties and large counties have very different experiences. In less-populated areas, officials are far more likely to focus on elections for only a small part of the year, while large cities and counties typically have full-time staff dedicated only to elections. Rural areas also have less of a problem recruiting poll workers.

Perhaps the most striking difference is the impact of the spread of false information. Only about 20% of administrators in jurisdictions of under 5,000 voters reported that misinformation was a serious problem. In jurisdictions of more than 100,000 voters, nearly half report that it is.

Kono said that because Burnside, Wisconsin, has so few voters, they are provided “white glove” service. She can interact individually with anyone who is experiencing a problem — whether that’s cynicism over election integrity or a missing absentee ballot.

“In a rural area, we have the advantage of knowing our neighbors,” she said.

By contrast, Heider Garcia in Dallas County, Texas, oversees voting for more than 1.4 million people. He is paid well for his job, which focuses entirely on voting and elections. His ability to pay his full-time staff a livable wage also makes it easier for him to attract candidates from other fields, which medium and small jurisdictions struggle to do.

Finding the right people for election work is difficult

Still, across the board, election administrators say that hiring qualified, full-time staff is difficult. As Gronke and Manson have done follow-up interviews with some of the respondents, they learned that low pay, high stress and intense scrutiny were the barriers.

“We had one election official say they couldn’t compete with In-N-Out Burger on pay,” said Manson. “Administrators want to communicate that this is a long-term job with good benefits, but so are other county jobs. And they do not come with as much scrutiny or criticism.”

Critically, more than 40% of election administrators say that job applicants have little to no experience in elections, and more than a quarter say that applicants lack the practical skills to do the work. That isn’t surprising in such a niche sector.

“Nobody goes to election school. Nobody says, when they are in high school, ‘Oh, when I graduate I want to go here and study to be an election administrator,’” he said. “It’s more about having the right skills, and then the job comes up.”

Garcia said that people who have experience in event planning or who have run a business tend to have transferable skills. In his previous job, in neighboring Tarrant County, his deputy elections administrator was a former Marine.

“You can learn the business if you have the right skills,” he said. The problem, though, is that the number of necessary skills continues to expand. “We joke. Like, you have to be a lawyer, an IT person, a spokesperson, a negotiator, and an event planner.”

In recent years, the availability of training has improved. The University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Policy — where Choate teaches — offers a certificate in election administration, for example. Choate hopes the industry will start proactively reaching out to more people to attract them to these programs and to the field itself.

Choate said the EVIC report (and others like it) “demonstrate the need for an aggressive program to create education opportunities for young people, people in college and people trying to get into a second career … that set them up for success in the world of election administration.”

Why medium-size jurisdictions struggle

Manson said one thing that stands out to him every year is the struggle medium-size counties experience. “Small counties don’t have that many ballots, and large counties have far more resources,” said Manson. They can usually muscle through, he said.

But for the medium-size, often suburban counties, “it’s like reverse Goldilocks,” he said. Demands are growing as population grows, but resources aren’t necessarily coming in as fast: The buildings are frequently too small, and there is almost never enough staff.

A few markers have been consistent since EVIC began the survey in 2018. Most notably, the demographics of full-time staff. Eighty-eight percent say that they are white, far higher than in the population at large. This number is consistent across jurisdiction size. Just under 85% of respondents to the survey were women (though this number is significantly smaller — just under 50% — for larger jurisdictions).

Gronke and Manson say the job of clerk has historically been popular among women because it used to be a quiet job that allowed you to balance the demands of family and work. The nature of the work is also viewed through a gendered lens. Kono said she and other clerks are often treated “just as the secretary, or just the person who takes the minutes.”

“Yeah, I wish I just took the minutes,” she said. “That is the easiest part of the job.”

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Huseman at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat’s newsletters here.

Job satisfaction among election administrators continues to sink, survey shows is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Democrats on Saturday will gather just outside Washington to take an early step in their journey out of the political wilderness: electing their party’s next national chair.

Among the candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee is Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler, who has served as chair of the state Democratic Party since 2019. His fiercest competition to lead the national Democratic Party comes from Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. The three have sparred in recent days over who is leading the race to secure a majority of votes from the DNC’s 448 voting members.

Wikler’s camp declined Monday morning to share an updated whip count with Wisconsin Watch. As of Friday afternoon, he said 151 voting DNC members were backing his bid. The Martin and O’Malley camps did not respond to questions about updated whip counts, but Martin said last week he had the backing of 200 members. Both Wikler and O’Malley questioned that number, with a Wikler spokesperson calling it “inflated.”

The first candidate to secure 225 votes on Saturday will serve as Democrats’ next national chair. If no candidate reaches that threshold during the first round of voting, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated, and members will cast another ballot, repeating the process until a chair is selected.

Wikler’s time as head of the state party has been, by most standards, a success. Capitalizing on the anti-Trump momentum of the 2018 midterms, Democrats have won eight of 11 statewide races since Wikler took over — including the 2020 presidential race and the 2022 gubernatorial election. The state Democratic Party was also instrumental in winning a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has remade Wisconsin’s political landscape. 

But there have been setbacks: U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson got reelected in an otherwise positive year for Democrats in 2022, and Donald Trump carried the state last year, helping return him to the White House.

Wikler maintains he’s the right person to lead the party, and he says Democrats need to make their party more transparent, change the way they communicate with voters and return to being focused on addressing the needs of working people.

“(Democrats) don’t talk the talk in a way that shows people that they’re fighting the fight,” Wikler said last week during an introspective moment at a candidate forum hosted by the Texas Democratic Party. “And that’s where we need to change.”

A shift in the landscape

Republicans and Democrats alike in Wisconsin said that if Wikler is tapped to lead the national party it will change the political landscape in Wisconsin.

“I know politics. And I love politics. And he is a very good politician,” Republican former Gov. Tommy Thompson said of Wikler. “The Democrat Party could do a hell of a lot worse going with somebody else than Ben Wikler.”

In fact, Thompson, who congratulated Wikler on his success as state party chair, seems keen on having the Democratic leader move on from his current post.

“I want to contribute to him!” he joked about Wikler while speaking with reporters.

Brian Schimming, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, also acknowledged that Wikler “is a talented guy.” But he was quick to point out that Wisconsin Democrats came up short on key goals in November. Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t carry the state, U.S. Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil are still in Congress, and Republicans still control the Legislature, Schimming noted. Their only success, the GOP chair claimed, was getting Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin reelected.

“Whether it’s Ben or anybody else, that party has a lot of issues,” Schimming said of Democrats. “So they are going to need a lot of people to step up, not just their chair, to fix what’s wrong with that party right now.”

While Democratic leaders acknowledge that Wikler moving on to the national party would be a loss for their efforts in Wisconsin, they said it’s time for the national party to choose a leader from a state that has a history of deciding elections.

Wikler helped Wisconsin Democrats crawl out of the political hole they found themselves in in the 2010s, said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, which gives him experience the national party could lean on.

“He’s been very invested in the Legislature, (we’ve) spoken often about our strategy and how to win, and he was involved even in calling candidates and helping recruit people,” Neubauer said. “So it’s, of course, going to be a loss for us, but we’re certainly very supportive of his run for DNC chair.”

Wisconsin Democrats have built out infrastructure that will last beyond Wikler’s time as chair, Neubauer added, pointing to year-round organizing efforts that will persist regardless of who is state party chair.

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Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler could soon lead national Democratic Party is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A bill that would empower Wisconsin municipalities to block the construction of solar and wind farms in their backyards has been introduced a second time.

Currently, local governments possess limited authority to regulate the siting and operations of solar and wind farms, but as the number and size of projects grow — solar panel fields spanning thousands of acres and wind turbines as tall as the Statue of Liberty — some residents from the Driftless Area and central Wisconsin say the state’s system for approving energy projects unfairly stacks the scales of power against communities that live alongside the facilities.

Meanwhile, a clean energy advocacy group and former Wisconsin utility regulator said the bill would enable a discontented minority to dictate energy policy for the entire state, effectively kill renewable energy development and generate uncertainty for businesses.

The Republican-backed proposal comes amid a wave of construction after federal lawmakers invested billions of dollars during the Biden administration to slow the pace of climate change. The ensuing backlash and enactment of local restrictions are playing out across the country.

Here’s what you need to know:

Some context: Investment in renewable energy has been a state priority for decades and a requirement for Wisconsin’s utilities. It also is central to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ ambitious climate goals. Wisconsin seeks to operate a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. 

In 2023, 9% of net electricity generated within the state came from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The governor’s Task Force on Climate Change expects most future emissions reductions to come from large-scale utility projects, especially the replacement of aging coal plants with solar farms.

In 2016, the state generated just 3,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from utility-scale solar facilities. Seven years later, it increased to 1.2 million. Nearly two dozen more solar farms are in the pipeline.

Wisconsin’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, oversees the approval of large projects, but opponents say gaps in state oversight make Wisconsin attractive to private developers, who aren’t mandated to share project expenses or evaluate ratepayer impacts.

They don’t have to demonstrate the energy created by the new installation is even needed at all — requirements if a public utility were to construct the facility. (The commission considers costs when utilities want to purchase power or an energy facility.) But developers can sell solar and wind farms to Wisconsin utilities. Ratepayers shoulder the infrastructure costs and pay state-authorized rates of return.

The commission reports that, compared to the Midwest and national averages, Wisconsin residents pay higher rates but less on their monthly bills because they consume less energy.

Opponents of large-scale projects also criticize the state’s disclosure requirements, which enable developers to acquire land rental agreements, often confidential, before communities are officially notified.

Residents often accuse industry of minimizing their concerns over impacts to wildlife, roads, aesthetics, property values, utility bills, health, topsoil and water quality. 

Yet climate change jeopardizes those same things, and land rental and municipal payments can be a lifeline. The construction of solar and wind farms can divide towns and neighbors. Public hearings quickly get messy. 

Organizers have mounted challenges, playing out in boardrooms, courthouses and the Legislature. Several towns enacted restrictions on renewable energy projects, a push supported by Farmland First, a central Wisconsin advocacy and fundraising group. Last year, a developer sued two Marathon County towns over their wind farm rules.

President Donald Trump is the latest to seed doubt over the merits of large-scale renewable projects after issuing a Jan. 20 executive order that suspends federal permitting for any wind farm while agency officials review government leasing and permitting practices.

The bill: The proposal requires solar and wind developers to obtain approval from every city, village and town in which a facility would be located before the Public Service Commission could greenlight the project.

Senate Bill 3’s authors, Rep. Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, said the measure responds to constituents who feel their concerns over continued development in the Driftless Area continue to fall on deaf ears.

“We are hoping to kick-start a conversation because the way I view it now, renewable energy projects are essentially the wild wild West,” Tranel said. “People have figured out that they can profit exorbitant amounts of money off these projects, and they are just popping them up left and right, and our current attitude is long-term ramifications be damned, and I don’t think that that makes any sense.”

Currently, the commission reviews proposals for energy facilities with a capacity of at least 100 megawatts. For scale, an average wind turbine in 2023 had a capacity of 3 ½ megawatts. A megawatt of solar generation might cover 7 ½ acres.

Local governments review projects less than 100 megawatts in capacity, but municipalities can impose restrictions on solar and wind farms only in limited instances, such as demonstrating they will protect public health or safety — a tall order. Additionally, municipalities that enact siting restrictions on wind farms cannot impose criteria more stringent than commission rules.

The bill would apply to any solar or wind farm with a 15-megawatt capacity or more. If a municipality fails to take action within an allotted period, the proposed facility would be approved automatically. 

An identical proposal introduced during the previous legislative session, exclusively backed by GOP lawmakers, failed to receive a committee hearing.

Yea: Some of the bill’s backers view the influx of large energy projects as the harbinger of “utility districts” across Wisconsin’s rural spaces, primarily for the benefit of urbanites.

It’s not that proponents of local control snub clean energy, said Chris Klopp, a Cross Plains organizer who has joined challenges to transmission and solar projects. Rather, regulators could respond to climate change more equitably.

“This idea that you can just decide you’re going to sacrifice certain people, well, I think there’s a problem with that,” she said. “Who decides, and who gets sacrificed? None of that is a good conversation. It should be something that works for everyone.”

Nay: Representatives from EDP Renewables, NextEra Energy, Pattern Energy and Invenergy — developers with a Wisconsin presence — didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery said local governments lack the agency’s battery of professionals it takes to evaluate whether an energy project would meet the state’s energy needs.

Empowering Wisconsin’s 1,245 towns, 190 cities and 415 villages to weigh the facts against their own standards would spell disaster for ratepayers, he said.

Michael Vickerman, former executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a renewable energy advocacy nonprofit, said the bill unfairly targets wind and solar.

“You’re deciding that this industry will no longer be welcome in this state,” he said. “It becomes such an arbitrary and mysterious, unstable, unpredictable process that the developer says, ‘Screw it. I’ll just go to Minnesota. I’ll go to Illinois.’”

What’s next? More than 20 co-sponsors, all Republicans, signed on to the bill, and it has been referred to a Senate committee. Klopp hopes to rally more lawmakers to obtain a two-thirds, veto-proof majority.

Montgomery said even if it leads nowhere, the bill certainly sends a message to investors.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify information provided by former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery.

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Republican bill seeks more local control over wind, solar farms is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.