Month: May 2019

Yesterday, Wisconsin Independent Businesses (WIB) released startling data on municipal public works projects. The data shows a disturbing trend of increased taxpayer-funded work being awarded to out-of-state contractors.

In 2015, out-of-state contractors were awarded only $72,600,000 in municipal work. That number grew to $146,000,000 in 2018. While the total value of municipal public works projects was up from 2015 to 2018, there was a 42% increase in the share of these municipal public works projects being awarded to out-of-state contractors.

“WIB members, Wisconsin-based contractors, and the local workforces they employ, who are key to the success of our State’s economic strength, are deeply troubled by this trend,” said John Gard, President of WIB. “Not only has there been a sharp uptick in contractors from neighboring states taking Wisconsin work, but contractors from states as far away as Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Kentucky are working on our local projects. We know that many of these out-of-state contractors are bringing their own workforce with them, rather than employing local hardworking Wisconsinites. Wisconsin contractors and construction workers are being hurt.”

Studies show that for every dollar of construction value that is completed by an out-of-state contractor, $2.26 in economic value is lost in Wisconsin. In 2018, Wisconsin lost over $329,000,000 in economic activity by having out-of-state contractors perform these local taxpayer-funded projects.

“Wisconsin taxpayer-funded projects should benefit Wisconsin, not Kentucky or Louisiana. We need stronger measures in place to keep Wisconsin projects with Wisconsin employers,” said Gard.

Two state lawmakers want to strengthen Wisconsin’s laws dealing with phone scams.

Republican Assemblyman Rob Hutton (R) wrote the bill targeting white collar crimes; things like phone ransom scams and money laundering.

“I think most criminals are cowards at heart and going to prey on those that are least able to defend themselves,” Hutton said. “In many cases, those are the seniors in our communities.”

Under the new bill, any scam topping $10,000 could mean up to 10 years in prison. Anything over $100,000 means up to 12 1/2 years.

Expanded post-election audits in 2018 confirmed that voting equipment in Wisconsin accurately counted the state’s votes, according to a recent report to the Wisconsin
Elections Commission.

“The 2018 post-election voting equipment audit was the largest audit of its kind undertaken in the State of Wisconsin,” Administrator Meagan Wolfe reported to the WEC. “Over the course of three weeks, more than 135,000 ballots were hand counted by dutiful and diligent local election officials. As with prior audits, the expanded audit and random selection process effectively confirmed the accuracy of voting equipment used in Wisconsin during the 2018 General Election.”

The audit results indicated there were no identifiable bugs, errors, or failures of the tabulation voting equipment. While there were discrepancies identified during the audit, they were the result of human error that occurred as part of the process of conducting the audit. Additionally, the results of the audit did not identify any programming errors that impacted how the audited voting equipment counted votes, Wolfe noted.

State law requires the Commission to conduct audits after each general election to determine the error rate of each type of electronic voting equipment used in Wisconsin. The Commission determined each system approved for use in Wisconsin tabulated votes in accordance with certification standards during the 2018 General Election. Under federal standards, an error rate of 1 ballot in 500,000 is permitted.

In 2018, the Commission significantly expanded the scope of post-election audits to ensure the integrity of voting systems, requiring audits of voting equipment in 5 percent of the state’s wards, including at least one in each of the 72 counties, and requiring completion of the audits before the Commission certifies the final results.

Wisconsin’s K-12 schools would receive $500 million over the next two years, including nearly $100 million more for special education, under a Republican funding plan approved Thursday by the Legislature’s budget committee.

The deal puts the Republican-controlled Legislature at odds with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers who decried it as inadequate compared to his $1.4 billion proposal but stopped short of promising a veto. The funding plan now becomes part of the state budget the Joint Finance Committee is writing and will send to the full Legislature likely in June.

Republican leaders said Evers would be wise to accept the proposal, even though it’s $900 million less than he wanted, because the GOP offer is not going to substantially improve. Rep. John Nygren, the committee co-chair, said Evers and school officials knew his original $1.4 billion proposal wasn’t realistic and they are happy with what Republicans put forward.

Under the Republican deal, special education funding would increase by $97 million, or less than one-sixth of what Evers wanted. That would increase the state’s reimbursement rate to 26% in the first year and 30% in the second, said committee vice chair Sen. Luther Olsen. It would be the first increase in more than a decade and addresses complaints from schools about a lack of funding that requires them to tap general aid money to pay for more expensive special needs students.

The Republican plan would increase per-pupil funding by $200 the first year and $204 the second, paid for with a mixture of categorical aids and revenue limits. Olsen said the goal was to keep property tax increases at no more than 1% each year. Under the Evers budget, property taxes were projected to go up about 2% each year.

The GOP plan also increases funding for mental health services and revenue limits for low-spending districts.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says Wisconsin’s laws regulating how companies respond to data stolen by hackers are lagging other states. The agency says current law was passed in 2008 and doesn’t include penalties for companies that don’t alert consumers that a data breach has occurred.

According to a report out this month on data breach risks, recovery and regulation released by the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, personal data is stolen by hackers on a constant basis. It says research shows that within the next 24 months, the probability of a significant breach at any given business or nonprofit organization is around 30 percent. In 2017, the Reference Bureau notes there were 1,579 data breaches that exposed nearly 179 million personal records.

Lara Sutherland, an administrator at DATCP, said Wisconsin’s data breach laws passed in 2006 with a technical revision in 2008 are lagging compared with other states. While the law instructs businesses and other organizations to notify consumers within 45 days that a data breach occurs, she said, “what’s significant about that law is there’s no enforcement mechanism.”

“So, if no one does any notification there’s no provision in the law that allows the state to enforce it,” said Sutherland, adding that organizations also don’t have to tell state regulators.

“There’s no requirement that they even tell the attorney general or the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection that a breach occurred,” said Sutherland. “So, it’s a law that has some prescriptions but very little teeth, which makes it hard to actually be effective.”

According to the Legislative Reference Bureau report, Wisconsin’s data breach laws are unclear on whether companies that don’t report can face lawsuits for negligence. According to the statute, “failure to comply with this section is not negligence or a breach of any duty, but may be evidence of negligence or a breach of a legal duty.”

While reporting breaches to the state isn’t explicitly required, Sutherland said many companies do and DATCP is able to help warn potential identity theft victims.

“By notifying the state if there’s a statewide data breach or a data breach in a hospital, the state can be a partner in helping get that information out to consumers so they can protect their data,” she said.

DATCP is looking to create a taskforce aimed at updating the state’s data breach laws, said Sutherland. No timeline was provided but she said the agency plans to begin engaging with stakeholders soon.

The Joint Finance Committee reworked Tony Evers’ proposal to promote tourism in Wisconsin, including paring back money designated for marketing.

The centerpiece of Evers’ plan was a call to put $5 million for the agency’s marketing appropriation while putting in another $186,700 for a new marketing position. He also wanted to add $200,000 over the budget for Tourism’s Native American Tourism budget, which is funded by tribal gaming.

Instead, Republicans approved placing nearly $1.6 million in general purpose revenue in the committee’s supplemental appropriation that Tourism could come back to seek later.

Republicans said they were hesitant to approve the proposed increase without additional information on how it would be spent. The agency plans to complete in July a new strategic plan to guide its future marketing strategy and didn’t have a defined role for the proposed new position.

The state now spends $12.5 million on tourism promotion, including just more than $1.8 million in GPR. The bulk of the effort is funded by tribal gaming revenues, and it hasn’t increased significantly since hitting $12.3 million in 2011-12.

Rep. Terry Katsma, R-Oostburg, said he couldn’t support the requested money because “there’s no concrete evidence of what’s going to be done.”

But Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, called what Republicans approved “anemic” and “pathetic,” saying it leaves the state behind others for investments in tourism.

“Your priorities don’t seem to be investing in local economies and local communities,” she said.

The marketing boost Evers proposed included an additional $3 million in 2019-20 that would support promotional efforts for national events, including the Democratic National Convention in July 2020 and golf’s Ryder Cup in September 2020.

U.S. corporations are contributing the smallest share of federal tax revenue in a generation.

That’s one of the findings in the Data Book for 2018, released by the Internal Revenue Service on Monday. In the fiscal year covered, the IRS processed more than 250 million tax returns and collected nearly $3.5 trillion in federal taxes paid by households and businesses.

The data show that the burden is increasingly falling on individuals. Their income taxes account for about $1.95 trillion, or 57% of total revenue. An additional 33% came from employment taxes. Corporations only paid 7.6% of the tax take — the lowest share since at least 1960, according to the IRS data.

The IRS report also provided data on tax audits and taxpayer attitudes. About two-thirds of respondents agreed that it’s their civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes, and an even bigger majority said that it’s not acceptable to cheat.

There were some outliers, though. About 3 in 100 taxpayers said it’s acceptable to cheat “as much as possible.”

Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was 2.8% in April, a record low for the state. Reaching that figure, however, was partially the result of having nearly 15,000 fewer people in the labor force than at the same time last year.

The number of people classified as unemployed in the state did reach a seasonally-adjusted record low of 88,100 in April, down 1,500 from March and 6,800 from April 2018.The reading is the lowest figure in data that goes back to 1976. The Department of Workforce Development released the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday.

The official unemployment rate does not include people who have given up on looking for work, are marginally attached to the workforce or are employed part-time for economic reasons. Including those groups, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate averaged 5.7% from April 2018 to March 2019, according to BLS data.

Wisconsin has the seventh lowest rate in the country when using the fuller picture of unemployment.

Overall employment was up by 600 from March to April but declined 7,700 from April 2018. The result of lower unemployment and fewer people working was a drop in the labor force participation rate from 68.2% to 67.5%.