Month: May 2024

As the dust settles from the past year’s redistricting battles in Wisconsin, the state Legislature is undergoing a shakeup, with nearly half of all state lawmakers having announced they won’t run in their old districts.

All told, at least 61 members of the state Assembly and Senate won’t run again in their old districts. Of those, 41 are Republicans and 20 are Democrats. In the Assembly alone, 40 representatives — more than a third of the chamber —have either filed to run for new seats in the Legislature or say they plan on it.

Another 16 state lawmakers, including eight Democrats and eight Republicans, have announced plans to leave the Legislature entirely.

There will be at least 26 primaries between Republican and Democratic candidates in the Assembly and Senate this August, a number that could grow by next week. Many of those are due to newly-opened seats as incumbents either opted against seeking reelection.

The final tally of lawmakers running for re-election in new districts or leaving the Legislature won’t be known until after June 3, when nomination papers are due to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Governor Tony Evers and Wisconsin’s economic development agency on Wednesday announced the launch of a new public-private $100 million fund to help start-up companies and entrepreneurs get started, the largest of its kind in state history.

The Wisconsin Investment Fund is initially being funded with $50 million the state received in federal funds and $50 million from private investors. Evers announced the new fund at Forward BIOLABS in Madison, a nonprofit that helps launch startups.

Venture capital firms selected to administer the fund must match each dollar of public money with at least one dollar of private investment. The state’s return on these investments is then reinvested into the fund.

“As the businesses that receive these investments start to grow, the value of the fund will grow with them, creating new opportunities to help even more businesses expand,” Evers said.

After a warm winter negatively affected tourism during the usually snowy season, Wisconsin communities are optimistic they’ll rebound this summer.

Market research firm Longwoods International’s latest travel sentiment survey, released last month, found early indicators show strong sentiment ahead of the summer season.

The survey showed 92 percent of Americans plan to travel in the next six months, 30 percent plan to spend more money this summer than last and 56 percent plan to spend about the same amount this summer.

Those numbers are encouraging to Northwoods tourism groups, who asked the state for assistance this winter because the region lost an estimated $6.5 million in revenue due to a lack of snow in December and January. In response, Gov. Tony Evers and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin helped clarify that Wisconsin businesses impacted by the warm weather were eligible for disaster loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration, or SBA.

Krystal Westfahl, president of the Let’s Minocqua Visitors Bureau, said those loans made a big difference for newer businesses in the area.

“The SBA loans really have bridged that gap, I think, for many of our businesses from having this horrible winter,” she said. “They were able to get those low interest, long-term loans, and were able to keep afloat. We didn’t lose any businesses, per se, and that was our biggest concern, or biggest fear, because it was a long way from February to June.”

Now, Westfahl said businesses are feeling better as they head into the summer season. She said the Minocqua area has already seen some early travelers on weekends with the weather getting warmer, and summer reservations for local lodging are filling up fast.

“Resorts are full, the pre-bookings are still full. Hotels are predominantly booked up,” Westfahl said. “It was a little bit slower, I think, this spring with summer bookings. But at this point, we’re fairly packed for the major summer tourism season.”

Home prices reached a new record in March amid an ongoing housing shortage, even as high mortgage rates pushed affordability out of reach for more Americans.

Prices increased 6.5% nationally in March when compared with the previous year, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index showed on Tuesday, the same as the previous month. It marks the fastest pace of growth since November 2022.

On a monthly basis, prices climbed 0.3%, according to the index.

Prices rose in all of the 20 major metro markets tracked by the index.

The largest price gain once again took place in San Diego, which recorded a year-over-year increase of 11.1%. It was followed by New York and Cleveland, with respective gains of 9.2% and 8.8%.

The Case-Shiller index reports with a two-month delay, meaning it may not capture the latest ongoings in the market.

There are a number of driving forces behind the affordability crisis. Years of underbuilding fueled a shortage of homes in the country, a problem that was later exacerbated by the rapid rise in mortgage rates and expensive construction materials.

Wisconsin’s budget surplus is projected to shrink slightly, according to new numbers from the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget office. But the projections would still leave lawmakers and the governor with a balance of more than $3 billion as they craft the next state budget.

The estimate from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau shows Wisconsin’s budget surplus is projected to be around $3.13 billion dollars by the end of next June, which is the end of the current two-year budget cycle. That marks a slight decline compared to LFB projections from January, which anticipated the state would end the current fiscal year with a surplus of around $3.25 billion.

Wisconsin Policy Forum Vice President and Research Director Jason Stein told WPR the latest projections show some “softness” but there’s “no reason for alarm or panic.”

“It’s just another reminder that as lawmakers and the governor put together the next state budget in the spring of 2025, it currently looks like they’ll have resources to work with to address problems in the state and quite a bit of resources, but not infinite,” Stein said.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) has announced that a fee holiday for pesticide and fertilizer licensees, and farmers purchasing fertilizer, will end on May 31, 2024. Pesticides and fertilizers that are registered or purchased on or after June 1, 2024 will include the applicable Agrichemical Cleanup Program (ACCP) fee. The program fund had previously been on a fee holiday since 2018.

The fee surcharge is based on the level of the ACCP fund on May 1 each year, when DATCP is required to review the program funds. When the fund remains above $1.5 million, DATCP may waive the fee. When the fund balance is at or below $1.5 million, the surcharge fees are reactivated to restore the fund balance to the level necessary to operate the ACCP, which helps pay for the costs of cleaning up agrichemical spills.

On May 1, 2024, the fund balance was $1,375,000. Due to the fund being below $1.5 million but above $750,000, half of the ACCP fee will be required on all pesticide products registered and fertilizers sold on or after June 1, 2024. When the surcharge is in effect, fertilizer and pesticide businesses pay the fee when they renew their licenses/product registration.

For more information about the ACCP fund and a complete list of fertilizer and pesticide fees, visit https://datcp.wi.gov/Pages/Programs_Services/ACCPFundSurcharges.aspx.

The Bide Administration said Tuesday that it is releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from a Northeast reserve established after Superstorm Sandy in a bid to lower prices at the pump this summer.

The sale, from storage sites in New Jersey and Maine, will be allocated in increments of 100,000 barrels at a time. The approach will create a competitive bidding process that ensures gasoline can flow into local retailers ahead of the July 4 holiday and sold at competitive prices, the Energy Department said. The move is intended to help “lower costs for American families and consumers,” the department said in a statement.

Gas prices average about $3.60 per gallon nationwide as of Tuesday, up 6 cents from a year ago, according to AAA.

The Biden Administration significantly drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, dropping the stockpile to its lowest level since the 1980s. The Biden administration has since begun refilling the oil reserve, which had more than 364 million barrels of crude oil as of last month. The total is lower than levels before the Russia-Ukraine war but still the world’s largest emergency crude oil supply.

The Northeast sale will require that fuel is transferred or delivered no later than June 30, the Energy Department said.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the structure used to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency tasked with enforcing consumer finance laws. By a vote of 7-2, the justices reversed a decision by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which had ruled that the agency’s funding violates the Constitution because it comes from the Federal Reserve rather than through the congressional appropriations process.

The case was one of several on the court’s docket this term involving the division of authority between the three branches of government, as well as the power of administrative agencies. It began as a challenge by two industry groups to a “payday lending” rule that the agency issued in 2017. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected their argument that the rule violated the federal laws governing administrative agencies.

But the court of appeals agreed with the groups that the agency’s funding structure – which was intended to foster its independence – is inconsistent with Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which instructs that “[n]o money shall be withdrawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” In fact, the 5th Circuit concluded, the CFPB’s funding is “double-insulated” from Congress’s power under the appropriations clause, because the agency not only receives its funding from the Federal Reserve, but it (rather than Congress) determines the amount of that funding, by requesting the amount that the CFPB director deems “reasonably necessary to carry out” the bureau’s duties.

In a 22-page opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that when the Constitution was ratified in the late 18th century, “appropriations were understood as a legislative means of authorizing expenditure from a source of public funds for designated purposes.”

That understanding, Thomas continued, is supported by both early English history and early American history in the years leading up to the ratification of the Constitution. And although “appropriations needed to designate particular revenue for identified purposes,” Thomas observed, legislatures in that era otherwise “exercised a wide range of discretion.”

That practice also continued in the years immediately following the ratification of the Constitution, Thomas added – for example, with Congress allocating funding for some purposes up to certain amounts and allowing other federal agencies (such as the Customs Service and the Post Office) to fund themselves through the money that they collected.

The CFPB’s funding scheme falls squarely within this definition of a congressional “appropriation,” Thomas concluded: Congress specified the source – the Federal Reserve – from which the CFPB can draw its funding, and it indicated how the CFPB is supposed to use that funding. The court therefore reversed the 5th Circuit’s decision striking down as unconstitutional the CFPB’s funding mechanism.

In the first seven months of fiscal year 2024, which began in October, spending on net interest surged to $514 billion, surpassing spending on both national defense ($498 billion) and Medicare ($465 billion). In fact, interest costs have topped spending on veterans, education and transportation combined.

“Rising debt will continue to put upward pressure on interest rates,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan group that advocates for lowering the national deficit, said in a statement. “Without reforms to reduce the debt and interest, interest costs will keep rising, crowd out spending on other priorities and burden future generations.”

Spending on interest is now the second-largest line item in the budget and is expected to remain so for the duration of 2024. By 2051, it is projected to become the most expensive part of the budget.

“Rising interest costs will crowd out other possible uses of government resources, and then also pose a risk to our economic stability,” said CBO Director Phillip Swagel while testifying on Capitol Hill in February.

Interest rates are not the only factor making servicing the debt more expensive. Over the past decade, the size of the national debt has more than quadrupled. From just four decades ago, the debt skyrocketed from $907 billion to more than $34.5 trillion as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the latest Treasury Department figures.

A national report shows employer-sponsored health insurance plans in Wisconsin pay significantly more than Medicare prices.

The report by the RAND Corporation looked at insurance claims data provided by employers and health plans. It found that the costs paid by private insurance in 2022 were 318 percent higher in Wisconsin than the estimated price paid by Medicare for the same services. That puts Wisconsin at the fifth highest in the country, with the national average coming in at 254 percent.

Rachel Ver Velde, WMC’s associate vice president of government relations, said it’s a national issue, but Wisconsin’s even higher prices puts employers in the state at a disadvantage.

Ver Velde said part of the problem behind higher prices is the growing consolidation among hospitals. The RAND report said researchers found a correlation between how much prices varied for private insurance and the amount of market share a hospital controlled in a state.

It’s far from the first report to point to consolidation as a negative impact on prices. KFF, which provides health policy research, reports that a substantial body of research shows that consolidation has led to higher health care prices, with the strongest evidence related to hospitals.