Brian Dake

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%.

State government will see a $753 million jump in state tax revenue over the next few years, according to a new estimate released Wednesday by the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget office.

Most of the increase, which is being driven by higher income and corporate tax collections, would be front-loaded, leaving state government with about $1 billion in its general fund on June 30, the day the current budget ends.

The higher numbers come as Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee are starting to vote piece by piece on Evers’ proposed budget for the next two years.

Shortly after the new estimate was released, Evers’ office announced the governor would make a $56 million payment to retire additional state debt. Evers also called on the Legislature to approve an additional $15 million for worker training as well as $18 million more for the Wisconsin Technical College System.

Republican leaders were less specific about what they want to do with the extra revenue, although Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, both floated the idea of cutting taxes.

While lawmakers and governors can add more money to the state’s rainy day fund if they choose to, deposits to the fund are mostly on auto-pilot.

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, if these estimates hold, it would mean a $291 million deposit in the rainy day fund, bringing its total balance to about $617 million.

Wisconsin is the 11th best state in the country, according to rankings from U.S. News.

The study used eight qualifications to determine their standing: Health care, education, economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, crime and corrections and natural environment.

The Dairy State ranked in the top 10 for opportunity and natural environment.

The state’s lowest categories were crime and corrections and infrastructure. In both categories the state was ranked 30th.

“More weight was accorded to some state measures than others, based on a survey of what matters most to people. Health care and education were weighted most heavily,” the news release said about the study.

“Then came state economies, infrastructure, and the opportunity states offer their citizens. Fiscal stability followed closely in weighting, followed by measures of crime & corrections and a state’s natural environment.”

U.S. officials listed $300 billion more of Chinese goods for possible tariff hikes while Beijing vowed Tuesday to “fight to the finish” in an escalating trade battle that is fueling fears about damage to global economic growth.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office issued its target list after Beijing announced tariff hikes Monday on $60 billion of American goods in their spiraling dispute over Chinese technology ambitions and other irritants. Chinese authorities were reacting to President Donald Trump’s surprise decision last week to impose punitive duties on $200 billion of imports from China.

The latest U.S. list of 3,805 product categories is a step toward carrying out Trump’s May 5 threat to extend punitive 25% duties to all Chinese imports, the USTR said. It said a June 17 hearing would be held before Washington decides how to proceed.

Trump started raising tariffs last July over complaints China steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology and unfairly subsidizes businesses Beijing is trying to build into global leaders in robotics and other fields.

A stumbling block has been U.S. insistence on an enforcement mechanism with penalties to ensure Beijing carries out its commitments.

Odds of a settlement “remain high,” said Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics in a report. “But suddenly a number of other scenarios seem possible, even one in which the U.S., China and the global economy suffer a recession.”

Supporters say the proposed Dairy Innovation Hub under consideration by the Wisconsin Legislature, one of 49 recommendations approved by Dairy Task Force 2.0, could match or go beyond the significance of the signature recommendation made by the first dairy task force in the late 1980s.

That task force told cheese producers to focus more on making specialty cheeses. At that time, the dairy industry was in the throes of an economic downturn as challenging as the current one.

As it turned out, the combined efforts of the Center for Dairy Research and the state’s cheese producers beginning in the early 1990s helped make specialty cheese a staple of the state dairy industry and strengthened its economic position, here and around the world.

While California overtook Wisconsin as the nation’s top milk producer that decade, America’s Dairyland stayed firmly on its perch as the country’s top cheese producer.

The funding concept for the research hub follows a similar plan the state of New York uses to help fund Cornell University’s Pro-Dairy program that links farmers and businesses in that state to research and key resources.

“The funds there don’t just go into what the state might look at as the big, black hole of the university,” said Mark Stephenson, chairman of Dairy Task Force 2.0. “It goes for a very specific program.”

That excites Shelly Mayer, a dairy farmer in Washington County and the executive director of the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin.

As an example, she cited research by UW-Madison dairy science professor Laura Hernandez that includes a new diet to lower instances of dangerous milk fever — caused by low blood calcium levels — in cows after they give birth. That has led researchers studying postpartum depression in women to look at Hernandez’s work.

“There’s a lot of linkages and synergies between animal health and human health that we haven’t even scratched the surface on,” Mayer said.

The White House on Wednesday filed formal notice of President Trump’s increase to tariffs on Chinese imports amid a breakdown in trade negotiations.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) submitted an order raising tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports after Trump announced the increase Sunday morning.

Trump said in a pair of tweets Sunday that he would raise tariffs on a wide variety of Chinese imports from 10 percent to 25 percent. USTR’s notice to formalize those increases will be published in the Federal Register on Thursday and take effect Friday morning at 12:01 a.m.

The filing comes after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer confirmed the pending tariff increase Monday, blaming China for backing away from previous agreements with the administration.

China’s Commerce Ministry reportedly said Wednesday that it will respond “in kind” if Trump follows through on the tariff hikes.