Brian Dake

Gov. Scott Walker’s administration is seeking to tighten up job creation requirements as part of a multibillion dollar deal to bring a Taiwanese company to southeastern Wisconsin, a top official said Tuesday. 

Foxconn Technology Group could receive up to $2.85 billion in cash payments from the state in exchange for building an up to $10 billion flat screen plant and hiring up to 13,000 workers. 

Speaking at a budget committee hearing here Tuesday, the head of Wisconsin’s jobs agency said the state was seeking to include stronger safeguards on those payments in its final contract with the company. 

Mark Hogan, chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., said his agency is seeking to require Foxconn to return some of the payments if employment at the factory doesn’t hit employment targets.

If Foxconn’s employment should rise to 13,000 by the fifth or sixth year of the deal but then decline, “we would look at putting in our contract the ability to pull back some of those dollars,” Hogan told lawmakers. 

Production workers at the plant will be paid more than $20 an hour, Hogan said. He said that not only will the average annual salary be nearly $54,000, but so will the median. That means half of Foxconn employees here would be paid more than $54,000 a year and half less.

Hogan also confirmed what has been widely believed but not officially acknowledged: Foxconn will locate its massive liquid crystal display panel factory in Racine County or Kenosha County.

That would represent a significant addition to the Foxconn deal, which has some safeguards in place but no minimum job creation requirement for some of the potential payments to the company. Democrats have called for including these protections in the Foxconn bill itself rather than waiting to see if they are included in the final contract with the company.

After two months of stalemate, work on the stalled state budget will restart next week as lawmakers take up a property tax cut and hear testimony on an up to $3 billion deal to lure a flat screen plant to southeastern Wisconsin.

The Legislature’s budget committee will meet twice next week in its first sessions since June 15 and will vote on eliminating the state’s roughly $86 million-a-year property tax for forestry. The Joint Finance Committee isn’t scheduled, however, to act on the most difficult to resolve issues like spending on state highways, a personal property tax levied on businesses and school funding.

Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), the panel’s co-chairman, said there is an agreement in principle on transportation and the personal property tax between Gov. Scott Walker and GOP leaders in the Senate and Assembly. But Nygren declined to reveal the deal in detail, saying it was tentative and could still fall apart as legislative leaders share it with rank-and-file lawmakers.

“It’s not final, but there’s a framework,” Nygren said.

A spokesman for Walker had no comment but the committee’s other co-chair, Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), said progress has been made between Senate Republicans, who favor sizable borrowing for road construction, and Assembly Republicans, who oppose new borrowing without new revenue to pay for it.

Both Nygren and Darling said the committee will vote Thursday to eliminate the property tax levied by the state for forestry programs, which would save $26 on the tax bill for a median-valued home.

Nygren and Darling said the budget committee is also close to a deal to cut the personal property tax, which is levied by local governments and paid by businesses on certain furniture and equipment.

Darling said Republicans are looking at eliminating the tax on certain classes of property to help small businesses such as restaurants and grocery stores.

The tax is also levied on some manufacturers, but Darling noted that Republicans have already moved to eliminate nearly all income and corporate taxes on manufacturers.

“I think the priority is small business,” Darling said.

Yesterday, State Senator Tom Tiffany (R-Hazelhurst) and State Representative Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) introduced LRB 2652 that will eliminate the moratorium on nonferrous metallic mining in Wisconsin. LRB 2652, also known as The Mining for America Act, is the first step forward in guaranteeing our nation’s ability to manufacture while ensuring our long-term global economic independence.

“People want to make things in America again. Our neighbors, Minnesota and Michigan, have placed their shovels in the dirt of America’s future. It is Wisconsin’s turn to do the same”, said Tiffany. He continued, “American technological needs such as mobile phones, hybrid cars, and even solar panels require mined minerals to be built. It is time for America to build these products. That process can begin here.”

The Mining for America Act will eliminate the nearly 20-year ban that the legislature placed on Wisconsin’s mining industry. Wisconsin has comprehensive mining laws in place and the moratorium prevents those laws from being used. Wisconsin can mine in a responsible way.
“Wisconsin is uniquely equipped to supply precious minerals to the world. Encouraging significant investments in safe mining will create a new economic environment in northern Wisconsin, resulting in family supporting jobs throughout our entire state,” said Hutton.

If American consumers want to continue enjoying the luxuries of small electronic devices or hybrid vehicles, it is critical to look inward to build those products. Consumers purchase products every day that are mined in countries with little to no environmental protection. It is time to step up to the plate and mine in a state that chooses to rigorously protect its environment. Mining can be done responsibly within our state while fulfilling the American consumers’ penchant for mineral-based products.

The Wisconsin Assembly planned to approve a $3 billion tax break Thursday for Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group to build a massive display panel factory in the state, a project President Donald Trump touted as a transformational win for the U.S. economy.

If built, the plant would be the first outside of Asia for liquid crystal display panels used in television, computers, medicine and other fields.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who led negotiations on the deal won by Wisconsin over competition from several other nearby states, has called it a once-a-generation opportunity.

The deal signed by Walker and Foxconn officials calls for the electronics giant to invest $10 billion in the state and hire up to 13,000 people at the massive plant that would be spread over a 20 million-square-foot campus. Construction would begin in 2020.

It will take at least 25 years for Wisconsin taxpayers to break even under the deal, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Democrats complain the bill is moving too quickly through the Republican-controlled Legislature. Walker and Trump announced that Foxconn was coming to Wisconsin on July 26, and the $3 billion incentive package was introduced on July 28. The Assembly is voting on it less than three weeks later.

The measure must also clear the Senate, but Republicans there have indicated they may want to make changes. If that happens, the Assembly would have to vote on it again.

The agreement with Foxconn calls for the state to approve the incentive package and secure the roughly 1.56 square miles of land for the deal by the end of September.

The Wisconsin Department of Revenue (DOR) has released its annual Equalized Value Report. The report shows that Wisconsin’s total statewide equalized property value as of January 1, 2017, was $526 billion, a 4 percent increase over the prior year. Equalized Values are based on data from January 1, 2016 to January 1, 2017.

Wisconsin residential property was valued at $369 billion as of January 1, 2017, an increase of 4.3 percent, or $15.1 billion. The 4.3 percent increase marks the fourth consecutive year of positive gains in residential home values.

The DOR report also shows construction activity continues an upward trend. Wisconsin added $8.1 billion in new construction during 2016, including $3.6 billion in residential property, $3.8 billion in commercial property, and $389 million in manufacturing property. In total, new construction value increased by 13.6 percent from the prior year.

The DOR report indicates that commercial property values were $102 billion, an increase of 5.1 percent or $5 billion. Manufacturing property was valued at $14 billion, an increase of 2.4 percent or $338 million from the prior year. Agricultural land was valued at $2 billion, an increase of 1.3 percent from a year earlier (agricultural land value changes do not represent changes in market value; agricultural land values are based on the income that could be generated from its rental for agricultural use). Undeveloped land saw a slight increase in total value of 0.2 percent, or $4 million, with a total value of $1.9 billion. The Agricultural Forest and Forest property classes had overall changes of +1.9 percent and -1.2 percent, respectively. To round out real estate value changes, the value of Farm sites and Farm buildings (Other) increased by 0.5 percent. Lastly, the value of personal property increased by 2.4%, to $12.9 billion.

Equalized Values are calculated annually and used to ensure statewide fairness and equity in property tax distribution. The Equalized Value represents an estimate of a taxation district’s total taxable value, and provides for the fair apportionment of school district and county levies to each municipality. Changes in Equalized Value do not necessarily translate into a change in property taxes.

It would take an ordinary person more than three years to read the entire US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which currently contains more than 112 million words. The sheer size of the CFR poses a problem not just for the individuals and businesses that want to stay in compliance with the law, but also for anyone interested in understanding the consequences of this massive system of rules.

States also have sizable regulatory codes, which add an additional layer to the enormous body of federal regulation. A prime example is the online version of the 2017 Wisconsin Administrative Code (WAC).

A tool known as State RegData—a platform for analyzing and quantifying state regulatory text—was developed by researchers at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. State RegData captures information in minutes that would take an ordinary person hours, weeks, or even years to obtain.

For example, the tool allows researchers to identify the industries that state regulation targets most by connecting text relevant to those industries with restrictive word counts. Known as regulatory restrictions, the words and phrases shall, must, may not, prohibited, and required can signify legal constraints and obligations. The three industries with the highest estimates of industry-relevant restrictions in the 2017 WAC are utilities, food manufacturing, and chemical manufacturing.

State RegData also reveals that the WAC contains 159,253 regulatory restrictions and roughly 12.0 million words. It would take an individual about 667 hours—or almost 17 weeks—to read the entire WAC. That’s assuming the reader spends 40 hours per week reading and reads at a rate of 300 words per minute.

State agencies will have to take added steps and meet higher standards to approve new rules, under legislation signed by Gov. Scott Walker Wednesday.

The measure allows a co-chairman of the Legislature’s rules committee to request that agencies hold public hearings before submitting scope statements on new regulations. In addition, under the bill, the state Department of Administration would also need to review an agency’s scope statement for proposed rules.

Since 2011, Walker and GOP lawmakers have given the governor more power over new environmental and other regulations, including a requirement that the governor sign off on a scope statement before new rules are written. The vetting by the administration department will now come before Walker’s review.

The proposal also requires the full Legislature to sign off any administrative rule that would make the public pay more than $10 million to comply with it.

In addition, the legislation allows the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules to object indefinitely to proposed rules and not just temporarily. A committee co-chairman can also contract with an outside group to analyze the compliance cost to the public of a new rule.