Brian Dake

The Legislature’s budget committee unanimously approved a plan Wednesday to overhaul the state’s unemployment insurance computer system and protect businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits. The plan that advanced Wednesday would also briefly suspend a requirement that those thrown out of work wait a week before qualifying for unemployment benefits.

Promising to help Wisconsin “bounce back” from the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Tony Evers proposed a $91 billion state budget Tuesday, an ambitious plan that would boost overall spending by almost 10 percent, infuse hundreds of millions of dollars in Wisconsin schools and reinstate some of the union bargaining rights lost by public sector workers a decade ago.

The two-year budget, which would lay the foundation for Evers’ reelection should he seek a second term, includes a wide array of policies many Republicans who run the Legislature are likely to resist — from the legalization of recreational marijuana to the expansion of Medicaid.

The governor would pay for the spending increases in a number of ways, including limiting a tax credit for some manufacturers and increasing capital gains taxes on high-income individuals. Overall, the Evers administration said the budget would increase revenue by $1.6 billion. At the same time, taxes would be cut elsewhere by about $590 million for groups that include caregivers, parents and low-income residents.

Wisconsin, we aren’t going to retrace our steps back to the way things were,” Evers said during his Tuesday evening address. “We aren’t going to follow the map back to where we started when this pandemic began. After all we’ve been through, we aren’t going to apologize for wanting more for each other — for our neighbors, for our kids, our parents and grandparents, and our state’s future.”

Evers’ proposals need the approval of the Republican-controlled state Legislature to become law. During the last budget cycle — Evers’ first as governor — GOP lawmakers rejected major pieces of the governor’s proposal as too expensive and started from scratch with their own plan.

At the same time, there are provisions in the governor’s budget proposal this year that could be more difficult for Republicans to reject, from a $200 million investment in broadband to a $200 million fund aimed at helping businesses recover from the pandemic.

Governor Tony Evers wants to allow counties to be able to double their existing sales tax and allow larger municipalities to impose a new half-cent sales tax, if local voters approve.

Yesterday, the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) published a new Emergency Rule that will allow DWD to continue to waive work searches for people who apply for Unemployment Insurance benefits.

State law requires someone applying for unemployment benefits to look for a suitable job and provide information about four work search actions they have taken each week. This emergency rule allows DWD to respond to the spread of COVID-19 by waiving those work searches for thousands of people.

The Department recognizes that the work search requirement carries a significant burden on claimants when many businesses remain closed and job opportunities in certain sectors are still limited in response to the ongoing health and safety impacts of the global pandemic.

Under the plan, school districts that have offered and will continue to offer more hours of in-person instruction will receive a larger percentage of federal coronavirus aid than schools that have remained virtual. The measure was approved on a party-line vote of 11-4, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats against, and will immediately go into effect.

Budget committee co-chairs Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, both argued the GOP plan will send more money to districts that have “done the right thing” during the pandemic.

“I believe our kids need to be in school for their benefit and society’s benefit,” Marklein said.  Marklein also argued districts that have provided in-person instruction over the last several months have incurred costs for things like transportation and cleaning supplies that districts exclusively offering virtual instruction have not.

Republicans on the committee pointed to statistics about rising suicide rates and mental health crises among students during the pandemic, as well as spikes in substance abuse and domestic violence. Democrats on the committee argued it is inappropriate to financially penalize schools that have chosen to offer exclusively virtual instruction during the pandemic.

“Districts that were doing the right thing were actually listening to those in the medical community and the scientists who said, ‘Close your doors, don’t be open,'” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-West Point.

Wisconsin will receive about $686 million from the federal government for K-12 schools under Congress’ coronavirus response bill passed last year. Under the federal bill, about 90 percent of those funds will be distributed based on the number of low-income students in each school district, without input from state administrations or lawmakers.

However, Congress gave states discretion over how to spend the remaining 10 percent of the funds, roughly $69 million in Wisconsin.

A one-week waiting period is back in effect for Wisconsinites applying for unemployment, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to lead to job losses.

The waiting period went back into effect Sunday after Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a Republican COVID-19 response bill last week. Republicans added the waiver of the one-week waiting period in an attempt to get the governor to sign a bill that included several COVID measures he disagreed with.

Republicans passed a law requiring unemployed people to wait a week before they could claim benefits a decade ago as a way to bolster the state’s unemployment fund. Lawmakers suspended the rule during the early months of the pandemic last year, but that action expired Sunday. Evers has previously called for permanently repealing the waiting period.

Gov. Tony Evers’ next two-year budget will include a proposal to legalize recreational marijuana as part of plan to generate more than $165 million each year for rural schools and underserved communities.

The proposal to tax and regulate marijuana similar to alcohol sales is likely to be shot down by the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has opposed efforts to legalize marijuana in the past. Thirty-six states have passed laws legalizing medical marijuana and 15 states are regulating recreational use of marijuana, including neighboring states Michigan and Illinois.

Some Republican lawmakers have supported legislation to legalize medical marijuana in recent years, including now Sen. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, and Sen. Kathy Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls.

Bernier said Sunday that she’s open to legalizing medical marijuana and decriminalizing small amounts of the drug, noting it may have potential to help people break their addiction to drugs like methamphetamine or heroin. She said she’s willing to work with Evers, but also indicated his past efforts to decriminalize marijuana were a thinly veiled effort to legalize recreational weed.

Bernier called the governor’s proposal “divisive.”

“The bottom line is, he knows, I know, we know that the Republican Legislature is not going to legalize marijuana, per se,” said Bernier. “So, let’s talk about the things we can do, and work together.”

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers issued a new statewide mask order on Thursday, an hour after the Republican-controlled Legislature voted to repeal his previous mandate saying he didn’t have authority to make such a decree.

If the Legislature keeps playing politics and we don’t keep wearing masks, we’re going to see more preventable deaths, and it’s going to take even longer to get our state and our economy back on track,” Evers said.