News of the Day

The state budget committee voted unanimously Thursday to reject Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to move about 250,000 state workers to a self-insurance system.

Under the proposed change, the state would pay employee medical bills directly through a third-party administrator instead of paying premiums to an insurance provider.

Lawmakers had previously signaled they planned to reject the move, arguing it’s too risky. Leaders of the finance committee reiterated that point Thursday.

“Our competitive marketplace is really a model for the nation, and we think with what’s happening nationally this is the wrong time for us to make major shifts in the marketplace,” said Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, co-chair of the budget committee.

The governor had linked $60 million in estimated savings to the proposed move to self-insurance. The budget committee identified $63.9 million in other savings.

Those changes include $22.7 million in negotiation savings, $25.8 million from the state insurance board’s reserve fund, and $15.4 million from increased usage of health plan tiers and plan design changes. They say they’ll achieve those by making changes to employee benefit plans and using money from the state insurance board’s reserve fund.

Committee co-chair Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, said those plan design changes will not result in state employees seeing premiums, co-pays or other expenses rise more than 10 percent in each of the 2018 and 2019 calendar years.

Joint Finance Committee Co-Chairman John Nygren (R-Marinette) told Newswatch 12 last week he sees three potential options to fix a billion-dollar shortfall: raising registration fees, raising the gas tax, or using toll roads.

Nygren says lawmakers have pushed off this issue for the last two budgets, so now’s the time to take action.

“I do think tolling, which is a true user fee–you can use other roads if you choose not to use the interstate system–could be an option,” Nygren said.

Toll roads wouldn’t be an immediate fix, because Wisconsin would need federal approval. Nygren thinks the system would be easy enough to install.

“It’s the direction we’re going and, as I said, it’s a true user fee,” Nygren said. “I know it’s not the old world of tolling with all the booths. You can do it nowadays with a transponder in your car.”

Gov. Scott Walker told reporters last week he’s not pushing for toll roads, telling the Associated Press that if he agreed to tolls, he would want the gas tax to drop. Meanwhile, Joint Finance Co-Chair Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said Republicans aren’t unified in backing the toll idea.

“I don’t know that I ever met anybody who agrees with me on every single issue, right?” Nygren said. “I don’t care if they’re a constituent or they’re another elected official. We’re elected to bring different perspectives to the table.”

The Joint Finance Committee plans to meet Thursday, when Nygren hopes to focus more on transportation funding.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) has submitted an application to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)  requesting an amendment to certain provisions of the Section 1115 Demonstration Waiver, known as the BadgerCare Reform Demonstration Waiver. The policy amendments, many of which are included in 2015 Wisconsin Act 55, are aimed at bolstering Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to help people move from government dependence to true independence.

“Wisconsin Works for Everyone is about helping people transition from public assistance into Wisconsin’s workforce, where they can build a solid financial foundation for themselves and their families,” Governor Walker said. “Unemployment is low, and the percentage of people working in Wisconsin is among the best in the nation. This application is a step in the right direction, and we’re continuing to build on Wisconsin’s legacy as a leader in welfare reform.”

The core changes in the waiver amendment application affect the childless adult population and include the following:

• Establishes monthly premiums and copayments for emergency department visits.
• Implements a work requirement that members work or participate in job skills training at least 80 hours every month.
• Limits benefits to 48 months, unless a member meets a work requirement.
• Rewards healthy behaviors by establishing lower premiums for members who make healthy choices.
• Requires members to be screened for drugs and if necessary, submit to a drug test. Those who test positive will be offered treatment so they can get healthy. Healthy workers help Wisconsin employers fill jobs that require passing a drug test.
• Expands access to treatment by creating a new residential substance use disorder treatment benefit to allow coverage of medically necessary residential substance use disorder treatment services for up to 90 days for all BadgerCare Plus and Medicaid members.

Once CMS receives the complete application, a 30-day federal public notice process begins along with a 45-day minimum federal decision-making period. During this time, DHS will work with CMS to finalize the details of the waiver. Once the changes to the waiver are approved by CMS, the effective date of the changes will be at least one year after approval to inform and work with members, providers, and partners, and to make system enhancements and implement the changes.

A “phishing” email is making the rounds, pretending to be from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, or DATCP. Officials there are warning consumers not to click on any links in the email.

The email says, “Wisconsin DATCP has sent you a PDF via Adobe® Cloud. Kindly read through and respond with the required details. Open in Adobe®.”

This message is not from DATCP. Do not click on the “Open in Adobe®” box or anything else in the email. The scammers may be trying to collect credit card information or personal data.

DATCP does not send emails under aliases. However, if you have any doubts about whether a message is actually from DATCP, hover your cursor over the sender’s email address to see the underlying, actual address. Messages from the agency will generally be in the format of firstname.lastname@wi.gov or firstname.lastname@wisconsin.gov. In some cases, the address may include the name of a program rather that an individual’s name, such as “datcphotline.” But the suffix will always be either wi.gov or wisconsin.gov.

For more information or to file a complaint, visit the Consumer Protection Bureau at http://datcp.wisconsin.gov, send an email to datcphotline@wisconsin.gov, or call 1-800-422-7128.

Republican leaders are considering whether to eliminate or phase out in the state budget a 170-year-old property tax that generates — mostly from businesses — a quarter billion dollars a year for municipalities and schools.

Business and conservative groups have been urging elimination of the so-called personal property tax for years and several small business owners spoke out last week at a public hearing in favor of a Republican bill that would exempt everything subject to the tax.

But the bill comes with a steep $261 million annual price tag that could make it difficult to pass during a contentious budget year in which resources are scarce. Under the proposal the state would reimburse municipalities and schools with general tax dollars that otherwise could pay for education, transportation or other tax cuts.

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said in an email the proposal “is certainly still on the table for this legislative session” and “as budget deliberations continue, further discussions about this measure will be guided by the amount of available revenue.”

Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, said in a statement that many of his Assembly Republican colleagues are interested in repealing the personal property tax.

A spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker said eliminating the personal property tax is “a proposal worth considering” but Walker does not want it to come at the expense of cutting property taxes for homeowners.

Homeowners are familiar with the annual tax bill on land and permanent structures, but they generally aren’t affected by the personal property tax, which has been around since 1849 and is assessed for non-residential properties on certain tangible items such as furniture, boats and machinery.

Over time, the state has exempted broad swaths of property from the tax, including computers and cash registers, which has led to complaints from businesses that the tax is unfair.

Those who have to pay it are required to determine each year the value of their personal property, which depreciates over time.

Jerry Martell, owner of Modern Disposal Systems in Sparta, told the Assembly Ways and Means Committee on Thursday the roughly $11,000 a year he pays in personal property taxes on his equipment could help him expand his business or hire more youth interns.

“If I get this money back, I’m not going to stick it in a bag and run down to the Carribbean with it … I’m going to put that money back into the economy,” Martell said. “I don’t think it’s right for me to pay this knowing it’s an unfair tax.”

President Trump’s America-first mantra steamrolled over the objections of lawmakers, top CEOs, the Pentagon, the U.N. and even his own daughter, as he announced Thursday that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate accord to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

“We’re getting out, but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine,” Mr. Trump said to applause from critics of the Paris deal assembled on the White House lawn. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he continued. “I promised I would exit or renegotiate any deal that doesn’t serve America’s interests.

Mr. Trump, though, delivered a detailed evisceration of the deal Mr. Obama signed, saying it crushes American businesses, unnecessarily funnels billions of dollars to other nations and allows the world’s top polluter, China, to do little to curb its own emissions for the next 13 years.

Mr. Obama had committed the U.S. to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025, while China needs only to cap its pollution by 2030. The pact also calls on America to commit billions of dollars to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund to pay developing countries to develop cleaner energy. Those terms, Mr. Trump said, are unacceptable.

“Compliance with the terms of the Paris accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025,” Mr. Trump said, citing numbers from a recent National Economic Research Associates study. “The cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income, and, in many cases, much worse than that.”