For the past month, we’ve been using this series of blog posts, “31 Ways in 31 Days,” to draw attention to some of the ways the recently passed 2011-13 biennial state budget stands to affect children and families in Wisconsin.

But let’s be clear: 31 is a rather arbitrary number we picked simply because it coincides conveniently with the number of days in the first month of the new fiscal year. The state budget’s impact on kids and families goes far beyond what we have outlined in this series.

In this final installment, we will take a very brief look at a handful of ways the budget affects kids and families that didn’t quite make the final cut for inclusion in the series—not because they are insignificant, but simply because we had to draw the line somewhere. Think of this segment as sort of an “honorable (or dishonorable, as the case may be) mention” category of ways the budget affects children and families.

• Cuts to local assistance: The budget includes large cuts to Shared Revenue, which provides aid to counties and municipalities to help pay for services they deliver to residents in order to keep local property taxes in check. Local governments will receive $76.8 million less in this biennium compared to the previous one.

  Gov. Walker and legislative leaders justified these cuts by arguing that local governments would be able to offset this loss of support via the new “tools” they were given to deal with public sector union employees; but county and municipal officials, like public school districts, contend that those savings do not come close to filling the gap. The budget also contains substantial cuts in transportation assistance to local governments.

• Shift of dollars from the general fund to the transportation fund: The budget shifts 0.25% of general fund tax revenue to the transportation fund, beginning in 2013. That amount must be at least $35.1 million. It also separately transfers $125 million from the general fund to the transportation fund during the 2011-13 biennium.

  This shift of GPR dollars into the transportation fund comes at a time when nearly every critical GPR-funded program that benefits children and families is seeing large cuts.

• Reinstatement of the “job ready” classification in W-2: Case managers are once again able to classify W-2 participants as “job ready,” meaning they can receive job search assistance and other services but will receive no cash assistance even though they meet all eligibility requirements for the program and are not currently employed.

  This classification—which was nowhere to be found in the original W-2 legislation — was struck down by the courts several years ago (to the great relief of advocates), but now returns as an option for W-2 case managers.

• Tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations: Rather than adopt a balanced approach to solving the budget deficit, this budget actually magnified the problem by creating additional tax breaks for corporations and the state’s richest residents, thus deepening the hole that had to be filled through spending cuts.

  Those breaks include an exclusion from the income tax for capital gains reinvested in Wisconsin businesses within 180 days; a new credit for business income generated by qualified production activities in Wisconsin; and a change to combined reporting that will allow corporations to share losses generated before loopholes were closed a couple years ago.

In addition to these items, there were a number of other policy changes in the budget that tend to favor business at the expense of the environment and consumer protection, a pattern that has continued beyond the biennial budget bill and into the regular legislative session.

We hope you have found the “31 Ways in 31 Days” series useful, and will refer back to it as the impact of the budget continues to make itself felt. Please help disseminate this information to a broader audience by posting links to it (bit.ly/k0LBCp) on your social media sites and wherever else you see fit.

And be sure to check back regularly, subscribe, “like”, and follow as many of these as you can stand for similar information in the months ahead:
Wisconsin Council on Children and Families
https://kidsforward.org/
http://www.wiskids.blogspot.org/
www.facebook.com/wiskids
www.twitter.com/wiskids

Wisconsin Budget Project:
http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org/
http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.blogspot.org/
www.facebook.com/wisconsinbudgetproject
www.twitter.com/wibudgetproject

Bob Jacobson

About the series: “31 Ways in 31 Days” is a series of posts to the WCCF blog exploring the recently-passed biennial budget’s impact on children and families in Wisconsin. Each day in July, we are posting a description of one way the budget will affect kids and families, with an eye toward what should be done going forward to help improve outcomes and move us closer to the goal of making Wisconsin a place where every child has the opportunity to grow up, learn, and thrive in a safe, healthy, economically secure home and community.