The Governor has been getting worried that the budget bill won’t be passed and signed before July 1. A late budget isn’t out of the ordinary; in fact, the biennial bill is almost never signed into law before the July 1 start of the biennium. But Governor Doyle notes that the stakes are much higher this year because of the state’s huge...
A key element of the Senate’s plan to balance the state budget is the elimination of the income tax break for capital gains income. A short issue brief on the topic by the Wisconsin Budget Project notes that Wisconsin is one of just 9 states that treat capital gains income differently than other income. The other 8 states are mostly...
The State Senate passed its version of the budget last night on a 17-16 vote, with one Democrat, Jim Sullivan of Wauwatosa, joining the Republicans to vote against it. In general, WCCF likes what the Senate did. A couple examples of changes we support are indexing the minimum wage and eliminating the generous capital gains tax break....
As the sun was coming up on Saturday, June 13, the State Assembly was finishing their work on the state budget. After a full week of meetings and caucuses, the Assembly finally went to the floor late Friday night to debate the state budget bill. Now the State Senate has their turn to caucus and debate the budget bill. The Senate hopes...
Among the amendments to the budget package being taken up by the Assembly today is one that makes a long overdue change to the Homestead Tax Credit program.The Homestead Credit is a critical program in making property taxes less burdensome for low-income households in Wisconsin. In most respects, it is a very well targeted and well...
Earlier this week, WCCF released its analysis of the impact of the Joint Finance Committee’s budget on children and families. The WCCF analysis is updated with each step of the budget process.Although the Joint Finance budget does include more than $300 million in additional revenue compared to the Governor’s bill, that figure is...
On Monday night, the Janesville City Council passed a resolution in support of the goals of our Vision 2020 Campaign to End Child Poverty. The text of the resolution does not seem to be online yet, but according to the Janesville Gazette report (you can save time by skipping to the very last line of the story), a task force will be...
In the coming weeks, Wisconsin will begin for the first time to offer a statewide health insurance plan for low-income adults who don’t have dependent children. Statewide implementation of this new coverage, know as the BadgerCare Plus Core Plan, will be a major step forward in Wisconsin’s efforts to reach the Governor’s goal of...
Under the corrections omnibus motion (motion #670), Youth Aids was restored to its current law amount of $100,790,200. The Governor had recommended a 1% and then 5% cut to the Youth Aids allocation, for a total cut of$5.9 million. The Motion creates a FED appropriation for the $5.9 million for this biennium, and returning the funding to...
The Joint Finance Committee's version of the 2009-2011 state budget, approved early Friday morning, includes a number of improvements to the state’s W-2 program. The omnibus motion which contains those parts of the budget – and others – can be accessed at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lfb/2009-11Budget/JFC/Motions/744.pdf.Here’s a short...
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