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...
The Joint Finance Committee finished their work on the state budget pretty early this morning after an all night session. The Committee adopted a motion that funded the Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy program, authored by Senator Mark Miller (D-Monona) and Representative Tamara Grigsby (D-Milwaukee). The motion eliminated the...
As everyone struggles with the reality of current fiscal deficits at the local, state, and federal levels, the President has recently released the federal budget for FY2010. An analysis of that budget's impact on children and families, titled Imperfect Progress: An Analysis of the President’s FY2010 Budget and its Impact on Children’s...
Gov. Doyle announced the general outline of his plan yesterday for closing the new $1.6 billion hole in the state budget caused by the sharp drop in tax collections. It calls for deep cuts in state agency budgets, furloughs and layoffs of state workers, and a 2.5 percent cut in state aid to schools, counties and municipalities.The...
The Governor and the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee, Sen. Mark Miller (D-Monona) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison), held a press conference late Thursday to announce additional cuts in the state budget due to a much larger deficit than originally expected. These include additional 5% cuts across the board to all state agencies,...
WCCF and a whole bunch of partners convened a press conference on Tuesday, May 20 to send the message to the Governor and legislators that it is not acceptable to fix the state budget deficit through spending cuts alone. Our aim was to raise awareness of the fact that deep cuts to critical programs would have a devastating effect on the...
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) issued new estimates on May 11 of tax collections this year and in the next biennium. According to the LFB, the state deficit over the next 2 years will be $1.6 billion greater than previously estimated. This grim news could get even worse in the coming weeks. The new LFB figures look only at the...
An op-ed by WCCF Executive Director Charity Elson appeared in the Janesville Gazette on Tuesday, May 12. In the column, Charity argues the merits of a quality rating and improvment system (QRIS) for early care and education. Such a system was proposed in the last two budgets, but did not survive the budget process either time. QRIS has...
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