MADISON, Wis. — A new legislative session begins in Madison on Jan. 6, and state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are planning their priorities.
The Wisconsin Legislature will convene with the slimmest Republican majorities in more than a decade after Democrats gained ground in the November election under new, more competitive legislative maps. That means party infighting could limit the kinds of proposals the GOP majority can get across the finish line. Democratic leaders hope the tighter margins will lead to more bipartisan compromise.
From a new state budget to cleaning up contaminated drinking water, here are some of the top issues lawmakers hope to address:
Tax cuts and a $4 billion budget surplus
The state budget will be top of mind as Republicans who control the Legislature’s powerful budget-writing committee battle with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers over how to spend the state’s more than $4 billion surplus. The Legislature typically sends its spending plan to the governor’s office sometime in June. From there, Evers can either veto the plan, send it back to lawmakers, or use his partial veto power to revise portions of the budget before signing it into law.
Republicans have been adamant that a majority of the surplus should go back to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts. Democrats want to see increased spending on education, both at the K-12 and college levels, as well as efforts to reduce the cost of housing and health care. After Evers used his partial veto power to gut Republican-backed tax cuts in the last budget cycle, GOP leaders say they’re changing their approach.
Watch: A new legislative session starts soon in Madison. Here's what you can expect
“This time around, we’re going to do our budget process different,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said. “We’re going to do the tax cuts first. So, we’re going to agree on how do we return the surplus, how do we get it back to Wisconsinites, before we start spending money.”
Vos said that if Evers doesn’t play ball on tax cuts, Republicans are willing to simply not pass a budget. That would keep spending over the next two years at the same levels as the 2023-2024 budget.
“That’s not my preference, but that’s ultimately what could happen,” he said.
Democrats say they’re open to tax cuts but want to see them narrowly targeted toward low-income and middle-class families.
Funding for K-12 schools
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction made a staggering budget request last month for an increase of more than $4 billion in the next state budget. State Superintendent Jill Underly, a Democrat, said the extra funds would help reduce the number of local referendums needed to pay for K-12 education and in doing so, keep property taxes in check.
“The Legislature really has not been keeping up its end of the bargain. We’ve seen district after district go to referendum across the state, having to raise their own property taxes while we’re sitting here on a big surplus,” Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, a Democrat, said in an interview.
Vos called that request “absolutely unrealistic.”
“That’s as much as our entire surplus. We’re not going to spend it all on one category,” he said.
Vos also criticized DPI’s decision to lower the bar for testing standards in Wisconsin.
“I’m angry and disappointed that Superintendent Underly dumbed down our standards to make herself look better,” Vos said. “If we’re going to have an increase in education, there are going to have to be more strings attached than we’ve had before.”
Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, the state Senate’s top Democrat, defended Underly’s massive ask.
“Really, she’s looking out for the kids in our state. She’s putting forth an aggressive agenda with a bold vision,” Hesselbein said. “Do I believe that we can do that in the state of Wisconsin? I’d be surprised. But can we get closer to what we need? Possibly.”
Funding for the Universities of Wisconsin
The Universities of Wisconsin are asking for an additional $855 million in the next budget. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has backed that request.
Vos says UW’s funding hinges on whether they’ve made promised cuts to DEI programs. In the last budget cycle, Republicans withheld raises for UW employees in order to force cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on campus.
“The first thing we’re going to do is see if they kept the deal we made a year and a half ago,” Vos said. “All those promises have to be kept before we can even think about having an increase.”
Vos said he’s also open to looking at further DEI cuts in the upcoming budget.
Medical Marijuana
Vos plans to bring back a proposal for medical marijuana distributed by state-run dispensaries. That plan failed in the previous legislative session after Democrats said the plan was too limited and Senate Republicans were opposed to the idea of state-run dispensaries.
Vos said he’s open to ideas other than state-run dispensaries but that so far, he believes that model is the best option.
“The biggest priority we have is making sure it is a program that is focused on people who actually have an illness, not just a precursor to recreational marijuana,” Vos said.
Hesselbein said the proposal for state-run dispensaries is too restrictive.
“I don’t think that’s where we want to go,” she said. “I really want recreational marijuana passed, but I realize with Republicans in charge that’s not going to happen. But at least let’s try to get medical marijuana in a place where people who have problems can access it.”
Trump presidency and mass deportations
President-elect Donald Trump has promised mass deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally. Evers and other top Wisconsin Democrats say they’re prepared to fight against those efforts. Evers has said he will not organize the Wisconsin National Guard to assist in mass deportations, though Trump could federalize those troops in some cases.
Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said he’s prepared to challenge Trump’s deportation plans if they appear to violate the law.
“There will be steps the Trump administration has to take, and ensuring they do that in a way that’s lawful and consistent with our values is important,” Kaul said.
Kaul also warned that mass deportation could be harmful to Wisconsin businesses.
“We are a state that has a very large agricultural industry,” Kaul said. “It’s very clear that if Donald Trump moves forward with the kinds of mass deportation plans that he’s suggested, it could have a devastating impact on that industry, on farmers in Wisconsin, and ultimately our economy.”
Republican state lawmakers are backing Trump’s deportation plans. Vos said he supports focusing deportation efforts on people living in the U.S. illegally who have committed crimes.
“If the National Guard can be brought out to say, ‘Look, we’ve got a bunch of criminals. We’ve got to transport them back to their countries of origin or to deport them to ICE,’ then yeah, we should all find consensus to do that,” Vos said.
According to Vos, Assembly Republicans are also planning to introduce a bill early in the new session that would require local law enforcement to cooperate with Immigrations and Custom Enforcement.
School safety and gun safety
Democrats are promising to revive several gun safety proposals in the new legislative session, including red flag laws, ghost gun registries, and expanded background checks. Republicans are opposed to those proposals, but lawmakers could find a bipartisan compromise on funding the Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety.
The office helps schools plan for violence and aims to prevent school violence with a 24/7 tipline and other initiatives. Republicans who control the Legislature’s powerful budget-writing committee rejected the office’s funding request in the last budget cycle, but the Legislature later passed a one-time spending plan to keep the program operational until the next budget. Kaul has repeatedly urged lawmakers to fund the office, and Vos and other Republicans have signaled that they’re willing to do so, as well as potentially make other investments in school mental health.
Government efficiency
Assembly Republicans are launching a new committee to look at how Wisconsin government can be made more efficient and effective. It’s inspired by a similar effort at the federal level, where Trump has chosen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new, non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Vos said Wisconsin’s committee will be known as GOAT, which stands for Government Oversight, Accountability and Transparency.
“We have more government than most places around the country,” he said. “We also know that we have issues where we are not delivering the services that people want or need. So how do we make it better? That’s really the goal.”
Some of the issues the committee could tackle include licensing delays, the uses of artificial intelligence in state agencies, and returning state workers to the office.
Slimmer margins in the Legislature
Republicans maintained their control of both chambers of the state Legislature in the November election, but new, more competitive maps led to Democrats gaining seats. Democrats hope that will lead to more work across the aisle.
“With the new maps in place, with a lot more legislators coming in with close-margin seats – very competitive districts – knowing they’re going to be up again in two years, we’re gonna see more of a focus on those issues that are really impacting Wisconsinites and hopefully more bipartisan action,” Neubauer said.
Republicans will control the Assembly with a 54-45 majority. The divide is smaller in the Senate, where Republicans will have an 18-15 majority.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, who did not respond to requests for an interview, told The Associated Press that “everybody understands, at least at this point, that we need to work together.”
Cleaning up PFAS contamination
In the last state budget, lawmakers set aside $125 million for the Department of Natural Resources to clean up pollution from so-called forever chemicals known as PFAS. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed a plan to spend that money, but Evers vetoed the bill, saying it would let polluters off the hook. Democrats argue the funds should be released directly to the DNR. The Joint Finance Committee has refused to let the money go without a plan in place for how it will be spent, citing concerns that innocent landowners may be made responsible for cleanup costs.
Democrats and Republicans have shown little willingness to budge on the issue.
“The money is there, it’s ready to go out. People are waiting for it. But I’m not going to make people who did nothing wrong pay the price for somebody who did,” Vos said.
“I think it’s really important that we hold polluters accountable, and that’s really where the rubber hit the road last session where we had a challenge finding compromise,” Neubauer said. “But we know how urgent it is to get that money out and work on PFAS, so I’m hopeful that we’ll make progress this session.”
Voter ID laws
Republicans are moving quickly to enshrine the state’s voter ID laws in the Wisconsin Constitution. Last session, the Legislature gave first approval to the proposal. Vos said Republicans plan to give another round of approval to the plan early in the new session, with the hopes of putting the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot for voters to decide on in the statewide April election.
The governor cannot veto a constitutional amendment, and the proposal would make it more difficult for lawmakers to loosen the state’s voter ID laws in the future. Those laws already require voters to show their photo IDs at the polls with few exceptions.
Nick Ramos, executive director of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, called it an attempt to “cement bad public policy.”
“They’re not thinking about the people this harms. It harms the low-income individuals who can’t afford their birth certificate,” he said. “It harms the elderly. It harms minority people that have a hard time trying to get these documents.”
Conservation grant program could be axed
In a lawsuit brought by Evers against Republican leaders, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in July that the Joint Finance Committee could not block funding for a program that allows the DNR to purchase land and make grants for land trusts and local governments to buy and improve public land.
GOP lawmakers have anonymously blocked dozens of projects in recent years, and conservationists are expecting an influx of grant applications because of the ruling. The DNR asked in its budget request for lawmakers to triple funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, but one of the Republican leaders of the finance committee said the whole program was in jeopardy because lawmakers can no longer keep it in check.
Vos said he believes there is “way less than a 50% chance” that the program will survive the upcoming budget process.
“That breaks my heart. I’m a supporter of the program. I want it to be. But without any kind of oversight… it’s just really not a good program,” Vos said.
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