GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — This week, Governor Evers’ office announced the state of Wisconsin ended the fiscal year with a $4.6B surplus and a record $1.9B in the state’s ‘rainy day’ fund.
As the Governor prepares the next biennial budget, lawmakers are sharing their thoughts on potential usages for some of that money.
This year’s surplus is around $2B smaller than the last. Nonetheless, it’s a huge number.
“It is a lot of money and as the governor said it’s a good position to be in, but part of the reason we have this money is because we have been underfunding a lot of initiatives at the state level for a long time under Republican majority so we need to get some of this back into the community,” says Democratic Representative Lee Snodgrass.
“We’re still dealing with like a hangover from a huge surge from the pandemic, the feds pumped all this money into the economy and it was like a bubble,” says Republican Senator Rob Cowles.
While its allocation may differ on each side of the aisle, these lawmakers both stress that this money does not replicate.
“We have to remember that this surplus is not an ongoing surplus necessarily, so these one-time investments are a little bit smarter so I just want to make sure we don’t drain this fund by suggesting an ongoing tax cut that we simply can’t keep up with,” says Snodgrass, who is up for re-election this November.
“I hope that they use caution on how to use this money,” adds Cowles, who is not running for re-election this year, and ending his decades-long career in the state legislature.
Both lawmakers say the wisest use of the money is one-time investments.
“Because this is one-time money, in all likelihood, that you gotta use it for things like capital projects, one-time events, you know, fix buildings, fix budget tricks that have been embedded in the budget for decades,” Cowles says. “But if you use the one-time money embedded in the base budget like Department of Health or school aides, etcetera, any place in the state budget, and you don’t get that growth going forward to replace it, you’ve got a big problem.”
Cowles says the fiscal bureau estimates the balance at the end of this two-year budget will be $3.5B, with the spending already appropriated for the rest of this fiscal year. Projections from the administration are expected next month, he says, and once those numbers are in, legislators will have a better idea of how much money can really be allocated.
Snodgrass says that money should be going right back to local municipalities.
“We have shared revenue that still needs to be increased, we have very expensive firetrucks that need to be built, a lot of municipalities are putting off those large expenses like that where we could send that money back into the community for EMS, police, fire, etcetera, road improvements, schools,” she says.
The surplus comes too as a record number of school referendums, including in Green Bay, go to voters, and Governor Evers this week highlighted the importance of further supporting child care and public education.
“So when you look at capital projects in particular, those one-time spending things, building improvements,new schools, that’s something we can do with that surplus and not have to worry about that being ongoing money. So I agree with the Governor that we need to invest in our K-12 public educationand then we look at the UW system, we look at how the engineering building was held hostage for a long time, some of those larger capital projects that keep us being very competitive with students out of state.”
Cowles says that he could see more funding being allocated to schools as a one-time support, and adds that lawmakers need to work together to ensure the money isn’t used to support base budgets in state departments.
“It’s nice to have the number, it gives the legislature, the governor a lot of flexibility, but you can’t abuse it. The last go around the governor spent that balance and even with tax increases we had a $3.5B structural deficit, that’s catastrophic, so you can’t just spend it all and think there’s going to be growth to cover it up,” Cowles cautions.
Snodgrass says she hopes roadblocks won’t be in the way.
“Some of the reason we have such a large surplus is because there is money that has been approved and allocated but joint finance has refused to release it. Until we have a better balance of representation in the state between Republicans and Democrats, there is going to be the sort of back and forth about how the money gets invested. I’m really hopeful we’ll have a little bit more equality so to speak so we can have real conversations about getting this money back to the people of Wisconsin and keeping Wisconsin fiscally sound in the process.”
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