Democratic Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers speaks with UW-Green Bay Chancellor Michael Alexander on the UWGB campus on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Democratic Governor Tony Evers wants to invest more in infrastructure across Wisconsin.
As part of his more than $4 billion capital budget recommendations, Evers has asked the state to spend nearly $1.6 billion to make building improvements on Universities of Wisconsin campuses.
Evers toured UW-Green Bay Tuesday, which is looking to make more than $40 million in upgrades and renovations to locations like the Kress Events Center, Environmental Science and Laboratory Sciences buildings.
“Here in Green Bay, the enrollments are up and the buildings are starting to age and they just need to be taken care of,” said Evers.
A significant portion of the governor’s capital funding recommendations for the Universities of Wisconsin is transforming UW-Oshkosh’s Polk Library, which is showing its age.
Evers has requested the state spend $137.5 million to upgrade and renovate the library into the Polk Learning Commons. That money would fully cover remodeling.
UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt revealed the school’s budget deficit will be closed by the end of the current academic year. At one point, the deficit sat at $7.6 million last year.
“The library, which is a capital project, it doesn’t overlap with our operating budget. It’s a separate project,” said Leavitt. “That is going to be a key ingredient in terms of driving future enrollment and making sure that we have high retention rates.”
Evers’ capital budget recommendations will be voted on by the State Building Commission later this month.
Republican State Senator Andre Jacque of De Pere, a member of the building commission, says they’ll review all of the governor’s requests to determine what stays and what is removed from the capital budget.
“It’s kind of the job of the legislature to be the responsible adults in the room and sort between the needs and the wants, and we’ll have to figure out exactly where that line is drawn and what projects fall within that,” said Jacque.
“If we continue to say, ‘Well, we’re going to do this and not this’ — at the end of the day, we’re just going to pay more,” said Evers.
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