Why was the IRS interested in efforts to ensure the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was legitimate? Read More »

Wisconsin State Superintendent Tony Evers has recently criticized the idea, saying that the report cards are currently a pilot program and that these report cards aren't ready to be a piece of high stakes educational policy. However, that's not what Evers and the Department of Public Instruction said as these report cards were being developed to replace an ineffective No Child Left Behind (NCLB) system back in February of 2012. Read More »

Robert Mentzer, the opinion editor at the Wausau Daily Herald, is grateful that my op-ed last week for the MacIver Institute was free of "Obamacare = death of freedom" rhetoric, even as he finds my arguments opposing Medicaid expansion to be less than compelling. I'll leave the cataclysmic rhetoric to Democrats like Senator Max Baucus and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who described President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act as, "a huge train wreck." Read More »

Department of Workforce Development (DWD) Secretary Reggie Newson announced today that Wisconsin's economy added over 62,000 private sector jobs in 2011-2012. Read More »

This recommends that the state's non-instrumentality charter schools no longer exist going forward. It's a bold statement, and one that doesn't line up with the rest of the study's mission; to provide high quality education for low-income students. Milwaukee, which is home to all but one of the state's independent charter schools, has had great progress in these institutions. They commonly outscore public schools and instrumentality charters in both WKCE and School Report Card metrics while educating a high population of low-income students. Read More »

MacIver News Service - Governor Scott Walker proposes a two-year tuition freeze at the UW System, reinstating funding lapses, and defunding multiple economic development initiatives. Secretary Mike Huebsch, Department of Administration, sent a letter to Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. John Nygren, the Co-Chairs of the Joint Committee on Finance, on Wednesday afternoon outlining the Governor's proposals. Read More »

The Joint Committee on Finance plans to vote today on additional bonding authority for the Department of Natural Resources Stewardship Program. The program has bonding authority of $1.4 billion through fiscal year 2020, and under the Governor's budget will borrow $115 million for land acquisition and property development. Each year, Wisconsin needs to pay back the money they owe in the form of Debt Service Payments. This chart shows that these payments will have cost the state more than $540 million over the past decade. Read More »

MacIver News Service (Updated 5/15/13 at 6:36PM) - The Joint Committee on Finance will vote today on providing additional bonding authority of $115 million for the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program for 2013-2015. This program has $1.4 billion in bonding authority through 2019-2020 and has debt service payments in excess of $90 million annually. Read More »

MacIver News Service - The State Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that will reduce the power of the Milwaukee County Board, decrease their budget, and schedule a referendum to essentially make County Supervisor positions part-time. The bill passed 19-14 in the Senate, and the Assembly took action to concur in both amendments. Read More »

"No one should feel comfortable right now based on the alleged un-American activities of the IRS," Rep. Nass wrote in his email. "That is why these requests should be stripped from the budget." Read More »