MacIver News Service - The Joint Committee on Finance passed a budget in the first week of June that looks to reduce bonding by nearly $370 million. Bonding under Governor Scott Walker's budget proposal totaled $2.17 billion, but the JFC approved budget decreases bonding authority to $1.8 billion. Read More »

MacIver News Service - The Joint Committee on Finance passed a budget in the first week of June. JFC made some changes to Governor Scott Walker's budget that included a $648 million income tax cut, a modification to the school choice expansion, and an increase in the per-pupil spending for K-12 public schools. After all the Committee's changes, Wisconsin is estimated end fiscal year 2015 with a $109 million surplus. Read More »

MacIver News Service - The Joint Committee on Finance approved a budget in the first week of June that includes a $648 million income tax cut. The plan will decrease rates for all tax brackets, and reduce the amount of brackets from five to four. Even with the tax cut passed in JFC's version of the budget, most taxpayers in Wisconsin will pay a higher income tax rate than millionaires in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Read More »

MacIver News Service - The Joint Committee on Finance will vote on Tuesday on Governor Scott Walker's Medical Assistance reforms. Walker rejected the federal expansion of Medicaid and proposes the state only cover childless adults up to 100 percent of the poverty level under BadgerCare. Those above the 100 percent limit would transition to the insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act. Read More »

MacIver News Service - As the Joint Committee on Finance debates the Building Commission's recommended bonding, this chart looks the state building program bonding over the last ten budgets in Wisconsin. Read More »

Brett Healy and Nick Novak of the MacIver Institute joined their friends at Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin to participate in Tax Townhalls all across Wisconsin last week. The two traveled to Appleton, Green Bay, Green Lake, Oshkosh, and Wausau to speak with taxpayers about Wisconsin's tax code, the state's income tax, and Governor Scott Walker's proposed budget that includes a $343 million income tax cut. 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 »

Compare your average Wisconsin property tax bill to other midwestern states. Read More »

Governor Scott Walker's 2013-2015 budget proposes $794.2 million in bonding authority to be used for major transportation projects during the biennium. While this is an increase over the 2011-2013 budget, it is still over $165 million less than Governor Jim Doyle's last budget. Projects covered under bonding include major highway development across the state, and larger projects like construction on the Zoo Interchange and Hoan Bridge in Milwaukee. Read More »

The MacIver Institute reported last week that the UW System had a balance of over $1 billion. According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, $648 million of that is considered surplus, or unrestricted funds. The above graph provides a comparison between the UW System's surplus and some of Wisconsin's largest publicly traded companies' unrestricted cash. Read More »