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The Potential Budget Delay
It could be a while before Wisconsin sees a new state budget.
The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee on Tuesday announced a series of budget listening sessions that will begin next month.
However, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu told reporters that budget decisions may not be made until the Supreme Court rules on a number of pending questions.
“I don’t know if we’re strongly considering delaying or passing [a state budget,]” LeMahieu said Wednesday. “We’re waiting on some cases before the state Supreme Court, to get more clarity on the veto power of the governor.”
LeMahieu said that includes the challenge to Gov. Evers’ 400-year school funding veto.
There, Evers erased the “20” and the dash from the current state budget in reference to “2024–25." That left the budget with a school funding increase til' “2425.”
The Supreme Court listened to arguments in the case last October, but the liberal-majority court has not yet issued a ruling.
LeMahieu said that ruling will decide what the next state budget looks like because Republicans need to know “the rule that you’re operating under.”
“Our governor already has one of the strongest veto pens of any other state,” he added. “We’re waiting to see what the Supreme Court decides.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said Republicans plan to send Gov. Evers a tax cut plan first, then wait to see what he does before sending him a state budget.
Evers proposed a massive new state budget. His plan would add about $10 billion in spending each year of the two-year budget, raise at least $3 billion in taxes, and hire more than 1,000 new state employees.
Both Vos and Lemahieu have declared the governor’s plan dead on arrival. They are not yet saying, however, what a Republican state budget would look like, or how much they are willing to spend.
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