What Wisconsin Can Learn From Other States' Welfare Systems

How to Reform Wisconsin Welfare

Government inefficiency isn't unique to Wisconsin. Across the country, state governments are structured in ways that produce confusion and bureaucratic delay.

Sometimes reform is blocked by statute, meaning state or federal laws that lock agencies into outdated structures. Other times, there's no political will to change. Either way, the people who pay the price are the ones who have to navigate the system themselves, and nowhere is that more evident than in how states administer welfare and workforce development programs.

The first part of this series examined how Wisconsin structures its welfare and workforce development system, showing how numerous state agencies each have a hand in serving overlapping needs.

Not every state takes this approach. Some have restructured administratively and seen real gains as a result. This article compares Wisconsin's system to Utah, Colorado, and Georgia, states that have pursued more innovative structures.

Utah's Full Integration

Before 1997, Utah's welfare system looked a lot like Wisconsin's does today. A legislative audit at the time found that the state's employment and training services were spread across 23 separate programs, run by six different agencies. That finding prompted reform.

In 1997, Utah combined five agencies that covered employment security, family support programs, welfare payments, food stamps, child care, and job training into the Department of Workforce Services (DWS). In 2021, Medicaid eligibility was added to DWS as well. The merger allowed the state to cut its field offices in half. A Utah resident who wanted to apply for help was then able to walk into one office and work with one person, instead of being directed to multiple agencies, programs, and case officers.

The One-Door model has proved successful. Utah's SNAP participation rate is around 5 percent of its population, compared to a national average of over 12 percent, and the same source notes Utah's unemployment rate sits below the national average as well. Advocacy groups like the Alliance for Opportunity point to how Utah saved $8 million in 2000 compared to 1996 after its merger of 36 programs across multiple agencies. The Archbridge Institute scores states on their social mobility, including entrepreneurship and growth, institutions and rule of law, education and skills development, and social capital, and found that Utah had the best score of America's 50 states. Wisconsin ranked 13th in the nation.

According to reporting on the most recent 2025 audit of Utah's program, five years after entering a program, participants showed decreased unemployment, decreased use of eligibility services, and positive wage growth. While it's a step in the right direction, that same audit found that only 9 percent of participants were still earning a living wage five years out.

Utah is an exception. The federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) generally requires states to run their job training funds through local workforce boards that operate somewhat independently from state welfare agencies. A small number of states are exempt, because they already held a special "single-state area" designation before a 2013 cutoff. Wisconsin is not one of them and cannot become one under current law.

Attempts have been made to change this legal provision. In January of this year, Congressman Blake Moore of Utah's first district proposed a piece of legislation called the Upward Mobility Act, to create a five-year pilot program that would allow a small number of states to combine federal funding for several welfare programs into one. This would reduce bureaucracy and prevent benefit cliffs, wherein a small increase in a family's income disqualifies them from benefits and leaves them financially worse off than before the raise.

Even in Utah, despite the success of the One-Door model, Utah Governor Spencer Cox has said that, “federal rules limit how we can further innovate to clear the path for families eager to escape poverty while reducing government dependence.”

“The Upward Mobility Act allows states the ability to craft innovative programs that work best for families transitioning into work and greater self-sufficiency.”

It's worth mentioning that even the best of current government interventions can't fully solve poverty and unemployment. These issues are multifaceted, and their causes aren't always external, meaning they don't always have external public policy solutions. Wisconsin, however, doesn't have the best of current government interventions.

If the Upward Mobility Act were passed, Wisconsin may be allowed to make major changes to its welfare and workforce development administrative system that could streamline the process of getting help and regaining self-sufficiency for Wisconsinites. Or at least make the process easier.

In the meantime, other states that don't have this federal exemption, like Colorado and Georgia, have taken innovative measures to change the administrative system that they currently have.

Colorado and Georgia's Backend Integration

Not every state has completely reformed its administrative structure to make meaningful changes. Colorado and Georgia left their agencies alone, but instead built a single computer system that each agency connects to, so a family fills out one application and each program that could help them pulls from the same information.

Colorado's version has two parts. PEAK is the website a recipient actually interfaces with. Behind this website sits the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS), a computer engine that combines all the various eligibility and statutory requirements and decides who qualifies for what. CBMS runs around 7,500 rules to handle Medicaid, food assistance, cash assistance, and other benefits. The original system that resulted didn't work correctly and, in some cases, wrongly administered benefits. Since then, Colorado has started a new modernization project and is still paying to fix the one shared system.

Georgia has its own system called Gateway that piloted in one county in February 2017 and now covers multiple programs like Medicaid, food assistance, cash assistance, and child care, all sharing one backend.

Wisconsin fits in close to these lanes, with some notable differences. As discussed in the previous article, Wisconsin's ACCESS system provides a single front door for FoodShare, Medicaid, Wisconsin Shares, W-2, and some other benefits and programs. Building that front door was comparatively cheap. A case study from ACCESS's early years put its development cost at around $6 million.

Wisconsin hasn't built a shared backend behind that front door. Once an application has been submitted, it doesn't flow into one system the way Colorado's CBMS handles every program at once. It routes to separate systems like income maintenance workers, the CARES Worker Web, and a separate system for W-2.

Conclusion

Utah is the exception rather than the model most states can follow. Its merger is only possible because of a federal designation the state received. Unless Congress acts on something like the Upward Mobility Act, Wisconsin cannot pursue that same path.

Colorado and Georgia showed that a shared system can be built without restructuring state agencies but building one well is expensive and can cause administrative difficulties. Wisconsin has taken another road. Its front door, ACCESS, was built quickly and cheaply, but the state is still working to connect what sits behind it.

The next part of this series will take a look at the ways Wisconsin can practically reform its welfare and workforce development system.