Smart and effective use of taxpayer investments in public safety have become a priority in many states, including Wisconsin. This budget represents a carefully measured first step toward comprehensive sentencing reform in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is not alone in passing sentencing reform this budget cycle, but it is important to note that this budget invests resources to ensure the reforms enacted will maintain public safety by ensuring that the most violent offenders are held accountable while low-risk offenders are offered opportunities for rehabilitation and a chance to resume productive lives in the community.
Not only does this budget enact sentencing reform, but it also strives to make the sentencing process more efficient and streamlined while still maintaining public safety. In the past year, the Council of State Governments' Justice Reinvestment Initiative has been working in Wisconsin to determine what drives growth in our prison population and identify the steps necessary to reduce recidivism and break the cycles of crime and violence. Recommendations have been adopted by the Legislative Council Special Committee on Justice Reinvestment Initiative Oversight. Some of those recommendations are included in this budget and build on the proposals I made in February. My administration will continue to work with the Legislature and the Justice Reinvestment Initiative to identify further reforms that positively impact public safety. As part of these efforts, I urge the Legislature to carefully review the risk reduction measures included in this budget to better address responsible sentence adjustment for nonviolent offenders.
The following is a brief summary of how this budget, including my vetoes, will address some of the key issues facing the citizens of Wisconsin:
K-12 Education
• Provides $237 million in federal stabilization funds for general equalization aid and $390 million over the biennium under federal Title 1 (No Child Left Behind) and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), which will protect districts from significant cuts to staff and programming. As a result, school districts will actually receive a $107 million increase in state and federal funding compared with the previous biennium.
• Repeals the Qualified Economic Offer to create equity between teachers and other public employees in collective bargaining, increases the allowable length of teacher contracts to four years, and authorizes the creation of bargaining units consisting of school district employees from multiple districts.
• Creates new requirements for private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to significantly strengthen program accountability and the quality of schools participating in the program. Among these provisions are requirements on schools to employ teachers with bachelor's degrees, adopt academic standards and schedule the same number of hours of instruction as in public schools.
A300
• Increases high-poverty aid by $13.4 million over the biennium to reduce the property tax burden in high-poverty school districts where at least 50 percent of pupils qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
• Increases sparsity aid by $11.3 million and increases the per pupil aid amount to $300. This program provides additional aid to low enrollment, rural school districts where offering a high-quality curriculum poses greater fiscal challenges.
• Creates a new revenue limit increase beginning in the 2009-10 school year for school district spending on energy efficiency measures and renewable energy products that result in cost savings, and additional revenue limit increases for school safety, transportation and nursing costs beginning in the 2011-12 school year.
Higher Education
• Helps ensure that college remains affordable for lower income Wisconsin residents by increasing support for financial aid programs by $20.3 million over the biennium.
• Strengthens Wisconsin's leadership role in medical research by providing $2 million GPR in fiscal year 2009-10 for the Wisconsin Genomics Initiative, a collaborative public-private initiative at the forefront of personalized health care research.
• Places Wisconsin at the leading edge of renewable energy science by investing $4.05 million annually in research and development projects at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and related bio-energy projects at the University of Wisconsin campuses in Milwaukee, Stevens Point, River Falls and Green Bay. The projects are developing the next generation of bio-based fuels and energy that promise to free us from our dependence on foreign oil.
• Provides $8.2 million GPR in fiscal year 2010-11 to support biotechnology, nanotechnology and information technologies research at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, a visionary public research institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison charged with enhancing human health and welfare through interdisciplinary research.
• Provides an additional $15 million over the biennium to strengthen the University of Wisconsin System's ability to retain high-demand faculty.
• Increases funding for general state aid to technical colleges by $1.8 million GPR to help support critical front line worker retraining and job readiness efforts.
• Provides $25 million GPR in fiscal year 2010-11 to establish a funding base for Wisconsin Covenant Grants. Beginning in fiscal year 2011-12, the grants will help all qualified Covenant scholars pursue a postsecondary education.
Children and Families
• Ensures that access to affordable child care for low-income working families will be maintained by providing $67.8 million in additional funding over the biennium for subsidized child care.
• Provides $38.6 million GPR to fully fund projected costs of out-of-home care in the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare and to fill the gap caused by diminishing federal support.
• Provides $3.9 million GPR to help strengthen and improve the service mission of the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare. This includes initiatives to reduce staff turnover and improve skills by hiring additional child protective services staff and implementing a career ladder. It also includes on-call reimbursement and technical assistance for supervisory staff. In addition, funding is provided to hire nurses to monitor the health and safety of children in out-of-home care and to expand the Mobile Urgent Treatment team, which provides crisis intervention services.
• Provides $1.9 million GPR to implement a graduated foster care licensing system. This system will create five licensing levels with increasing licensing requirements. It will also provide an assessment for children placed in out-of-home care and monthly rates of reimbursement to providers commensurate with the level of care the provider is licensed for and the needs of the child placed in the home.
• Provides $766,000 GPR to increase the uniform foster care rate by 5 percent in 2011 along with a 2.5 percent increase to kinship care providers, as well as increases to the one-time clothing allowance for foster families.
• Expands oversight of the Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy program by providing $900,000 GPR in additional funding over the biennium for the child care program integrity unit and strengthening state laws to better prevent overpayments and fraud.
• Expands Wisconsin Works (W-2) placement opportunities by creating a subsidized private sector employment initiative that will provide private sector work experience to W-2 participants, enabling them to more easily transition to full-time employment.
Health Care
• Funds the expansion of Medicaid coverage to income-eligible adults without children. This expansion will help cover over 98 percent of Wisconsin residents and, through use of managed care, help hold down unreimbursed costs for health care providers.
• Continues to expand Family Care, with over 20 additional counties starting up over the next two years, funded in large part by the savings achieved through relocating and diverting residents from nursing homes to community placements.
• Adds 1,000 long-term support waiver slots for children with disabilities over the next four years.
• Creates opportunities for residents of the Southern Wisconsin Center for the Developmentally Disabled to relocate to less restrictive community placements in a safe and measured manner.
• Provides new federal Medicaid funding for the Birth-to-Three program to increase early intervention services to young children with developmental delays and disabilities.
• Reduces county costs for placing children and the elderly at state mental health institutions by permitting counties to benefit from the enhanced federal medical assistance percentage.
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• Provides $10.2 million GPR in fiscal year 2008-09 and $1 million GPR annually starting in fiscal year 2009-10 to increase supplemental Medicaid payments to county and municipal nursing homes.
• Provides additional funding and positions to improve care to residents at the veterans nursing home facilities.
• Provides $500,000 GPR to study the feasibility of expanding access to dental education and the state's role in increasing dental care in rural and underserved areas.
• Provides $200,000 GPR as a one-time grant to Milwaukee Health Services to purchase equipment and provide dental services at the Isaac Coggs Heritage Health Center.
• Establishes a Wisconsin Quality Home Care Authority to provide services to recipients and providers of home care services.
Insurance
• Reforms motor vehicle insurance requirements to ensure that policyholders get the full benefit of their automobile insurance and to mandate that all drivers maintain vehicle liability insurance at a level adequate to meet growing health care costs. I have vetoed several related provisions that, while well-intentioned, could have the effect of unreasonably increasing premiums for liability insurance coverage. These vetoes balance the need for ensuring adequate coverage with maintaining the affordability of liability insurance premiums.
• Ensures that health insurance meets the needs of policyholders and protects consumers through changes in plans offered by regulated insurers, including:
-- Mandating coverage of autism services to children.
-- Covering dependents up to age 27 under group health policies.
-- Clarifying the coverage of mental health services provided by mental health professionals.
-- Mandating coverage of contraceptive services.
-- Improving consumer protections in the small group and individual health insurance markets.
Economic Development
• Creates a new refundable jobs tax credit program aimed at attracting and expanding business. The new program provides up to $10 million per year in payroll credits to businesses. A portion of the wages paid toward new family supporting jobs would be eligible for up to a 10 percent credit.
• Creates a flexible and streamlined forward innovation fund to support the start-up, expansion or retention of minority businesses; businesses in economically distressed areas; and innovative proposals to strengthen inner cities, rural communities, industry clusters and entrepreneurships.
• Provides tax incentives to accelerate new business growth, including a tax break for investors who reinvest their capital gains into Wisconsin start-up businesses and an income tax credit to businesses that significantly increase their research and development efforts.
• Encourages economic and business development by creating income tax credits that support market entry for new farmers.
• Supports the strategic industrial sectors of biotechnology and manufacturing by creating sales and use tax exemptions for machinery and equipment devoted to research and development.
• Launches a more efficient and effective business model for tourism in the state by closing the Wisconsin Welcome Centers and creating new grants for municipalities and tourism information organizations.
• Expands the scope of Wisconsin's prevailing wage law to assure that Wisconsin workers receive fair and reasonable pay for their labor.
Transportation
• Adds over $823 million of state funds and federal recovery grants for major highways, highway rehabilitation and local transportation infrastructure improvements over three construction seasons.
• Increases general transportation aids and transit aids to local governments by 2 percent in 2010 and 3 percent in 2011.
• Funds the next phase of reconstruction of the north-south I-94 segment in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties with over $270 million of state funding and federal recovery resources. Provides $6 million in new funding to continue preliminary work on the Zoo Interchange.
• Lays the framework for regional cooperation on transit issues by creating regional transit authorities in the Chippewa Valley, Chequamegon Bay region, Dane County and the Southeast Region.
• Provides $100 million in general obligation bonding authority for freight and passenger rail and $12.7 million in general obligation bonding authority for harbor assistance grants in recognition of the diversity of means to transport goods and products to and from Wisconsin.
Shared Revenue and Property Tax Relief
• Returns excess wireless 911 funds to local governments in support of emergency services.
• Supports local governments by averting deep shared revenue cuts through the use of $76.1 million of the state's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocation.
• Creates a police and fire protection fee coupled with a maintenance of effort requirement to preserve local emergency services.
• Continues the municipal levy limit program to protect property taxpayers while increasing the limit from 2 percent to 3 percent to help local governments meet essential service needs.
• Encourages the creation of low-income housing by exempting certain projects from property tax and permitting local governments to extend the life of a tax incremental district to fund improvements to low-income housing stock.
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• Expands the premier resort area tax to foster growth in tourism areas.
Environment
• Guarantees continued access to Wisconsin's vast outdoor recreational opportunities without general increases to hunting and fishing license fees.
• Encourages the long-term preservation of Wisconsin's fertile farmland and supports commitments by farmers to manage their land in an environmentally friendly manner by adopting key recommendations of the Working Lands Initiative.
• Protects Wisconsin lakes and rivers and improves water quality in Wisconsin by providing an additional $20 million SEG and bonding over the biennium to reduce nonpoint source water pollution through increased nutrient management planning and other pollution abatement practices.
Justice
• Increases funding for civil legal services to indigent persons to help on targeted issues, including guardian ad litem and obtaining child support.
• Provides funding and positions to improve mental health care for female inmates.
• Provides funding and positions to ensure that serious child sex offenders are closely supervised in the community and offenders comply with sex offender registration requirements.
• Increases staffing for the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
• Implements a smarter criminal justice policy that holds individuals accountable for their crimes, but also better prepares and supports those individuals when they re-enter the community so that they do not return to the criminal justice system. Provisions in the budget include the following:
-- Allows certain offenders to earn positive adjustment time for good behavior and progress toward rehabilitation.
-- Provides the Earned Release Review Commission (formerly the Parole Commission) with the authority to release inmates with extraordinary health conditions to extended supervision so long as public safety is maintained.
-- Allows the secretary of the Department of Corrections to release to extended supervision offenders serving the confinement portion of a bifurcated sentence for a misdemeanor or nonviolent Class F to I felony who are within 12 months of release to extended supervision and who meet certain eligibility criteria.
-- Expands the Earned Release Program and the Challenge Incarceration Program to include inmates with programming needs other than substance abuse, to allow the inmates deemed eligible at sentencing to earn early release by fulfilling certain requirements while in prison.
-- Allows the Department of Corrections to manage offenders on community supervision by prioritizing resources and discharging offenders who are no longer a threat to public safety.
-- Permits judges to order risk reduction sentences to provide offenders with a chance to redeem themselves and decrease time spent in prison, while learning skills and receiving services that will prepare them for successful reintegration into the community.
-- Provides $10 million GPR for community services to reduce recidivism and provide offenders with treatment, employment services and access to mental health care.
General Fund Taxes
• Provides targeted individual income tax increases by creating a new tax bracket that collects an additional 1 percent on income over $300,000. The new bracket is estimated to impact only the highest 1 percent of income earners and increases state revenue by $163.4 million in fiscal year 2009-10 and $124 million in fiscal year 2010-11.
• Improves public health outcomes by increasing the cigarette tax by $0.75 to $2.52 per pack and provides targeted tax increases on certain other tobacco products to increase state revenue by $166.1 million in fiscal year 2009-10 and $171.1 million in fiscal year 2010-11.
• Encourages individual savings and investment by maintaining one of the most generous tax treatments nationally for capital gains income. The long-term capital gains exclusion from taxable income is reduced from 60 percent to 30 percent, increasing state revenue by $115.1 million in fiscal year 2009-10 and $127.4 million in fiscal year 2010-11. The long-term capital gains exclusion for farm assets is continued at 60 percent.
• Promotes tax equity by realigning tax treatment of nonresident members of pass-through entities with resident members and by eliminating the deduction for corporations' qualified domestic production activities, a deduction that provided a tax subsidy for business activity outside the state.
