• Reduces the burden of the Alternative Minimum Tax by conforming it to the federal tax code.
• Reduces the marriage penalty by increasing the standard deduction for married filers.
• Improves Wisconsin's business climate by simplifying Wisconsin's tax code and reducing the state's compliance burden on individuals and businesses.
• Newly establishes Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) accounts to empower the disabled community and their families to achieve greater independence and assist with various expenses.
• Provides tax relief to teachers who purchase supplies for their classrooms.
Growing Our Economy
• Completes the phase-in of the Manufacturing and Agriculture Credit to stimulate the development of Wisconsin's key economic sectors.
• Increases the cap on the Enterprise Zone Jobs Credit program to provide additional capacity for economic development incentives.
• Streamlines and consolidates the Economic Development Credit and Jobs Tax Credit into a single Business Development Tax Credit to incentivize job creation and investment in Wisconsin.
• Simplifies the Wisconsin tax code by adopting numerous updates to the Internal Revenue Code.
Developing Our Workforce
• Implements a drug screening, testing and treatment program to increase the workforce readiness of individuals receiving unemployment insurance and those receiving certain public assistance benefits.
• Reduces the time limit for participants in Wisconsin Works from 60 months to 48 months, with limited extensions, to encourage participant placements in jobs at a more rapid pace and reduce dependence on public benefits.
• Provides $3 million to expand transitional jobs to other high-need communities, including Racine, Beloit and rural communities.
• Provides additional funding for GED test assistance and adult literacy grants to support adult literacy for TANF-eligible individuals.
• Adds credit for prior learning for veterans who have military training to the performance measures for the Wisconsin Technical College System.
Transforming K-12 Education
• Increases state aid for schools by $108.1 million in the equalization aid formula to offset the need for districts to levy property taxes, and $84.1 million over the base in per pupil aid, thus providing districts with additional spending flexibility.
• Expands the ability of low-income parents across the state to access a wide variety of educational options through expansion and reform of the parental choice programs.
• Increases transparency in K-12 funding by having public funding follow the student for expansions in school choice, charter school authorization and special needs scholarships.
• Enhances student opportunity and rebuilds perennially underperforming schools in the Milwaukee Public School District by creating an Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program to facilitate innovative reforms to improve school performance.
• Increases local control by affirming the authority of school districts to choose their own academic standards, provides a pathway to offering multiple student assessment options and prevents the mandatory application of the national Common Core Standards.
• Expands independent charter school options for parents by designating four new charter school authorizers: the University of Wisconsin System, the Waukesha county executive, tribal colleges and Gateway Technical College.
• Rewards high-performing independent charter school operators by granting authority to open additional schools if the operator's other schools receive four or five stars on the most recent school accountability report.
• Enhances private school accountability by increasing the qualifications for all teachers and administrators in choice schools and permitting independent researchers to access data at the Department of Workforce Development, Department of Children and Families and Department of Health Services to enhance research related to the efficacy of choice schools.
• Improves open enrollment programs by: (1) increasing the standard open enrollment transfer amount; (2) retaining the course options program; and (3) eliminating the ability of school districts to deny pupils with disabilities on the basis of undue financial burden.
• Provides additional resources for rural schools by increasing funding for the sparsity and high-cost pupil transportation categorical aid programs by $13.4 million over the biennium, and by increasing the reimbursement rate under the pupil transportation aid.
• Creates two new avenues to teacher licensure, which assists rural school districts with staffing while ensuring teacher quality.
• Augments state support for special education by providing $5 million in fiscal year 2016-17 for high-cost special education aid.
• Further assists families with special needs students by creating a special needs scholarship program.
• Requires Wisconsin high school students to pass a civics assessment in order to graduate.
• Simplifies the school accountability report through the establishment of a star rating system.
• Recognizes individual learning styles of students by permitting school districts to grant high school credits based on competency or a learning portfolio.
• Permits districts to choose their own reading readiness assessments.
Transforming Higher Education
• Ensures affordability of, and access to, a University of Wisconsin education for Wisconsin residents by extending the freeze on undergraduate in-state tuition.
• Modernizes the concept of tenure by authorizing the Board of Regents to enact such policies.
• Reforms shared governance to provide Chancellors with greater authority and accountability at individual campuses, while maintaining student oversight of student-set fees.
• Provides additional flexibilities to allow the University of Wisconsin System to maximize efficiencies while maintaining excellence in education and research.
Reforming Government
• Continues to protect property taxpayers by maintaining levy limits on counties and municipalities and limiting levy increases to the rate of growth due to new construction.
• Maintains the state's commitment to counties and municipalities by funding shared revenue at current levels.
• Consolidates all food safety, recreational facility, lodging and food protection activities into the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, creating efficiencies in regulation of these programs and reducing consumer confusion by assigning oversight to one agency.
• Reduces overtime, enhances security and modernizes security methods at adult correctional institutions with proven technology and strategic ground patrol.
• Permits members of certain religious sects to apply for a waiver from certain modern building code requirements when the requirement is contrary to their established religious beliefs.
• Reduces the risk of a data security breach by providing additional resources for information technology services.
• Realizes efficiencies by combining the Department of Administration's Division of Energy Services and Division of Housing, and by transferring most functions of the State Energy Office to the Public Service Commission.
• Capitalizes on existing expertise and increases efficiency by transferring Workers' Compensation adjudicatory functions to the Department of Administration's Division of Hearings and Appeals.
• Creates an Office of Marketing in the Department of Tourism to utilize the expertise of the department to provide centralized marketing services to state agencies.
• Authorizes the Department of Administration to provide Lean government consulting services to implement efficiencies across state government.
• Reduces offender recidivism by authorizing the Department of Children and Families to leverage social impact bonding in the city of Milwaukee.
• Reduces the size of government by eliminating numerous long-term vacant positions.
• Reduces state health insurance costs by modernizing health plan design and providing an opt-out option and corresponding stipend to state employees.
Investing in Infrastructure
• Invests a total of $6.14 billion to support Wisconsin's transportation infrastructure.
• Provides $415 million for continued construction of the Zoo Interchange and I-94 North-South Corridor. Maintains the scheduled completion date of the Zoo Interchange project.
• Invests $16.8 million in the Hoan Bridge and $13.2 million in the state's harbor system.
• Provides over $1.5 billion for state highway rehabilitation and over $485 million for major highway development.
• Provides $35 million for Freight Rail Preservation.
• Increases the state's investment in broadband expansion by providing up to $1.5 million annually from the universal service fund for broadband expansion grants and providing up to $18 million over the 2015-17 biennium for two grant programs to assist rural schools in financing information technology infrastructure improvements and training teachers in the use of educational technology.
Preserving Wisconsin's Heritage
• Provides a total $21 million of Stewardship borrowing authority for land acquisition and $9.75 million of borrowing authority for property development and local assistance in each year, beginning in fiscal year 2015-16 and ending in fiscal year 2019-20.
• Provides up to $19.6 million of unobligated existing Stewardship borrowing authority for the Kettle Moraine Springs Fish Hatchery to continue the modernization of the facility.
• Protects the integrity of segregated natural resources funds by eliminating $958,300 of earmarks for various organizations.
• Provides $750,000 forestry SEG and authorizes the Department of Natural Resources to participate in the federal Good Neighbor Authority program, to initiate additional watershed restoration and forest management services on federal land.
Medicaid Entitlement Reform
• Preserves essential safety net programs, including SeniorCare and Medicaid, while implementing reforms to slow expenditure growth and maintain essential health care services.
• Expands the Family Care program statewide and improves the integration of long-term care and acute care services, while maintaining the self-direction option for long-term care benefits.
• Fully funds the FoodShare Employment and Training program to provide able- bodied adults with education, skills and work experience necessary to obtain employment and become self-sufficient.
• Strengthens support for senior citizens by providing additional funding and positions for ombudsmen at the Board on Aging and Long-Term Care.
• Provides resources to support dementia care specialists in selected aging and disability resource centers across the state.
• Expands Medicaid coverage to the treatment portion of residential substance abuse treatment to ensure individuals with substance abuse disorders receive the appropriate level of care in the most appropriate setting.
• Expands the settings in which immunizations may be provided for Medicaid beneficiaries to include pharmacies.
• Improves program integrity in the use of personal care and other Medicaid services while ensuring members receive essential services on a timely basis.
• Provides $30 million GPR for disproportionate share hospital payments to ensure access to care for low-income patients.
• Establishes a pilot program for pediatric and adult emergency dental care.
• Provides annual increases to the children's long-term support services and autism services programs, and utilizes excess funds for children's long-term care services or other children's programs.
• Increases Medicaid reimbursement for nursing homes through an acuity adjustment.
Investing in Wisconsin's Veterans
• Strengthens support for residents in Wisconsin veterans homes by providing additional funding for an ombudsman at the Board on Aging and Long-Term Care.
• Provides funding for equipment purchases and operational improvements at veterans homes.
• Waives fees for a Commercial Driver License for veterans who hold a military Commercial Driver License.
• Transfers the Veterans Grant Program from the Department of Workforce Development to the Department of Veterans Affairs to enhance program awareness and efficiency.
• Provides one-time funding from the veterans trust fund to the Wisconsin Technical College System Board to create a veteran grant jobs pilot program. Requires the board to create a competitive grant process to distribute grants to districts that request funding for veterans services and identify matching funds.
• Creates an appropriation under the Higher Educational Aids Board for payments to tribal colleges equal to the amount per student the tribal college has received or expects to receive from the Bureau of Indian Education in the federal Department of the Interior based on the number of Native American students who were enrolled in the previous academic year and the number of full-time equivalent Wisconsin resident students who were enrolled in the college in the previous academic year for whom the college will not receive Bureau of Indian Education funds.
• Provides an appropriation during the biennium for payments to towns, cities or villages that provide municipal services to state veterans homes and authorize the Department of Veterans Affairs to transfer unappropriated balances from other PR appropriations in state veterans homes to the appropriation.
Improving Mental Health Programs
• Redesigns the state's juvenile community supervision to provide services based on a juvenile's individual risk and needs.
• Expands existing drug addiction programming in the Department of Corrections by creating a voluntary pilot program for eligible offenders with an opioid addiction- related conviction. Provides $836,700 GPR in each year for the program.
