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Legislative Reference Bureau Corrections
Corrections In:
SENATE AMENDMENT 26 TO SENATE SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT 2,
TO 2025 SENATE BILL 45
Prepared by the Legislative Reference Bureau
(July 2, 2025)
In enrolling, the following corrections were made:
hist2072961. Page 2, line 15: delete that line and substitute “study under section 9144 (1) of this act.”. 2. Page 6, line 3: delete that line.
3. Page 6, line 18: delete “2027”.”” and substitute “2027”.”.
4. Page 13, line 12: delete “rates” and substitute “, the rates”.
5. Page 15, line 7: delete “commitee” and substitute “committee”.
6. Page 19, line 15: delete “to 6” and substitute “to 5”.
7. Page 20, line 7: delete “, in” and substitute “in”.
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“134. Page 370, line 8: after “license fee” insert “of $10”.”.
9. Page 25, line 17: delete “1m.” and substitute “1m”.
10. Page 25, line 19: delete “3m.” and substitute “3m”.
11. Page 25, line 20: delete “3m.” and substitute “3m Effective dates date.”.
12. Page 26, line 1: delete “(1).” and substitute “(1)”.
13. Page 171, line 25: delete “of Milwaukee”.
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SENATE SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT 2,
TO 2025 SENATE BILL 45
Prepared by the Legislative Reference Bureau
(July 2, 2025)
In enrolling, the following corrections were made:
hist2072971. Page 235, line 22: before “9144” insert “section”. 2. Page 236, line 18: delete “Warrens” and substitute “Warrens;”.
3. Page 262, line 13: delete “are” and substitute “is”.
4. Page 287, line 18: after “In” insert “fiscal year”.
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State of Wisconsin
Office of the Governor
July 3, 2025
The Honorable, the Senate:
I have approved Senate Bill 45 as 2025 Wisconsin Act 15 and deposited it in the Office of the Secretary of State. Over the past three biennial budgets, I have made it a priority to listen to the will of the people, to do the right thing for Wisconsin, and to create prosperity that will define our state for generations. We've worked hard to be prudent with taxpayer dollars and save where we can, while still investing in the needs that had long been neglected, cutting taxes for working families, and staying within our state's means. As a result, over the last several biennia, I've been proud to use my signing pen and my broad, constitutional veto authority-to secure historic investments in our kids and schools, families, and communities across our state.
During my time in office, together, we've secured generational increases to shared revenue for local communities, made historic progress in our work to fully fund our public schools, provided some of the largest state increases in state history in critical infrastructure investments, including investing over half a billion dollars to build housing for our workforce, expanding access to affordable highspeed internet to help 410,000 homes and businesses get connected to new or improved service, and improving more than 8,600 miles of our darn roads and 2,000 bridges statewide. In fact, Wisconsinites could drive from Wausau, Wisconsin, to Disney World in Orlando, Florida-and back-three times over--on the number of miles of roads we have fixed. We have made critical investments in our farmers, producers, and their families, including supporting our meat and dairy producers, investing in farmer mental health resources, and bolstering Wisconsin's exports worldwide to ensure our $116 billion agricultural industry remains on top and that we continue to retain the title of "America's Dairyland" for generations to come.
We have made investments in key priorities, delivering for kids, families, schools, veterans, seniors, communities, and so many more, and we have been able to do so all while cutting taxes for hard-working Wisconsinites. Through our bipartisan work to cut taxes over the past six years, Wisconsinites are keeping more of their hard-earned income today than at any point in the last 50 years. When I first took office in 2019, the state had the 24th-highest tax burden in the nation. Now, a recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report shows Wisconsin's state and local tax burden has dropped to a record low in 2024, and today, the state and local taxes Wisconsinites pay as a share of their income is the lowest it has been in over half a century.
We have invested in state needs and priorities that have long been neglected while still delivering real, meaningful tax relief to Wisconsinites who needed it-and we did so all while staying well within the state's means. Since 2019, we have:
• Had a positive General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) ending balance for all five full fiscal years that I have been Governor after the state previously ran a GAAP deficit for 30 consecutive years;
• Increased our Budget Stabilization Fund (also known as the "rainy-day'' fund) to record-high levels, six times more than when I took office to a figure that will exceed $2 billion later this year;
• Achieved our state's first underlying AAA bond rating on our General Obligation bonds since the early 1980s, which we have maintained since 2021;
• Reduced our state's overall outstanding debt by $2.5 billion, or nearly 20 percent, over the past six years; and
• Completed numerous debt refinancing transactions providing present value debt service savings of nearly $600 million.
Each budget I have introduced and signed as Governor has balanced the important obligations of both finding ways to save where we could while still upholding our duty to protect the future Wisconsinites deserve that we are working in earnest to build, together. The budget I am signing with improvements today is the rule, not an exception.
Thanks to our bipartisan work and strategic investments over the last six years, we began this 2025-27 budget process with a robust opening balance, reduced debt, and steady economic growth. And much like every budget I have ever built, the 2025-27 Executive Budget began as every budget always has for me, by doing what is best for our kids.
I have always believed that what's best for our kids is what's best for our state-our kids are why I became an educator, a principal, and a superintendent, they are why I ran to serve as State Superintendent of Public Instruction for a decade, and they are why I ran for Governor. I wanted to do more and do better for our kids.
I began 2025 by declaring it the Year of the Kid in Wisconsin, and I introduced the most pro-kid budget of any Governor and of any budget in our state's history. If we want to improve our kids' outcomes and make sure our kids can be successful both within and beyond our schools, we must shorten the odds, I made it clear from the get-go that my top priority would be to pass a pro-kid budget that makes meaningful investments in Wisconsin's kids at every stage and every age, from early childhood to K-12 to our higher education institutions. While the final budget being sent to my desk today is far from the budget I introduced and fought for, after months of negotiations with Republican leaders, I am proud to have reached a bipartisan budget agreement that delivers on that important promise.
Republican lawmakers had long indicated this budget would not invest in child care providers. Today, I am proud to be signing into law a budget that invests over $361 million in our child care industry, including a third of which will provide direct support to child care providers, much like the wildly successful Child Care Counts Program, to help providers find staff, cut wait lists, and lower the cost of child care for working families. This investment also includes a new first-of-its-kind "Get Kids Ready" initiative to help get kids ready for the classroom and get an earlier jump start on learning. This is the first-ever child care program funded solely through general purpose revenue (GPR) in state history, helping to ensure that future budgets will include an ongoing and continued state commitment to our child care providers statewide.
Republican lawmakers had also long indicated this budget would provide no new increases for our K-12 schools. Today, I am proud to be signing into law a budget that provides nearly $1.4 billion in spendable revenue for K-12 schools, including the largest increase in the special education reimbursement rate for K-12 schools ever in state history with more-than-half-a-billion-dollar investment. This will bring the special education reimbursement rate to 42 percent in the first year of the biennium and 45 percent in the second year of the biennium -the highest rate schools have seen in 30 years and a larger increase for special education than the last three state budgets combined. Additionally, we know our kids are struggling with their mental health perhaps now more than ever, which is why I fought hard for the second consecutive biennial budget to ensure our state budget invests in comprehensive, school-based mental health services for our kids. While I am disappointed the Legislature declined to make sure this investment is an ongoing and sustainable state obligation, the $30 million I fought to secure in this budget will ensure our kids will continue to be able to access mental health services and support at school modeled on my successful "Get Kids Ahead" initiative I created several years ago. All told, through our bipartisan budget agreement, this budget includes a net categorical aid increase for our K-12 schools that is five times larger than the increase provided in the most recent state biennial budget.
Finally, I have spent the last year advocating for increased investments in the UW System to prevent further campus closures, staff and faculty layoffs, and program cuts and consolidations, so Republican lawmakers' threats to cut nearly $90 million from our UW System were a nonstarter for me. I am especially proud that the bipartisan budget I am signing today makes the largest increase in our UW System in nearly two decades with an increase of over $250 million for the UW System over the next two years. This includes over $100 million to support UW System campuses statewide to help stabilize the system after recent campus closures, layoffs, and program cuts and consolidations and ensure UW institutions remain economic and workforce hubs in communities across our state.
We are also making critical investments in our UW System faculty and staff with a $54 million investment to help retain and recruit faculty in high-demand fields and increasing wages for UW System workers with an almost $90 million investment. We are also making critical investments in capital building projects on campuses across the state, including projects at UW-Madison, La Crosse, Oshkosh, Stout, Milwaukee, and Stevens Point, with an over $1.2 billion investment. Together, these investments will help ensure our UW System institutions remain competitive, world-class institutions and continue to be the gem of our state.
Furthermore, a critical part of our work doing what's best for our kids in the Year of the Kid must be supporting the families and communities that raise them, too. As families and communities face devastating federal cuts to basic needs programs, including Medicaid and food security programs, as well as efforts to gut tax credits that will make household utility bills go up, our bipartisan budget works to lower everyday out-of-pocket energy costs, supports access to local, nutritious food for Wisconsin's kids, families, and seniors, and ensures Wisconsinites have access to quality, affordable healthcare.
Household budgets are already stretched too thin. So, I am proud this bipartisan budget includes my budget proposal to lower out-of-pocket costs on energy and utility bills for working families by eliminating the sales tax on household energy and utility bills. This will help reduce energy costs for families and save Wisconsin households over $178 million over the next two years alone.
Through this bipartisan budget, 1.6 million Wisconsin income taxpayers will see income tax cuts with an average tax cut of $180. All told, this budget brings the tax cuts I have enacted since taking office to over $12.6 billion, including $2.4 billion on an annual basis by the end of this biennium, helping Wisconsinites keep more of their hard-earned money in their household budgets. With these reductions and four consecutive state budgets signed that included significant middle-class income tax cuts, most middle-class individual income taxpayers will have seen total reductions of 20 percent or more under the budgets I have been proud to sign into law.
Additionally, this budget also works to ensure Wisconsinites have access to quality, affordable healthcare statewide, especially in our rural communities with new efforts to bolster health systems across the state. Currently, hospitals in Wisconsin pay an assessment of approximately 1.8 percent of their net patient revenue to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS). The department uses a portion of these funds to make supplemental Medicaid payments back to hospitals and transfers a portion of the funding to the Medical Assistance Trust Fund. This budget requires DHS to establish the hospital assessment at six percent, with 30 percent of the funds generated retained by the state in the Medical Assistance Trust Fund, which helps to fund the state Medicaid program. The remainder of the funds will be used for investments in hospital provider payments, resulting in over $1.1 billion in investments in Wisconsin hospitals. This will help prevent hospital closures and ensure access to healthcare in communities across the state.
Through our bipartisan budget negotiations, I am also glad the state will fund the current Medicaid program, providing full funding for the minimum fee schedule implemented by DHS last biennium to help long-term care facilities avoid staffing cuts and facility closures, as well as provide an increased investment in free and charitable clinics. These critical investments in the state's healthcare systems come at a time of significant uncertainty caused by the federal government and Congressional efforts to potentially jeopardize healthcare access for millions of Americans and will help safeguard access to quality, affordable healthcare for families and communities across the state.
As the federal government and U.S. Congress appear poised as of this writing to make devastating cuts to basic food security programs across the nation, I fought hard to secure $10 million to continue the popular Food Security Initiative grant program, which connects local nonprofit food assistance programs, such as food pantries, with local food producers. This not only ensures families have access to healthy, local foods, but supports our farmers and producers by getting their products on shelves. In addition, as we have in each of my previous biennial budgets, we are continuing our work to improve Wisconsin's roads, bridges, and local infrastructure. This includes $150 million in continuing support for the Agricultural Roads Improvement Program, created and funded in the 2023-25 biennium, to repair and improve Wisconsin's rural roads, most especially to help farmers and producers and the state's agricultural and forestry industries move products to market safely and efficiently. As a portion of this investment we were able to secure, $30 million will specifically target bridge and culvert repair to help improve and repair deteriorating bridges across the state. All told, this bipartisan budget will also generate nearly $200 million in additional revenue to improve the sustainability of the transportation fund and invest $14 million in local communities through municipal service payments to meet basic and unique local needs alike.
Finally, another critical part of our work to do what's best for our kids includes making sure eve1y kid and family has safe, clean drinking water. Every Wisconsinite should be able to trust the water straight from their tap, and in order for our kids to bring their best and full selves to the classroom and prepare for their futures, kids and families must have access to clean, safe drinking water that is free of harmful contaminants like PFAS and lead. Therefore, I'm glad to be signing a bipartisan budget today that increases borrowing for the state's Environmental Improvement Fund by $731.6 million to secure federal clean water and safe drinking water capitalization grants over the next four years. This will help meet the demand from local communities who need support to upgrade local water systems and infrastructure to ensure every Wisconsin kid, family, and community has clean, safe drinking water.
Through this bipartisan budget, we are making progress key state priorities to move Wisconsin forward: making critical investments supporting our kids and schools, lowering costs of child care and household bills for working families, stabilizing our child care industry, cutting taxes for seniors and middle-class families, ensuring Wisconsinites have access to healthcare, continuing to fix our roads and bridges, and significant investments in our local communities, among much more. Simply put: this is a pro-kid budget that is a win for Wisconsin's kids, families, and communities, and our state's future in 2025 the Year of the Kid, and I am incredibly proud of this important work.
At the same time, this budget is also a reflection of bipartisan compromise-that means eve1yone gets something they want and no one gets everything they want. I spent months working together with Republican leaders to reach common ground and find consensus. Today, I am signing a bipartisan budget compromise that reflects those months of conversations and is supported by a majority of the Legislature with bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats alike.
While this budget looks drastically different than the budget I proposed and does not include everything I asked for and hoped it would, frankly, I believe most Wisconsinites would say that compromise is a good thing because that is how government is supposed to work.
Wisconsin is a purple state. At the end of the day, it is my job as Governor to get things done, and it is my job to be a Governor for the whole state. I made a promise to always work to do the right thing for Wisconsin. And I believe working together to find common ground so we can pass a bipartisan budget that reflects the will of the people of this state is part of keeping that promise.
As I noted two years ago, I recognize there are those who would urge me to veto this entire budget and tell the Legislature to go back to the drawing board to start this whole darn budget over. Doing so, however, would have created a level of uncertainty across this state for months that would not have made the lives of the people of this state any better. It would have failed to secure more than $1 billion we will now be able to invest in healthcare across our state. It would have meant not providing by far the largest nominal biennial increase in funding for kids with disabilities in state history. It would have meant not fulfilling our responsibility to kids and working families across Wisconsin who count on roughly 4,600 child care providers to keep their doors open, ensuring the employment of over 72,000 child care professionals who care for over 175,000 kids. It would have meant not honoring our commitment to the hundreds of thousands of students to do everything we can to provide them with a quality higher education at the many great institutions across our state and providing them with the largest increase in financial aid in many years. It would have meant not providing additional support to our farmers, care providers, veterans, seniors, workers, and educators, and it would have meant leaving the people across our state wondering why government at every level is dysfunctional and what would happen next even as the state maintains a $4.3 billion budget surplus. Failing to reach consensus and vetoing this budget in its entirety was an untenable option, not just for me, but for the people of our state.
Nevertheless, passing the state budget is never the end of our work; there is, as always, more work to do, and I am optimistic we can continue our bipartisan work toward accomplishing shared priorities that we know Wisconsinites want and deserve. Chief among them is reauthorizing the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship Program that, for decades, has been our promise to future generations of Wisconsinites to help preserve our proud conservation heritage and protect our natural resources so that our kids and grandkids will have the opportunity to appreciate and enjoy them just like so many of us have.
Additionally, we must get back to the table to ensure the Legislature finally releases more than $125 million in funding to combat PFAS contamination for communities across our state that was approved now two years ago in the last state budget. We must find ways to work together to lower everyday, out-of-pocket costs for working families, including preventing medical price gouging and surprise billing, holding insurance companies accountable, lowering prescription drug prices, and improving oversight over drug companies. And we need to have serious conversations about how we're going to keep Wisconsin's kids, families, schools, and communities safe by reducing crime and preventing gun violence.
Whether expanding high-speed internet and closing the digital divide, improving healthcare access and expanding BadgerCare, building more affordable workforce housing and bolstering our current and future workforce to make sure we have the 21st-century workforce needed to support a 21st-century economy, these items, and many more, are not controversial. They are not extreme or far-fetched, at least not to Wisconsinites who spend more of their time outside of the Capitol building than inside of it.
My promise to the people of Wisconsin has always been to be a Governor who works for all Wisconsinites, who does the right thing when it matters most. That is a promise I will continue to keep. I am signing this budget today because it is the right thing to do for our state knowing there is much work ahead as we continue building the future our kids and grandkids deserve.
We have so much more work to do and so much we can accomplish if we're willing to work together-this bipartisan budget proves it. So, let's continue our work in earnest and let's give these priorities the deliberation and debate worthy of the traditions and the people of our great state.
The following is an abbreviated summary of the items in this budget, including my vetoes:
DOING WHAT'S BEST FOR KIDS
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION
Building upon our historic increase in spendable authority for public school districts in the 2023-25 biennium, this budget sets a new high-water mark by providing an overall increase of nearly $1.4 billion in spendable authority for public school districts. This figure exceeds the $1.2 billion increase in spendable authority for public school districts in the 2023-25 biennium and is again more than ten times larger than what the increase in spendable authority was for public school districts in the 2021-23 biennium. I declared 2025 the Year of the Kid, and this budget is proof of what we can accomplish when prioritize our kids and schools.
While I would like to have seen an even greater investment in our kids just as I initially proposed, this budget represents significant progress in providing additional resources to our schools. Nevertheless, we must continue to work to prioritize school funding now and into the future; I did that by exercising my partial veto authority in the 2023-25 biennium to ensure new spendable authority for public school districts would be predictable and substantial. This budget focuses on helping schools support kids receiving special education services and mitigate budget pressures caused by increasing special education costs and continues to make meaningful progress toward our goal of reimbursing 60 percent of special education costs by bringing the special education reimbursement rate to the highest rate in 30 years.
• This historic investment continues to be driven by the $325 per pupil increase in revenue limit authority in each fiscal year, that I ensured through my partial veto of 2023 Wisconsin Act 19. This budget continues the largest increase over a four-year period, or a single Governor's term, in statewide revenue limit authority since revenue limits were first imposed on K-12 schools in 1993-94 and continues to be both permanent and base-building. School districts will have continued budget certainty similar to what they experienced before the statutory indexing mechanism for the revenue limit adjustments was deleted over fifteen years ago. • Every kid has the right to a quality education, regardless of their ability, yet Wisconsin, like many other states across the nation, has faced a special education staffing and funding crisis. This budget provides an unprecedented half-a-billion-dollar investment in special education reimbursement with $207.6 million GPR in fiscal year 2025-26 and $297.0 million in fiscal year 2026-27 to achieve special education reimbursement rates of 42 percent and 45 percent, respectively. These rates will be the highest reimbursement rates for kids with disabilities our state has seen in 30 years. This represents both the two largest single year increases over prior year funding for special education aid, and the first time since the state started reimbursing special education costs in 1981 that the reimbursement rate has increased by more the five percent in a single year.
• This budget invests $54.6 million GPR over the biennium for high-cost special education aid, increasing the reimbursement rate of this program from its current estimated 25.9 percent to 50 percent in fiscal year 2025-26 and 90 percent in fiscal year 2026-27. This categorical aid helps school districts pay a portion of their eligible special education costs for pupils with specific and elevated educational needs. Now children with disabilities with the greatest needs can have a portion of their costs exceeding $30,000 be reimbursed at the same rate as the highest cost students attending a private school under the Special Needs Scholarship Program.
• According to the Wisconsin Office of Children's Mental Health's annual report, kids across our state are reporting increased levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts at concerning rates, especially girls, kids of color, and LGBTQ youth. It is clear our kids are struggling perhaps now more than ever. The simple truth is that our kids can only achieve their full and best potential when they can bring their full and best selves to the classroom. To address the mental health crisis facing our kids, this budget again provides $30 million GPR over the biennium to continue funding for school-based mental health modeled on my "Get Kids Ahead" initiative.
• The budget provides $37.1 million GPR in 2025-26 to provide grants to reimburse school districts, independent charter schools and private choice schools to adopt an approved literacy curriculum and to reimburse school districts and independent charter schools for the cost of professional development training in literacy. Additionally, the budget exempts this increase from being included in the calculation of indexing of payments for private choice schools and independent charter schools, preventing them from benefiting twice from funding school districts could only receive once.
• The budget provides additional investments in the following areas:
• $300,000 GPR annually for the Holocaust Education Resource Center to support increased programming to educate students on the dangers of hatred, antisemitism, and genocide.
• $1,450,000 GPR annually for diagnostic assessment of early literacy skills to help make the literacy reforms of 2023 Wisconsin Act 20 a reality in our schools. • $250,000 GPR annually to support the professional development of science teachers to help ensure high-quality science education for students.
• $2 million GPR over the biennium to fully fund the state's sparsity aid program for eligible districts in both fiscal year 2025-26 and fiscal year 2026-27.
• $36 million SEG over the biennium for school library aids to reflect the historic distributions provided in recent years.
