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Evers' refusal to fight and the fate of democracy
Gov. Tony Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner) The budget that Gov. Tony Evers recently signed was a missed opportunity for Wisconsin. It's also a cautionary tale about the consequences of a Democratic leadership style that cedes power and demobilizes the public in the face of an increasingly authoritarian opponent. During the budget process, Wisconsin Democrats had more leverage than they have had since the 2000s, holding the governorship and, due to fairer maps and GOP divisions, the deciding votes in the state Senate. Combined with an unusual state budget surplus made possible by Biden-era policies, and the striking unpopularity of the GOP's budget stands on the big issues, this was a golden opportunity to start to undo the damage wrought by Republicans during the administration of former Gov. Scott Walker. This budget could have begun to reverse Wisconsin's long term disinvestment in public education and local government services, expand BadgerCare, start to address the affordability crisis in child care, housing, home energy, and health care, and build a buffer against a coming tsunami of slashing cuts from President Donald Trump's Big Ugly Bill. But rather than marshalling all the power at his disposal to achieve progress on at least some of these objectives, the governor gave away his leverage by not bringing Senate Democrats into negotiations until the very end, and then signing off on a concessionary bargain without a public fight, even whipping Democratic votes to support the disappointing deal. Despite improved leverage, Evers followed the script of his first three budgets. In 2019, facing a gerrymandered supermajority, Evers appeared to have a fighting spirit. I was there with dozens of Citizen Action members when he seemed to throw down the gauntlet, memorably declaring days after Republicans removed BadgerCare Expansion from the budget: 'I'm going to fight like hell.' Democratic legislators and advocacy groups were blindsided when he suddenly backed down. The governor and his team are spinning the latest deal as the kind of bipartisan compromise necessary under divided rule in a purple state, hoping that voters will not read the fine print. Republicans were right to brag during the floor debate that the one-sided deal was much closer to their priorities than the ultra moderate blueprint Evers proposed. Evers also rewards his opposition for the damage they are willing to inflict on the body politic, wrapping appeasement in the tinsel of a mythic bipartisanship which borders on delusional in the face of an increasingly authoritarian GOP. The budget lowlights include the first $0 increase in general school aid in decades. (after inflation, that amounts to a real dollar cut in state support for public schools contrasted with yet another large increase for unaccountable voucher schools); a cut in support for child care in the midst of an affordability and access crisis; a $0 increase for mass transit at a time the state's largest transit system is facing service cuts; and $1.5 billion on regressive tax giveaway which, according to a Kids Forward analysis of the original legislation, funnels nearly 60% of the benefit to the wealthiest households, and a miniscule proportion to Black and Latino families. It contains a huge giveaway to the hospital industry, the Capitol's most powerful lobby, with no requirements to reduce cost and increase access for patients, or keep facilities open in underserved areas, while missing yet another opportunity to expand BadgerCare in the last year Wisconsin can secure the full financial benefit of 95% federal funding. After Evers' second budget surrender in 2021, I wrote a column for the Wisconsin Examiner arguing that hand-wringing over the leadership of establishment Democrats like Evers is counterproductive because it deflects responsibilities away from grassroots progressives for not building enough power to force their hand. As Shakespeare put it in Julius Caesar: 'The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.' This year, the reaction from the organized grassroots was dramatically different. For the first time organizing groups and education unions, representing tens of thousands of Wisconsinites, publicly campaigned for the governor to fight by wielding his potent veto power and appealing over the heads of the Legislature to the public. As Ruth Conniff reported for the Wisconsin Examiner, at a joint lobby day in late May a raucous crowd filled the hallway at the State Capitol leading to the governor's office to deliver a letter demanding that he veto any budget that did not meet minimum standards on education, health care, child care and criminal justice. In the weeks leading up to the deal, grassroots leaders kept the pressure on. The governor's concessionary bargain also divided his own party. Dozens of rank and file Democrats at the party convention wore stickers urging Evers to veto a bad budget. A striking number of progressive state legislators spoke out against the budget deal, and despite the administration using the power and resources of the governor's office to whip votes, 80% of Democratic legislators rejected a budget Evers touts as a victory. The reaction against Evers' refusal to fight is parallel to the growing frustration with the failure of national Democratic leaders to adjust their leadership to the authoritarian situation. The critique of establishment Democrats focuses on two dimensions: their willingness to cede power to authoritarians, and their lack of appreciation of the increasingly important role of mass public organization and mobilization as traditional inside levers of power lose their effectiveness. The Republicans began shredding the 20th century governing norms well before the rise of Trump. The national GOP has steadily devolved from the conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to the Newt Gingrich insurgency, the Tea Party, Mitch McConnell's power grabs during the administration of President Barack Obama, and finally MAGA, into an authoritarian populist movement seeking to totalize its grip on power by erasing what remains of the checks and balances of the liberal constitutional order. Wisconsin's GOP has followed a parallel path towards authoritarianism, including voter suppression laws targeting Democratic constituencies, the scuttling of settled law by a former Republican-backed majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to legally sanitize Walker's gross violations of campaign finance laws, a lame duck session stripping Evers of powers, and the unprecedented refusal to confirm the governor's appointments to cabinet positions and state boards so they can be fired at will by the Legislature. Wisconsin did not meet the accepted political science definitions of democracy in its lawmaking branch of government from 2012-2024 because of a partisan gerrymander so severe that, as in Viktor Orbán's Hungary, one party was guaranteed victory. In the face of the onslaught in the second Trump administration, establishment Democrats at the national level are violating historian Timothy Snyder's well-known first lesson in fighting authoritarianism: Do not freely cede power by obeying in advance. Emblematic was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's decision to supply the votes needed to keep the government open. Schumer ratified many of Trump's illegal cancellations of programs without the consent of Congress, arguing that in a shutdown he would have even more power to ransack federal agencies. In effect, Trump and his allies took the government hostage, reaping the rewards of their own lawlessness. Evers also rewards his opposition for the damage they are willing to inflict on the body politic, wrapping appeasement in the tinsel of a mythic bipartisanship which borders on delusional in the face of an increasingly authoritarian GOP. Evers has long argued that using his power to veto a bad budget, or force an impasse to mobilize public opposition, would empower Republicans to do worse damage by 'going back to base.' The 'base,' in Wisconsin budget-ese, is the last state budget, which would, factoring inflation, constitute a massive cut in all state programs. By Evers' logic, a bad deal is better than no deal. The second lesson in an authoritarian situation violated by the likes of Schumer and Evers is the necessity of empowering mass mobilization. There is an overwhelming consensus among democracy scholars that resistance to authoritarians requires the large-scale and sustained marshalling of the power of the public. An impressive body of political science research documents that large scale peaceful nonviolent resistance movements are the most effective vehicles for overturning authoritarian regimes. This populist orientation is not entirely new. In the early 20th century Wisconsin's progressive Gov. Fighting Bob La Follette and Progressive Era presidents mobilized the public to break the stranglehold of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, winning the power to enact major reform. The lesson also applies to the liminal status of the U.S., somewhere between healthy democracy and autocracy, where traditional levers of power are losing their effectiveness, and large-scale popular resistance is an essential power to slow and ultimately reverse the authoritarian advance. In this light, the problem with Evers' approach to governing is that by making it entirely an inside game of bargaining with the Legislature, he freely gives away power, cutting out civil society groups that want to mobilize on behalf of his agenda and denying the public clear rallying points for exerting pressure on the process. This leadership style also erodes democracy by failing to deliver for average people, building an audience for authoritarian scapegoating of marginalized people and fake solutions. If Evers had established a clear bottom line in the budget process on popular issues like public education and health care, and used both his veto power and the need for Democratic votes in the Senate to block a budget that did not include them, then he would have been in a position to work with grassroots groups and use his bully pulpit to rally public opinion against his opponents ahead of an election where control of the Legislature is in play, exerting tremendous pressure. Instead the public is left with no clear understanding of why they still can't afford health care and child care, and why more schools are closing or cutting vital academic programs, as property taxes skyrocket to pay for less and less. Despite these catastrophic failures in leadership, the future of multiracial democracy does not depend on Evers or other Democrats. It depends on us. Political parties and social movements make leaders, not the other way around. Grassroots organizing groups and education unions made progress this budget cycle, but we need more people to join and commit, and greater investments in organizing, to win a more progressive Wisconsin. The national resistance to Trump, as measured by the number of people coming to rallies, is gaining steam, but that does not mean we are winning. The history of mass resistance shows that large scale mobilizations lose momentum over time unless enough people actively participate in permanent community-rooted organizing groups that demand bold and transformational leadership. The beating heart of democracy is direct personal engagement in cause-driven voluntary groups. In the end, it's up to all of us. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
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The real effects of the Wisconsin state budget on children
As federal aid ran out, advocates called on lawmakers to fund the Child Care Counts program using state dollars, as Evers proposed. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner) This summer Democratic and Republican legislators along with the Gov. Tony Evers participated in closed-door negotiations to come up with the 2025-27 state budget. All of the parties involved are touting the budget as a historic advance for children and patting themselves on the back for compromising with each other and the work they accomplished. In other words, they played well in the sandbox together. While yes, the state budget has never included funding for child care in its history, as we were one of only six states that didn't, crowing about it now is kind of like touting the fact that you've just changed a diaper for the first time when your child is 2 years old. It's not something to brag about, and the new state budget is nothing to brag about either. On the surface, as you read the claims about historic investments in child care and K-12 schools, you might think the budget really solved some big problems. Take Evers' statement celebrating 'Over $330 million to support Wisconsin's child care industry and help lower child care costs for working families, a third of which is in direct payments to providers.' That means only $110 million is to continue the direct investment to all 4,700 eligible regulated child care programs. The original amount for this program was $480 million. Child care is receiving less than 25% of the requested amount. You might have surmised from Evers' victorious statement that parents will see a decrease in tuition costs with the new budget. However, the opposite is going to be occurring, and tuition increases will start in August. The $110 million will cause child care rates to increase next month because the new state investment is less than a third of what Child Care Counts, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, originally provided. The purpose of that money was to stabilize a field that had been declining for decades. It increased teachers' wages while holding down tuition costs for parents. It worked. The data showed a decline in closures and it raised the average child care educator's wage from $11 an hour to $13 an hour in Wisconsin. (In our state, over 50% of early child care teachers have some college education or degree, with an average of 10 years experience.) This month the ARPA funds run out, and for the past few years, knowing the federal funding would be ending, families, child care providers, and businesses have been advocating for the state to fill the gap and to subsidize child care. We know that for every $1 a state invests in early childhood education, the rate of return is between $10-$16. Not only does quality early child care give children an opportunity for greater success as adults, it also supports our workforce, families and the economy. Regardless of the research and well-being of children, the gatekeepers of our tax dollars on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee deleted Evers' $480 million direct state investment budget request for child care. Instead, child care funding was determined behind closed doors with Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein and Evers in one corner and Rep. Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin Lemahieu in the other. It should be noted that no one in that space is considered an expert in child care policy. What came out of this room was a compromise for the sake of compromise. The $110 million for child care won't come from state dollars. It's the interest that has accrued on the federal ARPA funds. It will be allocated directly to child care providers over the next 11 months, until June of 2026. It comes to about 70% less than the original amount paid through CCC. This is why, starting in August, there will be significant closures of child care centers and home daycares in rural areas of the state — already considered a child care desert. Tuition will increase at the child care operations that try to stay open. So no, working families will not 'see a decrease in childcare costs' as stated by Evers. And when the $110 million ends next year, there is nothing to replace it. The Wisconsin Legislature will gavel out in March and not gavel in until January of 2027, as legislators will be campaigning the rest of 2026. There won't be an opportunity to pass emergency legislation funding child care. Rates will increase again and closures will continue. The remainder of the $330 million in child care funding in the new state budget is for several new programs. A $66 million state investment for 4-year-olds to access 'school readiness' in their child care program. This will help parents as the state will pay for their 'preschool' time, but it replaces tuition for part of the school day. Child care programs that have school districts with all-day, free 4K will likely find it almost impossible to compete with public schools when they still need to charge for the remainder of the day plus wrap-around care. In addition, there is a $28 million pilot project to deregulate the child care field, which ends in July 2027. This move comes directly from the Republicans' playbook. The pilot project will incentivize providers to increase their ratios, meaning more children per teacher, lower quality and safety for children and more stress on teachers. Another harmful policy in the new budget is that 16-year-olds are now allowed to be assistant teachers and count as adults in the ratio. Coupled with the pilot project mentioned above, this means a classroom of 14 toddlers can be supervised by one 18-year-old and one 16-year-old. This reduces the quality, safety, care and education for the children in our programs. Recall that while these decisions were being made behind closed doors, there were no experts in child care policy in the room. This policy was made without consideration of our state accreditation program, YoungStar, and our national accreditations. Any program that participates in the pilot project will no longer qualify to be accredited. And in Wisconsin, accreditation is not just a certificate to state you are following high safety standards, but our YoungStar program is tethered to our Wisconsin Shares (subsidy for child care). Programs with a five or four-star rating receive a bonus subsidy rate. It can mean a considerable loss of funding for providers to participate in the new pilot project. The politicians who wrote the budget deal behind closed doors neglected to consider the increased cost or loss of insurance for providers when we increase the teacher-to-child ratio and when we allow 16-year-olds to count as adults. The same group of non-experts also decided to allow policies that, in 2023, were already proposed and had failed to become law due to the overwhelming outcry from families, providers and the medical field against a policy that reduces quality and safety for our children. The state is throwing millions of dollars in the garbage for these policies, which won't benefit child care programs and will cause actual harm to Wisconsin children. Enacting policies like these without holding hearings raises the question: Who is representing us? The public already overwhelmingly said no to these policies two years ago. Furthermore, funding for child care is one of the top priorities that the JFC heard from voters throughout the state at budget listening sessions. Surveys show that the majority of both Republican and Democratic constituents support funding early child care. The only real compromise made in this budget was the compromise of safety and quality of our youngest children in the state. So how did school-age children fare in the state budget? Again, we are reading about record-setting investments in schools, along with the biggest investment our state has ever made for children with disabilities. Evers proclaimed that the new budget 'secures the largest increase to special education reimbursement rate in state history.' You might think, great, finally children with disabilities will receive the support and resources they need. But you would be wrong. Evers' budget request was for a 60% reimbursement for children with disabilities. After all, 90% reimbursement is the amount that Wisconsin voucher and charter schools have already been receiving for children with special needs. Unfortunately, the new budget allows public schools a maximum of 42% in 2026 and 45% in 2027 reimbursement, which is a far cry from the 60% request — the rate of the 1980s. Yes, the increase in this budget is technically the largest increase in recent years, but it is still miles away from the finish line. To make matters worse, the budget also provided a $0 per-pupil increase in general aid funding to public schools; however, a provision was placed in the budget paperwork that guaranteed voucher and charter schools would receive additional funding for their general aid in the budget. I can't recall a year when no new general funding was provided in a budget to public schools in Wisconsin. Last year Wisconsin saw a record number of public schools go to referendum to squeeze additional funding from their communities to compensate for the lack of state and federal funding. Under the new budget, we will see another record number of schools going to referendum next year. We will also likely see more schools close, specifically in rural, poorer areas where the communities cannot be squeezed any more than they already have been. As you can imagine, this budget will only continue to widen the education gap in quality between the wealthy and the poor. Not to be all doom and gloom, there was one category of children that fared quite well with the new budget: our juvenile offenders. The budget will invest $1 million per juvenile offender. Yes, $1 million per kid. Remember when it was mentioned that investing in our youth early on saves us tenfold later on? The children in our juvenile justice systems are children who were not given the opportunity for quality early child care, children who were raised in poverty, children who have been abused, children who experience trauma, children with mental health issues. The children in our juvenile systems are those who have been failed by our state. Their families could not afford child care, so they were shuffled from one person to another. They lived with violence and addiction in their homes. And when they got to school at age 5, they were already on a trajectory of despair; the school systems cannot afford to provide all the services and support these children need, especially for those who have suffered trauma at an early age. Our new state budget only prioritizes these children once they are ready to be locked away. Unfortunately the hype about Wisconsin making record investments in our children is terribly overblown. Instead, the truth of the matter is that we are putting in the minimum, and this budget keeps us on the lowest tier as a state for investment in our public schools and our young children compared to other states. Meanwhile, we continue to be among the biggest spenders on our juvenile offenders. Our political leaders have misled us. I don't think most Wisconsinites care whether their representatives can compromise or not. I think we would all rather have elected politicians who will actually represent us with integrity. Represent us with values that prioritize our children, families, workforce and our economy. This is our common humanity. We can stop generational poverty. We can stop children from going hungry, we can support children who have been abused and neglected, and we can give children a chance in life. But we just made the choice not to do that. Correction: An earlier version of this commentary misstated the amount of Gov. Tony Evers' budget request as 90% instead of 60%. We regret the error. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Solve the daily Crossword
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Criminal justice advocates unsatisfied with state budget
Advocates, Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers have conflicting views about the Department of Corrections funding in the 2025-27 state budget. (Photo by) For criminal justice advocates in Wisconsin, the new state budget leaves much to be desired. Although the $111 billion two-year budget signed by Gov. Tony Evers earlier this month will help eventually close the beleaguered Lincoln Hills juvenile prison, some feel that it missed opportunities to reform the state's justice system. 'Wisconsin's elected officials, including Gov. Evers and state legislators, have once again failed to take meaningful action to overhaul the state's broken and inhumane carceral system,' Mark Rice, statewide coordinator for WISDOM's Transformative Justice Campaign, wrote in a statement released July 11. 'The recently passed state budget ignores the deep harm caused by mass incarceration and falls far short of what is needed to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding inside Wisconsin's prisons.' Evers' original budget proposal released in February contained a number of proposals that were removed or reduced by the Legislature's Republican-led Joint Finance Committee, including $8.9 million to support alternatives to revocation. Another pitch by Evers for $4 million to fund community reentry centers was cut in half by Joint Finance. His proposed $3.19 million in supportive housing service beds for people under DOC supervision was removed. Over $1 million in funding for six positions on the DOC's Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance team was also removed by JFC. Evers proposed a total increase of $519 million to the Department of Corrections budget over the next two years. The final budget deal instead increased the DOC budget by $461 million over the two-year period. The budget's capital projects plan, passed by the Legislature and signed by Evers, allocated $225 million to the Department of Corrections (DOC), as well as another $15 million towards construction planning for facilities, with the goal of closing the Green Bay Correctional Institution by 2029. Evers used his partial veto to strike the 2029 deadline for closing Green Bay. 'We need more compromise on that,' said Evers, who added that he supports closing the prison, one of Wisconsin's oldest, but called the timeline unrealistic: 'Saying we're going to do Green Bay by '29 doesn't mean a damn thing.' In his veto message, Evers said that he objected to the Legislature 'assigning a date' to close the Green Bay prison 'while providing virtually no real, meaningful, or concrete plan to do so.' 'I support closing Green Bay Correctional Institution,' Evers wrote. 'Indeed, my administration spent years working on a comprehensive corrections reform plan to be able to close Green Bay Correctional Institution quickly, safely, and cost efficiently, which was included in the biennial budget I introduced months ago. I proposed a 'domino' series of facility changes, improvements, and modernization efforts across Wisconsin's correctional institutions while improving public safety by expanding workforce training opportunities to reduce the likelihood that people might reoffend after they are released. Under that plan, Green Bay Correctional Institution would be closed in 2029. Instead, the Legislature sent this budget with the same deadline and no plan of which to speak.' Lincoln Hills, Wisconsin's notoriously troubled juvenile prison, which still houses 79 boys according to the DOC's most recent population report, blew years past its own closure deadline. Now, the budget provides $130.7 million to build a new Type 1 juvenile facility in Dane County to help facilitate the closure of Lincoln Hills. Plans for a second Type 1 facility in Milwaukee County ran into roadblocks from local resistance and political disagreements in the Capitol, though the facility's completion is still planned. Green Bay's prison was originally built in 1898. Plaques embedded in its outer wall commemorate that the wall was 'erected by inmates' in 1921. Over 1,100 people are incarcerated in the prison, which is designed to hold only 749, according to the DOC's most recent weekly population report. In late June, prison reform advocates from JOSHUA, a local affiliate of WISDOM, held a monthly vigil and prayer service outside the prison, where people are held in 'disciplinary separation' for the longest periods in any of DOC's adult facilities. Protesters included people whose loved ones have died inside the prison, some by suicide due to a lack of mental health support. In late August, 19-year-old Michah Laureano died in the prison after he was attacked by his cell mate. Although the budget aims to close Green Bay, how that will be accomplished remains hazy. Rice wrote that the budget 'includes no plan' to close the prison, 'despite overwhelming evidence that the facility is beyond repair.' Instead, Rice wrote in a statement that 'some legislators continue to push for more studies and planning tactics that will only delay justice while people continue to suffer and die behind bars. This is unacceptable.' That sentiment was echoed by the Ladies of SCI, an advocacy group formed by women with loved ones at the Stanley Correctional Institution. Although the group appreciated that closing Green Bay was part of the budget discussion, 'we also agree that does not mean much without funding an actual plan,' the group wrote in an email to Wisconsin Examiner. 'The [Joint Finance Committee] committed that the plan presented by [DOC] Secretary [Jared] Hoy's team in the Governor's initial budget was 'just an idea' and yet, the JFC also just put an 'idea' in the budget. Yes, they put in dollars for a plan to be developed, but this has already been done several times over.' Studies for closing Green Bay, Waupun, and other old and blighted facilities have been recommended as far back as 1965, Ladies of SCI wrote in the statement. 'Here we are, 60 years later, STILL discussing it. The most recent study was done in 2020 and called out almost $1 billion in projects to increase capacity across our facilities to just handle that population level…We are well above that population level today.' The group asks, 'Is $15 million actually enough to finally get tangible actions to deal with our Corrections crisis? We'd like to know what the magic combination of dollars and opinions are needed to finally address issues that have been identified over and over.' Ladies of SCI said 'setting aside money for yet another study and plan development is rinse and repeat of history…The bottom line is our state's prison population is too big for what we currently have.' Rice concurred, writing in his own statement that prisons like Green Bay, Waupun (the state's oldest prison where multiple deaths have occurred in recent years), and the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) 'are notorious for inhumane conditions and should have been shut down years ago.' Rice added that 'there is no justification for continuing to pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into maintaining or expanding a failed prison system.' Instead, he believes that the state should commit to reducing the prison population by expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration, commuting 'excessive and unjust sentences,' granting 'fair access to parole and early release,' and stopping the practice of locking people up for 'technical or convictionless revocations.' When Evers wrote his message vetoing the deadline for closing Green Bay, there were 362 people working at the prison and more than 1,100 incarcerated adults. 'As of this writing, Wisconsin has the capacity to house 17,638 individuals at its correctional institutions but there are 23,275 people living in [DOC] institutions across Wisconsin;' Evers wrote, 'the Legislature provides no steps whatsoever to stabilize the state's skyrocketing prison population.' Referring to the saga of Lincoln Hills, Evers added, 'Wisconsin already has about a decade's worth of painful experience learning how well it works in practice to set unrealistic, artificial timelines and due dates for closing prison facilities without a complete and thorough plan for implementation. It would be foolish and dangerous to attempt to take a similar approach with a maximum-security institution like Green Bay Correctional Institution.' Just over one-third of the 2,727 new prison admissions statewide between January and April were people sent back to prison for issues like violating the rules of community supervision, and without a new crime committed or sentence issued, according to the DOC's dashboard. Over the same period of time, there were more than 63,435 people on community supervision, probation, or parole. Sean Wilson, senior director of organizing and partnerships at criticized the cuts to proposals to expand alternatives to incarceration, 'clean-slate' legislation and expungement reforms that were left out of the final budget deal. 'I think that there continues to be a lack of re-entry investments, which should be pretty high on the list,' Wilson told Wisconsin Examiner. For years, criminal justice advocates have pushed for support for housing, access to mental health care and jobs, 'those things were not included in the budget.' With less than 3,000 people housed between Green Bay, Waupun, and MSDF, Rice feels that 'these prisons could be emptied and closed within months' and that 'doing so would not only alleviate human suffering but it would also free up critical resources' which 'must be reinvested in the communities most harmed by incarceration.' From providing living-wage jobs and stable housing to creating educational opportunities and violence prevention, Rice wrote in his statement, 'that is how we build true public safety.' The path forward is clear: Care, not cages. Communities, not prisons. – Mark Rice, statewide coordinator for WISDOM's Transformative Justice Campaign Wilson declared that 'the biggest elephant in the room' was that 'there's no real movement on closing outdated prisons or reducing the DOC's footprint.' He stressed that 'we are beyond design capacity…with 5,000 additional bodies [beyond the number] this system was designed for.' Without a concrete roadmap and deadline, he says the budget commitment to closing the Green Bay prison doesn't mean much. Over 20 years ago, Wilson spent time in the Green Bay prison, which he remembers as 'a dilapidated hellhole…It was a trauma pressure cooker in my opinion.' 'But the fact that they're talking about just studying it, that really made me livid as someone who spent time in that facility, and is currently in communication with many individuals who are still housed there today,' he added. Wilson said he doesn't see focused funding to reduce racial disparities in incarceration, nor is there funding to support people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system and are trying to lead a reform effort. 'I think if you look at the movement at large for the last 20 years, it's been led by directly impacted leadership,' said Wilson. 'Because we believe in the words of Glenn Martin that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.' People with personal experience need to be brought to the table to offer both critiques and solutions, he said. Ladies of SCI called the building plans in the budget 'just one of the steps our lawmakers must take to address things,' and pointed to separate legislation introduced by Republican Senator Andre Jacque (R-DePere) and Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), which the group believed would have put needed investments into rehabilitation 'instead of warehousing people in our crumbling facilities.' Evers said the budget was an exercise of compromise and cooperation. 'We need to work together,' he said after signing the budget less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. 'Compare that to what's going on in Washington, D.C., and it's significantly different, so I'm very proud to sign it,' Evers said of the bipartisan compromise. In order to retain $1 billion per year in federal Medicaid matching funds, legislators on both sides of the aisle worked to finalize the bill before the federal reconciliation bill was signed by President Donald Trump. Another one of Evers' partial vetoes stirred discussion around juvenile incarceration. The Senate version of the budget specified that state juvenile correctional facilities would operate at a rate of $912,000 in 2025-26 per kid, per year, before increasing to over $1 million per kid per year for 2026-27. Evers' partial vetoes lowered the rates to $182,865 per kid in 2025-26, and $275,670 per kid in the following years. Over the last decade the cost of housing for each young person in youth corrections in Wisconsin has quadrupled from $303 per day in 2014 to $1,268 per day in 2024, largely due to a lower population of incarcerated youth and higher staffing needs. In his veto message, Evers objected to the Legislature's plan to continue expanding the costs of the existing youth incarceration system during a time of 'uncertainty,' and delays in closing youth prisons. Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) criticized Evers for using a veto to cut housing expenditures for juvenile offenders. 'Evers' veto of this provision is unsustainable and he knows it,' said Wanggaard. 'The statutory daily rate is not a number that we come up with out of thin air. It's simple math – the total cost to operate our juvenile facilities divided by the average population.' Wanggaard added that 'up until now, a county sending a juvenile to a state facility paid for those costs…Governor Evers just decided unilaterally to turn it on its head and have the state pick up the vast majority of costs. It flips the entire funding of juvenile corrections without debate or discussion. It's irresponsible.' Wanggaard also said that Evers' refusal to utilize the expansion of the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center to house more youth offenders is driving costs higher. Children can only be placed in Mendota when it's clinically appropriate, however. The facility was never intended to replace Lincoln Hills, or augment bed space for incarcerated kids. In his veto message, Evers explained why he shifted the cost burden from local communities to the state, writing that he objected 'to establishing a daily rate that is unaffordable to counties.' He continued that, 'I have heard loud and clear from counties that the current daily rate is burdensome and will detrimentally impact public safety. Unbelievably, despite that clear message from the counties, the Legislature has chosen to increase that rate by over $1,000 per day. This increase and funding model is untenable, and counties have expressed that this unaffordable increase will have serious and detrimental effects on other county services.' Evers urged the Legislature to 'revisit this issue in separate legislation and appropriate those additional GPR funds to the department.' Criminal justice advocates around the state say viable solutions must go beyond incarceration. Lincoln Hills continues to be under a court-ordered monitor due to a successful lawsuit that brought attention to the harms done to both incarcerated youth and reports of abuse within the facility. Waupun's prison has yet to recover from a string of deaths which ultimately led to charges against the prison's warden and several staff. Green Bay is also notorious for inhumane conditions and deaths behind bars. 'We don't need more studies, we need action,' said Wilson. When he was incarcerated at Green Bay between the years 2000 and 2005, he added, 'I watched people get battered by each other. I saw individuals get beaten by staff. I see the paint peeling, the walls are sweating. The prison cells are outdated. You're talking about a facility that was built in the 1800's…And you're putting people in this facility in 2025 and you are expecting them to come home sane. You are expecting them to navigate this space in a rational way. You expect them to interact with one another in a humane way when you are housing them, or caging them, as if they were animals. Wisconsin should stop wasting taxpayer money by keeping people in cages that should've been shuttered decades ago!' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Solve the daily Crossword
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Whatever Evers decides, Wisconsin is heading into a high-stakes battle for democracy
No Kings Day protest march viewed from the Wisconsin State Capitol | Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner Early campaign reports this week goosed speculation that Gov. Tony Evers might not run for a third term. Evers, who hasn't declared his intentions, has only raised $757,214 this year and has $2 million in the bank, compared with the $5 million he raised during the same period in 2021, before his successful bid for a second term. Some progressives, most vocally Dan Shafer, creator of The Recombubulation Area blog, have been calling on Evers to step aside. Traumatized by former President Joe Biden's fumbling 2024 campaign, Shafer says Evers, who is 73 (a decade younger than Biden) should not make the mistake of hanging around too long and instead should 'pass the torch.' 'This is not ultimately an argument about ideological differences or policy disagreements,' Shafer writes. For him, it's about age. It's about the Biden trauma. And it's about the problem Democrats at both the state and national level seem to have nurturing the next generation of leaders. For some progressives, it's also about ideology and policy disagreements. Advocates for child care, public schools, criminal justice reform and protecting health care access were furious that Evers didn't drive a harder bargain with Republicans in the recently completed state budget deal. Still, if Evers announces his retirement, a large, non-MAGA portion of Wisconsin will experience a moment of fear. In our closely divided purple state, there is a real possibility a Republican could win the governor's office, just as new, fairer maps are finally giving Democrats a chance to compete for power in the state Legislature. The Republicans who have declared so far are wrapping themselves in the MAGA flag. Evers is popular across the state and has shown he can win. Devin Remiker, the state Democratic party chair, has said he is 'praying' Evers will run again. U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters recently that he couldn't think of a better governor for Wisconsin than Evers. If Evers doesn't run, Attorney General Josh Kaul, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys and Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski are all likely Democratic candidates. 'There's plenty of people on the bench who would love to be governor,' Pocan said. '… that's not a concern. It's really, I want the best person to be governor, and I think the best person who could be governor on the Democratic side is Tony Evers.' Pocan calls Evers a 'responsible adult' in contrast to Republicans who are following President Donald Trump off a cliff, slashing health care and food aid and driving up prices and deficits, making life a lot worse for a lot of people, including a projected 276,000 in Wisconsin who will lose health insurance and 49,000 who will lose food assistance under the federal mega bill. There is an argument that Evers — 'the most quintessentially Wisconsin politician I've ever seen,' as Pocan put it — accomplished what most Wisconsin voters wanted him to do in the budget process, put politics aside and get the best deal he could for state residents. Working across the aisle to achieve shared goals with the other party — including a last-minute maneuver that mitigates the disastrous Medicaid cuts Trump and congressional Republicans pushed through, drawing down $1 billion per year in federal funds for Wisconsin, was, as Evers himself pointed out, 'significantly different' from the dynamic in Washington. 'How about that, compromise?' Evers said Wisconsin voters told him, happily, when they heard about the deal. If the definition of compromise is a bargain that makes everyone unhappy, Democrats and progressives are clearly the more unhappy parties to this bargain. Despite the glow of productive bipartisanship when the deal was struck, the details — and how the deal was done — are beginning to grate on some of Evers' biggest former backers. Big majorities of Republican legislators voted for the deal in both chambers. Five out of 15 Senate Democrats joined them, and there were only seven yes votes out of 45 Democrats in the state Assembly, where Speaker Robin Vos, who helped craft the budget, made it clear he didn't need or want Democratic votes. Arguably, the Democrats who gave impassioned floor speeches denouncing the budget have been in the minority in the Legislature for so long they never have to think about making the kinds of compromises involved in governing a divided state. If you look at it that way, it seems unfair of them to react angrily to Evers, a decent man who shares their goals and has worked diligently to accomplish what he can in the face of nasty opposition. Apart from Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, who joined the budget negotiations behind closed doors after it became clear Republicans were going to need some Democratic votes in the Senate, Democrats were largely shut out of the whole process. And that's the real problem with the way Evers governs, according to Robert Kraig of Citizen Action. By not involving legislative Democrats from the beginning, he disempowered not just those individual legislators but their constituents, giving up the pressure he could have brought to bear on Republicans if he leveraged citizen outrage and demands for action on broadly popular priorities — funding public schools, expanding Medicaid, keeping child care centers open, and the whole list of progressive policies in Evers' original budget proposal. Instead, Evers was the kind of adult in the room who sends everyone else out when it's time to make a decision. This governing style, Kraig argues, is badly out of step with the political moment. As an increasingly dangerous, destructive administration sends masked agents to grab people off the street and throw them in detention centers or deport them without due process, liquidates safety net programs and deliberately destroys civil society, it's going to take a massive, popular movement to fight back. Maybe Shafer is right that a younger, dynamic Democratic candidate could emerge as a leader of that movement. Maybe the Democratic Party needs to stop praying for likeable, bipartisan father figures to deliver victory and instead open the doors to the somewhat chaotic, populist backlash that is brewing against the oligarchic, authoritarian kleptocracy led by Trump. It's a big risk. But we are in very risky times. Democrats, and the public at large, have not yet figured out how to defend against the unprecedented maliciousness of our current federal government and the MAGAfied Republican party. The whole idea of bipartisanship seems outdated in a world where one side is seeking to tear up the social contract, the Constitution, due process, the justice system, fair elections, and the most basic, longstanding protections against poverty, hunger and disease. These are the same conditions that gave rise to the Progressive Era. Fighting Bob LaFollette fought the leaders of his own party and founded a nationwide movement to wrest control of government from the wealthy timber barons and railroad monopolies who, through corrupt, captive politicians, fought to control all the resources of our state and nation. Now those same powerful interests are fighting to claw back everything, to destroy the reforms of the early 20th century protecting workers, the environment, and the public sphere. They are smashing public institutions and flouting legal constraints. Democrats need to make the case to the public that they will fight back. And they need the public to rise up behind them to help them do it. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gov. Tony Evers says the decision whether to run for a 3rd term is coming in a 'couple weeks'
Gov. Tony Evers has said for months he would wait until after the state budget is signed to announce whether he plans to seek a third term in 2026. Four days after he signed the budget in the early morning hours of July 3, the Democratic governor said his decision is coming soon and expects to announce in a "couple weeks." 'To me, there's two options. Thank God there's not 10," Evers on July 7 said when asked about the probability he will decide to seek reelection, after touring a Head Start provider in Milwaukee to highlight the budget's investments in child care. More: 55% in Marquette poll say Gov. Tony Evers should not seek a third term, but Dem support is high While Wisconsin governors are not term-limited, only former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson has been elected more than twice. Republican Gov. Scott Walker lost to Evers when he sought a third term in 2018. Top legislative Republican Speaker Robin Vos said Evers would make up his own mind but he hopes to see a Republican governor elected in 2026. "I think Wisconsin would certainly be better served with a Republican governor who wants to work to enact and carry out the laws that we have passed as opposed to spending so much time fighting against what we are trying to do," Vos said. More: Gilbert: Should Gov. Tony Evers run for a third term? Here are his political pluses and minuses So far, only one Republican has officially launched a campaign for governor: Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann. Others are considering joining the race, including Whitefish Bay businessman and Navy SEAL veteran Bill Berrien. Republican sources previously said Tim Michels and Eric Hovde, former Republican candidates for governor and U.S. Senate, are also considering bids. If Evers, who is 73, decides against running, Attorney General Josh Kaul, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez are among the potential Democratic contenders. Ana Kleiber of the Journal Sentinel contributed. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Tony Evers says decision on running again coming in a 'couple weeks'
