Goyke addresses Greater Whitewater Committee; discusses state budget, population trends

By Kim McDarison 

State Rep. Evan Goyke was a guest and speaker hosted by the Greater Whitewater Committee (GWC) during its monthly breakfast meeting. 

The meeting was held Thursday, March 9, at 841 Brewhouse, Whitewater. 

Goyke, who serves as the ranking Democrat on the State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, offered information about the upcoming biennium state budget as proposed by Gov. Tony Evers, along with some of his impressions about the condition of the state’s future, citing among his concerns, trends showing a decline in the state’s population growth. 

During the meeting, GWC President Jeff Knight told those in attendance that Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), a co-chair of the Joint Committee on Finance, had served as keynote speaker during the group’s annual meeting held last month. 

Introducing Goyke to a panel of about 20 people, Knight said the representative is from the Madison area, but lives today in Milwaukee. He attended Marquette University Law School, and previously served as an attorney in the Office of Wisconsin State Public Defender, and as an adjunct professor of law at Marquette. Along with the Joint Committee on Finance, Goyke serves on the following legislative committees: Joint Legislative Council, Joint Survey Committee on Tax Exemptions, Joint Review Committee on Criminal Penalties, and Committee on Corrections.

“Goyke will be providing an in-depth presentation on the state budget, and we will also be opening up the floor to discussion and further questions,” Knight said. 

During his remarks, Goyke noted that he has served in the State Legislature for 11 years, but, he said, he would not seek reelection in 2024. Instead, he will be running for the position of municipal attorney with the city of Milwaukee, noting that he was eager to embrace a “public policy position that’s a little bit more hands-on and tangible.” 

He added: “The Legislature is great. I absolutely love it, but I would often come home and my wife would ask me: ‘What did you do today?’ And I said, ‘you know, I went to meetings.’ And so sometimes it’s hard to see the fruits of our labor, because (it) can sometimes take years and years and years.”  

Goyke said that during his presentation, he would touch upon several topics, including: the future of Winther Hall, a classroom building serving as “home,” according to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s website, to the College of Education and Professional Studies; a “broader perspective” about his perception of the condition of Wisconsin, and issues related to funding, including school funding, municipal funding and housing initiatives.  

Future of Winther Hall 

Goyke said that he had visited Winther Hall and was in agreement with those who saw reason for the building to be included within the framework of future construction projects. 

Referencing the last legislative session, he said: “I was surprised that the (Joint Finance) committee did not enumerate that project. It was recommended by the governor and then ultimately not recommended by the Legislature and as you all know, nothing happened. And now, we are in the opposite scenario, where the governor has not recommended enumerating and funding the project. I think, at this point with inflation, it’s a $76 million project … and the governor has instead recommended, I think, $500,000 in continuing planning cash to kind of keep the project alive.” 

Offering what he said was a “tongue-in-cheek” explanation for the change in plans, he said “maybe the governor is playing reverse psychology, where last time because he recommended it and the Legislature was against it, and so maybe they will add it. If he’s not for it, they’ll be for it — sometimes that happens.” 

Offering a second explanation, he said three projects within the UW System are included within the governor’s proposed capital budget. They include a health sciences building at UW-Milwaukee, Winther Hall, and a building on the UW-Stout campus.  

In the governor’s budget, Goyke said, the projects are not slated within the next biennium for actual construction dollars.  

“In the governor’s proposed capital budget, they viewed these three projects in the same way. And they base their decision on some UW System language … that they did not believe that the actual construction dollars would be spent during this biennium, and so the governor thought that enumerating the projects in the next biennium was more appropriate. So the UW-Milwaukee, Whitewater and Stout projects each received the continuing planning dollars in anticipation of enumeration in the future,” Goyke said.  

Goyke said that the decision, in his view, was not a “denial of the value and the need,” but, “somewhere in the mechanics between system and the governor, there was, on these three projects, this decision was made.” 

He suggested that the GWC continue to lobby for enumeration of the project within an upcoming budget. 

“I think a project like Winther is not dead until it’s dead,” he said.  

He added that within the governor’s proposed budget, some $3.2 billion has been earmarked to support a building portfolio, which Goyke said, was “more robust than in previous budgets.”  

Building with cash 

Goyke said the state has roughly a $7 billion surplus. 

Within the governor’s proposals, $1.9 billion “in essence” has been set aside to cash finance building projects for which the state would normally bond and borrow,” he said. 

“So $1.9 billion of cash into the capital budget does two things … for Wisconsin: One, it allows for a larger building program than we had before. The majority of those projects are within the UW System. There are non-UW System building projects. The Department of Corrections has a number of projects, as well as what we call non-state projects, and if you use $1.9 billion cash to build rather than borrow, that saves us about $800 million over the length of the borrowing. We generally borrow between 20- and 30-year bonds, so that $800 million is stretched out between the next 20 or 30 years,” Goyke said.  

He added: “I actually think this is an area where the majority party in the Legislature will do something similar. I don’t know that $1.9 billion will be their number, but I do expect the Republican majority to use a sizable chunk of the surplus. They continually talk about one-time money being used for one-time purposes, and building projects are clearly one-time expenditures …,” he said.  

Describing his predictions as “reading the tea leaves,” Goyke said he believed the state’s building budget would be somewhere between $2 billion and $2.3 billion, with about $1 billion worth of projects financed with cash. 

Population trends 

Goyke next turned his comments toward what he described as “scary trends” within Wisconsin showing decline in population growth in both rural and urban settings. 

Citing the governor’s proposed budget, he said at least $1 billion has been set aside in various savings accounts. 

The governor, he said proposes to put away $500,000 in “our ‘rainy day’ fund,” and a residual in another saving account, both of which would hold funds that would be invested to earn money. 

“If you put $500 million away, you can expect about $20 million or so in investment returns, and so a billion for potential economic downturns. He’s got an income tax cut that functions like a tax credit. He doesn’t change the brackets or the standard deduction, he allows joint filers at $150,000 or less, single filers at $100,000 or less, to receive 10% of their tax liability paid back in the form of a credit. That costs about a billion dollars over the life of the budget, so that’s 2 plus 1 plus 1, so we’re at about $4 billion in the surplus, and then another big chunk goes into continuing the Medicaid program and K-12,” Goyke said. 

Returning to the topic of population statistics, Goyke said that the state saw its slowest population growth as a percentage over the last decade in the history of the state, further defining that period as “since we’ve been counting.” 

He noted that Wisconsin grew in population by 3.6% between 2010 and 2020, which was a slower rate than the national average for state growth, which, he said, was about 7%. 

He said declines in growth rates similar to those in Wisconsin were found in northern and industrial states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. 

“Illinois had a reduction in population, so we fared better in terms of population growth than our neighbors to the south,” he said. 

Looking at raw numbers, Goyke said Wisconsin grew by roughly 200,000. Some 75,000 individuals counted within that growth were in Dane County. 

“If you take Madison out, we are really close to treading water,” he said, adding that the biggest population loss was in Milwaukee County, where population declined by 20,000.  

Among counties that experienced population growth, he named St. Croix, Eau Claire, and Brown. Looking more locally, he said Jefferson County was up by 1.5% or about 1,200 people, and Walworth was up by 4.5% or about 4,600 people.  

“Walworth was among the higher growing counties in Wisconsin,” Goyke said. 

He added: “I talk about this because we’re seeing rural shrinkage in population as well as some of the legacy industrial urban areas — Beloit, Janesville, Racine, Milwaukee — Shawano, Taylor, Richmond (counties), all population losses.”  

Goyke said population statistics were of importance because in Wisconsin, funding for local services is tied to property taxation. 

“If you are not growing, there is an impact on property value. Your home is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it, and if people are not moving to your community and buying property, there can be a stagnation and a decrease in property value.” 

He described property value as “the largest revenue source for the services.”

He cited recent referendums approved by voters in both Whitewater and Fort Atkinson, as a “really good example of service costs going up and local revenues not going up, and needing to have a referendum and increase property tax to have an EMS service — professional 24/7 EMS service — as well as K-12 operation.” 

He called trends in decreasing population growth and declining property values, leading to local revenue decreases “a spiral.” 

He asked: “How do those local communities attract and retain new families if they, themselves, can’t provide the services that people rely on? There are … communities in declining population areas of rural Wisconsin that no longer have reliable EMS service. That very quickly becomes an unsustainable place to live as you age. If you are 80, and still in your home, and an ambulance can’t come get you, at a certain point, your family is going to make the decision for you that you can’t live there.” 

Goyke said that in his Milwaukee community, similar trends exist. Citing the housing market crash of 2008 and 2009, he said his community was affected with a loss of some $4 billion in taxable property value. 

Today, he said, “our property tax in the city of Milwaukee doesn’t pay for the police department. Our police department budget is $300 million, our tax levy is like $265 (million). And so we’re in big trouble. And we’ve shrunk our workforce for the city by over 1,000 employees over the last 10, 15 years.”  

Declining resources affect the city’s ability to provide such serves as EMS, garbage and recycling pickup, and street repair, among others, Goyke said, adding: “As you can’t meet the demand, people leave.” 

A new shared revenue relationship  

“There needs to be a new relationship between local communities and the state of Wisconsin, Goyke said, adding that historically, the state helped fund services through a program called “shared revenue.” 

According to Goyke, the program was created in 1911, when Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to adopt an income tax. 

Since then, he said, “the share of our state budget that goes back to local communities has shrunk, and shrunk and shrunk. It’s about 5% of our state budget right now. Twenty years ago, 15 years ago, it was about 12%. Local governments have not gotten an increase in shared revenue in 20 years.” 

Both parties have decreased shared revenue, he said. 

“There are a number of communities in this state, in all corners of this state, that, under the current model, do not have the resources necessary to change the trajectory that they are experiencing,” he said. 

Decreases in shared revenue bring “workforce implications,” Goyke said. 

“If we are not growing and attracting working people, our birth rate has gone down, if we don’t have new arrivals to this country, to this state, we are in really big trouble. Also your general workforce issue, if you project these trends 10, 20 years, if it goes unabated, these challenges get much, much harder. We’re aging. That is, to me, a very scary situation.”  

In response to the trends, Goyke said he believed both Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature will make “big changes” to the state’s shared revenue program this session. 

“The governor’s proposal is to take 20% of the sales tax collected statewide — our statewide sales tax is 5% — and then there’s a 0.5% issue that all of the three counties around here, Walworth, Rock, and Jefferson, I think, all three have the 0.5% sales tax, but 5% statewide, so you can think of it as one penny of the five pennies on the dollar that the state collects will be set aside for shared revenue,” he explained. 

He added: “Shared revenue total right now this year is about $900 million. The total statewide one penny of the sales tax would be about $1.5 billion. So that means dedicating that one penny would increase the pot available for shared revenue by $500 to $600 million.” 

Within the governor’s proposed budget, he said, shared revenue would be distributed similarly to the way it is now, which would guarantee that no community would see a loss of shared revenue income and each would see an increase.  

A structure provided by the governor would include two components: the first would include a fund into which 43.5% of the revenues would be placed, which Goyke said, would amount to about $250 million, which would be used to support police, fire and EMS expenses. 

Another 55% would be used to provide “general aid,” through use of an equalization formula on a per capita property value basis, Goyke said. 

He continued: “Right now with shared revenue, there’s nothing guaranteed, we pick a number. We can pick a higher number, we can pick a lower number. It becomes very, very hard to budget longterm for your community when every two-year cycle is so volatile. Two, it is a source of growth. Sales tax has grown over time, and generally, it follows inflation, obviously recessions can impact sales collections, but overall, it’s a more reliable growth model so that as local costs increase, and local governments need more money to operate, and continue to have the services, more revenue would automatically be put into that pot.” 

K-12 funding   

Goyke next cited an operational K-12 referendum which was approved by Whitewater Unified School District voters in November. 

Having read some local coverage, he said, his understanding was that the referendum was driven by two factors: costs associated with funding special education and providing services to a growing diversified population, including costs associated with English language learning (ELL). 

Looking at financing for special education and ELL students from a state perspective, he said: “Both of those pots have very low reimbursement rates from the state of Wisconsin, to you, as a school district.” 

Additionally, he said, there is a growing number of communities that have higher populations requiring such services as free and reduced lunch, ELL, and special education, and, he added, “it is causing major budget crunches across the state.” 

Referendums to fund K-12 activities have “spiked,” he said. 

Said Goyke: “In my opinion, the single most important piece of the governor’s K-12 budget is the special education reimbursement increase.” 

According to Goyke, the state uses a formula that returns 31 cents of every dollar spent on special education back to the district.  

The federal government, through a process it calls “maintenance of effort,” Goyke said, requires that a school district cannot spend less on special education in a current budget year than it did the year before. 

“It is a rational, important law to prevent school districts from not providing adequate services to kids that need it,” he said, but, he added, it places pressure on a district as it seeks to find dollars to fund its rising costs. 

“As your special education costs go up, you pull money from your general education pot. And so you start putting pressure on things like extracurricular sports, language, art, music, etc. And you start to see those important cultural experiences that are really important to young people be reduced … because you have to meet this legal obligation,” he said. 

The governor’s proposed budget increases the reimbursement rate for special education expenditures to 60 cents on the dollar in both years of the next biennium and going forward, Goyke said.  

“That alone, when you put it over the entire state, is a billion dollars over two years; $450 million in year one, $550 million in year two. I’d say this is the most important change in K-12 funding and in this budget,” he noted.  

Goyke said that there was some money available to reimburse districts for costs associated with ELL. 

“I think the governor’s budget, it’s at $14, $15 million a year increase, the ELL services are similarly reimbursed, similarly way below cost. There’s a new pot of money going to literacy for English language learners,” he said. 

Goyke said that the state’s immigrant community was a positive factor in helping to alleviate low-growth population trends. Citing trends in workforce development, he said, the immigrant community often fills jobs in tourism, hospitality and agriculture left unfilled by other members of the population.

“We’d be in big trouble without those folks,” he said.  

“Now we have the obligation to help the kids and make sure that they are on a path to prosperity, and it starts with K-12, and it starts with these pots of money. I think they will go a long way to help districts like Whitewater, middle-sized districts, that have changing demographics, to meet the needs of those changing demographics,” he added. 

Workforce housing  

Addressing policies associated with housing, Goyke said that the governor’s proposal includes “$350 million invested, or proposed to be invested in housing in various different buckets. 

“Some will be for what we now call ‘workforce housing,’ but, really, a nut that we need to crack, in my estimation, is how do you handle aging, single-family, low density housing?” 

Goyke pointed to older “farmstead” homes found across Wisconsin, many of which, he said, “looked worse for wear.”  

“Families have lived there for a very, very long time. The house now needs a lot of money, and when you couple what I’ve been talking about, population, and the soft housing market with homes that need a lot of renovation, you have a lot of properties that are underwater. And the private sector … they will not lend you $200,000 to buy a $100,000 home and spend $100,000 fixing it. It isn’t going to be worth $200,000 at the end of the day. You are not going to get a loan to do that,” Goyke said. 

He talked about his own neighborhood in Milwaukee, where, he said, he used cash to buy a modestly-priced home. According to Goyke, his home was abandoned for a year before he purchased it, and abandoned homes in a neighborhood create situations where homes fall below “ultimate appraised value,” and buyers cannot get a traditional loan. 

“I was told when I bought my house that one empty house on my block reduces the value for every other house by $7,000.

“What I’m saying is some of these communities, the private sector is designed in a way that without a subsidy, it’s going to be very hard to see the money necessary to do home renovation and restoration in a way that we keep the fabric of the communities the way they are now. That 80-year-old grandma is going to move out because there’s no EMS, (and) who’s going to buy her house?” he asked.  

Goyke said he believed the public sector would need to “inject funds” into the private sector in a “tailored and narrow” way, directed to communities that did not have the growth projections or tools to return value to their taxable stock. 

Questions

After Goyke’s presentation, GWC members and guests were offered an opportunity to ask questions. 

Knight asked Goyke if he could talk further about the difference between one-time money and other “sustaining surplus money.”  

Said Goyke: “Me, personally, I like the idea of putting one-time money into one-time expenses that eases the burden longterm. So I talked about that in the capital budget, and the opportunities that it presents to avoid borrowing longterm. It eases pressure on budgets. When we borrow … the line item in the last budget to pay down capital debt was $800 million. So reducing that is really important.”

Additionally, he said: “We saw a huge spike, there’s been — two things that are driving this surplus that, I think, go away. One is we saw a really big spike in corporate income tax collection. We armed the Department of Revenue with a whole town of auditors in recent budgets, and they went out and they audited, and they found a lot of revenue. There’s a point on the horizon where those kinds of new positions don’t come up with new money because there’s a finite number of corporate income tax filers in Wisconsin. 

“The second piece, and this is now well over a billion and a half of the ($)7 (billion), when COVID struck, and this was under Trump, and continued under Biden, the federal government agreed to expand Medicaid coverage, and with it, the feds paid a bigger share of Medicaid; it’s about 60-40, and they decided, under what’s called an enhanced FMAT (Federal Medical Assistance Percentages) match, it was 66-34. The gap between the state paying 40% and 34% of Medicaid, which covers over a million people, is $1.5 billion over the last couple of years. 

“So we saved the state money, our state money, because we didn’t have to spend as much on our chunk. That goes away this summer.” 

Goyke said that while the governor has recommended that the state expand Medicaid, it has remained an ideological battle for the Republicans for four years.  

“I do not see the majority party agreeing to expand Medicaid to cover able-bodied adults to 138% of the federal poverty guideline. If we did that, we would continue this enhanced federal match. It’s about $1.8 billion, I think, over the biennium that we would save. But I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said. 

Knight cited efforts underway by the GWC to change the state’s funding formula for general purpose revenue (GPR) to increase the UW-Whitewater’s share. When compared with the UW System campuses, according to Knight, UW-Whitewater is supported with the least amount of funding. 

Additionally, he said: “Over the years, the UW campuses get so much back in the form of state support to the community — 34% of the property value.”  

Knight talked about services like EMS that support the campuses. 

“You can see, years ago, when you had a lot of employees working here, there’s a multiplier, so it’s a little easier for a community to adapt. But through the pandemic, with most of everything being shut down, you still have that ambulatory service without the people there to spend the money, so you got — it’s a more realized burden. So anything you can do to fix that, and that’s more of a longterm fix, because, I think there’s a number of campuses in the same boat as we are,” Knight said.   

Said Goyke: “It’s interesting because it really affects towns that you might refer to as like a ‘college town,’ where the campus is a huge portion. River Falls, Platteville, there are debates about this in a different context in the city of Waupun. There’s a big prison right in the middle of downtown …  so when a crime takes place, say one inmate hurts another inmate, often the … Dodge County Sheriff is called in to investigate. And the reimbursement for those services aren’t quite there.” 

Goyke said there was an “interesting” conversation about: “What happens to your community when you’re home to a big state footprint?” 

Whitewater City Manager John Weidl, offering some perspective, said: “To put that into (real value), the total value of municipal property that excludes the university, not land, just buildings, about $500 million. University is about $400 million and change, just building values, so if you just take away the value of the land that’s sitting underneath, whether it’s agricultural or commercial or industrial, we are about the same size in terms of property that sits within the city to … just have and be responsible for with service and response, and things like that. So we are almost equalized …” 

Said Goyke: “My take on personal property tax is that the Legislature is so tired and annoyed they’re continuing to deal with this that everybody is ready to get to ‘yes.’ We put the money aside to make sure local governments — there’s $202 million sitting in a fund called the Joint Finance Supplement Account — just sitting there. It isn’t getting spent because the bill didn’t become law last session. I’m not in the direct middle of that conversation, but if I’m reading the tea leaves, then maybe they will take that up.”  

Additionally Weidl asked: “You talked about the money for local governments being split into two pots, and one of those pots being for police, fire and EMS services. Municipalities that just went through a referendum, is there some sort of ‘hold harmless’ or are we getting set back as money is allocated because we just went through a heavy lift on our own against a community that hasn’t yet decided to go through or wasn’t able to go through that?”  

Said Goyke: “I was describing the governor’s proposal. The leadership of the Legislature has indicated that they likely will not support all of what the governor has proposed. I have not heard anyone discussing a kind of ‘hold harmless’ or something that’s related to the timing of enacting your own property tax …” 

Weidl asked Goyke if he knew what the formula might look like, asking: “Will we all be treated equally in that sense?”  

Said Goyke: “What I’m hearing from the Republicans is that the pot of new money — that $500 million, whatever — that’s on top of shared revenue. I think there’s agreement that 1% or one penny of the sales tax dedicated to local government funding — there seems to be consensus that (it’s) an ok fit in everybody’s arena. It provides an increase, it’s sustainable. I am hearing more from the conservative side of less dollars for locals directly — so some for counties, some for locals, … I think the speaker, himself, is really interested in creating something, whispers are, through an innovation fund, where you could apply to the state for dollars. You guys are in a really interesting situation. I’m sure there are services where counties, for example, because you split so uniquely between three, sharing services becomes something that’s a challenge or could be something really cutting edge, where you kind of regionalize, and I think the speaker is envisioning a pot of money …

Said Weidl: “I think that’s totally fair. Walworth County, for example, has been talking about consolidation of some services since 2017, I found out. It hasn’t gone anywhere.”  

Said Goyke: “You don’t have the money to do it, plan it even. How, in this era of tight local governments, how are you going to set aside the dollars necessary to either hire a consultant or to have a FTE (full time employee) do the work, to plan for something — so, I like the concept of, and have actually done legislation previously on the concept of incentivizing that type of shared services or collaborative operation or efficiencies or whatever, whether it’s, whether the speaker and I are in total agreement of what the details are, we’ll see. He and I don’t always align, so …” 

GWC guest Joseph Kromholz asked: “You talk about the governor’s proposal, and what the majority in the Legislature wants to do. As far as education goes, as far as local money showing up, what do you handicap the odds of any of that money actually showing up here?”  

Said Goyke: “I’m confident that the Republicans will not approve the governor’s budget as introduced. When this budget began, I was predicting that K-12 would become the most contentious and the most drawn out and difficult place to get to ‘yes.’ 

“Because the governor — the education governor — last couple of budgets, in terms of state investment, has not been as robust as he’s introduced. Meanwhile, you’ve got more global conservative movements — school board elections have become a little bit more contentious in different parts of the state. I thought there would be a big showdown. I have heard this week, and it’s just rumblings in the ether of the halls of the Capitol, but that’s the currency in which we trade, that the Republicans are going to put a number on K-12, an increased number. I don’t think it will be small. How that gets spread out is the question.”  

He continued: They (Republicans) did a Blue Ribbon commission on school funding a number of years ago, and their own commission said that you’ve got to address this. And they’ve inched, inched, closer. I think they take a bigger step this year. 

“What they haven’t really liked is putting money into a per-pupil increase. They don’t generally like putting money into the formula because there are equalization mechanisms that they don’t like. So I expect a per-pupil increase, I’d expect a special education increase, I know that for the intensely rurals you’ll see high cost transportation go up. I don’t expect a giant debate over expansion of the choice program because it’s kind of dead on arrival with the governor. So I think that won’t be the debate. It won’t be an ideological debate with education, it will just be a debate over how much …”  

A meeting participant asked: “What about ELL?”  

Said Goyke: “Tough sell.” 

He described a meeting between several Republican lawmakers and a rural northern school district. He described the district as “rock red,” with large dairy and agriculture industries and an immigrant work force. He said he believed Republican lawmakers were learning from their constituents about needs, adding: “I think there’s more money going into it.”  

Interview with FAO

After the meeting, Goyke granted Fort Atkinson Online a brief interview. 

Similar to a question we posed to Marklein last month, Fort Atkinson Online shared with Goyke our understanding of discussions held at the local level — at school districts and within municipalities — during which officials note that they find themselves placed in a position where they must use one-time monies, such as those received through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) and American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) funds, to cover recurring or operational expenses. Pointing to reduced or withheld state aid, officials say the message from the State Legislature is to use the one-time money in lieu of state aid. Another alternative is asking constituencies for money to support recurring costs through the referendum process. 

Said Goyke: “Running a referendum takes time and money. I was going to ask the group today: I wonder how much time and money was spent passing the Fort Atkinson EMS, fire, police referendum in April (2022), and Whitewater’s EMS or school referendum. Just think about how many professional people — city leaders, police, folks, civic leaders, took time and money out — I mean who made the yard signs that say ‘vote yes’? 

“There is a cost to how we fund and rely on referendum.” 

Even with those efforts, Goyke noted that the referendum was approved by voters in Fort Atkinson by a small margin, with 52% casting ballots in favor of the measure and 46% casting against.  

Exploring potential uses for one-time money, we asked about the possibility of giving such resources to local governments for use as investment dollars, say, allowing them to begin a fund through which they could grow a one-time money allocation for future use. 

Goyke likened the suggestion to an endowment. 

He said: “This is one part of the strategy, is setting aside some money that could be invested that would cushion an economic downturn. Your point about COVID relief aid and its life expectancy approaching or its expiration approaching is very real. That is real for school districts, and for local governments, it’s real for healthcare providers and daycare providers. I mean there is a, what we sometimes refer to as an ‘unwinding.’ When the federal COVID emergency ends, and federal funds expire, you will have a number of different industries and organizations and entities really struggling to recalibrate, and school districts are maybe the tip of the spear, because they were given these one-time funds. They were used, they did their best to pivot and continue to educate over the last few years, but the idea that school districts are flush with cash because of that COVID relief money is dead wrong.” 

In Fort Atkinson, we noted, the community has pushed back its plans to build a middle school by five years because the most recent capital referendum, brought before the voters in November, failed. We asked: Can one-time money be used to help districts with capital improvement projects?  

Said Goyke: “Well, I think that the state’s role in especially local school construction and local government construction, on the capital side, has always been relatively minimal, because the local government and school districts have bonding authority and taxation authority. In my time on the Joint Finance Committee, we have not directly funded those individual programs, but that is not to say we couldn’t or that there couldn’t be a pot of one-time money available to districts that have capital needs. 

“It’s not in the current proposed budget. I don’t know that it would be added. I just have not been a part of conversations; that idea has not percolated up to the channels of the State Legislature at this point.” 

Recently, the word “broken” has been used by local leaders to describe the state’s shared revenue system. We asked if legislators, on both sides of the aisle, agreed with that assessment, or are there legislators who believe the system is working?  

Said Goyke: “If you asked me this question four years ago, I would have said there are a group of legislators that do not think there’s a problem. I think today, that number is small or nonexistent. Where we disagree is the degree of the problem. I started working on local government funding in 2015 or 2016, because we had a fire station in my neighborhood close. And the city of Milwaukee is in such a precarious financial position, they have no choice but to — they’ve shrunk the fire department, they’ve shrunk the police department, they shrunk — as I said in my speech, there’ over 1,000 employees less, and that’s not a desire to defund the police or to defund the fire department, it’s a reality that there’s just not enough money to fund all the services. When I started that years ago, there was much less recognition of the problem. And today, I think it is a signature policy issue of this two-year legislative session. 

“And what I mean by that is, if we are, as we approach, when voters go to the polls in November, 2024, one of the issues, whether it’s achieved or not, a success or failure of this Legislature, one of the major issues we should review is whether we fixed local government funding. Now, how we fix it, people will agree or disagree on the merits of that fix, but I guess my point to you today is, I think there’s a group of people willing to get to ‘yes.’ Enough recognize the problem is real, and immediate, urgent, and if you are to grade our ability in divided government to come together and get something done, local government funding should be one of those major issues that we are graded on.” 

An earlier story about Sen. Marklein’s presentation last month before the Greater Whitewater Committee about the state budget is here: https://fortatkinsononline.com/state-budget-surplus-discussed-at-greater-whitewater-committee-annual-meeting/.    

About the GWC 

The GWC, as stated by the group in a recent news release, is an action-oriented group committed to working with citizens, elected officials, and policymakers to identify, craft and implement a pro-business agenda. Its goals are to advance the economic, educational, and social policies required to energize and secure the Whitewater area’s economic future, as well as protect Whitewater’s quality of life.