By Benjamin Yount (The Center Square), includes “One suggestion for how Wisconsin can spend the $5 billion it is receiving from the federal government. Give it to the people.”
By Mitchell Schmidt, includes “… Under cash modified accrual accounting, the method used by the state for balancing the budget, a credit card purchase in December wouldn't be logged as an expense until January, when the bill is due to be paid.”
Impeachment is easy. Governing is hard. That may be the lesson Democrats on Capitol Hill are about to learn as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office. … But the plan also includes a $350 billion bailout of state and local governments, many of them poorly governed and chronically in debt
Joe Biden, the crazy uncle who escaped from the attic long enough to get himself elected, is proposing massive subsidies for Blue States that are circling the drain.
Wisconsin’s split government could face the most challenging budget session in a decade next year as state spending is projected to exceed revenues by about $373.1 million — without taking into account Medicaid costs and new spending requests from state agencies, according to a new report.
Wisconsin State Superintendent of Schools Carolyn Stanford Taylor on Monday submitted a budget request for the Department of Public Instruction that is $1.4 billion larger than the current budget.
The 2020 Financial State of the States report surveys the fiscal health of the 50 states prior to the coronavirus pandemic. This data is released today by Truth in Accounting (TIA), a think tank that analyzes government financial reporting.
The thing about tipping points is that you never quite know where they are until you, well, tip.
Advent Tool & Manufacturing Inc., a manufacturer of high-precision tooling products, said Wednesday it will move its headquarters from Antioch, Illinois, to Salem Lakes in Kenosha County.
Regular readers will recall that I frequently promote the Wisconsin Retirement System as a model in which its shared-risk structure, along with sound governance in general, keeps the plan fully funded, year after year.
For 43 Wisconsin Republican lawmakers, the urge to bash Illinois and go on record against bailouts for state governments during the coronavirus pandemic was just too good to pass up.
Governor Scott Walker's administration says the current two-year state budget is expected to end with a $342-million surplus next June 30th. But for the next budget, state agencies have asked for $171-million dollars more than the funding that's expected to be available.
It is not surprising an Illinois politician finally put in writing what economists and financial watchdogs have been warning for years: That elected officials who failed to take seriously decades of fiscal warning bells in this state eventually would seek a bailout from the federal government.
It's finally now time for public pension funds and their sponsoring employers to make lemonade from lemons. The market value of public pension stock portfolios has shrunk dramatically in the shadows of the COVID-19 crisis, coupled with the recessionary impact of the Saudi-Russian oil price war. Stock indexes are down 35% or more from their peaks just earlier this year, in a dramatic sell-off.
Wisconsin received a 78 transparency score on a recent review of state governments’ annual financial reports, putting the state in a tie for 35th best among all 50 states, according to the policy institute Truth in Accounting (TIA).
In recent years, municipal government finances have become more transparent due to requirements that agencies disclose pension and other paid benefits on balance sheets, the TIA study said.
Wisconsin’s latest fiscal projections would bolster the state’s reserve to more than $1 billion at the end of the current fiscal biennium. The updated projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau project that state will also now close the biennium with a general fund balance of $620 million, up by $452 million from the prior projection used for fiscal 2020-2021 $82 billion budget adopted last year.
Thousands of pension fund managers and trustees are gathering for an all-expenses paid convention at the out-of-state Grand Geneva Resort and Spa, and local taxpayers are picking up the tab.
Wisconsin's public pension plan is the best funded in the nation, according to a new analysis from the Tax Foundation on Fiscal Year 2017 data.
The No. 1 U.S. state for outbound migration in 2017 was Illinois, moving up from No. 2 in the previous year.