MADISON, Wis. — The way Wisconsin goes about sharing money with local governments to help pay for critical services has made headlines this week as Democrats and Republicans went back and forth on shared revenue legislation.
Though a deal seems to be far from done, neither side of the aisle is giving up on finding a solution.
Republicans released a draft of their shared revenue bill on Tuesday, followed by a public hearing Thursday. Legislation typically does not move that fast through the legislative process. However, a proposal has been a long time in the making with lots of private negotiations, which is how Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, would like to keep it for the time being.
A day after he took to social media to threaten a veto of Republicans’ shared revenue bill, Democrat Gov. Tony Evers remained confident about compromise.
“All the hard work that municipalities do, we have to have more money for them, and we have the money to do that, so do I think we can get there? Yes,” Evers said during a Friday interview with Spectrum News.
The governor said he is hopeful that common ground will be reached on several issues.
“It seems to be that the Republicans are taking it in a place that it’s more about control of those organizations than actually funding them, but we’ll work through that,” Evers explained. “We’ll work through a lot of these issues.”
Assembly Speaker Vos, who appeared at a Milwaukee Press Club event Friday, said Gov. Evers’ message was in “bad form,” especially after staff for Republican leaders had just met with the governor’s staff on Wednesday.
“I mean, if you are trying to negotiate and find a consensus, then you come out and put this blanket statement out with no details, having just negotiated or at least tried to do it to say, ‘Here’s our concerns,’ I don’t know where we are on a lot of these things,” Vos said.
When pressed for details about where members from both parties could find compromise, Vos remained firm on the requirement of a referendum for Milwaukee to raise its sales tax.
“I still believe it should be a referendum,” Vos said. “I think that is the way we do it all across Wisconsin. If you want to raise taxes for your school district or fund police at the local level in any other municipality, it is done by referendum.”
Vos said the issue of a referendum question was one of the areas the governor’s team wanted to negotiate. Even though both parties are willing to take a stronger stance on some issues over others, Evers has not lost hope.
“Do I think that we will get everything we ask for? No, but I’m very hopeful that we can reach common ground on a whole number of issues,” Evers said.
As far as specifics, Vos declined to go into detail about which issues his party intends to fight for versus those which members will give up some ground on.
“I’m not going to do it in public, unlike the governor, so I’m happy to kind of report back once we have a chance to talk [about] things,” Vos explained. “I mean, I am trying to be as sincere in this effort as we possibly can, which means I don’t really want to negotiate in public.”
The details of the deal will likely have to be hammered out quickly. Vos said he expects a shared revenue bill to be ready for a vote by all members of the Assembly during the next floor period coming up within two weeks.