Hamilton Political Tidbits – May 21, 2021

The Legislature has taken steps to overhaul Wisconsin’s 2021-23 state budget by removing hundreds of policy proposals and resetting spending levels to the 2019-21 baseline. On May 6, the Republican-led Joint Committee on Finance met to vote on major aspects of the 2021-23 state budget put forward by Governor Tony Evers. Gov. Evers’ executive budget proposal included a two-year operating budget of more than $90 billion and a long list of changes to various state laws and programs.

A legislative committee has voted to end a temporary rule that suspended the work search requirement for people receiving unemployment insurance benefits. By a 6-4, party line vote on May 19, the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules ended the emergency rule promulgated by the Department of Workforce Development. Without committee action, the rule was set to expire July 10; now, the work search requirement will resume on Sunday, May 23.

A group of Democratic state legislators backed by Wisconsin’s governor are reintroducing legislation called the Chemical Level Enforcement and Remediation or “CLEAR” Act. The bill includes a variety of provisions to regulate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of thousands of manufactured chemicals commonly known as PFAS. In addition to legislative efforts regarding PFAS, the Department of Natural Resources recently released a draft economic impact analysis for a proposed rule affecting all regulated facilities that may impact groundwater.

On May 19, Governor Tony Evers directed the Legislature to convene a special session on his proposal to expand Wisconsin’s Medicaid program, also known as BadgerCare. The bill put forward by the governor would accept federal money to expand Medicaid coverage to about 90,000 additional people. Over the next fiscal biennium, this would bring about $1.4 billion in federal money to Wisconsin and could save the state about $634 million in general-purpose revenue, based on budget estimates from the governor’s office.

On April 27, Governor Tony Evers signed 2021 Wisconsin Act 29 making various changes to Wisconsin’s worker’s compensation law, including creating a new type of claim for public safety officers diagnosed with job-related post-traumatic stress disorder. The bill originated in the Wisconsin Legislature as Senate Bill 11 and has also been referred to as the “Public Safety PTSD Coverage Act.”

As of May 19, Wisconsin had administered almost five million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, with more than 2.3 million Wisconsin residents or 39.8 percent of the state’s population fully vaccinated. About 82.5 percent of Wisconsinites aged 65 and older have received at least one dose.

On April 14, a majority of the seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to select Justice Annette Ziegler as the state’s next chief justice. She assumed the office on May 1. Justice Ziegler was first elected to the court in 2007 and ran unopposed in 2017. She is the court’s third longest-serving member. A press release from the court announcing the results of the vote did not indicate how each justice voted.