Fiscal Facts

The upcoming state budget cycle starting in July is on track to continue a recent trend of ever-larger state budget surpluses, creating an unprecedented opportunity to boost government services with additional spending, reduce taxes, or both.

Local government debt in Wisconsin hit record levels in 2020, driven by low-interest rates, infrastructure needs, and a little-known incentive in state law.

In the last decade, school referenda have become a fixture on ballots around Wisconsin.

The proposed 2023 city of Madison budget offers mostly good news for city services, with few cuts and a range of new offerings.

Federal pandemic relief funds give a temporary reprieve to a mounting array of fiscal woes for the city of Milwaukee, helping it avert large-scale service reductions in Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s proposal for the 2023 budget.

Amid the pandemic and resulting recession, Wisconsin’s tax burden — or its state and local tax collections as a share of personal income in the state — fell in 2020 to its lowest level in at least a generation.

Wisconsin room tax collections rebounded in 2021, as did leisure travel, from the pandemic plunge of a year earlier.

Total property values in Wisconsin grew by a record 13.8% in 2022, marking the largest increase in decades of data.

Hybrid and electric vehicle registrations continued their recent rapid increases throughout Wisconsin in 2021.

City of Milwaukee finances are closer than ever to a long-predicted day of reckoning, threatened by an unsustainable revenue mix, shrinking resources for core functions, diminishing reserves, and escalating long-term liabilities.