Fiscal Facts

As school districts across Wisconsin enter budget season amid extraordinary financial uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Milwaukee officials offered a $1.2 billion “placeholder” 2021 budget that defers many key questions to be resolved later in the budget process.

Despite safer-at-home orders in place through May 26, many Wisconsinites already had become more mobile than in the opening weeks of the pandemic.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spurs Wisconsin schools to undertake an unprecedented exercise in virtual and distance learning, it also threatens to exacerbate the “digital divide” between students who have fast, reliable at-home internet access and those who do not. Data shows these children are in both cities and rural areas, and are disproportionately low-income and students of color.

Wisconsin school districts face extraordinary uncertainty in drafting next year’s budgets amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Key questions include whether and how schools will open this fall and whether the drop in state tax collections will mean a cut in state school aids.

In the April election, Wisconsin voters again approved the vast majority of school district referenda to increase local property taxes, despite the economic uncertainty linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic began causing traffic on Wisconsin’s roads to plummet even before the governor’s Safer at Home order was issued on March 24.

Among all Wisconsin local governments, its counties are likely to face the greatest fiscal challenges during this unprecedented COVID-19 crisis.

While revenues for Wisconsin municipalities will likely be hit hard by the COVID-19 economic shutdown, compared to other states local governments here may see at least some benefits from their heavy reliance on property taxes and state aids to fund public services.

The Wisconsin Policy Forum’s analysis of sectors of Wisconsin’s economy most affected by recent COVID-19 business closures shows the workers most affected include many low-wage earners, and regions most affected include those with economies that rely on tourism.

As Wisconsinites exercised their constitutional right to vote April 7, the dearth of competition for local elected offices left many voters with no alternatives in many important races.