To view the archived video you will need a user account. Create your free account here.

If you find this programming of value, please donate to support WisconsinEye.

Questions? Contact us at info@wiseye.org or visit our Account FAQs for more information.

Thank you!

Two area representatives have different takes on the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee (JFC) cutting lines of the 2025-27 state budget.

Governor Tony Evers presented the budget in February of this year, with funding going towards protecting the environment, a tax hike for the wealthy, and expansion of Medicaid access, or Badgercare.

3rd District Republican Ron Tusler says Evers would just be throwing money at things that can’t be accomplished.

He specifically brings up an item involving PFAS, saying, “Governor Evers has never seriously come to the table to discuss protections for innocent landowners, instead, he keeps insisting on giving more money and power to the DNR while ignoring legitimate concerns.”

Sheboygan Democrat Representative Joe Sheehan says he was disheartened to see over 600 items taken away from the budget.

He says the JFC cut $42 million for Childcare Counts, a $35 cap on insulin, and a measure that could save a family of four $1,800 a year in groceries.

In a statement, he said, “I hope we see more collaboration and less swift, undiscussed action from the Joint Finance Committee in the future, so we can pass a budget that supports the success of all Wisconsinites.”

The Wisconsin Legislature has until June 30th to vote on the budget and send it back to the governor’s office.

× Expand Clockwise from top left: New members Karen Hurd, Deb Andraca, Rob Stafsholt, Romaine Quinn and Julian Bradley. New members of the Joint Finance Committee are, clockwise from top left: Reps. Karen Hurd (R-Thorp) and Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) and Republican Sens. Rob Stafsholt (New Richmond), Romaine Quinn (Birchwood) and Julian Bradley (New Berlin).

For three months every two years, the 16 members of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee are the Capitol’s fiscal princes and princesses.

Leaders of business, nonprofit groups and statewide trade organizations line up to meet with them, asking for specific favors in the next two-year budget.

In March and April, the finance committee gets a nonpartisan summary of what spending Democratic Gov. Tony Evers recommended. Last week, Republicans who control the committee voted to dump more than 600 of Evers’ priorities. In May and June, the committee builds its own spending plan, sending it to the full Legislature to hopefully meet the July 1 start of the new budget cycle.

Every spending item — and even a two-word change in current state law — inserted into the budget by a committee member can mean millions of dollars in favors to one special-interest group, at the expense of that group’s enemies.

That’s why party leaders sometimes assign finance committee members “budget buddies” — lawmakers not on the committee who can ask their committee “buddy” to push the budget changes they want.

Sure, both the full Senate and Assembly can change what the finance committee recommends, but 95% of the committee’s least controversial recommendations usually become law.

All this explains why it’s not easy to get on the finance committee; legislative leaders put their most loyal members on it.

Who are the 12 Republicans and four Democrats, and 12 men and four women, who serve on the finance committee? Five of the 16 are new members.

Committee co-chairs Sen. Howard Marklein, of Spring Green, and Rep. Mark Born, of Beaver Dam, will again lead the panel.

Marklein, 70, has served in the Legislature since 2011 and the Senate since 2014. His official biography says the accountant is a “retired certified fraud investigator.”

Born, 49, has served in the Assembly since 2013. According to his biography he worked as a “corrections supervisor” for the Dodge County Sheriff’s Department before he became a full-time legislator.

Finance committee vice chairs are Republicans Sen. Pat Testin, of Stevens Point, and Rep. Tony Kurtz, of Wonewoc.

Testin, 36, was re-elected for a third term last year after losing a statewide primary for lieutenant governor in 2022. His official biography says he worked in sales for a “Wisconsin-based wine distributor.”

Kurtz, 58, an Assembly member since 2019, has an intriguing biography: “Organic grain farmer. Former U.S. Army attack helicopter pilot 1985–2005, retired from active duty…Persian Gulf War veteran; Iraq War veteran.”

Republican Sen. Eric Wimberger, 46, of Oconto, is an attorney and another finance committee veteran. He won a second term last year.

Three Assembly Republicans return to the finance committee:

Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, 53, of River Falls, is a small business owner who has served in the Assembly since 2017. Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, 47, Oak Creek, has been an Assembly member since she won a special 2013 election and formerly led a nonprofit. Rep. Alex Dallman, 32, of Markesan, has served in the Assembly since 2021 and his biography says he is a former Congressional aide and “licensed basketball official.”

Two Assembly members are new committee members: Republican Karen Hurd, 67, of Thorp, who owns a nutrition business, and Democrat Deb Andraca, 55, of Whitefish Bay, a former teacher and lobbyist.

Three Republican senators are new to the budget panel:

Sen. Rob Stafsholt, 49, of New Richmond, a small business owner, won a second Senate term last November.

Sen. Julian Bradley, 44, of New Berlin, won a second term last November and is the first black Republican to serve in the Wisconsin Senate. His biography says he was a “former Realtor and operations manager for Northwestern Mutual and CenturyLink [and] professional wrestler.”

Sen. Romaine Quinn, 34, of Birchwood, served in the Assembly before his 2022 Senate election. A former Rice Lake mayor, his biography says he worked as a “former Coca-Cola salesman.”

Senate Democrats again on the committee are Sen. LaTonya Johnson, 52, of Milwaukee, a former child care provider and senator since 2017, and Kelda Roys, 45, of Madison, a former Assembly member who won a second Senate term last year. She is an attorney and small business owner.

The fourth Democrat on the panel is Rep. Tip McGuire, 37, of Kenosha, an attorney and former Milwaukee County assistant district attorney..

It’s the season when there are two types of lawmakers — those “on finance” and those that aren’t.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com.

The Republican co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee said the GOP budget will aim to reduce the size of government as the pair brushed off concerns about the impact of looming cuts from the federal government.

“I’m not overly concerned about it,” Rep. Mark Born, of Beaver Dam, said on WISN 12’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “I think the federal government makes changes all the time. They’ve made changes in previous budgets. I think people are curious about it now, it’s getting a lot more attention, but they still have to actually make changes before it actually impacts the budget.”

One area of potential concern is the state’s Medicaid costs. The Legislative Reference Bureau estimates that about 54% of the state’s Medicaid funding comes from the federal government, as congressional Republicans consider cuts to Medicaid nationally.

>> WisPolitics is now on the State Affairs network. Get custom keyword notifications, bill tracking and all WisPolitics content. Get the app.

>> WisPolitics is now on the State Affairs network. Get custom keyword notifications, bill tracking and all WisPolitics content. Get the app or access via desktop.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen yet,” Sen. Howard Marklein, of Spring Green, said. “I mean, Mark and I don’t have any inside information as to what’s going on in D.C.,; we’re going to just wait and see. …We’ve always based our budget decisions on the best available information, and that includes new tax collection projections next week.”

The pair offered little insight into the state of GOP negotiations with Dem Gov. Tony Evers surrounding a potential tax cut agreement. The state’s projected surplus is more than $4 billion.

“I think right now the governor doesn’t seem serious about talking about it, and he keeps trying to push it into the budget discussions more,” Born said. “And we would prefer to know our starting point, and so talks are ongoing, and hopefully they’ll be more productive than they have been.”

The pair expressed slight optimism about the potential for a sweeping prison reform package. Evers has proposed closing Green Bay Correctional Institution while modernizing Waupun and expanding the state’s early release program.

“I think it’s possible; there’s just a lot of work to be done there,” Born said. “And so it’s going to depend on how serious people are about it. If the governor was doing it to check a box to make it look like, for the first time, he cared about prison reform and closing Green Bay and stuff like that, then probably not. If he’s going to be open to some other ideas, because his plan is not the complete path to do this.”

“Realistically, I’m not sure,” Marklein added, “The solution needs to be comprehensive. The easiest part is closing Green Bay. Then what do you do? What is the ripple effect throughout the system?”

Both said the Republican plan would strive to include no numbers or digits in response to the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling upholding Evers’ 400-year education veto.

“I think it’s a strong possibility,” Marklein said. “The court, I don’t know that they’ve made our drafters’ job easier by any means, but I don’t see any dates. You know, 2027 will have to be written out.”

Meanwhile, Sen. LaTonya Johnson, the longest-serving Democrat on the budget committee, said she believes Dem votes will be needed to pass the budget, at least in the state Senate.

“I hope they do because then that gives us more room for negotiations,” Johnson said. “Our numbers are extremely close in the Senate. We are only two people down, and so I think that’s going to force them to come to the table, and I hope they do. We are now at an opportunity to actually have input in what happens in the State Capitol, and before we were not. So I’m banking on the fact that they’re going to need our vote.”

Johnson said the role of Dems in the minority will be to continue to highlight the governor’s proposals Republicans removed from the budget.

“I think the role of Democrats on this committee is to highlight the differences between the governor’s budget and what’s being proposed,” Johnson said. “There is a difference. Oftentimes we see things under-resourced in our budget coming out of Joint Finance, and if you’re funding things and you’re not funding them to scale, then you’re doing a disservice because you’re guaranteeing those programs to fail or to struggle, such as special education.”

Johnson backed Evers’ continuing negotiations with Republican leaders surrounding a potential tax cut agreement.

“I think that’s important,” Johnson said. “It’s important for the taxpayers, especially for those areas that are going to referendum. We are asking those residents to pay twice. They’re already paying for their property taxes for their school system, and then they’re having to go to referendum and say, look, we’re willing to pay extra just as long as our kids get the education that they deserve. And it’s unfair. We need to be trying to give some money back to residents, but we need to make sure that we’re funding the things that we’re supposed to be funding, so we don’t have to ask them for extra.”

The Rev. Andrew Matijevic, a priest at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, says Pope Leo XIV’s Midwestern roots will carry with him as he leads the Catholic Church.

“I think he’ll be someone who is there and who won’t just assume things, but he’ll listen, he’ll think, he’ll ponder, he’ll converse with others for opinions and make a decision for whatever he needs to take on,” Matijevic told “UpFront.” “I would say that he will use the office given to him to be a moral voice in the world, whether it be for immigrants, for refugees, for life issues. But I think ultimately his goal as the pope is to build bridges between people.”

Matijevic helped Pope Leo, then Robert Prevost, several years back during a mass in Chicago.

“I was a junior in college seminary at the time,” Matijevic said. “And he came back to ordain a priest on the south side of Chicago, and I was the emcee for that. I would tell him what to do and where to go, and it’s just kind of unique. Did I think he’d be the pope then? Probably not, but when he went to the Vatican in 2023, when he was made a cardinal, he was a good person to know and a good person to look up to.”

Retired U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner led an effort of more than 150 former state and federal judges strongly criticizing the Trump administration’s arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan.

“Judge Michael Luttig, who was appointed by a Republican, and I drafted the letter and then opened it up to everyone we knew who was a retired federal or state judge to see if they wanted to sign on,” Gertner told “UpFront.” “And the reaction was extraordinary.”

Gertner and Luttig wrote the letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that said, “The circumstances of Judge Dugan’s arrest make it clear that it was nothing but an effort to threaten and intimidate the state and federal judiciaries into submitting to the Administration, instead of interpreting the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

Gertner also criticized the way the arrest was handled.

“Worst of all, the notion that they had to parade her, what we call the perp walk, to handcuff her, take a picture of her getting into the car, having Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, post the picture is humiliating, degrading, and ultimately intimidating,” Gertner said. “That was the only point of it.”

Dugan is accused of helping an undocumented migrant, who appeared in her courtroom on domestic violence charges, evade ICE agents inside the courthouse.

“I don’t think it would be acceptable behavior if it’s true,” Gertner said. “The question is, if it’s true. The affidavit in support of the arrest says that she sent him out the side door to a public hallway. Let me repeat that, to a public hallway. So I’m going to withhold my judgment until I hear want the hell they’re talking about.”

The impact of the case, Gertner said, could be long-standing.

“I think the impact of this arrest, the intention was to intimidate judges,” Gernter said. “I think that the response of the 150 judges who signed Judge Luttig’s and my letter makes it clear that’s not going to work.”

See more from the show.

Reporter/MMJ

Lucas Kihmm joined the 27 News team in July 2024 shortly after graduating Magna Cum Laude from Loyola University Chicago. He majored in Multimedia Journalism with a minor in Spanish Language.

In college, Lucas won Loyola’s School of Communication Multimedia Journalism Student of the Year in 2023 and the winner of the Crystal Pillar Award in the Talent Category at the 65th NATAS (National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) Chicago/Midwest Emmy Awards.

Lucas is excited to explore and share stories in the Madison area. If you have a fun or interesting story you’d like to share, please reach out to him at lkihmm@wkow.com or on Instagram at @lucaskihmm.media!