Viewpoints: Thirteen reasons to vote ‘Yes’ on Aug. 13 constitutional amendments

On July 10, the Badger Institute launched a campaign recommending that voters approve the two-question proposal on Wisconsin ballots this Aug. 13.

The proposal would amend the constitution so that money sent to the state government by the federal government would be subject to the same legislative oversight and deliberation as all other state spending is.

13 reasons to vote “yes”

1. If voters approve two constitutional amendment questions in August, Wisconsin would join 34 other states whose governors and legislators share authority over major federal funding allocations. Right now, Wisconsin’s governor has carte blanche to spend a lot of federal money without legislative involvement.
2. The amendments are bipartisan. They would be binding on every governor, regardless of party, and every Legislature.
3. The public is unlikely to ever know how the state Department of Administration decided to allocate and spend nearly $4 billion from three federal pandemic emergency spending bills. Questioned by a sometimes frustrated Joint Legislative Audit Committee, DOA leaders acknowledged that many of the decisions were made in phone conversations and emails with Gov. Tony Evers and his staff that were not documented.
4. Because of that lack of transparency, the Legislature and the public were unaware of hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic spending for broadband expansion in the state. When the Legislature found out, it stopped the governor from adding $750 million in state tax money for the same thing.
5. Big chunks of pandemic money were spent on things that had nothing to do with the pandemic. Hundreds of millions in “emergency” funding actually went into plugging deficits in the annual budgets of hundreds of Wisconsin communities.
6. In a press release in November 2023, Evers touted projects paid for with emergency pandemic funding: a $15 million ARPA grant for a sports and convention center in Janesville; $9.3 million for a new soccer stadium in Milwaukee’s Iron District; $7 million to expand the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay; and $5 million to create a Bronzeville Center for the Arts in Milwaukee.
7. The governor felt the spending was necessary because legislators removed projects he wanted during 2023-25 capital budget negotiations.
8. Money spent on pandemic-related items was also wasted. For instance, correctional and other public safety agencies in Wisconsin bought at least 55 disinfection robots at a cost of more than $2.2 million.
9. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services spent $38.7 million to buy and maintain 1,542 ventilators at four emergency sites. No more than 308 of those ventilators were ever used, and six have never been accounted for.
10. Much of the pandemic money still has apparently not been spent. As of April 2024, more than four years after Congress began its multitrillion-dollar pandemic spending spree, the State of Wisconsin was still sitting on $1.1 billion allocated to the state.
11. The constitutional amendments will apply to other types of federal “emergency spending” in the future as well as to grants tied to legislation, such as the funds dispersed through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
12. The amendments will ensure that all federal funding is treated the same way as nearly $20 billion in federal funds approved by legislators and the governor in every state budget.
13. The amendments would guarantee oversight and accountability.

Mike Nichols is the president of the Badger Institute.