So what might be changed out of the budget this week?

The state budget is expected to be voted on by the full (gerrymandered) Legislature this week. But what gets voted on in the Legislature is likely to be different than what passed out of the Joint Finance Committee last week. Patrick Marley and Molly Beck had a good preview in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel late last week.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester said Republicans planned to tack an amendment onto the budget that would further limit property tax increases and require the full Legislature — not just a committee — to increase vehicle fees.

Vos and others said Republicans were also considering a provision that would change how Tesla Motors' electric cars are sold.

Vos and the others didn't say what other provisions the budget amendment might contain or say say how much of an effect the property tax provision would have on typical homeowners.

ABS - Always Be Scheming

So what might those property tax limitations look like? Given that the Joint Finance Committee already nixed Evers' proposal to allow more local governments a little more leeway to raise property taxes (and instead kept them under the same limits they've struggled with for the last 8 years), that doesn't seem likely to be the place that GOPs would try to limit property taxes even more.

But Evers' proposal to allow a 2% increase in revenue limits for K-12 public schools stayed in, and that, combined with a severe reduction in Evers' proposed bump to General School Aids, was a reason that property taxes were slated to go up under the Joint Finance Budget. At least until the GOPs on JFC decided to throw another $58 million to the state's lottery to get the property tax number down to what was in Evers' original budget.

My guess is the K-12 move will be similar to an idea Vos had 3 years ago that would have further damaged public schools on top of the money funneled away to voucher schools.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is not backing off a proposal to reduce the amount of property taxes school districts can raise to offset the cost of vouchers.

The Assembly on Tuesday is scheduled to take up his proposal, attached as an amendment to a bill making technical changes to the state’s new voucher program for students with disabilities.

That plan was eventually defeated. At this point, I'll step back and remind you that today, most public school districts that have a student living in their district that use a voucher to go to a private school lose the same amount of money that the voucher school gets (which makes the net cost $0).

Those public schools are currently able to make up the difference in lost state aid by raising property taxes, under the state's revenue limit. My guess is that might get changed, and given that many of the GOPs in the State Legislature got put in their seats with an assist from Betsy DeVos' pro-voucher contributions, they could allow it to happen, even if it screws their local public school.

Another possibility is that those 2% increases in revenue limits for schools would go away. That move would have risks associated with them, as it would continue the elevated amount of referenda that many have complained about in recent years. But the cosmetics of the claim of "we reduced property taxes" might be enough for Vos and the other GOPs to try.

Beck and Marley also said there will likely be a change to a provision inserted by the GOPs on Joint Finance that was allegedly to start a study on tolling and other revenue enhancers for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. As people dug into what was written, they found that it could have set up a situation where new fees could have been put in place without approval from either Governor Evers or the full Legislature.

Under the budget provision, the state would spend up to $2.5 million on a study into setting new fees based on how many miles vehicles travel. Miileage-based systems could include traditional tolling or having drivers install devices in their vehicles that would tabulate how much they travel.

Once the study was completed, the Department of Transportation would recommend whether to impose new fees. The finance committee — which consists of 16 of the state's 132 legislators — could sign off on that plan or write one of its own.

Vos said supporters of the plan never intended to cut the majority of lawmakers out of having a say on the matter. The amendment would address that issue so the full Legislature would have to vote on any new vehicle fees, he said.

Riiiight Robbin', I'm sure the 12 members of the Joint Finance Committee just threw this in there on their own, with specific language to go around state law. Like these guys do ANYTHING without having Vos and Senate GOP Leader Fitzgerald signing off on it. Give me a freaking break.

Just like with the open records fiasco from 4 years ago, there was no mistake here. It was just that the GOP leadership got caught by the state's media.

Anyone with a brain can bet that these GOPs will try some last-minute BS to sneak in to try to goad Evers into signing off on a regressive, bad budget, or throwing the whole thing out and leading to months of delays. But given that Evers can strike out most changes to current law while keeping increased investments in a number of areas, my guess is that whatever might get out of the Legislature this week will eventually be signed with Evers, albeit with a lot of line-item vetoes included.

Stay tuned.