$4 billion left over in Wisconsin for next budget. But big needs drain it down fast

November 20 after a general election year is a big day for those who watch the Wisconsin Budget, because it's the day that the state's Department of Administration gives its first estimates of the next budget picture. This not only has estimates of revenues from the DOA for this fiscal year and both years of the 2025-27 biennium (which will be replaced by estimates by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau in a couple of months). Then it gets compared to the 2-year spending requests by all state agencies.

I'll remind you that in Fiscal Year 2024, we started with more than $7 billion in the state's General Fund bank account, and $2.4 billion of that was reduced as the huge surplus was used to pay for a lot of one-time expenditures. In FY 2025, the General Fund balance is estimated to only drop by $622 million, to just below $4 billion, but then the gap grows again, as the increase in budget requests for 2025-27 far outpace the relatively small increase in revenues.

A large part of that jump is the $4 billion in increased spending requested by Wisconsin Schools Superintendent Jill Underly, much of which will go toward tripling the coverage of special education funding, and allowing an additional $1 billion of funding for the classroom and related everyday expenditures. It also could hopefully reduce the huge number of school referenda that have been happening throughout the state.

But just because the money is requested, it doesn't mean that either Governor Evers or the State Legislature will allow it to go through. And if these numbers hold, there has to be at least some changes, because we are projected to end up nearly $800 million in the hole if all spending went through as requested.

And given the austerity talk that's coming from TrumpWorld, there could well be a risk in an economic downturn and changes in program funding that might lead to a need to set aside some of these extra funds until we figure out just how different and outright bad that things might be in 2025.