Wisconsin has even more money in its already-huge bank account.

We knew the State of Wisconsin already had a lot of money in its bank account. But we found out this week we had even more than we were planning on.

The Evers administration in August announced the state took in $275.7 million more in tax collections in 2023-24 than had been previously projected. [Tuesday’s] report adds in a final look at the state’s expenditures during the fiscal year, resulting in the roughly $400 million more to the state’s bottom line than what had been projected.

According to [Tuesday’s] report, the state closed the books on 2023-24 June 30 with $4.6 billion in the general fund after the Legislative Fiscal Bureau had projected in January that the state would have a gross balance of about $3.8 billion.

But the LFB built into its January projection that the state would transfer $423.3 million from the general fund to the Capital Improvement Fund during 2023-24. That move was part of a deal struck between UW officials and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to fund university projects and make other investments in exchange for changes to DEI positions.

Basically, that $423 million hasn’t yet been sent over to a fund that pays for building projects in cash vs borrowing. It is being sent over in the current 2025 Fiscal Year, and adds to $1.234 billion in cash that was allocated to building projects in June 2023, with the passage of the 2023-25 state budget.

So even though the state ends up nearly $800 million better off than they were in May's estimates from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, about $400 million of that gap will be given back in this Fiscal Year due to that delayed payment. But it still leaves an estimated $3.5 billion to be carried over into the next state budget.

You dig further into the Annual Fiscal Report, and you see that outside of the cash payments for buildings, the biggest increase in state spending for the 2024 Fiscal Year was in Medicaid and related Medical Assistance (MA).

In FY 2024, total MA expenditures, including BadgerCare Plus, were $14,372.1 million, of which $4,200.8 million was GPR. On an all funds basis, MA expenditures increased by 2.6 percent from FY 2023. In FY 2024, GPR expenditures increased by $1,130.2 million from FY 2023. The GPR expenditures increase was driven by the phasing down of the MA federal matching rate under the federal Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. During FY 2024, average MA enrollment decreased by 11.4 percent, the decrease was due to the end of the continuous coverage provision of the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

Enrollment trends varied within eligibility groups, however. Average monthly enrollment of low- income families (children and parents) decreased by 8.9 percent, while the average monthly enrollment of elderly and disabled individuals and childless adults decreased by 5.1 percent and 19.8 percent, respectively.

So we had an increase in state tax dollars for BadgerCare and other Medicaid services by more than $1.1 billion last year, despite having fewer enrollees. And a big reason why was that the Feds stopped covering as much when it came to Medicaid expenses (removing a COVID-era boost of 6.2% of costs).

Wait, I know a way we can have the Feds go back to paying a higher % of those bills! All we have to do is to expand Medicaid under the ACA and we'd save $1.7 billion in state tax dollars over the next two years. And now with new, fair maps, maybe we can get Robbin' Vos out of the way in the Assembly, and finally do the right thing in this state.

Then maybe we can use some of that extra money from the $3.5 billion in the bank and $1.7 billion from expanding Medicaid to stop using so many property taxes to pay for schools and local services in this state. Whatcha say?