This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/what-wisconsins-constitutional-amendment-means-for-big-government-spending/

Badger State to vote on new financial guardrails Aug. 9

If voters approve two constitutional amendment questions this coming August, Wisconsin would join 34 other states whose governors and legislators have authority over major federal funding allocations, according to a Badger Institute review of several government data sites.

Although much of the federal money that flows into Wisconsin is spent through our state budget and already requires legislative approval, members of the Assembly and Senate currently have no authority over billions in additional federal funding.

The lack of legislative oversight became particularly apparent during the pandemic.

Decisions about how and why billions in federal dollars were spent remain largely a mystery. The state Legislative Audit Bureau has been sharply critical of Gov. Tony Evers and his administration, who maintain the sole authority for the federal funding dispersal, for a lack of transparency and years-long delays.

More than four years after Congress began its multi-trillion-dollar pandemic spending spree, the State of Wisconsin is still sitting on $1.1 billion of the more than $5 billion allocated to the state.

Why the remaining funds have not yet been spent years after the health emergency was called off has not been explained. As has been the case when asking for explanations, emails from the Badger Institute to the state Department of Administration were not acknowledged.

In the meantime, the governor — over objections of Joint Legislative Audit Committee officials — is claiming spending authority over another $119 million in interest accrued while the unspent $1.1 billion sits in savings.

On Aug. 9, Wisconsin voters have the chance to give back to their representatives final approval over such big blocks of federal spending in the future. To do that, they will have to vote yes to two ballot questions that would amend the state Constitution.

Legislators would be obliged to come to agreements with the governor, up front and publicly, about the objectives for all major federal spending not already baked into state programs funded by federal mandate.

Examples of other sorts of federal money that would have oversight in the future include, for instance, funds dispersed through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The infrastructure bill is showering the state with $5.2 billion in highway aid, $841 million for lead abatement and water system improvements, $592 million for public transportation, and $225 million for bridges.

Where and how that money will be spent would be decided jointly by the governor and the legislature if the constitutional amendment was in place.

Citizens ought to be able to know how their governor, regardless of party affiliation, is making choices about where to direct huge sums of federal money, said Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Racine), one of the authors of the joint resolution that put the constitutional amendment on the ballot. They should also expect their own elected representatives to have something to say about those choices.

“The legislative oversight would start from the beginning,” Wittke told the Badger Institute. “What we have now is no transparency, no accountability. It’s not good government and it’s not good for the State of Wisconsin.”

It’s also not at all consistent with the way the state keeps track of nearly $20 billion in federal funds in every state budget.

From March 2020 when the first of the COVID bills, the CARES Act, was passed, the Republican-led Legislature asked Evers for a similar role in deciding how best to deploy emergency federal funding before it left the state’s treasury.

Those efforts were rebuffed and bills to grant legislative oversight tabled.

The Badger Institute has been a longstanding critic of misuse of federal dollars and the actual cost of the federal government’s “free money.”

We have also detailed the shortcomings and the costs to produce the annual “Single Audit,” the Legislative Audit Bureau’s tallying of how and where much of the federal money is spent.

As we reported in November 2022, State Auditor Joe Chrisman acknowledged the Single Audit Act requires his department to do an audit to comply with federal requirements but “does not assess how state agencies performed when administering programs or the results achieved by the programs administered.”

The Single Audit encompasses in general terms some federal spending that is part of the biennial budget process and, after the fact, federal money from the pandemic and infrastructure bills. Wittke said he was particularly piqued to find out from one of the targeted audits in one LAB report more than a year after the fact what had become of the state Department of Health Services ventilator program.

As the COVID panic grew in June 2020, the department 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. How the agency decided on the number of ventilators needed, and where to purchase and deploy them has never been disclosed.

“I understand it’s an emergency, but what if we have another emergency?” Wittke said. “Why this many ventilators and how they arrived at the purchase price when only 300 hundred were used at the high point, I have no idea.”

When asked by finance and audit committee members about the amount of unspent COVID money, administration officials have said pushing back the deadline for spending the funds through 2026 has allowed Gov. Evers the option to redeploy sums from one agency or program to another based on need, Wittke said. The Legislature isn’t informed, either about the original allocations or the reason for the redeployment, Wittke said.

In December 2022, the Legislative Audit Bureau bored in on the Department of Administration’s conscious decision to keep the Legislature and the public in the dark about its COVID spending rationale.

“Providing clear and comprehensive information will allow legislators and the public to more readily identify how these funds are spent in the future,” the LAB said in its report.

Voters on Aug. 9 are not creating any new commission or office. They are considering one question about whether to block the Legislature from delegating its power to determine how major federal funding is spent and another question blocking the governor from allocating any of those funds without a joint resolution approved by the Legislature.

“This isn’t a power grab or an R versus D issue,” Wittke said. “With a constitutional amendment this applies to any governor — an Evers, a Walker, a Doyle or a Thompson. If you vote yes, you’re saying you want your representative to have a say in how all this money is being spent rather than one person deciding everything.”

Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

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