{"id":15204,"date":"2025-02-10T19:54:14","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T20:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15204"},"modified":"2025-02-10T21:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T21:07:09","slug":"wisconsin-republicans-call-for-transparency-fairness-in-school-referendums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15204","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin Republicans Call for Transparency, Fairness in School Referendums"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/wisconsin-bills-call-for-transparency-fairness-in-school-referendums\/\">https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/wisconsin-bills-call-for-transparency-fairness-in-school-referendums\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/dpi-wisconsin-150x150-1.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"dpi wisconsin\" title=\"Lake Sturgeon Protection\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(The Center Square) \u2013 A pair of Wisconsin legislators are pushing for more transparency in the school referendum process in the state.<\/p>\n<p>The proposal comes after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecentersquare.com\/wisconsin\/article_d4ad0844-a2bb-11ef-836e-efc5f7221722.html\" target=\"_blank\">169 out of 241<\/a> school ballot referenda in 2024 elections were approved by voters at a cost of $4.4 billion to taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, proposed bills that would require local governments and school boards to include information on the ballot about how much the difference in taxes would for a median-valued home in the community resulting from the referendum.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReferendums are opportunities for voters to make important decisions about how their tax dollars should be spent,\u201d Allen said. \u201cGood decision making requires transparency in the information provided to voters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A second bill would protect school districts from losing state funding when other districts go to referendum.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a shock to many to learn that the massive school referendum passed in Milwaukee would take away vital state funding from over 300 other school districts,\u201d Allen said. \u201cIt\u2019s only fair that large referendums in one district should not negatively affect other school districts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/LFB-memo-on-MPS-referendum-and-other-districts-240315.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Legislative Fiscal Bureau report<\/a> last year analyzed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/milwaukee-public-schools-referendum-will-sap-aid-from-other-wisconsin-districts\/\" target=\"_blank\">Badger Institute<\/a> showed that a $252 million Milwaukee referendum would cost Madison, Waukesha and Racine $2 million a year in state funding while Appleton and West Bend would lose more than $1 million each year.<\/p>\n<p>The impact is due to tax base equalization, which means that \u201ca school district&#8217;s property tax rate does not depend on the property tax base of the district, but rather on the level of expenditures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bill states that any school referendum of over $50 million dollars should be paid for by the district that votes for the referendum instead of taking away money from shared school funding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/wisconsin-bills-call-for-transparency-fairness-in-school-referendums\/ (The Center Square) \u2013 A pair of Wisconsin legislators&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":7124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15206,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15204\/revisions\/15206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}