Yahoo Autos Republicans reject Gov. Tony Evers' $3.8 billion plan for building projects, but it's not over yet. Here's what happens next.
The State Building Commission on Thursday failed to recommend any of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ $3.8 billion in proposed state building projects, with Republicans voting them down one by one.
The series of deadlocked votes along party lines doesn’t necessarily doom the projects but rather kicks them over to the Legislature's budget-writing committee, which is controlled by Republicans. The committee later this year will craft its own list of statewide building renovations, upgrades and expansions to fund in the next two-year state budget.
Evers said in a statement that Republicans have shown they would "simply rather play politics than have a meaningful discussion about how these projects would serve the needs of the folks they represent."
Is this approach common?
Republicans have taken the vote-down-every-project approach in the past two state budgets but never before Evers took office. Historically, the Building Commission vets and approves projects it deems worthy of funding in a collaborative manner. But since 2019, the four GOP lawmakers on the eight-member Building Commission have declined to approve any part of Evers’ plans, first requesting no recommendation be made and later voting down each of the projects.
"It’s a Republican power grab," Sen. Robert Wirch, D-Somers, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after Thursday's meeting. "Look, we have a lot of worthwhile projects out there, and we have a lot of surplus money. Republicans say this (surplus) is only one-time money. Well, guess what? These projects are (built with) one-time money. Now’s the time to fix our infrastructure when we have a state surplus."
Unlike Evers' previous budget requests that relied heavily on borrowing to pay for the brick-and-mortar building projects, the governor suggested paying for about half of the projects with cash from the state's more than $7 billion budget surplus.
What building projects did Evers propose to fund?
Evers' plan calls for a renovation of the Cream Puff Pavilion at State Fair Park, more money for the new Wisconsin History Museum and several juvenile corrections facilities across the state, including one in Milwaukee County.
Nearly half of the money in Evers' plan would be spent on University of Wisconsin System campuses. The $1.8 billion would help fund a new engineering building at UW-Madison, expansion and renovation of two dorms at UW-Oshkosh and completion of a science center at UW-La Crosse.