As part of his 2023–25 proposed biennial budget, Gov. Tony Evers is proposing to send 20% of the state’s sales tax revenue back to local communities for shared revenue. The proposal means more than $500 million more per year in new resources for local communities to invest in local health and human services, transportation, EMS, fire, and law enforcement services, and other challenges facing communities such as PFAS and district attorney recruitment and retention.
The governor’s budget creates a new shared revenue appropriation that will provide increased aid to municipalities and counties of $576.2 million GPR in fiscal year 2024–25. Future allocations will grow with sales tax collections. The appropriation’s allocation for each calendar year will be 20% of the state’s sales tax collections of the fiscal year ending in that calendar year. As part of the 20%, communities will continue to receive existing county and municipal aid, expenditure restraint, and the county and municipal components of personal property aid; the remaining funds will be divided between public safety aid and general aid to municipalities and counties.
The governor’s budget will also allow Milwaukee County to impose an additional 1% sales tax, with 50% of the resulting new revenue distributed to the city of Milwaukee. This proposal must be approved by local referendum to take effect.
The budget further allows counties, other than Milwaukee County, to impose an additional 0.5% sales tax and allows municipalities with populations over 30,000, other than the city of Milwaukee, to impose a 0.5% sales tax to diversify local revenue sources and better empower local governments to fund police and fire protection, EMS, transit, roads, and other important services, if approved by local referendum.
