As data center developers stake out land in Wisconsin communities, much debate has surrounded whether the computer-packed warehouses will deliver economic benefits locally. 

Waves of opposition and concerns about land, water and electricity use routinely follow data center proposals, while supporters echo that the centers will create jobs and help the economy. 

But what jobs? How many of them? And will they last?

To answer those questions, Wisconsin Watch talked to three professors:

• Xiaofan Liang, who specializes in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
• Scott Adams, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee labor economist. 
• Dijo Alexander, who specializes in information technology, digital transformation and artificial intelligence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Here are some takeaways.

What kinds of jobs do data centers bring?

Data center jobs fall into three major categories that represent phases in their creation: 

• Development
• Construction
• Operations

A data center first needs people to plan for its existence. Developers, engineers, designers and planners lay that groundwork. 

“The data center industry as an ecosystem is pretty big … When they first introduce a data center to a place, they have to figure out the design standard, how to construct all kinds of facilities, how it connects to city systems,” Liang said.

Then, developers must hire heaps of hands-on laborers to construct the gigantic warehouses from the ground up — the largest portion of workers needed in creating and operating a data center. Among other professions, this includes electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, carpenters, structural steel and iron workers, concrete workers and earth drillers.

The job boom from early phases fizzles out once the building is complete, Liang said. 

“(During) construction time, you usually have a lot more jobs — maybe 10 times in magnitude more so than operations,” Liang said. 

Operations jobs, fewer in quantity, are largely “unglamorous,” Adams said. 

Some of these roles have relatively low barriers to entry, such as maintenance workers and security guards. Meanwhile, electricians and HVAC workers are needed, considering that power and cooling are data centers’ “two most important inputs,” Adams said. 

Adams echoed a popular analogy likening data centers to warehouses full of rotting bananas that need constant cooling and replacing.

“You need banana technicians, more or less, that take the rotted bananas out and replace them with new bananas,” Adams said. “Now, granted, they’re much more expensive bananas in there, and they’re doing a whole lot, and it requires a little more expertise. But again that expertise, by and large, can be developed pretty quickly.”

Those workers will be data center technicians — people who install servers, replace hardware and cables, monitor systems and notice when things break down.

How many jobs do data centers bring? 

The number of jobs created depends on a data center’s size, Liang said.  

That can initially mean thousands of jobs at gargantuan developments like in Mount Pleasant. Microsoft says it has employed 3,000 people to construct the location, compared to 500 full-time workers once the plant is operating. But these numbers are expected to climb as the company constructs a cluster of additional centers at the site. 

Not all of these workers will be local. Given the temporary high demand, the projects will likely need out-of-town construction laborers who travel to the area and don’t stay long term.

Smaller projects will employ far fewer people. For a typical data center, Microsoft estimates it hires about 50 full-time employees. What those numbers mean for the local area depends on the community’s size. 

“In a bigger city, like Atlanta, it’s like a drop in the ocean, right? It doesn’t really affect much,” Liang said. “In a rural area, in a smaller town, hundreds of jobs … are a big deal.”

What about the trickle-down economic benefits? 

A sizable new employer entering communities could ripple across other nearby industries, though Liang notes this is hard to measure. 

“(A data center) just has such a big infrastructure need that trickles down in many different ways,” Liang said. “Now we need expanded utility infrastructure, grid, fiber, water, all these things. Construction of these infrastructure, even though it’s not directly related to (a) data center, could increase local employment in those areas.”

Inside a data center are “cabinets after cabinets of steel frames holding computers” that need to be built, Alexander said. This can boost local manufacturing, especially the metal fabrication industry. 

Wisconsin manufacturers have already begun cashing in on the construction boom nationwide. As Wisconsin Watch previously reported, just three Wisconsin companies alone have amassed more than $1 billion in equipment sales — such as motors, generators and cooling systems —  to data centers.

Massive developments like Microsoft’s in Mount Pleasant can potentially lead to a “tech corridor,” a cluster of warehouses and manufacturers near the data center they serve, Alexander said. 

“If we take the initiative and if we bring a few big enough component manufacturers, we can create locally created components for these data centers to consume,” Alexander said. “It’s like if you have a big restaurant or food manufacturer here, you will have agriculture around there, because it is easy for you to bring your produce for their consumption. Just like that. ”

The trend could also activate industries like nuclear power, Adams said. Building data centers  in conjunction with nuclear reactors to generate their power would fuel even more construction and energy jobs, he added. In Kewaunee County, an energy company wants to rebuild Kewaunee Power Station, a defunct nuclear power plant, anticipating energy demand from AI and data centers.

In more rural communities or near smaller data centers, the trickle-down effects could prove more modest — perhaps a few new restaurants and housing units, Adams said. 

Alexander also noted the effects could also be less concentrated, with growth spilling into neighboring cities as employees work at the center but live elsewhere.

But will enough permanent jobs be created to sustain the growth sparked during the early labor-intensive development phase? That’s unclear, Adams said. 

“We don’t have a firm enough grasp about the indirect effects in the longer term,” Adams said. “Short run, that’ll be great. Longer run, can we sustain the new development that might happen around these? I don’t know the answer to that. I think if the power generation side of it comes in connection with them, there’s more of a chance that that will work.”

Who are data center technicians?

Data center technicians are perhaps the most novel job introduced by the data center boom. The roles are more specialized than others needed inside the warehouses.

Job postings for data center technicians at Microsoft’s Milwaukee location say the workers will be “preparing, installing, performing diagnostics, troubleshooting, replacing, and/or decommissioning equipment under the guidance of more experienced data center colleagues.” 

The posting states the job requires a high school diploma, knowledge of computer hardware and some experience with IT equipment. Pay for lower-level technicians ranges from $23 to $36 per hour, with more experienced workers making up to about $48 per hour.

Adams said likely candidates will include engineers and computer coders and people now entering college with their sights on data center work. Microsoft and Gateway Technical College in Kenosha launched a “Data Center Academy,” preparing students to work in data center operations. Adams believes partnerships like this will become more common.

Are these good jobs?

You can use the interactive table below to explore many of the jobs data centers are expected to create, including wages, employment totals and required education.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Here’s what the data center boom means for Wisconsin’s workforce is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

While digging out from the snow, we’ve also been marking Sunshine Week — an annual reminder that access to public records and meetings isn’t a luxury or abstract concept. It determines whether the public knows what the government is doing with tax dollars and public trust.

That’s why we published a pair of stories around those themes this week. One, from Tom Kertscher, shows how nondisclosure agreements tied to data center developments limit what communities can learn about projects in their own backyards. The other, from our partners at The Badger Project, examines a long-standing loophole that allows Wisconsin lawmakers to delete records that would otherwise belong to the public.

At the same time, we asked our team to look inward — reflecting on stories we could not have reported without the sunshine laws that quietly power our newsroom every day.

Here are a few recent examples.

‘They are squeezing everybody in this park to death’: Owners of manufactured homes get little protection as private equity moves in

Public records — including state licensing files, inspection records and regulatory complaints — allowed Addie Costello to document Wisconsin’s failure to enforce basic protections for manufactured home owners as private equity firms buy up parks to maximize profits. The story, part of our Forgotten homes series on the promises and perils of manufactured housing as an affordable path to ownership, amplified tenant concerns. It also preceded legislation to limit rent increases, require annual state inspections and make it easier for residents to purchase communities through cooperatives.

Wisconsin’s work-release program promises opportunity. Prisoners say jobs are scarce.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections provided little meaningful data to Natalie Yahr about its work-release program — a gap that became part of the story. Officials said they do not tally counts of how many people participate. To provide context, Yahr obtained public records from other states, offering points of comparison. The reporting highlights how limited transparency makes it difficult to evaluate a program that can help incarcerated people build resumes, pay court costs and prepare for release — while helping employers fill jobs.

Pest or climate ally? DNR weighs new beaver management plan under mounting scrutiny

This story was strengthened due to persistence. Bennet Goldstein filed records requests across all 10 Mississippi River Basin “stem states,” plus Oklahoma and Michigan, to understand how agencies manage beavers. He also pressed the U.S. Department of Agriculture for documents it initially withheld — records released only after our attorney signaled a willingness to challenge the denial. The reporting produced a fuller picture of how policy decisions ripple across ecosystems and communities, and it is helping shape debate over flood mitigation and climate resilience. It also found Wisconsin stands out for the number of beavers and dams removed, the millions spent and how officials justify the approach.

Duty to Disclose: Milwaukee County’s flawed Brady list

Our collaboration with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMJ4 News relies on records many jurisdictions resist releasing, if they store them at all: “Brady lists” of officers with credibility issues who might need to testify in court. After pressure from news organizations, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office released its list in late 2024, enabling a series of stories examining who is included — and who is not.

That reporting has revealed significant gaps, which TMJ4 and the Journal Sentinel are continuing to explore. Officers accused of falsifying reports, contradicting body camera footage or costing taxpayers millions in misconduct lawsuits are absent from the list, raising questions about how prosecutors define credibility. The disclosures have fueled public debate, prompted additions and removals from the list and spurred deeper scrutiny of best practices — and whether Milwaukee County meets them.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Let the sunshine in: How public records shape what Wisconsin knows is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin Legislature sent a $133 million plan to combat contamination from so-called forever chemicals to Gov. Tony Evers for his approval Tuesday, promising an end to years of squabbling between the Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers over the issue.

Evers said immediately after the Senate approved the bills Tuesday afternoon that he would sign them into law. The rare bipartisan compromise offers at least some hope for the scores of Wisconsin villages, towns and cities grappling with PFAS pollution in their groundwater.

“Beautiful. This has been a long time coming,” Campbell Town Supervisor Lee Donahue said of the Senate votes. Residents of the town of 4,300 have been drinking bottled water since state health officials warned them in 2021 that more than 500 wells were contaminated. Donahue said state dollars would help the town transition from private wells to a municipal water system treated for PFAS.

“This is definitely a day for celebration,” she said.

Communities across the U.S. struggling with PFAS

PFAS — short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are manmade chemicals that don’t easily break down in nature. They’re found in a wide range of products, including cookware and stain-resistant clothing, and previously were often used in aviation fire-suppression foam. The chemicals have been linked to health problems, including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease, and have been shown to make vaccines less effective.

Communities located near industrial sites and military bases nationwide are grappling with PFAS contamination. Government estimates suggest as much as half of U.S. households have some level of PFAS in their water — whether it comes from a private well or a tap. While federal officials have put strict limits on water provided by utilities, those rules don’t apply to the roughly 40 million people in the U.S. who rely on private drinking water wells.

Municipalities across Wisconsin are struggling with PFAS contamination in groundwater, including Marinette, Madison, Peshtigo, Wausau, the town of Stella and Campbell. The waters of Green Bay also are contaminated.

In Stella, for example, private wells were badly contaminated by PFAS-laden fertilizer spread on farm fields. The state has had limited resources to help, struggling to provide widespread free testing, and officials have offered only a limited grant program for well replacements.

‘Some forward movement’

Tom LaDue, a Stella resident, lives on the shores of a highly contaminated lake. He said the Senate signing off on the bills was a rare bit of good news for his town of 670 people. Testing has shown very little PFAS in his private well, but LaDue sits on a town committee that tracks PFAS developments and he knows dozens of people are living on bottled water. He said he hopes the town will get enough money to at least test private wells for pollution.

“We’ve been waiting for it for a long time,” he said of releasing the money. “We’ll be letting everyone in the town know this has passed and we’ll finally see, hopefully, some forward movement in our small town.”

Evers and Republicans have been at odds for years over how best to address the pollution. The 2023-25 state budget created a $125 million trust fund to combat PFAS contamination, but the two camps haven’t been able to agree on how to spend it.

Two years ago the governor vetoed a GOP bill that would have spent the money on grants for municipalities, landowners and waste disposal facilities to test for PFAS in water treatment plants and wells. But Evers said the bill limited state regulators’ authority to hold polluters liable, and environmental groups urged him to kill the proposal.

Compromise bills unlock tens of millions of dollars

The fund has grown to $133.4 million during the stalemate, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The chief sponsors of that original bill, Republican Sen. Eric Wimberger and Rep. Jeff Mursau, released two new proposals in January after discussions with the state Department of Natural Resources, an Evers Cabinet agency.

The first bill would spend $132.2 million from the PFAS trust fund for community grants, well replacements, airports and industrial properties and $1.3 million from the state’s general fund to cover 10 new state Department of Natural Resources positions to administer the spending.

The second proposal establishes a list of entities that would be exempt from liability for contamination, similar to the bill Evers vetoed in 2024. Included on the list are people who spread PFAS while in compliance with permits that did not address PFAS; landowners whose property was contaminated pursuant to a permit; owners of contaminated industrial property who didn’t cause the pollution; and fire departments that used PFAS in their foam. Businesses that own or operate facilities that currently or have used PFAS or have ever spread industrial waste could be held liable, however.

Bills generate overwhelming support

The Assembly passed both pieces of legislation unanimously on the last day of its regular two-year session in February. The Senate passed the bills overwhelmingly, approving one bill 33-0 and the other on a voice vote with almost no discussion.

“I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right,” Evers said in a statement.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Senate OKs $133 million package to combat ‘forever chemicals,’ sends bills to governor is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

All public employees in Wisconsin must retain records, per the state’s open records law. Except one group. The ones who wrote that law.

State legislators have exempted themselves from the retention portion of the law. Some want to change that.

“The public should not have to worry about legislators having secret conversations or deleting emails,” said state Rep. Clinton Anderson, D-Beloit, who is introducing a bill that would close this loophole despite the fact that the state Assembly adjourned last month for the rest of the year.

Anderson released the bill Monday because it is the start of Sunshine Week, a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.

In Wisconsin, state legislators must comply with a records request, but if they have destroyed the record, they have nothing to send.

“Obviously, it’s troubling,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. “It allows legislators to make things go away that they would rather not see the light of day.”

State Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, told the Wisconsin Examiner in 2021 that his office “frequently deletes emails during the normal course of business each day.”

And he’s not the only one.

“My office does not delete records on principle, and we should make sure every elected official is held to that same standard,” Anderson said.

In 2025, Gov. Tony Evers stepped in to close this loophole – his 2025 budget proposal included a measure to “remove the Legislature’s exemption from open records law by requiring that records and correspondence of any member of the Legislature be included in a definition of a public record to provide greater transparency for the people of Wisconsin.” The proposal also would have allocated funds and opened a full-time position with the Legislative Technology Services Bureau to carry out this new requirement. But the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee removed it from the final budget.

State Sen. Chris Larson, a Democrat from Milwaukee, has introduced bills to close that exemption for state legislators multiple times and is doing so again in the Senate this week in tandem with Anderson.

Before his election to the state Senate in 2010, Larson served on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. As a public official, he had to maintain all his records there and assumed the same when he arrived in the Legislature.

But as his email inbox filled up and ran low on space, Larson said he was told by IT staff to simply delete old messages.

“People often wonder why so many wildly popular policies go session after session without a vote or even a public hearing, while special interest slop rises to the top of the agenda,” said Justin Bielinski, Larson’s spokesman. “The Wisconsin Legislature’s exemption from record retention requirements creates a perverse incentive to do the people’s business in secret. If lawmakers aren’t going to be responsive to their constituents’ needs, the least we can do is allow people to find out who they are listening to, and whose voices they choose to ignore.”

Larson’s bills to close the loophole have been ignored by Republicans who control the Legislature, he said. The majority party generally pays little attention to bills from the minority.

But the fact the Wisconsin Legislature is even subject to the open records law, albeit with a caveat, makes it one of the more transparent states. Nearly a quarter of all states — 12 in total — do not even allow records from the Legislature to be accessed by the public, according to a study from The Journal of Civic Information. Congress has also excluded itself from open records requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

The exemption for legislators here “completely undermines Wisconsin’s public records law and the ability for citizens to trust their Legislature,” said David Cuillier, director of the University of Florida’s Brechner Freedom of Information Project. “It’s really quite bizarre and an outlier in the United States. The right thing to do is remove it and restore accountability and credibility to the institution.”

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported newsroom in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A loophole lets Wisconsin lawmakers delete public records is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

At a Jan. 28 public forum on Wisconsin data centers, Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke boasted that his city did not sign a nondisclosure agreement that would have concealed plans for a $15 billion facility that is now under construction.

“If you’ve got the courage and you push back and say, ‘Listen, we’re just not going to do it,’ (the data center developers) will find a way to operate without having to sign an NDA,” Neitzke said. “So, we did not and we will not.”

On the same day Neitzke was touting his community’s openness, Port Washington was in court over its refusal to provide communications about its data center. The city had turned over emails, but not documents attached to the emails.

It’s one example, beyond NDAs, of local governments hiding details of proposed large-scale AI data centers, which are projected to span hundreds of acres, cost billions of dollars and transform communities.

Wisconsin Watch reported in January that NDAs were signed in at least four Wisconsin communities where artificial intelligence data centers are proposed or being built — Beaver Dam, Kenosha, Janesville and Menomonie. Since then, Wisconsin Watch has learned about a fifth project with an NDA, this one in the town of Beloit — showing that discussions there occurred more than a year before any public announcement was made.

Port Washington stymies public records requests 

Construction began in December on Lighthouse, the 672-acre Vantage-OpenAI-Oracle data center campus in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee.

Four months earlier, philanthropist Lynde Uihlein, a town of Port Washington resident, environmentalist and major Democratic donor, made a public records request of the city. She asked for any communications between the city and the data center developer dating back to Jan. 1, 2025.

The Wisconsin public records law declares that “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government” and that governmental bodies must respond to requests “as soon as practicable and without delay.”

After nearly three months, the city did not reply to Uihlein’s request, so she sued.

The city responded by turning over emails, but not the documents attached to those emails, such as a draft development agreement. The city’s attorney explained that Uihlein didn’t specifically ask for the attachments.

“When cities want to court large, community-changing development, they also should be prepared to act with maximum transparency,” said Madison lawyer Christa Westerberg, one of the lawyers representing Uihlein.

“The city of Port Washington has been too slow to respond to requests about the data center and even when it has, there are gaps, like providing emails without attachments. This was foreseeable and avoidable.”

Wisconsin Watch is one of Westerberg’s clients, but is not a party to this case. Westerberg did not participate in the writing or editing of this report.

City Attorney Matthew Nugent told Wisconsin Watch: “The assertion that the city refused to produce email attachments is inaccurate. The city reasonably interpreted the original request to seek the email communications themselves, that is, the body of the email message, not the separate documents attached to those communications.”

At a court hearing Jan. 28, Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Adam Gerol rejected the idea that documents attached to emails aren’t part of the emails themselves. “There has not been a complete response to the open records request,” he said.

In February, the city turned over emails along with attachments to Uihlein, and Gerol ruled that city officials must submit to depositions to answer questions from Uihlein’s lawyers.

Gerol will be asked to determine whether the city has fully complied with the public records law, whether its delay in replying violated the law and whether it should have to pay Uihlein’s legal fees.

Another denial

The city used the same rationale to partially deny another public records request.

Port Washington resident Michael Beaster, an opponent of the data center, asked the city Nov. 20 for emails and other communications between city officials and the data center developer. 

The city replied six weeks later, sending some emails but no attachments to the emails. An attorney for the city told Beaster he would need to submit another request if he wanted attachments because Beaster did not specifically request those.

“It feels like they’re being overly cautious in trying to protect the city,” Beaster said, “which certainly isn’t serving the public.”

Beaster is running unopposed April 7 for an open seat on the Port Washington city council. He helped lead a failed effort to recall Neitzke over the data center.

Neitzke said he could not comment on why the city has not turned over email attachments, other than to say he is not part of the process of releasing records.

NDA for possible Beloit data center

News surfaced this month of a possible data center an hour southeast of Madison in the town of Beloit. The town, saying it was responding to information “being disseminated” about a possible data center, announced it had begun “very preliminary discussions” and signed a predevelopment agreement with Delaware-based Cambrin LLC.

Wisconsin Watch has since learned that the town signed an NDA with Cambrin in February 2025 — more than a year before making its announcement.

The NDA and other documents provided to Wisconsin Watch in response to a public records request do not directly refer to a data center. 

The documents indicate that “Project Corn Maze” would initially include 700,000 square feet of buildings, employ 50 people and require tax incremental financing from the town.

The records also show that the town has exchanged emails about the project since April 2025. They indicate that Cambrin LLC was formed to make the development proposal and don’t identify what company would operate the data center.

Signs of openness 

Access to records also was at issue for the first phase of a data center complex south of Milwaukee in Mount Pleasant. The first center in that Microsoft complex is expected to open later this year.

This month the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council announced it is giving its annual citizen openness advocate award to Midwest Environmental Advocates. The public interest law firm successfully sued the city of Racine for records disclosing how much water it is projecting to provide for the Mount Pleasant data center.

The council also gave an award to Wisconsin Watch for its story on data center NDAs.

Amid reports of a possible data center in Grant County and as Meta seeks to add a data center to one it is building in Beaver Dam, there is movement toward more openness on several fronts.

The state Public Service Commission, which approves requests for new utility plants and utility rates, initially accepted a confidentiality request from Alliant Energy in its application to serve the Beaver Dam data center despite numerous redactions — including how much energy the center would use.

On Feb. 26, however, state administrative law judge Michael Newmark, who is overseeing the PSC hearings on the request, told Alliant to resubmit its request with fewer redactions. Alliant did the next day with less information blacked out. 

“It seemed like the redactions were not going to allow us to do sort of the basic functions of open government,” Newmark said at the hearing. Fewer redactions would enable the commission to rule on the application in a way that is “defensible in court and in the court of public opinion,” he said.

Last week the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Water Policy released a model for state legislation to “promote transparency and environmental protections” for data centers.

The model, which recommends temporary statewide moratoriums on data centers, makes several recommendations to increase transparency, including a ban on local governments signing NDAs and requiring public disclosures on water and electricity use before any approvals are given.

The “continued absence of comprehensive and timely disclosure requirements,” the report said, “undermines public understanding and limits informed decision-making around siting, permitting and environmental impacts.”

And on Friday, a state Senate committee on a 4-1 vote approved Senate Bill 969, which would prohibit local governments from signing NDAs with data center developers. No further action has yet been scheduled.

The committee also advanced, 3-2, Assembly Bill 840, which would require the Public Service Commission to protect ratepayers from the costs of providing electricity to data centers. The bill contains a controversial requirement that renewable energy used for a data center be located on the site. The Assembly passed the bill 53-44 in January. 

Legislation banning NDAs is pending in several states, including two that took action last week.

A Minnesota House of Representatives committee approved a bill banning data center NDAs and sent it to the House floor.

In Florida, a provision banning NDAs that industry groups lobbied against was removed from a data center bill. 

A report released last week by the Alliance of Great Lakes urged governmental bodies to limit the use of NDAs so that the public can know how much water and energy a data center will use.

“When critical information is withheld, decision-making shifts risk from private developers to communities and public utilities,” the report said.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

More than NDAs. Wisconsin communities face scrutiny over data center secrecy. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice first elected in 2007 announced Monday that she will not seek a third 10-year term next year, giving liberals another chance to expand their majority as cases affecting redistricting, union rights, school funding and other hot button issues await.

Justice Annette Ziegler, 62, becomes the second conservative justice in as many years to decide against seeking reelection after liberals took majority control of Wisconsin’s highest court in 2023. Liberals held onto their majority last year in a race that broke national spending records and saw billionaire Elon Musk traveling to the state to hand out $1 million checks to conservative voters.

There’s another election on April 7 for the open seat caused by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley’s decision not to run for reelection. The liberal candidate, Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, has outraised her conservative opponent, fellow Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, allowing her to spend more on television ads in what so far has been a low-profile race given that the court’s majority is not on the line.

Liberals are seeking to win their fourth Supreme Court race in a row dating back to 2020 and solidify their hold on the court.

Ziegler’s decision to step down means there will be another open race next year. If liberals win this year, their majority would increase to 5-2, and in 2027 they could grow it to 6-1. If the conservative candidate wins this year, the liberal majority would remain 4-3, and next year the best conservatives could do would be to keep it at 4-3.

Ziegler consistently sided with fellow conservatives justices, including in 2020 when the court fell one vote short of overturning President Donald Trump’s election loss that year. Ziegler was in the minority after a conservative swing justice sided with liberals.

Cases expected to come before the court in coming years include challenges to congressional district maps, the future of a state law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers and an effort to increase spending on public schools.

Liberals have struck down a state abortion ban law and ordered new legislative maps since taking control of the court, fueling Democrats’ hopes of capturing a majority this November.

Ziegler, who was chief justice between 2021 and 2025, previously served as a circuit court judge in Washington County for 10 years.

“Now is the right time for me to step away to spend more time with my husband, kids and grandkids,” she said in a statement.

“I am incredibly proud that in all my elections I had support from a broad spectrum of legal, civic, law enforcement and political leaders — both Democrats and Republicans — who believed in my commitment to fairness, ethics and the rule of law,” Ziegler said.

The election to replace Ziegler is April 6, 2027.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler won’t seek reelection is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that highlights how judges can apply different interpretations of the law and constitution to suit their ideological viewpoints.

The case resulted from disagreements between the Republican-led Legislature and Attorney General Josh Kaul following the 2018 lame-duck session that limited the powers of the incoming Democratic administration. 

The lawsuit, which the Legislature filed in 2021 when there was a conservative majority on the state Supreme Court, focuses on who has oversight of the dollars the state receives from legal settlements. The Legislature argues the 2018 law requires the attorney general to put money from a financial settlement in the general fund, which state lawmakers control. Kaul argues that he can put settlement funds in accounts that the Department of Justice oversees and still comply with the law.

In December 2024, the 2nd District Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling reversed part of a circuit court decision that said Kaul could continue to direct settlement dollars into DOJ-controlled accounts.

The Appeals Court opinion was written by Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative who is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April against liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor. Lazar ruled the language in the 2018 law aligns with the Legislature’s arguments that settlement dollars belong in the general fund. 

“Despite the legislation expressly designed to bring all settlement funds under legislative control and despite the simple and plain language of that legislation, the Attorney General has continued to act precisely in the manner which the Legislature sought to end,” Lazar wrote.

But in a dissent, retiring Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, the only liberal on the Waukesha-based District 2 Court of Appeals, criticized Lazar for basing her decision on what the Legislature intended, rather than a strict reading of various clauses in the law that may give the attorney general wiggle room.

The oral arguments this week follow a series of decisions in recent years on lawsuits challenging the separation of powers between the Legislature and the executive branch. In June, the court unanimously struck down a portion of the 2018-era lame-duck laws that required the attorney general to receive approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing committee to settle most civil cases. For the 4-3 divided liberal-majority court, the rulings in these cases have shown agreement among the justices over the need for clear boundaries between the core powers of the branches of government, legal experts said. 

Where this latest lawsuit differs is the debate seems focused more on the language of the law than the separation of powers, said Chad Oldfather, a professor at the Marquette University Law School. Typically the conservative approach to statutory interpretation has been to focus on the basic meaning of the law while the liberal approach has been to examine the law’s intent. That has been the opposite in this case, Oldfather said.  

“The advocates are kind of flipping a little bit the usual ideology of the statutory interpretation approach,” Oldfather said. “And all that’s going on while it’s clear that there are some people on the court who want to fundamentally shift the way the court does statutory interpretation. So there’s a real interesting mix of issues going on in this case.” 

The law in question has been wrapped up in a yearslong debate over separation of powers that has made its way to justices in recent years, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. In many of those cases, the Supreme Court opinions have shown the justices interested in balanced branches of government. 

“There seems to be an inclination to reinstate greater separation of powers between the branches and preserve the important roles of various actors, whether that’s the attorney general or the governor or the Legislature,” Godar said. 

For example, in a 6-1 decision in 2024, with Justice Annette Ziegler dissenting, the court ruled the Legislature’s Republican-led budget-writing committee could not block spending by the Department of Natural Resources for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund. 

“While the legislature’s motivation for overseeing the public fisc may be well-intentioned, fundamentally, the legislature may not execute the law,” Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the conservative bloc, wrote in the majority opinion. “The people gave the executive alone this power.”

In the 7-0 decision last June on the Legislature’s approval of the attorney general’s civil case settlements, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that the constitution does not give lawmakers the ability to execute the law when there are financial decisions. 

“If the Legislature has a constitutional interest in the execution of the laws every time an executive action involves money, there would be virtually no area where the Legislature could not insert itself into the execution of the law,” Hagedorn wrote. 

There are still areas of disagreement among the court in these types of cases. Last July, the court reached a 4-3 decision in a lawsuit between Gov. Tony Evers and the Legislature, which determined 2018 lame-duck legislation that gave a legislative committee the ability to delay rules and policy changes from executive agencies was unconstitutional.

In that case, the court’s four liberal justices were in the majority. Hagedorn wrote an opinion both concurring and dissenting with the majority’s decision, while Bradley and Ziegler dissented.

“The majority has created a grave constitutional imbalance by strictly construing, and thus confining, the constitutional powers of the legislative branch while not doing the same when it comes to the power of the executive branch,” Ziegler wrote.

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Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race could have spurred another bank-breaking election cycle. Instead, national super donors have kept their pocketbooks closed, and with only a month until the election, the liberal candidate appears to be sailing ahead in contributions.

Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate, has raised more than $3.8 million over the past year, compared to the $438,000 conservative candidate Maria Lazar, who is also an appellate judge, has brought in. 

The low-key nature of this year’s race is a sharp reversal from the 2025 state Supreme Court contest, in which the candidate campaigns, political parties, outside interest groups and mega billionaire Elon Musk combined to spend a record $144.5 million on the contest. Brad Schimel lost to Susan Crawford, maintaining the liberal majority on the court.

But the financial landscape of the election is not a done deal, both camps say.

“We can’t take anything for granted on our side,” said Sam Roecker, a Taylor adviser. “We know that there are supporters of (Lazar’s) who have the capacity to dump a lot of money in this race, and we saw what happened last time around when tens of millions of dollars got poured in.”

And as more voters start paying attention to the race, Lazar has a “window of opportunity” in the weeks leading up to the April 7 election, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said.

“The truth is a lot of folks on the conservative side thought that our candidate wasn’t going to have a very strong chance a month ago. Now we think she could actually win,” McCoshen said.

Without big spending, this year’s state Supreme Court campaigns aren’t breaking through to voters like they did in 2025. Just 6% of voters said they had heard a lot about the election, compared to 39% at the same time last year, according to a Marquette Law School Poll released last month.

Despite Taylor’s wide fundraising advantage and outsize TV advertising, about two-thirds of voters are undecided, the same poll found. Taylor polled 5 percentage points higher than Lazar among voters who have made a decision, narrowly outside the margin of error.

“The real point is it’s not getting through to voters, or voters haven’t tuned into it. But you know, that’s more than a six to one greater awareness a year ago than it is today,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “I’m not saying that we’ll go into election day without anybody having heard anything, but it was an earlier campaign last year and with more resources behind it.”

Generally, liberal candidates have an advantage in spring judicial elections, Franklin said. College graduates and older voters, who have shifted leftward over the past several decades, are the primary voting blocs in spring court elections.

The stakes are different this cycle. The court’s liberal majority is secure. The winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Still, losing this race would make it even harder for conservatives to regain power on the state’s high court. If they lose this year, they would have to retain the seats held by conservatives Annette Ziegler next year and Brian Hagedorn in 2029 and then flip seats held by liberals Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky in 2028 and 2030.

“Last year’s was to determine which ideological faction will have control of a majority of the court, and this year’s won’t change that. This year’s is to replace a conservative on a court that leans liberal already,” said Jeff Mandell, the co-founder of the progressive organization Law Forward.

Janine Geske. a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said that liberal voters have been galvanized to turn out for judicial elections by hot-button national issues like abortion and gerrymandering that have taken center stage in the state’s highest court. 

“Those issues became really the issues on the ballot versus the candidates themselves. As a result, I think we had more progressive candidates,” Geske said.

It’s a playbook that was adopted by Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won Wisconsin’s high-profile race in 2023 on a platform of sharing her “values” regarding political issues that were likely to come before the court.

Lazar just might find success with that strategy, too, McCoshen said.

“Judge Lazar is doing a better job of at least tipping her hat to what her conservative leanings may be so that voters have a better understanding of what they’re voting for,” McCoshen said.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

One year after Elon Musk’s Wisconsin spending blitz, the state’s Supreme Court race falls quiet is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

When this legislative session began, Wisconsin Senate leaders made the unusual decision not to create a committee dedicated to election policy for the first time in nearly two decades. That choice has had a measurable consequence: The Senate has taken up far fewer election bills than the Assembly, and several measures that cleared the lower chamber are now stalled with no clear path forward.

Of the 19 election bills that Votebeat has tracked this legislative session, 18 have gotten at least a public committee hearing in the Assembly, compared with nine in the Senate. Fourteen of those bills passed the Assembly, compared with six in the Senate. 

Even in a session when the Senate has generally moved more slowly than the Assembly on many issues — as of Feb. 25, the Assembly had passed 439 bills since the start of the current two-year session, while the Senate passed 276 — the disparity is especially stark on elections.

Both chambers’ election activity is down compared to last session. With a dedicated election committee in the Senate, about 30 election bills received a committee hearing, compared with about 45 in the Assembly. Republicans have controlled both chambers for more than a decade.

“The lack of the dedicated committee has definitely changed things,” said Sen. Mark Spreitzer, a Democratic member of the local government and government operations committees. Without a clear Republican point person on election policy in the Senate, he said, the chamber is allowing the Assembly to drive most of the legislative action.

Some of the bills that have moved through the Assembly but haven’t passed the Senate include proposals to expand early voting hours and to bring the state in line with a 2022 federal law regarding the timing of casting electoral votes and certifying election results in presidential elections, designed to prevent the kind of post-election chaos that President Donald Trump and his allies sowed after the 2020 election. 

Two other bills — one that would require ballots to include plain-language explanations of proposed constitutional amendments and another requiring early in-person voting hours in every municipality — have gotten a public hearing in the Senate but have since stalled.

Clerks have told Votebeat that some of the stalled bills would significantly improve their efficiency  — including an omnibus proposal to create a system tracking voters adjudicated incompetent and also send voters text notifications on the status of their absentee ballots, said Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, a Democrat. That proposal passed through the Assembly in November, but hasn’t been heard in the Senate.

Given the absence of a dedicated Senate election committee, Tollefson added, the Assembly has been doing the heavy lifting. But even with ready-made bills, the Senate does not appear to be eager to pass election legislation.

In every legislative session since 2009, there has been a Senate committee formally tasked with covering election legislation. Committee chairs typically serve as the go-to experts on their panels’ subject areas. They consult with lobbying groups, schedule public hearings and set up committee votes — giving them the power to advance or stall legislation.

But when election bills are scattered across multiple committees, there’s no clear point person in the Senate to guide them through the process.

In the absence of a dedicated election committee in this session, several committee leaders declined to explain whether or when the stalled election bills might move. And some voting groups say it has made it harder to know who to consult with in the chamber to discuss election legislation.

At a WisPolitics event in Madison on Feb. 12, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said that the absence of a Senate committee “doesn’t make it hard to pass election bills.” He added that there are “definitely avenues where election bills can run in the Senate,” including the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development and the Senate Committee on Transportation and Local Government.

LeMahieu, a Republican, didn’t respond to Votebeat’s request for comment. Sen. Dan Feyen, the chair of the government operations committee, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. Sen. Cory Tomczyk, who chairs the local government committee, also didn’t respond to a request for comment.

But even some of their fellow Republicans are seeing the effects. For example, Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara is the author of two of the bills languishing in the Senate, which would require and fund a certain number of early in-person voting hours in every municipality. Those reforms, she said, are “crucial to restoring confidence in our election process.” 

She said in the Assembly, municipalities and clerks are working on a few details before the bills receive a final Senate vote, though both proposals passed the Assembly in November. The proposal to require the in-person hours got a Senate hearing in late January but has seen no activity since, while the bill to fund it hasn’t gotten a hearing at all. 

There could still be a late flurry of committee activity. On Feb. 27, the Senate government operations committee approved the proposal to bring the state in line with new federal laws regulating presidential elections. But the next presidential race is two years away, and most of the bills that would affect all elections — not just presidential ones — remain stalled. Another bill to require the Wisconsin Elections Commission to hear complaints against itself was scheduled for a March 3 hearing.

With the legislative session entering its final stretch, though, the stalled bills face increasingly long odds. The last general floor session period of the biennium ends on March 19, and the Assembly is effectively finished for the session. That means the Senate only has a few weeks left to consider election bills that already cleared the lower chamber, and if the Senate modifies any of them, the Assembly is unlikely to return to approve the changes. 

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

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None of the billion-dollar-plus data centers planned for Wisconsin are yet online, but the nationwide, artificial-intelligence-fueled market is already spurring economic growth in the state.

Wisconsin business leaders say no comprehensive accounting has been done. But just three Wisconsin companies have already amassed more than $1 billion in data center-related business: 

• Regal Rexnord, a Milwaukee maker of motors, announced in February it had received $735 million in orders from data centers.

• Generac, a Waukesha-based manufacturer, told Wisconsin Watch it has a backlog of $400 million in orders for backup generators for data centers. Moreover, Generac announced Feb. 19 it is acquiring a 120-employee Illinois engineering company to help meet data center demand. 

• Racine-based Modine announced in February 2025 it received $180 million in orders from a new customer for data center cooling systems to be manufactured in Virginia and Mississippi. In addition, the company in November opened a 155,000-square-foot plant in suburban Milwaukee to manufacture the systems.

Many companies don’t publicly report details on data center business they do, so it’s impossible to tally total economic impact in Wisconsin. But there are other examples.

Trane Technologies is manufacturing cooling systems for data centers in La Crosse, where it was founded in 1913, and says data centers are a strong part of its business. In November 2023, Excellerate opened a 385,000-square-foot plant in Little Chute, primarily to manufacture “modular electrical buildings” for data centers. Maysteel, a Washington County manufacturer, opened a data center hub in November 2024 and announced in February it is expanding the operation. 

The sheer demand to outfit data centers has meant that some business has trickled down from larger companies to smaller ones.

Modular Power & Data has 90 employees in Dane County and suburban Milwaukee to manufacture electrical distribution products. Chief Operating Officer Erik Thompson told Wisconsin Watch that Modular did $10 million of data center business in 2025 and expects to more than double that in 2026.

That work is “transforming a very small company into what I believe will be a very large Wisconsin manufacturer,” Thompson said. “Without this growth, we’d always be much smaller.” 

Because no hyperscale data centers are scheduled to begin operating in Wisconsin until later this year, their ultimate economic impact remains unknown.

Nationally, data centers are known for spurring construction work. That includes companies such as Brownsville-based Michels Corp., a lead contractor on the $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, and Waukesha-based Boldt Co. But those jobs are often temporary. 

“The standard data center development model — speedy dealmaking and opaque negotiations — delivers short-term construction jobs and revenue, but little durable local economic upside,” the Washington, D.C.- based Brookings think tank concluded in February.

In Wisconsin, data center expenditures are projected to raise the state’s gross domestic product from $354 million in 2024 to $881 million in 2029, according to University of Virginia economist João-Pedro Ferreira, author of a study done for the Joyce Foundation. The data center workforce is expected to triple from 360 to 1,143 jobs, but constitute only 0.09% of the overall labor market.

“The impacts might seem a lot, but they are not,” Ferreira said.

At least $46 billion in hyperscale data centers are under construction or under consideration in Wisconsin. Besides Port Washington, $20 billion worth of data centers are under construction and planned in Mount Pleasant, and a $1 billion facility is being built in Beaver Dam. Proposals are pending in Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie. 

That’s as concerns about impacts on land, water and electricity spur loud opposition to data centers in Wisconsin. On Facebook alone, more than 24,000 people have joined groups to fight hyperscale centers that are proposed or under construction in the state. 

But Wisconsin businesses see more growth from AI. In November, a foundation connected with Waukesha County-based Pieper Electric announced a $2 million donation to expand Waukesha County Technical College’s Applied AI Lab.

Dale Kooyenga, CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and a former Republican state lawmaker, said skills being developed for data center construction have value after the facilities are built.

“These men and women building these data centers aren’t building just buildings, they’re building the world’s largest computers,” he said. 

Kooyenga also pushed back on claims that AI will be bad for the economy.

“The concept that robots and technology are out to get your jobs has been a concept in America since 1900. That’s not a new fear,” he said. “But the fact is, is that there will be a different-looking economy and different opportunities.”

AI’s growth is affecting workers unevenly across industries. 

It’s reducing employment in the most AI-exposed industries, such as computer systems design, and it’s especially hitting younger workers, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis. 

But wages in those sectors have continued to grow as AI tools are benefiting veteran workers — those who have gained knowledge from experience.

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Seventy-two Wisconsin school districts are going to referendum in April seeking just over $1 billion from taxpayers at a time when voters indicate they are less likely to support increased funding for schools. 

A record high 60% of registered voters said reducing property taxes was more important than increasing spending on public schools, according to the recent Marquette University Law School poll conducted in February. Fifty-seven percent of voters in the same poll said they would vote against a school referendum, same as October, but a reversal from six years ago when 57% said they would support one. 

The public concern about property taxes creates an especially difficult environment this year for the school districts seeking financial approvals from voters. Sixty-two districts are pursuing operational referendums this spring, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction. Operational questions ask voters to approve whether school districts can increase taxes to pay for things such as educational programs, technology and transportation services. 

The rest of the referendums in April would allow districts to borrow money for capital construction projects. Two districts, Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie, are asking voters to approve both capital and operational referendums. 

Approval rates for districts have declined since 2018, according to research from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. A record number of school districts proposed referendum questions to voters in 2024, but the 70% approval rate was the lowest passage rate for referendums in a midterm or presidential election year since 2014. More than 20% of the districts going to referendum this April are returning to voters after failed referendums in 2025. 

In the meantime, debates continue at the Capitol over state funding for public schools. Gov. Tony Evers and Republican legislative leaders are expected to continue negotiating over how to use the state’s $2.4 billion surplus and what amount should be used to lower property taxes and support public schools. Just last week, a group of Wisconsin parents, four teacher unions and five school districts sued the Legislature arguing it’s failing to fund public schools. The Necedah Area School District, one of the plaintiffs in the case, is asking voters in April to approve a $5.8 million operational referendum across the next four school years. 

Meanwhile, Wisconsin school districts continue to battle with the financial impacts of declining enrollments and rising costs as district leaders say state funding they receive has not kept up with inflation. The Appleton Area School District is seeking a $60 million operating referendum spread out over the next four years, which would fund efforts to help students struggling with poverty and mental health issues and plug a $13 million operating deficit that formed over three years of high inflation rates that outpaced available funding, Superintendent Greg Hartjes said. 

“Certainly the timing is not good,” Hartjes said of Appleton’s operating referendum. “But it is because of that three years of high inflation that we can’t sustain another year. If we don’t pass a referendum, we are going to cut $13 million from our budget next year. And that’s a lot of services for kids.” 

Why a school district goes to referendum

The two main sources of revenue for Wisconsin school districts are state funding and property taxes. In 1993, Wisconsin lawmakers put limits on how much school districts can increase funding from those two revenue sources. State law allows districts to go to referendum to ask voters to exceed the revenue limits with additional property taxes. 

“It sometimes gets talked about as if it’s a fluke, or if it necessarily means that something bad is happening. That isn’t always the case,” said Sara Shaw, the deputy research director at the Wisconsin Policy Forum. “You might have an instance where a local community says, ‘Actually we’re fine with this. You tax us more. We have the means to be taxed more and we have the desire to fund education more.’” 

School district revenue limits were connected to inflation until 2009, during the Great Recession, when a Democratic-controlled Legislature and Democratic governor chose to decouple them. Since then, as Republicans took control of state government in 2011, state education spending has not kept pace with inflation or the national average, according to the Policy Forum. 

In recent years, the lack of inflationary increases to revenue limits and declining school district enrollment are among the main reasons why districts have gone to referendum, said Dan Rossmiller, the executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

“At the same time, your fixed costs, such as transportation, heating, lighting, insurance, health insurance for your employees and the salaries of your employees and the portion you pay toward their retirement are all coming up generally,” Rossmiller said. “So that puts school districts in a bit of a vice.” 

The Wisconsin Rapids School District, which is asking voters to support a $19 million operating referendum over the next five years, is one of those examples. The district has an existing five-year operating referendum approved in 2021 that expires this school year, but was boosted by pandemic-related funds that are no longer available. Inflation, rising insurance costs and declining enrollment have put the district in a difficult position, said Wisconsin Rapids Superintendent Ronald Rasmussen. 

“The district is in a situation now where our expenses exceed our revenue,” Rasmussen said. 

But referendums are about compromise, Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, said at a February meeting of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee. It’s also not just schools that are feeling the impacts of inflation, Quinn said. 

“There isn’t anybody in their family budget, a local entity unit of government or state government that can afford to keep up with the inflation that we’ve had to endure over the last four to six years,” Quinn said.

What about the 400-year veto?

During the 2023-25 state budget process, Evers used the governor’s veto powers to provide an annual $325 per pupil increase to school district revenue limits for 400 years.

Republicans have repeatedly slammed the veto and advanced proposals seeking to limit the governor’s partial veto powers in the future. In February, the Legislature added to the November ballot a constitutional amendment to prevent the governor from using veto powers to increase taxes or fees. It’s unclear if the proposed language would have affected the 400-year veto because the veto didn’t directly increase taxes or fees. Instead, it gave school districts more discretion to increase property taxes.

School leaders say they’re appreciative of the revenue authority coming from the 400-year veto, but it doesn’t make up for the lack of consistent inflationary increases since 2009. Districts are also still dependent on how the Legislature acts on revenue limits or general state aid. 

“The more state aid we get means we get less property taxes,” Rasmussen said. “And this year, the revenue limit changed by $325, but the aid we got from the state that line stayed the same, so the difference was made up by local property taxes.” 

Hartjes and Rasmussen said they are approaching frustration about property taxes by trying to inform residents about the basics of school funding, being transparent with potential voters about district finances and breaking down the cost of the referendum on a typical home in their community. 

Districts across the state that are going to referendum this spring are holding similar information sessions to answer questions from potential voters and creating webpages for people seeking more information. 

It’s not an easy task, especially as the cost of living remains the top issue for Wisconsin voters this year. 

“Your price of everything else that you have to buy as a consumer is difficult,” Hartjes said. “And then to ask to have your property taxes raised? We understand the challenge for families.”

The election is April 7. Early voting starts March 24.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

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Members of an ad hoc Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources committee are urging wildlife regulators to work with a national expert as they finalize recommendations to guide state beaver management policy for the next decade.

Researchers and conservationists serving on the advisory body — which is largely composed of DNR staff and government and tribal representatives — hope that including additional scientific expertise, and even a potential computer-guided aerial beaver dam mapping survey, could assist regulators at a time when climate change is beginning to significantly alter Wisconsin weather patterns and pose widespread ecological risks.

“We’re taking our species out faster than they can recover, and when we are overexploiting our trout, when we’re overexploiting animals, plants, habitats, that’s going to make us lose these species faster,” said University of Minnesota ecohydrology professor Emily Fairfax, who has helped review and fact-check several beaver management plans and recently spoke to the committee. “I don’t think we have time to wait — full stop.”

A shift would transform long-standing beaver policy that frames the critters as a nuisance species.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services program has removed beavers and their dams in Wisconsin since 1988 under contract with the state, along with local governments, railroad companies and Indigenous tribes.

At least five states across the Mississippi River basin and Great Lakes region contract with the federal wildlife services program for beaver removal, but Wisconsin stands out among states for the quantity of beavers and dams USDA employees clear, the millions of dollars Wisconsin has invested to do so and the state’s justification.

Current trout policy includes killing beavers 

USDA killed roughly 23,500 beavers across 42 states in 2024, about 2,700 of which were in Wisconsin, ranking the state among the top five in the nation.

In Wisconsin, the agency focuses on abating transportation hazards, such as flooded roadways. But, perhaps most controversially, about a third of sites where USDA traps beavers are coldwater streams.

Wisconsin currently prioritizes maintaining free-flowing conditions on the state’s prized coldwater streams, partly to appeal to its “customers” and their fishing preferences.

But the strategy has faced increasing scrutiny, even among anglers, who are divided over the issue. Some beaver advocates say the state agency charged with protecting and enhancing natural resources shouldn’t let commercial interests unduly guide its decisions. 

In 2025, the agency trapped and cleared dams in more than 1,550 miles of coldwater streams — roughly the driving distance from Milwaukee to Salt Lake City, Utah. The DNR uses proceeds from annual trout fishing stamp sales to finance the annual undertaking.

At least two other states, Minnesota and Michigan, have employed the USDA for trout stream clearing, but at a significantly reduced scale.

The DNR doesn’t know the impacts of these policies on Wisconsin’s beaver population, as it ceased conducting aerial surveys in 2014. Agency staff, instead, estimate beaver numbers and harvest impacts using trapper surveys and voluntary reporting of annual take. Staff believe the population remains stable statewide or is even growing.

Conservationists are calling on the DNR to systematically survey the state’s beaver population. Without obtaining a reliable count, they say, it’s impossible to devise a science-based management plan. Even if beaver removal continued on trout streams, critics say the state could better estimate the population by having trappers register their beaver take, as the DNR requires for turkey, deer, bobcat and bear harvests. 

Meanwhile, an expanding body of research is showcasing beavers’ ecosystem and economic benefits and the drawbacks of removal.

Beaver dams help limit flooding

When beavers remain on the landscape, they create wetlands, which mitigate climate change impacts like drought, wildfires and flooding. Problems thought to be endemic to the American West are now creeping eastward.

Thunderstorms wreaked havoc in southeastern Wisconsin last summer, bringing more than 14 inches of rain to some parts of Milwaukee within 24 hours on Aug. 9-10. Roughly 2,000 homes sustained major damage or were destroyed in the ensuing floods, and the county now faces more than $22 million in public infrastructure repairs after being twice denied federal disaster assistance.

Beaver dams can dissipate torrents of water when the sky opens — even to the city’s benefit.

Using computer models, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers estimated that the Milwaukee River watershed could accommodate enough beaver colonies to reduce flood water volumes by 14% to 48%.

Wisconsin beaver policy understudied

But scientists face decades of institutional consensus in Wisconsin that beavers degrade stream habitat and threaten wild coldwater fisheries.

DNR fish biologists say that beavers warm water temperatures and plug coldwater streams with silt. When unobstructed, the water bodies, which tend to contain few fish species, flow fast and hard.

“Past studies have identified some positive but mostly negative effects of beavers on trout, and my research builds upon this,” DNR fisheries scientist Matthew Mitro told the beaver management committee. “The option for lethal removal (of) beavers is an important tool that should remain available for resource managers.”

Yet critics charge DNR biologists with managing streams for the primary benefit of one species by trapping out another, justifying the practice using research that hasn’t undergone scientific peer review.

A 2011 academic review of beaver-related research conducted in the Great Lakes region, which predated Mitro’s recent research, found that 72% of claims concerning beavers’ negative impacts are speculative and not backed by data, while the same held true for 49% of positive claims. The negative claims included the idea that beaver dams warm stream temperatures and block trout passage.

DNR biologists often note that academic literature largely has been conducted in the western United States and can’t be directly transplanted to Wisconsin’s comparatively flat landscape.  

That is all the more reason to get off our haunches and wade into beaver ponds, Fairfax said.

“We have to follow that up by collecting our own data sets,” she said. “We have to publish them in peer-reviewed journals and get that scientific stamp of approval.”

Beaver trapping and natural predation are distinct from targeted eradication, Fairfax noted. The former can be sustainable, while stream-wide depopulation and dam removal can damage entire ecosystems. 

It’s also possible that stream clearing prevents beavers from moving to parts of Wisconsin where they are wanted or where they could thrive with fewer conflicts.

Federal government assesses Wisconsin’s beaver dealings 

The DNR beaver management plan’s update coincides with a new USDA environmental assessment of the potential impacts of its beaver and dam removal in Wisconsin.

A conservation organization founded by beaver management committee member Bob Boucher announced its intent to sue the federal agency to compel it to update its previous assessment, published more than a decade ago. Then Boucher threatened to sue the DNR after it wouldn’t release a draft of the new one, currently under review.

The 2013 assessment determined that USDA’s involvement in clearing streams and conflict areas did not significantly impact the beaver population. It estimated wildlife managers would only trap about 2,000 beavers annually, but the agency exceeded that figure within a few years.

The USDA recommends staying the course, using lethal and nonlethal methods. When analyzing alternatives, the agency concluded that other wildlife managers would continue trapping with or without federal involvement.

The USDA allocates some funding for the installation of flow control devices that can reduce the footprint of beaver ponds by lowering water levels. But nearly all beaver conflict sites the USDA handles in Wisconsin are managed through trapping. Levelers do have limited effectiveness in settings like high-flow streams or infrastructure-heavy floodplains. 

Wildlife managers say that they need flexibility because no two beaver sites are identical. 

“We’re not against beaver complexes,” DNR fisheries biologist Bradd Sims told committee members. “We’re not against ecosystem diversity, and I don’t know why people try to paint us that way. We’re an open-minded bureau that’s open to different management styles.”

Trout and beaver proponents do agree that climate change poses an existential threat to biodiversity. While the former group might view beavers as harmful to coldwater streams, the latter see their potential as a partner in creating resilient landscapes that accommodate not only fish, but also frogs, turtles, bugs, bats, birds and humans.

The committee’s next meeting is March 18 in Rothschild, Wisconsin. Ultimately, DNR staff will rewrite the current plan, release a draft for public comment and discussion at open houses, and present a revised document to the state’s natural resources board for ratification.

This story was produced in partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network, of which Wisconsin Watch is a member. Sign up for Wisconsin Watch’s newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

Pest or climate ally? DNR weighs new beaver management plan under mounting scrutiny is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.