PFAS cleanup funds are latest battleground in fight over money and power in the Capitol

While Gov. Tony Evers has called a meeting of the Legislature’s powerful budget committee for Tuesday morning, it’s not on official calendars and the committee’s Republican leaders have already dismissed any intention of being there.

Evers’ agenda for the Joint Finance Committee meeting is to authorize a plan to spend $125 million set aside in the 2023-25 state budget to address drinking water contamination by PFAS “forever chemicals,” along with a plan to inject $15 million into health care services in western Wisconsin that was authorized in legislation enacted earlier this year.

Barring a last-minute change of heart by the finance committee’s Republican majority, the only lawmakers at the meeting will be the panel’s four Democratic members.

“We will be there tomorrow, ready to show up for the people of Wisconsin,” the Democrats said in a joint statement issued Monday by the office of Rep. Tip McGuire, the senior Assembly member on the committee. “Hopefully our Republican colleagues change their minds and join us to find solutions to these health and safety crises.”

While the funds were included in the current state budget to combat PFAS chemicals — found in thousands of consumer and industrial products and linked to cancers and other health ailments — the committee’s GOP majority made how it was spent subject to the committee’s vote in the future.

The deadlock over Tuesday’s special meeting is just the most recent in a running conflict between Evers, a Democrat, and the Republican lawmakers over how the state spends money that has already been allocated and budgeted.

Some of those disputes, such as the PFAS money, revolve around decisions that the Joint Finance Committee’s majority made to put some funds that are allocated in the state budget into the Legislature’s supplemental appropriation rather than directly into the budget of the relevant department.

With others, the committee has retained control through other means.

‘Special meeting’

Last week, Evers vetoed SB-312, which would have created a PFAS cleanup grant program. In his veto message Evers cited provisions that would limit how the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) could act to hold accountable those responsible for PFAS contamination. He also criticized the bill for other provisions that he said would limit the department’s ability to respond to PFAS contamination.

Accompanying his veto on Tuesday, April 9, Evers called a “special meeting” of the finance committee, with two items on its agenda: the DNR’s request for the PFAS funds, and a Department of Health Services (DHS) request to release $15 million approved earlier this year for health services in the Chippewa Valley.

The latter bill was enacted in February to address the imminent closure of hospitals in Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls. When it reached his desk, Evers used his partial veto power to remove restrictions limiting that legislation to emergency services and to Eau Claire and Chippewa counties.

In his announcement for a finance committee meeting last week Evers cited language in state law that says the Joint Finance Committee “shall hold special meetings upon the call of the governor or upon call of the cochairpersons…”

The committee’s co-chairs, Sen. Howard Marklein (R- Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) responded with a joint statement rejecting the governor’s call, accusing him of “playing politics” and arguing that to release the funds, Evers should have signed the PFAS and Chippewa Valley health care bills as they were written.

They cited a Legislative Reference Bureau memo that was issued the same day at their request. According to the memo, “… the governor may call a meeting of JCF [the finance committee] but may not require the JCF cochairpersons to convene any meeting, require JCF to consider any matter, or compel any member to attend that meeting.”

An attempt Evers made in late 2019 to force a finance committee meeting to release $7.3 million in aid to address homelessness was also ignored.

Supplemental appropriations

The PFAS conflict draws attention to the finance committee leaders, increased use of their supplemental appropriation mechanism — funding a budget item, but setting that money aside so lawmakers can control it’s spent after it was approved — since Evers took office in 2019.

The practice of creating a supplemental appropriation has been around for decades, with the amount set aside varying from budget to budget, according to data from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The use of the supplemental appropriation skyrocketed in the state’s 2021-23 and 2023-25 budgets — the second and third written since Evers took office in 2019. In the 2021-23 budget, the supplemental appropriation totaled $285.4 million.  Over the two years of the current budget, the supplemental appropriation will come to nearly $268.9 million out of the $99 billion budget..

The PFAS funding is just one of several items that was shifted to the supplemental. For example, putting $500,000 in funding for reading curriculum materials in connection with a comprehensive reading and literacy bill enacted in 2023 into the supplemental appropriation allowed the finance committee to override the list of materials drawn up by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

The finance committee’s ability to redirect spending isn’t limited to budgetary items.

A 2018 law passed at the very end of then-Gov. Scott Walker’s second term gave the committee new authority to override how Wisconsin spends additional Medicaid money the state receives, even when the funding comes from sources outside the state budget.

The committee has blocked a $258 million boost that Wisconsin would receive under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to improve reimbursement and pay for home health care providers under the state’s Family Care plan, which allows Medicaid recipients who need long-term care to be cared for at home.

Opioid settlement money

The Republican majority also gave the finance committee a role in how Wisconsin spends its share of settlement funds from litigation against companies involved in the manufacture and distribution of opioid drugs. The 2021 state law enabling the state to take the settlement money subjected the money to “passive review” by the committee: If the body does not object within a deadline of 14 working days, a proposed plan is approved. While he argued at the time that the provision was unconstitutional, Evers signed the legislation.

The finance committee rewrote plans the DHS submitted for spending that money in 2023 and 2024. Now state officials are watching to see whether the health department’s 2025 plan will be accepted by the committee’s passive review deadline this Friday, April 19.

Evers has chafed under these and many other mechanisms that the Legislature has used to give the Republican majority continued hold over how the executive branch carries out its duties. In October, he took a step further, filing a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court citing multiple examples of what he declared were unconstitutional “legislative vetoes.”

The Court voted 4-3 to take the case and allowed Evers to bypass lower courts. The justices have narrowed the case to one element of Evers’ lawsuit: the finance committee’s votes to block spending by the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program. 

The fund, created in 1989, authorizes the Wisconsin DNR to purchase land to preserve natural areas, protect water quality and expand outdoor recreation opportunities. Spending over $250,000 triggers a passive review by the finance committee, but Evers in his lawsuit has claimed the Legislature has expanded the use of its blocking power.

Arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.