(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin Republicans are looking to root out fraud by changing the way state agencies go through the budget process.
Assembly Bill 556 would require 20% of state agencies to do a zero-based budgeting process each biennial budget. That would mean starting from scratch and justifying all spending instead of building on prior agency budgets.
Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, said that the state’s current budget process is broken and pointed out that the 2011-13 budget was for $64 billion while the 2026-27 budget is $111 billion.
“The most important part of the budget process is that every budget builds off of current spending levels,” Kapenga said in testimony for the bill, which he sponsors. “Simply put, every state budget is built on top of the one before it, or what’s called built from base. Rarely, if ever, is there an actual cut in spending.”
The bill passed the Assembly Committee on Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency with a 5-4 vote on Tuesday.
Kapenga said that it is necessary for state agencies to look at the effectiveness of past spending toward an agency’s purpose before choosing to spend again in the same way in the future.
“The bill also makes modifications to the way our state agencies make their budget base reports, by requiring agencies to identify the intended goal of each appropriation and analyze whether each appropriation completely succeeded in meeting its intended goal,” Kapenga said. “If not, then the agency is required to explain why. Under current law, the information agencies are required to share about how successful their prior appropriations leave much to be desired.”
Rep. Lindee Brill, R-Sheboygan Falls, said that normal business owners, like the family manufacturing business she grew up with, use zen-based budgeting and that it only makes sense for state agencies to do the same with taxpayer funds.
“Just one state over, taxpayers have been defrauded of literally billions of dollars, with the true number climbing all the time,” Brill said in testimony on the bill. “We have learned that state agencies, if not actively complicit in the fraud, allowed this to continue for cycle after cycle of budget processes.
“AB 556 provides a clear, effective measure to establish a culture of accountability in our budgeting process, to ensure that not one penny of taxpayer dollars is being wasted.”
