February 24, 2025
Last week the Governor introduced his 2025-26 budget. It is the strongest budget we’ve ever seen for our climate, land, and water. The budget includes funding for many critical programs, like safe drinking water and the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund, as well as some new programs that we’ve needed for a long time.
The Governor's Budget includes:
- Funding for Clean Water programs: The budget makes a huge investment in cleaning up Wisconsin’s drinking water. The budget includes over $300 million to remove lead from service lines and more than $145 million to tackle toxic, cancer-causing PFAS, "forever chemicals" contamination statewide, along with stronger PFAS protections and emergency response resources. The budget also expands funding for the well-compensation grant program too.
- Funding for Public Lands and Expanded Access: The budget reauthorizes the important, popular Knowles Nelson Stewardship Fund and allows bonding up to $100 million per year for 10 years. This will allow for more public lands as demands for getting outdoors rises. The Budget also includes the acceptance of the Every Kid Outdoors pass for Wisconsin State Parks, removing the financial barrier to ensure that all Fourth Graders and their families can enjoy our parks.
- Support for Clean Transportation: Big news! The budget enables Regional Transit Authorities (RTAs), allowing local communities to work together to fund transit systems. The Budget also moves transit back into the transportation fund and increases funding for transit systems and paratransit systems. It also increases local ids, specialized transportation and Tribal transportation funds.
- Funding for programs to support farmers experiencing wolf-livestock conflict: There are a handful of farms in Wisconsin that are experiencing wolf-livestock conflicts. This budget funds programs to help those farmers put up things like fences to reduce or eliminate these conflicts. We have seen very successful projects eliminate or significantly reduce conflicts in the past few years.
- Support for clean energy and to reduce energy burden: The Governor’s budget creates a Green Bank to allow Wisconsinites to fund renewable projects and includes funding to transition to clean energy and support energy efficiency. The budget also includes a program that will help reduce energy burden in Milwaukee by creating a whole-home upgrade program.
- Funding for seed treatment for farmers who are experiencing crop loss from sandhill cranes: This funding will help farmers and support our sandhill crane populations. To learn more about this effort, read our blog here.
Please write to the Governor and thank him for his strong budget proposal here. Stay tuned for ways you can lobby to keep these strong programs in the budget going forward.
You can read our statement about the budget here.