MON AM News: Local governments move to referendum as limited revenue options and inflation apply pressure; Businesses and DATCP celebrate National Cheese Curd Day

October 20, 2025

— Net new construction growth, decades of limited shared revenue funding, minimal new local tax options and inflation are driving communities toward referendums, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

Wisconsin Policy Forum President Jason Stein during a virtual event with local leaders said only 23 municipalities out of the more than 1,800 statewide went to referendum in 2024, but noted several of them were fairly large communities with significant budgets. For example, communities such as Madison, Oconomowoc and Marshfield increased property taxes through referendums.

New revenue from property taxes is limited by state law to the annual increase in property values due to net new construction, which is typically just over 1.5% in most communities, Stein said.

Inflation over the last few years has significantly outpaced that number, putting pressure on local governments, which generally need to include in their budgets cost of living increases for their staff.

And while many local governments saw significant increases in shared revenue last year due to Act 12, the biggest bumps mostly went to communities with small populations and low property values.

Local governments are also limited in how they can generate new revenue streams to a small number of options, such as local wheel taxes. They can’t just increase their local sales taxes or income tax without state approval.

Those factors have put local government leaders in a bind, forcing some, such as Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza, to go to referendum.

“The simple answer is, we’re running out of options,” he said during the event. “With state shared revenue traditionally declining, costs of everything going up … it gets tougher and tougher every single year.”

Stevens Point last year asked voters to hire new fire fighters, a referendum that passed.

Wiza argued the shared revenue formula should be changed to “reward the communities that are really doing well on providing the services without wasteful spending, and not put so much emphasis on that growth.”

This year is also the sixth in a row Stevens Point’s budget has had no increase at all in its operational budget “because everything that we have is being diverted to some of the rising costs that we have to deal with,” Wiza said.

The Madison suburb of Monona last year passed a referendum to raise its levy by about 30%, $3 million, each year, by just 32 votes out of roughly 9,000 residents. Monona Mayor Nancy Moore said the city “just ran out of runway.”

Tying property tax revenue growth to net new construction is tough on Monona because the city has little room to grow without demolishing existing buildings.

“When you’re doing inflow construction, it’s a lot more expensive, and it takes a lot more time,” she said. “So we have some years where we’re certainly developing and redeveloping, but we actually end up with a net figure that’s negative rather than positive.”

St. Croix County Administrator Ken Witt credited Act 12 funding for helping his county pass a referendum last year to add about $900,000 to the budget to hire eight new public safety-related positions. The county in 2023 asked voters for $3.5 million to hire 24 positions, but the shared revenue bump in 2024 paid for most of them, he said.

Witt also said his county is doing “ok” under the current shared revenue formula due to its net new construction growth and one of the fastest growing populations in the state.

“We’re able to continue to grow, whereas I know a lot of my peer counties are not able to do that,” he said. “We’re very fortunate here. But we’re barely getting by, and we’re at the top, so.”

Watch the event.

— Businesses and the state government celebrated National Cheese Curd Day last week with events and fun facts about Wisconsin’s role in the cheese industry.

The Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection in a video featured Sarah Hagenow, the 78th Alice in Dairyland, and Secretary Randy Romanski eating both fried and fresh curds together. They also touted the roughly 1,200 licensed cheesemakers that produce about 600 different types and styles of cheese in America’s Dairyland.

Wisconsin cheesemakers produced a whopping 25% of the nation’s cheese, roughly 3.58 billion pounds, in 2024, according to DATCP. That’s more than twice as much as the next leading state.

Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee pumped out over 235 pounds of cheese curds, roughly one order of curds per minute, to hundreds of patrons in celebration on Oct. 15. The company also debuted three new cheese curd flavors, Chicken N’ Waffle, French Onion, and Caramel Apple Cheesecake.

The company’s annual cheese curd pull, in which contestants compete for the longest string of melted curd, saw a record setting pull of more than four feet.

3 Sheeps Brewing in Sheboygan plans to hold its celebrations on Saturday with a contest for best curd maker between 10 local curd tenders, cheese pull and cheese toss contests, various food vendors, the crowning of King and Queen Curd and more.

See the Lakefront Brewery release here.

See the 3 Sheeps Brewing release here.

— DATCP confirmed the first case this year of Eastern Equine Encephalitis in a horse in Marathon County.

DATCP on Friday announced a 5-month-old colt in the central Wisconsin county tested positive. While the presence of the potential fatal virus is concerning, this year’s infection rate is significantly down compared to last year, when the department confirmed 10 cases of EEE.

EEE is also only spread to horses by mosquitoes and is therefore most commonly spread during peak mosquito season, which has passed.

The virus cannot be transmitted from horse to horse or other animals, only from birds to mosquitoes, which then infect humans, horses or other animals.

The American Association of Equine Practitioners recommends all horses be vaccinated against EEE as well as limiting potential mosquito breeding areas and keeping horses in the barn from dusk to dawn.

See the release here.

— The Office of Business & Entrepreneurship and the Wisconsin Small Business Development Center at UW-Milwaukee are hosting a free clinic in November at Waukesha County Technical College.

The “choose-your-own-adventure” style clinic in Pewaukee on Nov. 7 is 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. and includes sessions on business planning, taxes, workforce development, financial record keeping, legal topics, digital marketing and artificial intelligence. Participants can also schedule 30-minute individual sessions with consultants to talk about starting a business, financials, marketing, home baking businesses, international trade or legal matters in a group setting.

“Your entrepreneurial journey doesn’t have to be a solo adventure,” Dan Brosman, strategic projects associate director, OBE, and event organizer, said. “Our clinic provides the roadmap, resources, and community support you need to succeed.”

See the release here.

— A group of Republican lawmakers are circulating a proposal to create a framework to tax, regulate and restrict the sale of hemp-derived THC products.

LRB-4863 and LRB-5185 would bar anyone under 21 from buying hemp-derived THC products, creating a licensing structure administered by the Department of Revenue, create a new occupational tax, create new package labeling requirements and require such products be kept behind the counter, among other things.

The proposal would create a three-tier regulatory system similar to Wisconsin’s alcohol regulatory system, separating manufacturers, distributors and retailers.

“This bill ensures that intoxicating hemp products are treated with the same accountability, safety, and transparency standards as alcohol, protecting both consumers and responsible businesses,” the co-sponsorship memo argues.

The memo also cites the fact that 85 people became sick after eating THC-infused pizza in Stoughton last year when store employees made food with oil that contained Delta-9 as evidence of the need to pass regulations.

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