Evers threatens budget veto over child care center payments, GOP leader signals openness to negotiation

Gov. Tony Evers said he will not sign a state budget that doesn’t continue direct payments to Wisconsin child care centers.

The comments to reporters Monday came after “good-faith” budget negotiations between Evers and legislative Republicans ground to a halt earlier this month, leaving the legislators to write the budget themselves and send it to Evers. The governor then has the option to sign the bill, veto it in its entirety or use his powerful partial-veto authority recently upheld by the state Supreme Court.

Legislators on the Republican-controlled budget committee have thrown out Evers’ proposed $442 million in payments to child care centers as part of the process of writing their own budget.

Evers’ proposal was a state-funded continuation of Child Care Counts, which was funded by federal COVID-19 relief funds. Those funds are set to run out at the end of the month. Providers have said the funds prevented closures, offset tuition costs and helped attract new workers.

Asked whether he’d sign a budget that doesn’t fund Child Care Counts, Evers said “no.”

He said he’d like to see the program funded at pandemic-era levels but did not explicitly say he would not sign the budget that funds the program but at a lesser amount.

“It’s necessary for people to understand, Republicans especially, how important this is for the state of Wisconsin,” Evers said. “It’s going to hurt not only kids but our economy.”

Evers also urged legislative Republicans to “come back” to negotiations and said there “should be” budget progress between his office and Republicans this week.

On Tuesday afternoon, GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos suggested he was open to that.

Vos said Assembly Republicans have learned from Evers’ vetoes of past tax cuts. Their strategy now, he said, was to “make investments in things that are important to Gov. Evers, but in return he also signs the tax cuts that are really important to all of us.”

He said child care legislation would be “part of the broad discussion.”

“We’re certainly open to working with the governor,” Vos said. “I know child care is important to him. It’s important to our members. And I think in the end, we’ll be able to find a consensus around that topic.”

Vos did criticize Child Care Counts specifically, saying Republicans didn’t want to “write checks out to providers,” preferring to target aid to individual needy families.

The budget negotiations that broke down this month were themselves unusual for recent Wisconsin budgets. For the past several years, Republicans controlling the Legislature have largely written the budget themselves, with Evers using his veto authority to make line-by-line changes to budget items.