As data center developers stake out land in Wisconsin communities, much debate has surrounded whether the computer-packed warehouses will deliver economic benefits locally. 

Waves of opposition and concerns about land, water and electricity use routinely follow data center proposals, while supporters echo that the centers will create jobs and help the economy. 

But what jobs? How many of them? And will they last?

To answer those questions, Wisconsin Watch talked to three professors:

• Xiaofan Liang, who specializes in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
• Scott Adams, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee labor economist. 
• Dijo Alexander, who specializes in information technology, digital transformation and artificial intelligence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Here are some takeaways.

What kinds of jobs do data centers bring?

Data center jobs fall into three major categories that represent phases in their creation: 

• Development
• Construction
• Operations

A data center first needs people to plan for its existence. Developers, engineers, designers and planners lay that groundwork. 

“The data center industry as an ecosystem is pretty big … When they first introduce a data center to a place, they have to figure out the design standard, how to construct all kinds of facilities, how it connects to city systems,” Liang said.

Then, developers must hire heaps of hands-on laborers to construct the gigantic warehouses from the ground up — the largest portion of workers needed in creating and operating a data center. Among other professions, this includes electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, carpenters, structural steel and iron workers, concrete workers and earth drillers.

The job boom from early phases fizzles out once the building is complete, Liang said. 

“(During) construction time, you usually have a lot more jobs — maybe 10 times in magnitude more so than operations,” Liang said. 

Operations jobs, fewer in quantity, are largely “unglamorous,” Adams said. 

Some of these roles have relatively low barriers to entry, such as maintenance workers and security guards. Meanwhile, electricians and HVAC workers are needed, considering that power and cooling are data centers’ “two most important inputs,” Adams said. 

Adams echoed a popular analogy likening data centers to warehouses full of rotting bananas that need constant cooling and replacing.

“You need banana technicians, more or less, that take the rotted bananas out and replace them with new bananas,” Adams said. “Now, granted, they’re much more expensive bananas in there, and they’re doing a whole lot, and it requires a little more expertise. But again that expertise, by and large, can be developed pretty quickly.”

Those workers will be data center technicians — people who install servers, replace hardware and cables, monitor systems and notice when things break down.

How many jobs do data centers bring? 

The number of jobs created depends on a data center’s size, Liang said.  

That can initially mean thousands of jobs at gargantuan developments like in Mount Pleasant. Microsoft says it has employed 3,000 people to construct the location, compared to 500 full-time workers once the plant is operating. But these numbers are expected to climb as the company constructs a cluster of additional centers at the site. 

Not all of these workers will be local. Given the temporary high demand, the projects will likely need out-of-town construction laborers who travel to the area and don’t stay long term.

Smaller projects will employ far fewer people. For a typical data center, Microsoft estimates it hires about 50 full-time employees. What those numbers mean for the local area depends on the community’s size. 

“In a bigger city, like Atlanta, it’s like a drop in the ocean, right? It doesn’t really affect much,” Liang said. “In a rural area, in a smaller town, hundreds of jobs … are a big deal.”

What about the trickle-down economic benefits? 

A sizable new employer entering communities could ripple across other nearby industries, though Liang notes this is hard to measure. 

“(A data center) just has such a big infrastructure need that trickles down in many different ways,” Liang said. “Now we need expanded utility infrastructure, grid, fiber, water, all these things. Construction of these infrastructure, even though it’s not directly related to (a) data center, could increase local employment in those areas.”

Inside a data center are “cabinets after cabinets of steel frames holding computers” that need to be built, Alexander said. This can boost local manufacturing, especially the metal fabrication industry. 

Wisconsin manufacturers have already begun cashing in on the construction boom nationwide. As Wisconsin Watch previously reported, just three Wisconsin companies alone have amassed more than $1 billion in equipment sales — such as motors, generators and cooling systems —  to data centers.

Massive developments like Microsoft’s in Mount Pleasant can potentially lead to a “tech corridor,” a cluster of warehouses and manufacturers near the data center they serve, Alexander said. 

“If we take the initiative and if we bring a few big enough component manufacturers, we can create locally created components for these data centers to consume,” Alexander said. “It’s like if you have a big restaurant or food manufacturer here, you will have agriculture around there, because it is easy for you to bring your produce for their consumption. Just like that. ”

The trend could also activate industries like nuclear power, Adams said. Building data centers  in conjunction with nuclear reactors to generate their power would fuel even more construction and energy jobs, he added. In Kewaunee County, an energy company wants to rebuild Kewaunee Power Station, a defunct nuclear power plant, anticipating energy demand from AI and data centers.

In more rural communities or near smaller data centers, the trickle-down effects could prove more modest — perhaps a few new restaurants and housing units, Adams said. 

Alexander also noted the effects could also be less concentrated, with growth spilling into neighboring cities as employees work at the center but live elsewhere.

But will enough permanent jobs be created to sustain the growth sparked during the early labor-intensive development phase? That’s unclear, Adams said. 

“We don’t have a firm enough grasp about the indirect effects in the longer term,” Adams said. “Short run, that’ll be great. Longer run, can we sustain the new development that might happen around these? I don’t know the answer to that. I think if the power generation side of it comes in connection with them, there’s more of a chance that that will work.”

Who are data center technicians?

Data center technicians are perhaps the most novel job introduced by the data center boom. The roles are more specialized than others needed inside the warehouses.

Job postings for data center technicians at Microsoft’s Milwaukee location say the workers will be “preparing, installing, performing diagnostics, troubleshooting, replacing, and/or decommissioning equipment under the guidance of more experienced data center colleagues.” 

The posting states the job requires a high school diploma, knowledge of computer hardware and some experience with IT equipment. Pay for lower-level technicians ranges from $23 to $36 per hour, with more experienced workers making up to about $48 per hour.

Adams said likely candidates will include engineers and computer coders and people now entering college with their sights on data center work. Microsoft and Gateway Technical College in Kenosha launched a “Data Center Academy,” preparing students to work in data center operations. Adams believes partnerships like this will become more common.

Are these good jobs?

You can use the interactive table below to explore many of the jobs data centers are expected to create, including wages, employment totals and required education.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Here’s what the data center boom means for Wisconsin’s workforce is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

While digging out from the snow, we’ve also been marking Sunshine Week — an annual reminder that access to public records and meetings isn’t a luxury or abstract concept. It determines whether the public knows what the government is doing with tax dollars and public trust.

That’s why we published a pair of stories around those themes this week. One, from Tom Kertscher, shows how nondisclosure agreements tied to data center developments limit what communities can learn about projects in their own backyards. The other, from our partners at The Badger Project, examines a long-standing loophole that allows Wisconsin lawmakers to delete records that would otherwise belong to the public.

At the same time, we asked our team to look inward — reflecting on stories we could not have reported without the sunshine laws that quietly power our newsroom every day.

Here are a few recent examples.

‘They are squeezing everybody in this park to death’: Owners of manufactured homes get little protection as private equity moves in

Public records — including state licensing files, inspection records and regulatory complaints — allowed Addie Costello to document Wisconsin’s failure to enforce basic protections for manufactured home owners as private equity firms buy up parks to maximize profits. The story, part of our Forgotten homes series on the promises and perils of manufactured housing as an affordable path to ownership, amplified tenant concerns. It also preceded legislation to limit rent increases, require annual state inspections and make it easier for residents to purchase communities through cooperatives.

Wisconsin’s work-release program promises opportunity. Prisoners say jobs are scarce.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections provided little meaningful data to Natalie Yahr about its work-release program — a gap that became part of the story. Officials said they do not tally counts of how many people participate. To provide context, Yahr obtained public records from other states, offering points of comparison. The reporting highlights how limited transparency makes it difficult to evaluate a program that can help incarcerated people build resumes, pay court costs and prepare for release — while helping employers fill jobs.

Pest or climate ally? DNR weighs new beaver management plan under mounting scrutiny

This story was strengthened due to persistence. Bennet Goldstein filed records requests across all 10 Mississippi River Basin “stem states,” plus Oklahoma and Michigan, to understand how agencies manage beavers. He also pressed the U.S. Department of Agriculture for documents it initially withheld — records released only after our attorney signaled a willingness to challenge the denial. The reporting produced a fuller picture of how policy decisions ripple across ecosystems and communities, and it is helping shape debate over flood mitigation and climate resilience. It also found Wisconsin stands out for the number of beavers and dams removed, the millions spent and how officials justify the approach.

Duty to Disclose: Milwaukee County’s flawed Brady list

Our collaboration with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMJ4 News relies on records many jurisdictions resist releasing, if they store them at all: “Brady lists” of officers with credibility issues who might need to testify in court. After pressure from news organizations, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office released its list in late 2024, enabling a series of stories examining who is included — and who is not.

That reporting has revealed significant gaps, which TMJ4 and the Journal Sentinel are continuing to explore. Officers accused of falsifying reports, contradicting body camera footage or costing taxpayers millions in misconduct lawsuits are absent from the list, raising questions about how prosecutors define credibility. The disclosures have fueled public debate, prompted additions and removals from the list and spurred deeper scrutiny of best practices — and whether Milwaukee County meets them.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Let the sunshine in: How public records shape what Wisconsin knows is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

At a Jan. 28 public forum on Wisconsin data centers, Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke boasted that his city did not sign a nondisclosure agreement that would have concealed plans for a $15 billion facility that is now under construction.

“If you’ve got the courage and you push back and say, ‘Listen, we’re just not going to do it,’ (the data center developers) will find a way to operate without having to sign an NDA,” Neitzke said. “So, we did not and we will not.”

On the same day Neitzke was touting his community’s openness, Port Washington was in court over its refusal to provide communications about its data center. The city had turned over emails, but not documents attached to the emails.

It’s one example, beyond NDAs, of local governments hiding details of proposed large-scale AI data centers, which are projected to span hundreds of acres, cost billions of dollars and transform communities.

Wisconsin Watch reported in January that NDAs were signed in at least four Wisconsin communities where artificial intelligence data centers are proposed or being built — Beaver Dam, Kenosha, Janesville and Menomonie. Since then, Wisconsin Watch has learned about a fifth project with an NDA, this one in the town of Beloit — showing that discussions there occurred more than a year before any public announcement was made.

Port Washington stymies public records requests 

Construction began in December on Lighthouse, the 672-acre Vantage-OpenAI-Oracle data center campus in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee.

Four months earlier, philanthropist Lynde Uihlein, a town of Port Washington resident, environmentalist and major Democratic donor, made a public records request of the city. She asked for any communications between the city and the data center developer dating back to Jan. 1, 2025.

The Wisconsin public records law declares that “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government” and that governmental bodies must respond to requests “as soon as practicable and without delay.”

After nearly three months, the city did not reply to Uihlein’s request, so she sued.

The city responded by turning over emails, but not the documents attached to those emails, such as a draft development agreement. The city’s attorney explained that Uihlein didn’t specifically ask for the attachments.

“When cities want to court large, community-changing development, they also should be prepared to act with maximum transparency,” said Madison lawyer Christa Westerberg, one of the lawyers representing Uihlein.

“The city of Port Washington has been too slow to respond to requests about the data center and even when it has, there are gaps, like providing emails without attachments. This was foreseeable and avoidable.”

Wisconsin Watch is one of Westerberg’s clients, but is not a party to this case. Westerberg did not participate in the writing or editing of this report.

City Attorney Matthew Nugent told Wisconsin Watch: “The assertion that the city refused to produce email attachments is inaccurate. The city reasonably interpreted the original request to seek the email communications themselves, that is, the body of the email message, not the separate documents attached to those communications.”

At a court hearing Jan. 28, Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Adam Gerol rejected the idea that documents attached to emails aren’t part of the emails themselves. “There has not been a complete response to the open records request,” he said.

In February, the city turned over emails along with attachments to Uihlein, and Gerol ruled that city officials must submit to depositions to answer questions from Uihlein’s lawyers.

Gerol will be asked to determine whether the city has fully complied with the public records law, whether its delay in replying violated the law and whether it should have to pay Uihlein’s legal fees.

Another denial

The city used the same rationale to partially deny another public records request.

Port Washington resident Michael Beaster, an opponent of the data center, asked the city Nov. 20 for emails and other communications between city officials and the data center developer. 

The city replied six weeks later, sending some emails but no attachments to the emails. An attorney for the city told Beaster he would need to submit another request if he wanted attachments because Beaster did not specifically request those.

“It feels like they’re being overly cautious in trying to protect the city,” Beaster said, “which certainly isn’t serving the public.”

Beaster is running unopposed April 7 for an open seat on the Port Washington city council. He helped lead a failed effort to recall Neitzke over the data center.

Neitzke said he could not comment on why the city has not turned over email attachments, other than to say he is not part of the process of releasing records.

NDA for possible Beloit data center

News surfaced this month of a possible data center an hour southeast of Madison in the town of Beloit. The town, saying it was responding to information “being disseminated” about a possible data center, announced it had begun “very preliminary discussions” and signed a predevelopment agreement with Delaware-based Cambrin LLC.

Wisconsin Watch has since learned that the town signed an NDA with Cambrin in February 2025 — more than a year before making its announcement.

The NDA and other documents provided to Wisconsin Watch in response to a public records request do not directly refer to a data center. 

The documents indicate that “Project Corn Maze” would initially include 700,000 square feet of buildings, employ 50 people and require tax incremental financing from the town.

The records also show that the town has exchanged emails about the project since April 2025. They indicate that Cambrin LLC was formed to make the development proposal and don’t identify what company would operate the data center.

Signs of openness 

Access to records also was at issue for the first phase of a data center complex south of Milwaukee in Mount Pleasant. The first center in that Microsoft complex is expected to open later this year.

This month the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council announced it is giving its annual citizen openness advocate award to Midwest Environmental Advocates. The public interest law firm successfully sued the city of Racine for records disclosing how much water it is projecting to provide for the Mount Pleasant data center.

The council also gave an award to Wisconsin Watch for its story on data center NDAs.

Amid reports of a possible data center in Grant County and as Meta seeks to add a data center to one it is building in Beaver Dam, there is movement toward more openness on several fronts.

The state Public Service Commission, which approves requests for new utility plants and utility rates, initially accepted a confidentiality request from Alliant Energy in its application to serve the Beaver Dam data center despite numerous redactions — including how much energy the center would use.

On Feb. 26, however, state administrative law judge Michael Newmark, who is overseeing the PSC hearings on the request, told Alliant to resubmit its request with fewer redactions. Alliant did the next day with less information blacked out. 

“It seemed like the redactions were not going to allow us to do sort of the basic functions of open government,” Newmark said at the hearing. Fewer redactions would enable the commission to rule on the application in a way that is “defensible in court and in the court of public opinion,” he said.

Last week the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Water Policy released a model for state legislation to “promote transparency and environmental protections” for data centers.

The model, which recommends temporary statewide moratoriums on data centers, makes several recommendations to increase transparency, including a ban on local governments signing NDAs and requiring public disclosures on water and electricity use before any approvals are given.

The “continued absence of comprehensive and timely disclosure requirements,” the report said, “undermines public understanding and limits informed decision-making around siting, permitting and environmental impacts.”

And on Friday, a state Senate committee on a 4-1 vote approved Senate Bill 969, which would prohibit local governments from signing NDAs with data center developers. No further action has yet been scheduled.

The committee also advanced, 3-2, Assembly Bill 840, which would require the Public Service Commission to protect ratepayers from the costs of providing electricity to data centers. The bill contains a controversial requirement that renewable energy used for a data center be located on the site. The Assembly passed the bill 53-44 in January. 

Legislation banning NDAs is pending in several states, including two that took action last week.

A Minnesota House of Representatives committee approved a bill banning data center NDAs and sent it to the House floor.

In Florida, a provision banning NDAs that industry groups lobbied against was removed from a data center bill. 

A report released last week by the Alliance of Great Lakes urged governmental bodies to limit the use of NDAs so that the public can know how much water and energy a data center will use.

“When critical information is withheld, decision-making shifts risk from private developers to communities and public utilities,” the report said.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

More than NDAs. Wisconsin communities face scrutiny over data center secrecy. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Applause, laughter and cheering reverberated in a Madison auditorium on Thursday as students raced to answer questions during the African American History Academic Challenge. The annual event, a partnership between the Madison Metropolitan School District and the nonprofit 100 Black Men of Madison, Inc., seeks to enhance appreciation and knowledge of Black history and bolster pride and self-worth.

Student teams representing two high schools and a half-dozen middle schools demonstrated knowledge through challenges focused on key events, figures and themes in African American history. McFarland and Verona middle schools also hold the event, with winners advancing to a regional competition on March 14. That contest determines who represents Madison’s 100 Black Men chapter on a national stage in New York City. 

As the middle school competition unfolded in the Doyle Administration Building, Sennett Middle School teacher Johnny Kennedy pumped her fist as she cheered on the students she coached. 

“I’m so proud of them,” Kennedy said. 

Her group of seventh and eighth graders had practiced since November. Some had competed last year without advancing, but they immediately knew they wanted to try again this year. James C. Wright Middle School ultimately advanced. 

During the separate high school contest that Robert M. La Follette High School won, “Coach O” Anderson, a Madison West High School student engagement specialist, said she learned about the event when her son Micah advanced to the national finals in Las Vegas during his eighth grade year in 2018. 

High schoolers tend to lag behind middle schoolers in participation. Anderson aimed to ramp up the same level of excitement among high schoolers that younger students display. She aims to engage more than just the “usual kids who get the opportunities” — like those already earning A’s in history and taking AP courses. 

“I wanted the regular kids who don’t necessarily see themselves involved like this to have an opportunity,” she said. Her main motivation is watching her students put themselves in “transformational situations,” she added.

African American History Academic Challenge encourages pride, learning among Madison students is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin has thousands of assisted living providers. Some are small houses; others are more like apartment complexes. Some take Medicaid, while others require residents to pay out of pocket. It’s a lot to sort through, especially when someone needs care fast. 

Searching “assisted living” on Google pulls up several pages of facilities, many listed under a prominent “sponsored results” section.

Mixed in with actual providers are referral companies that promise a way to compare options. Long-term care referral companies don’t typically charge families for their services. Instead, they often receive money from facilities they recommend.

Wisconsin lawmakers in May proposed legislation to make any financial relationships between a referral agency and an assisted living facility clearer. 

Supporters of the bill said disclosure requirements could help families make more informed decisions. Opposing the bill, referral companies argue that they are already transparent and that proposed guardrails would prevent them from helping more families. 

The bill failed to pass before the Assembly adjourned last month. But the debate left me wondering: Where should someone start the search for care?

Aging and disability resource centers

Aging and disability resource centers (ADRCs) can provide objective provider lists for free, alongside information about services and payment options, said Janet Zander, the advocacy and public policy coordinator with the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources, Inc. 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services lists ADRCs by county online. 

ADRCs cannot recommend one facility over another, Zander said. But they can suggest what to look for during a tour. Zander also recommends looking at a facility’s Wisconsin Division of Quality Assurance surveys.

They can also help people identify what kind of care makes the most sense and explore aging at home, said Sara Tribe Clark, the director of the Eldercare Locator, which offers local resources for older adults, people with disabilities and caregivers. 

If you work with a referral agency, ask questions

Tribe Clark recommends asking:

• Do you receive compensation from the providers you recommend?
• Are your referrals limited to certain facilities?
• How do you determine which providers to suggest? What is the criteria for inclusion/exclusion?
• Are there providers in my area that you do not represent?

We want to answer your questions

Getting answers to my own questions is a perk of being a reporter. But I haven’t yet navigated Wisconsin’s aging and disability resources for myself or a loved one. I know I’m missing important questions, so please send me yours, alongside your perspectives.

What has been confusing or frustrating about finding care?

What do you wish you’d known sooner?

What made the process easier?

Even after more than two years reporting on long-term care in Wisconsin, I won’t have all the answers. But I will find experts who do. Email me at acostello@wisconsinwatch.org or call 608-616-5239.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Finding long-term care is hard. Here’s how to start. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Editor’s note: This story was updated March 13 to include a comment from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested a Sheboygan Falls woman during a routine check-in this week, taking her back into custody just months after an immigration court judge canceled her deportation order and began the process of securing her a green card.

Elvira Benitez, 51, spent six months in ICE custody last year after accidentally crossing the Canadian border during a family road trip in Michigan. Benitez fled an abusive home in Michoacán, Mexico, as a teenager and lived without legal status for 35 years, her family said. She first entered the immigration court system after last year’s arrest. 

She was among more than 25,000 people arrested by ICE in July 2025 alone. Roughly a third of immigrants arrested by the agency nationally between January and mid-October 2025 had neither a prior criminal history nor pending criminal charges, including Benitez. 

In her absence, her two adult daughters — both U.S. citizens — took in their school-age siblings. Judge Richard Drucker of the Cleveland immigration court cited her younger children’s struggles during Benitez’s initial detention as a reason to cancel her deportation and set her on the path to legal residency. 

Drucker initially signaled a willingness to grant Benitez relief in early November, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) delayed her background check — necessary for her path to a green card — for over a month, eventually releasing her in mid-December. 

The agency soon appealed Drucker’s order, stalling Benitez’s green card process. She continued attending mandatory check-ins at the Milwaukee DHS office, where ICE agents arrested her Tuesday morning before transferring her to a holding facility outside Chicago.

ICE arrested at least 107 people at the DHS office in downtown Milwaukee between January and mid-October 2025 — more than at any other Wisconsin site named in ICE arrest records. Three-quarters of those immigrants  had no pending criminal charges or past convictions, compared with just 17% of all immigrants arrested by ICE in Wisconsin during the same period.

Benitez had no other run-ins with law enforcement that could have triggered her recent arrest, said Crystal Aguilar, her eldest daughter. In Aguilar’s view, the arrest calls into question “whether families who follow the rules can rely on the decisions made in immigration court,” she added.

She complied with all requirements following her initial release, including attending every ICE supervision appointment, according to her attorney, Marc Christopher. DHS was not legally required to arrest her while its appeal is pending, he added. 

Benitez’s detention serves “no legitimate public safety purpose,” Christopher wrote in a Tuesday press release. “It separates a mother from her vulnerable U.S. citizen children despite a federal immigration judge already recognizing the extreme hardship her removal would cause them.”

An ICE spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch that Benitez will remain in custody “pending further immigration proceedings.”

“Being in detention is a choice,” they added, suggesting that undocumented immigrants should self-deport or face arrest and a permanent ban on re-entering the U.S.

ICE re-arrests Sheboygan Falls mother after judge halted deportation and cleared green card path is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that highlights how judges can apply different interpretations of the law and constitution to suit their ideological viewpoints.

The case resulted from disagreements between the Republican-led Legislature and Attorney General Josh Kaul following the 2018 lame-duck session that limited the powers of the incoming Democratic administration. 

The lawsuit, which the Legislature filed in 2021 when there was a conservative majority on the state Supreme Court, focuses on who has oversight of the dollars the state receives from legal settlements. The Legislature argues the 2018 law requires the attorney general to put money from a financial settlement in the general fund, which state lawmakers control. Kaul argues that he can put settlement funds in accounts that the Department of Justice oversees and still comply with the law.

In December 2024, the 2nd District Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling reversed part of a circuit court decision that said Kaul could continue to direct settlement dollars into DOJ-controlled accounts.

The Appeals Court opinion was written by Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative who is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April against liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor. Lazar ruled the language in the 2018 law aligns with the Legislature’s arguments that settlement dollars belong in the general fund. 

“Despite the legislation expressly designed to bring all settlement funds under legislative control and despite the simple and plain language of that legislation, the Attorney General has continued to act precisely in the manner which the Legislature sought to end,” Lazar wrote.

But in a dissent, retiring Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, the only liberal on the Waukesha-based District 2 Court of Appeals, criticized Lazar for basing her decision on what the Legislature intended, rather than a strict reading of various clauses in the law that may give the attorney general wiggle room.

The oral arguments this week follow a series of decisions in recent years on lawsuits challenging the separation of powers between the Legislature and the executive branch. In June, the court unanimously struck down a portion of the 2018-era lame-duck laws that required the attorney general to receive approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing committee to settle most civil cases. For the 4-3 divided liberal-majority court, the rulings in these cases have shown agreement among the justices over the need for clear boundaries between the core powers of the branches of government, legal experts said. 

Where this latest lawsuit differs is the debate seems focused more on the language of the law than the separation of powers, said Chad Oldfather, a professor at the Marquette University Law School. Typically the conservative approach to statutory interpretation has been to focus on the basic meaning of the law while the liberal approach has been to examine the law’s intent. That has been the opposite in this case, Oldfather said.  

“The advocates are kind of flipping a little bit the usual ideology of the statutory interpretation approach,” Oldfather said. “And all that’s going on while it’s clear that there are some people on the court who want to fundamentally shift the way the court does statutory interpretation. So there’s a real interesting mix of issues going on in this case.” 

The law in question has been wrapped up in a yearslong debate over separation of powers that has made its way to justices in recent years, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. In many of those cases, the Supreme Court opinions have shown the justices interested in balanced branches of government. 

“There seems to be an inclination to reinstate greater separation of powers between the branches and preserve the important roles of various actors, whether that’s the attorney general or the governor or the Legislature,” Godar said. 

For example, in a 6-1 decision in 2024, with Justice Annette Ziegler dissenting, the court ruled the Legislature’s Republican-led budget-writing committee could not block spending by the Department of Natural Resources for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund. 

“While the legislature’s motivation for overseeing the public fisc may be well-intentioned, fundamentally, the legislature may not execute the law,” Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the conservative bloc, wrote in the majority opinion. “The people gave the executive alone this power.”

In the 7-0 decision last June on the Legislature’s approval of the attorney general’s civil case settlements, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that the constitution does not give lawmakers the ability to execute the law when there are financial decisions. 

“If the Legislature has a constitutional interest in the execution of the laws every time an executive action involves money, there would be virtually no area where the Legislature could not insert itself into the execution of the law,” Hagedorn wrote. 

There are still areas of disagreement among the court in these types of cases. Last July, the court reached a 4-3 decision in a lawsuit between Gov. Tony Evers and the Legislature, which determined 2018 lame-duck legislation that gave a legislative committee the ability to delay rules and policy changes from executive agencies was unconstitutional.

In that case, the court’s four liberal justices were in the majority. Hagedorn wrote an opinion both concurring and dissenting with the majority’s decision, while Bradley and Ziegler dissented.

“The majority has created a grave constitutional imbalance by strictly construing, and thus confining, the constitutional powers of the legislative branch while not doing the same when it comes to the power of the executive branch,” Ziegler wrote.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Latest Wisconsin Supreme Court case flips the script on which judges strictly interpret the law is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Update: March 9, 2026:

A panel of judges in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday paused a federal judge’s February order overturning the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy in most of the country.

The Trump administration is appealing Central District of California Judge Sunshine Sykes’ order, and the pause applies while the appeal is pending. Multiple federal appellate courts are considering challenges to the administration’s policy, which bars detained immigrants from seeking bond; the 7th Circuit, which includes Wisconsin, heard arguments in a related case last month.

Wisconsin immigration attorneys who hurried to file bond motions for their detained clients last month are now in a holding pattern.

Original story, March 6, 2026

Over the past six months, dozens of immigrants held in Wisconsin jails awaiting deportation have challenged their detention in federal court. Judges ruled in their favor in more than half the cases, pushing back on new federal immigration enforcement practices.

Wisconsin’s federal courts have not seen comparable volumes of immigration-related habeas corpus petitions, which challenge the legality of a person’s detention, in at least a decade. More than a third of the petitions heard in Wisconsin since 2016 were filed in the past six months.

Two forces are driving the influx: the Trump administration’s effort to halt bond for virtually all detainees and its enforcement surge in neighboring Minnesota. 

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals ruled last September that all unauthorized immigrants in ICE custody are ineligible for bond, meaning they must remain in custody while their case plays out.

The ruling reversed a long-standing practice that previously enabled many immigrants to continue their cases while out on bond. In its wake, habeas petitions became one of few remaining paths to an exit.

Wisconsin’s growing tally of habeas petitions pales in comparison to national figures. Federal district courts nationwide have received more than 24,000 habeas petitions from detained immigrants since January 2025, with numbers surging after the Board of Immigration Appeals decision, overwhelming federal prosecutors tasked with defending the legality of ICE detentions.

Soon after the board’s ruling, the Trump administration targeted Minnesota in its immigration crackdown, deploying thousands of federal agents to patrol the Twin Cities and nearby rural communities. The White House claimed in early February that the campaign resulted in the arrests of more than 4,000 immigrants.

Since January 2025, ICE has transferred at least 108 immigrants from Minnesota to the Douglas County jail in Superior, Wisconsin. The sheriff’s office contracts with ICE for detainee housing, as do three other Wisconsin counties.

At least 15 immigrants held in Douglas County have filed habeas petitions in Wisconsin’s Western District Court since September 2025. Judges have thus far sided with immigrants four times, including two Ecuadorian men arrested in a raid on a construction site in a Minneapolis suburb. Five of the cases remain pending.

Those detained in the Douglas County jail made up two-thirds of the Western District’s immigration-related habeas petitions between September 2025 and February 2026. 

While arrest locations were not available for every case, available data indicates that 60% of immigrants who passed through the Douglas County jail between January and October 2025 were arrested in Minnesota.

The Madison-based court had not previously handled an immigration-related habeas case in over a decade. 

Habeas petitions in the recent past were a “hodgepodge,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Benjamin Crouse, and were often dismissed or denied by judges in Wisconsin’s Eastern District.

Prior to last September, many habeas petitions challenged the legality of detaining immigrants for months at a time without a clear end date. A Colombian man transferred into ICE custody after a drug arrest in 2014 filed a habeas petition after spending more than 20 months at the Dodge County Detention Facility in Juneau, arguing his detention had stretched beyond reasonable time limits. 

Judge William Griesbach denied the man’s petition in 2016. Griesbach has ruled on 17 habeas petitions in the past decade, granting only one: a 2018 petition filed by a Mexican asylum seeker who spent more than two and a half years in the Kenosha County Detention Center without a bond hearing.

In some cases, Griesbach and other federal judges had no choice but to deny or dismiss habeas petitions: In at least 10 cases filed in Wisconsin’s Eastern District Court since 2016, federal immigration officials deported immigrants before the court could fully consider their petitions. 

Nearly as many immigrants left ICE custody through other routes, including community supervision and asylum, before a judge could rule on their habeas petitions.

Despite the influx of new cases in the Western District, the Eastern District has still heard roughly two-thirds of the immigration-related habeas petitions filed since September. 

Most federal district court judges who have considered habeas petitions since September have ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision prohibiting bond hearings for detained immigrants. 

Wisconsin’s Eastern District judges are split. Griesbach called the board’s position “persuasive” in December, rejecting a habeas petition filed by a Venezuelan man arrested alongside his wife during a routine check-in at the Department of Homeland Security’s downtown Milwaukee office earlier that year. That man, Diego Ugarte-Arenas, left ICE custody after receiving asylum in January.

Judge Brett Ludwig also sided with the Trump administration’s position on detaining immigrants without bond. Trump appointed Ludwig to the Eastern District bench in 2020; then-President George W. Bush appointed Griesbach to the court in 2002. 

Eastern District judges Byron Conway, a Biden appointee, and Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee, have both criticized the board’s ruling. “Courts have nearly universally rejected the conclusion of the Board,” Conway wrote in an October order granting the habeas petition of a Nicaraguan man arrested during an incidental run-in with ICE agents.

Western District judges have uniformly ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond decisions.

Keeping cases in courts like Wisconsin’s Western District is a high priority for attorneys representing detained immigrants.

“It’s less about jurisdictions where you’re successful and more about avoiding jurisdictions where it’s more problematic,” said St. Paul immigration attorney Solomon Steen, who has represented two clients detained in the Douglas County jail.

Many of ICE’s largest detention facilities are in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — states within the jurisdiction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which last month backed the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond eligibility decision.

When a client arrested in Minnesota lands in a Wisconsin jail, Steen said, attorneys can find them within “hours or days.” Tracking clients’ locations becomes tougher once they are transferred to larger detention facilities elsewhere, he added.

With thousands of immigrants now bouncing between distant detention centers, Steen said many face pressure to give up on their legal cases. “You won’t know if you’ll be able to contact a lawyer if you get detained,” he said. “So wouldn’t it be easier to just take a voluntary departure or take a removal order in immigration court just so that you will know where you are and what’s happening?” 

Steen and other attorneys are now working to keep clients’ cases in Midwestern courts — and out of the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction — even when their whereabouts are unclear, preserving their chances of a successful habeas petition.

Even before the Board of Immigration Appeals blocked most detainees from seeking bond, voluntary departures — wherein an immigrant leaves the U.S. to avoid a deportation on their record — increased 21-fold between January and September of last year. 

Meanwhile, an order from a federal district court judge in California has opened the door for many of Wisconsin’s current ICE detainees to request bond for the first time in months. 

Judge Sunshine Sykes of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California initially ruled in November that the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of denying bond hearings to most immigrant detainees ran afoul of federal law. 

DHS didn’t budge, maintaining that the Board of Immigration Appeals’ rulemaking authority takes precedence over a ruling in federal district court. Chief Immigration Court Judge Teresa Riley, a Department of Justice employee, later directed judges in immigration courts nationwide to continue denying detained immigrants’ requests for bond hearings. 

Sykes doubled down last week, rebuking DHS for ignoring her earlier order. 

“It is not the executive department’s province and duty to say what the law is,” she wrote. 

Sykes vacated Board of Immigration Appeals bond rules in all states outside of the 5th Circuit, which still leaves most immigrants in ICE’s largest detention centers unable to request bond hearings. 

Crouse recently observed one Chicago immigration court judge notify immigrants about Sykes’ latest order.

 “They’re taking this a little more seriously now, but we still don’t know exactly what this looks like,” he said. 
He and other Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys are again filing bond motions for their clients. “We’re getting hearings,” he added.

Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, confirmed that immigrants detained in Dodge County are receiving notice that they are eligible for bond. So far, she said, there is no indication federal immigration authorities are rushing to move Wisconsin detainees to holding facilities farther south.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Immigrants fight ICE detention in federal court — and increasingly win is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A new study of Wisconsin data finds what some researchers and policy wonks have long suspected: The $2 billion Work Opportunity Tax Credit doesn’t work. 

Congress created the credit in 1996 as it overhauled the country’s welfare system. It rewards companies for hiring people who often struggle to get jobs, including some people who receive government aid, have disabilities or felony convictions or have been out of work for a long time. Employers can typically claim up to 40% of the wages paid to qualifying workers, with a maximum credit of $2,400. 

The credit subsidizes around 4% of all new hires, according to 2022 federal data cited in the study. Overwhelmingly, they’re low-wage, short-term jobs at large employers, including major retailers and temporary staffing agencies, researchers have found. 

Researchers have wondered for decades whether the credit pays off, but most states don’t offer the kind of records that would answer that question. Wisconsin does. 

Thanks to an unusual collaboration between the state government and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers can track the earnings and employment status of participants in certain social safety net programs. 

In a 2025 working paper, researchers from UW-Madison and the University of Southern California studied two decades of records of Wisconsinites who received food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the most common way an employee qualifies for the tax credit. Researchers compared SNAP recipients who were eligible for the credit with similar recipients who weren’t. 

Their findings were unequivocal. 

“We find that these subsidies do not increase hiring or earnings among eligible groups,” the authors wrote. In fact, they said, their findings rule out even so much as a 0.2 percentage point effect on hiring. 

They estimate 97% of the hiring subsidized by the tax credit would have happened anyway, a phenomenon known as “windfall wastage.” It’s possible, they wrote, that every one of the subsidized jobs falls into that category. 

The companies that take advantage of the credit are disproportionately large. In Wisconsin, they found, half of the subsidies go to just 48 businesses. Nationally, they estimate the credit costs more than $2 billion a year.

“Without reform, the program will continue as a costly transfer to firms with little benefit to the populations it is meant to support,” the researchers wrote.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers wants to increase the credit, which expired in December. 

In November, legislators introduced a bill to extend the credit and expand eligibility to older SNAP recipients and spouses of military service members. The legislation would increase the amount companies can receive and automatically raise the credit amount with inflation. 

In a statement, co-author Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., called the credit “a proven tool” that serves workers and employers. “WOTC is a bipartisan, commonsense approach that every Member of Congress should champion,” Smucker said.

Neither Smucker nor co-author Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., responded to a request for comment. 

Troubleshooting the tax credit

So why doesn’t the Work Opportunity Tax Credit work? The authors think one important reason is that hiring managers often don’t know which job applicants qualify. 

To receive the credit, employers must certify that they knew the applicant was eligible on or before the day they hired the person. Researchers surveyed 170 companies that use the credit. Less than 1 in 5 screened for eligibility on job applications. At companies that do collect this information, it might stay in the human resources office, never reaching the person who decides who to hire.

That may well be intentional, said UW-Madison economist Corina Mommaerts, one of the authors of the study. Federal and state law bars employers from considering certain factors in hiring decisions. That includes age and, in some cases, criminal record. There are ways to screen applicants without violating such laws, Mommaerts said, “but you can see why employers might still be very concerned.”

In addition, she said, some job applicants may hesitate to tell a prospective employer that they’re eligible. People with felony convictions, for example, may prefer not to draw attention to their criminal records. In the last two years, Wisconsin authorities certified the hires of just over 3,000 people with a felony conviction as qualifying for the credit.

“The concern is that there might be this stigmatizing effect,” Mommaerts said, explaining that some employers try to minimize that by asking applicants to review all the WOTC eligibility categories and indicate whether any apply to them. 

Melissa Riccio, director of inclusive hiring at the national re-entry nonprofit Center for Employment Opportunities, is an expert on that stigma. It’s her job to convince employers that hiring a formerly incarcerated person may not be as risky as they imagine.

Asked about the tax credit, she said such policies won’t singlehandedly make the kind of change she’s looking for, in part because many employers may see them as more work than they’re worth.

“You would never hear any of us say that it would be a bad thing,” Riccio said. “But I don’t think that that alone is enough to move the needle in encouraging employers to make a change in their hiring practices.”

Some policy experts say the new study proves that the temporary tax credit shouldn’t come back. 

Until now, there was little evidence on how well the Work Opportunity Tax Credit works, said Jen Doleac, executive vice president of criminal justice at the philanthropy Arnold Ventures, who researches strategies to reduce recidivism and help formerly incarcerated people get jobs. She and former colleague George Callas penned an October op-ed in Tax Notes calling the credit “completely ineffective.” 

“The evidence is clear: The WOTC does not serve its stated purpose and is a waste of taxpayer dollars,” they wrote. “Encouraging the hiring of workers from disadvantaged groups is a worthy goal. We must devote scarce public resources to solutions that actually achieve it.”

Lobbyists hail a proven, bipartisan tool

Initially authorized for just one year, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit has stuck around far longer — in part because of a powerful lobby. Major backers include payroll processing companies, temp agencies and groups representing the hospitality and retail industries. 

In 2022, a variety of industry groups seeking “solutions to the U.S. labor shortage” joined forces to form the Critical Labor Coalition. One of the coalition’s top priorities: lobbying for WOTC. The group spent $60,000 on lobbying last year, according to watchdog Open Secrets.

“Members of the Critical Labor Coalition — representing restaurants, retail, hotel and lodging, construction, food manufacturing, and other sectors — consistently affirm that strengthening and reauthorizing WOTC is essential both to their industries and to addressing the nation’s ongoing labor shortage,” Critical Labor Coalition Executive Director Misty Chally said in an email. 

Asked about the new Wisconsin study, Chally questioned its “narrow” focus on SNAP recipients. She said her group places “greater confidence” in a 2025 study commissioned by multinational talent management company Allegis Group. The authors of that study estimate renewing WOTC would subsidize 131,000 jobs, but they note it’s not clear how many of those jobs would have existed regardless.

“The exact impact of WOTC on net new job creation is uncertain … While some studies find that WOTC leads to meaningful employment gains among eligible groups, a significant share of the cost may stem from subsidizing hires that would have occurred anyway,” Allegis Group wrote. For their analysis, they assume more than 85% of those jobs would have existed without the credit. 

Why has WOTC stuck around?

Sarah Hamersma has been worried about WOTC for more than 20 years.

In the early 2000s, she was an economics graduate student at UW-Madison interested in programs designed to reduce poverty and help people work. She wanted to study the much larger Earned Income Tax Credit. Her adviser suggested she instead examine the smaller, newer and unstudied Work Opportunity Tax Credit. 

At the time, the credit was just 4 years old and limited to people who received cash welfare assistance. She asked state officials for access to the data. What she found matched what Mommaerts and her colleagues found decades later. Unlike the Earned Income Tax Credit, which gives money directly to low-income workers — and which studies show increases employment and boosts incomes — this tax credit seemed to just boost employers’ bottom lines.

“They’re not passing it along to the workers in the form of higher wages. They’re just sort of being like, ‘Awesome, I got more money,’” Hamersma said.

She wanted to do similar analyses on other places, but she couldn’t find any other states willing to share their data. Now an economist at Syracuse University, she researches programs like Medicaid and SNAP.

“I started studying other programs that seem to make more of a difference … but I always come back to this,” Hamersma said.

From time to time, reporters contact her to ask about it. Lawmakers, not so much.

“I still wait for them to someday call me and say, ‘What should we do, Sarah? Should we reauthorize this?’ Congress has never called,” Hamersma said.

She’s sure legislators didn’t read her research. But she hopes they might read the new study, and that it might sway them. 

“They’ve checked every angle you could possibly check, and the program is not working,” Hamersma said, calling it an “ironclad case.”

The new research was enough to convince Elena Spatoulas Patel, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who saw the authors present their findings at a conference. “That really changed my mind about how we think about the credit,” said Patel, who co-authored a December op-ed calling for an end to WOTC. 

But Congress has reauthorized the credit each time it lapsed before, and it will likely do so again this year, Patel said. It’s not just that there’s so much industry power behind the credit (“a classic case of lobbying versus good tax policy”), she said — it’s also that lawmakers like the idea of it. 

“Unless and until something better is offered, it’s probably easier to renew the credit than to let it expire,” Patel said. “But again, it’s sort of ignoring the point, which is that we are spending taxpayer dollars on this by offering this credit, and it really isn’t helping employment.”

Exactly what the alternative might be is “the million-dollar question,” Patel said. Policy experts say options could include supporting evidence-backed job training programs or expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

“If you’re trying to reduce poverty, putting money in the hands of working people is a great way to do it, which is what the Earned Income Tax Credit does … Those low-income working families get more money to spend on the things they need, and we kind of cut out the middleman of the employer altogether,” Hamersma said.

Still, Hamersma doesn’t think Congress will follow her advice anytime soon. 

“This is my cynical take: It’s kind of the perfect program because it benefits corporations, which Republicans historically like, and it seems like it’s supposed to be for poor people, which Democrats historically like,” Hamersma said.

“The facts are kind of irrelevant, the facts where nobody gets helped — it doesn’t quite make it to the top.”

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Tax credit meant to help struggling workers mostly helps employers, Wisconsin study finds is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

If you’re following recent national headlines, you know that attacks on press freedom are having a moment — from the FBI’s raid on the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson and seizure of her devices to the arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort following their coverage of a protest at a Minneapolis church.

But some positive news is emerging in Wisconsin: State legislation is advancing that would make it harder to use the courts to silence people speaking on matters of public concern — whether they’re journalists or private citizens — by draining their time and resources.

About 14 months ago, I wrote about how Wisconsin is particularly vulnerable to these kinds of lawsuits, one of just 11 states without legislation to shield residents from them. Our friends at the Wausau Pilot & Review felt the consequences firsthand, spending $200,000 to defend themselves against a since-dismissed defamation lawsuit.

There was little momentum for anti-SLAPP legislation when I wrote the column. But that has since changed. 

Lawmakers last year introduced bills that would create a clearer process for quickly dismissing SLAPP suits and require defendants’ legal fees to be paid by plaintiffs who bring meritless claims: AB 701/SB 666, introduced by Republican Reps. Jim Piwowarczyk and Sen. Eric Wimberger, with a suite of co-sponsors, including Democratic Reps. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez and Randy Udell.

The Assembly passed AB 701 last month with unanimous consent — a rare show of bipartisan agreement. The legislation still requires Senate passage before reaching Gov. Tony Evers’ desk.

If it makes it to the finish line before the Senate wraps up for the year, its impact would extend well beyond newsrooms. Everyday people face SLAPP risks, too. People in other states have been sued for leaving negative reviews online. 

As a fiercely independent newsroom, Wisconsin Watch doesn’t typically opine on specific policies; we assemble information on matters of public concern so residents can form their own views through their own value systems. But free expression is fundamental to what we do — and fundamental to a functioning democracy.

That’s why Wisconsin Watch is joining other newsrooms and free speech advocates in urging the Senate to enact protections against frivolous lawsuits.

Have thoughts about this legislation or this moment for free speech in Wisconsin and the U.S.? I’d love to hear from you. Reach me at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Opinion: How Wisconsin can slap down efforts to silence speech is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Watch a video version of the story here.

As Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly traversed the state last month to visit classrooms, she saw students harvesting and selling farm-fresh food, managing coffee shops and learning in wood shops, among other hands-on training. 

Through career and technical education programs, high school students can take unconventional classes like these that train them for in-demand jobs. The classes are popular among students, and schools want to offer more of them.

“Kids’ imaginations and their talents completely jump to life when they’re immersed in these settings and in these classrooms,” Underly said. 

But whether students can access classes like these largely depends on if their school district can cobble together the funding. That’s because Wisconsin is one of just five states that don’t dedicate state funding to public schools for career and technical education programs. 

In most states, programs teaching students hands-on job skills have secured increasing bipartisan support and financial investments in recent years, with lawmakers creating funding flows in states that previously lacked them. 

Wisconsin hasn’t done the same, leaving access to career and technical education uneven across the state. The programs rely mainly on federal funds many school leaders call insufficient. 

During Wisconsin’s most recent budget process, Underly requested $45 million for schools to spend on career and technical education. But as other issues took precedence, lawmakers rejected that proposal, likely leaving schools without guaranteed state funding for at least another two years. 

“I want to make sure that every kid has these opportunities, and if we were to have dedicated state funding, we can make sure that they do,” Underly said. “Otherwise, we’re just leaving it up to districts. And sometimes whether a district can pass a referendum or not is going to be the difference of if they offer these programs.”

Schools and state education leaders say the federal funding schools get right now falls short of covering these programs, which are often pricey and require high-tech tools and teachers with field experience. 

To make up the difference, schools often rely on piecemeal funding such as grants and donations, or ask voters to approve tax increases to fund new programs. The state has offered more piecemeal grants in recent years, but those funds are unpredictable.

“Career and technical education programs are among the most effective tools we have to keep students engaged, prepare young people for good-paying jobs, and address Wisconsin’s ongoing workforce shortage … Wisconsin employers are already facing serious labor shortages, and failing to invest in our workforce pipeline only makes that problem worse,” state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, a member of the Joint Finance Committee, wrote in a statement to Wisconsin Watch.

Wisconsin an outlier

Early hands-on job training for students has emerged as a popular solution for nationwide skilled worker shortages.

States passed 90 policies bolstering high school career and technical education in 2024, illustrating its increasing political support. 

Advance CTE, a nonprofit representing state career and technical education leaders, reported in 2023 that state funding for high school programs was increasing, while Wisconsin was among a handful of states with no such funding formula.

States have since continued to increase funding, and at least one — Nebraska — has created a funding formula.

Underly made her $45 million request during the 2025-27 biennial budget process. Gov. Tony Evers then suggested a pared-down version – dedicating $10 million – which was scrubbed by the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee and not included in the final bill. 

Underly believes lawmakers rejected her request due to widespread pressure to boost funding for the special education services schools are legally required to provide. 

“I do think, though, that our Legislature values these programs,” Underly said. “They’re very proud of the programs that they have in their school districts, but it’s one of those things where it’s just, ‘What’s the most pressing need right now?’”

Wisconsin Watch asked all 16 lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee why these funds were not included in the budget. Just three responded. Two Democratic lawmakers pointed to the lack of bipartisan communication during the budget process, making it impossible to know why the funding didn’t make the cut. 

“There is no discussion. It is not like we’re having a Mr. Smith goes to Washington, kind of a debate,” said state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison. “There’s no WisconsinEye footage where I can point to them, where Democrats say, ‘Well, we should do this,’ and Republicans say, ‘Well, actually, we don’t want to do that.’”

Continuing the status quo?

The number of Wisconsin students enrolled in career and technical education courses has remained stagnant over the past few years, the most recent state data shows. 

Roughly 64% of Wisconsin high schoolers have taken one of these classes, while just 25% have taken more than one career-focused course. 

Wisconsin gets $25.5 million in federal funds for career and technical education, $8.3 million of which is appropriated to high school programs. Schools have used these funds to “keep the lights on,” said Sara Baird, the Department of Public Instruction’s career and technical education section director. In fact, 23 states give more in state dollars than they receive in federal funds, said Laura Maldonado, senior research associate for Advance CTE.

In the meantime, Wisconsin has allocated career and technical education grant money to schools. Rather than directly funding programs, the funds are “incentive grants,” meaning they give schools money after students graduate from a career and technical education program and earn a certification in a high-need industry. In the 2023-25 biennium, lawmakers bumped the pot from $6.5 million to $8 million, where it stayed in the 2025-27 budget. 

In a response to Wisconsin Watch’s request for an interview, Joint Finance Committee Co-Chair Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, didn’t say why the committee denied the request for career and technical education funding. He pointed to the incentive grants as proof the Legislature “has consistently supported career and technical education by investing in workforce focused programs.” 

Advance CTE advocates for states to have dedicated funding because it expands access to more students, lends stability and allows flexibility as workforce needs change, according to Maldonado. 

“You’re trying to keep up with that labor market demand, and oftentimes it’s harder to do that with the federal funding,” Maldonado said. “You want to have that more flexible state funding source to be able to adjust that. So I think the main thing is that (federal funding) is often insufficient.”

In December, Wisconsin Watch reported on an Appleton technical charter school that struggles to manage high program costs and secure donations to stay afloat. The school received state grant funding to open, but a decade later, after those initial funds dried up, staff must chase down donations from local businesses.

Underly, whose term ends in July 2029, said she’ll continue to press for the creation of a state funding mechanism in the next budget cycle. 

“If it was up to me … It wouldn’t be $45 million, it would be a lot more,” Underly said.

Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagramand Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Nearly every state funds hands-on job training in high schools. Why not Wisconsin? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

None of the billion-dollar-plus data centers planned for Wisconsin are yet online, but the nationwide, artificial-intelligence-fueled market is already spurring economic growth in the state.

Wisconsin business leaders say no comprehensive accounting has been done. But just three Wisconsin companies have already amassed more than $1 billion in data center-related business: 

• Regal Rexnord, a Milwaukee maker of motors, announced in February it had received $735 million in orders from data centers.

• Generac, a Waukesha-based manufacturer, told Wisconsin Watch it has a backlog of $400 million in orders for backup generators for data centers. Moreover, Generac announced Feb. 19 it is acquiring a 120-employee Illinois engineering company to help meet data center demand. 

• Racine-based Modine announced in February 2025 it received $180 million in orders from a new customer for data center cooling systems to be manufactured in Virginia and Mississippi. In addition, the company in November opened a 155,000-square-foot plant in suburban Milwaukee to manufacture the systems.

Many companies don’t publicly report details on data center business they do, so it’s impossible to tally total economic impact in Wisconsin. But there are other examples.

Trane Technologies is manufacturing cooling systems for data centers in La Crosse, where it was founded in 1913, and says data centers are a strong part of its business. In November 2023, Excellerate opened a 385,000-square-foot plant in Little Chute, primarily to manufacture “modular electrical buildings” for data centers. Maysteel, a Washington County manufacturer, opened a data center hub in November 2024 and announced in February it is expanding the operation. 

The sheer demand to outfit data centers has meant that some business has trickled down from larger companies to smaller ones.

Modular Power & Data has 90 employees in Dane County and suburban Milwaukee to manufacture electrical distribution products. Chief Operating Officer Erik Thompson told Wisconsin Watch that Modular did $10 million of data center business in 2025 and expects to more than double that in 2026.

That work is “transforming a very small company into what I believe will be a very large Wisconsin manufacturer,” Thompson said. “Without this growth, we’d always be much smaller.” 

Because no hyperscale data centers are scheduled to begin operating in Wisconsin until later this year, their ultimate economic impact remains unknown.

Nationally, data centers are known for spurring construction work. That includes companies such as Brownsville-based Michels Corp., a lead contractor on the $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, and Waukesha-based Boldt Co. But those jobs are often temporary. 

“The standard data center development model — speedy dealmaking and opaque negotiations — delivers short-term construction jobs and revenue, but little durable local economic upside,” the Washington, D.C.- based Brookings think tank concluded in February.

In Wisconsin, data center expenditures are projected to raise the state’s gross domestic product from $354 million in 2024 to $881 million in 2029, according to University of Virginia economist João-Pedro Ferreira, author of a study done for the Joyce Foundation. The data center workforce is expected to triple from 360 to 1,143 jobs, but constitute only 0.09% of the overall labor market.

“The impacts might seem a lot, but they are not,” Ferreira said.

At least $46 billion in hyperscale data centers are under construction or under consideration in Wisconsin. Besides Port Washington, $20 billion worth of data centers are under construction and planned in Mount Pleasant, and a $1 billion facility is being built in Beaver Dam. Proposals are pending in Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie. 

That’s as concerns about impacts on land, water and electricity spur loud opposition to data centers in Wisconsin. On Facebook alone, more than 24,000 people have joined groups to fight hyperscale centers that are proposed or under construction in the state. 

But Wisconsin businesses see more growth from AI. In November, a foundation connected with Waukesha County-based Pieper Electric announced a $2 million donation to expand Waukesha County Technical College’s Applied AI Lab.

Dale Kooyenga, CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and a former Republican state lawmaker, said skills being developed for data center construction have value after the facilities are built.

“These men and women building these data centers aren’t building just buildings, they’re building the world’s largest computers,” he said. 

Kooyenga also pushed back on claims that AI will be bad for the economy.

“The concept that robots and technology are out to get your jobs has been a concept in America since 1900. That’s not a new fear,” he said. “But the fact is, is that there will be a different-looking economy and different opportunities.”

AI’s growth is affecting workers unevenly across industries. 

It’s reducing employment in the most AI-exposed industries, such as computer systems design, and it’s especially hitting younger workers, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis. 

But wages in those sectors have continued to grow as AI tools are benefiting veteran workers — those who have gained knowledge from experience.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Data centers fuel $1 billion in Wisconsin business growth, but some question long-term impact is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.