outbreak occurring if measles were introduced.
sitting in a house, you own your home values remain high, and the
2024 increase, while slowed, is still up more than 8.5%. Now
that's not great news. If you're in the market to buy a house.
And how might it affect your property tax bill come December?
Here to unpack the numbers from a recent report from the
Wisconsin Policy Forum is its director, Jason Stein. And
thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. So the headline
of your report, Wisconsin Property Tax Levies, see the
biggest increase since 2007, but that actually cuts the tax rate.
So what does that mean we can expect when we open our December
tax bill. Right. >> So the bills back in December
of last year was a significant increase. Now that's in the
gross levy. So there are state tax credits that lower that a
little bit. But it's still a very significant increase that
we saw in December 2023. And I think December 2024 bills are
shaping up to be a big increase as well, because if you look at
the statewide level, there was a large referendum that passed
$250 million in the Milwaukee public Schools in Milwaukee and
then in Madison. We see two significant school referenda up
and in many, you know, surrounding Dane County
districts. So I think we're going to see some significant
increases in December. >> So we were also talking about
home values. Now, those increases in home values have
cooled, but they are still historically high.
>> Right? I think what we could say is they're still rising
rapidly. Home values, just maybe not at ridiculous speeds as we
saw in 2022. And 2023. >> So I mean, that's good. As we
said, if you're if you're sitting in a house that you own,
but what about people who are trying to get into that market?
>> I mean, I think that's something to watch because, you
know, there's already been a lot of angst and worry for, you
know, the younger generations as they try and angle their way
into that market, you know, we are seeing we have seen uptick
in construction of particularly of multi-family housing, but to
a lesser extent of single family housing. So that will help. But,
you know, we're still do not seem to be meeting the demand
with just the housing stock we have and the construction
projects in the pipeline as to taxes on properties, property
tax revenues don't seem to be keeping pace for local
governments and schools, some of which, like Madison, that you
spoke to find themselves with deep budget holes in both the
city and school coffers. >> But how could a growing city
like Madison be in that place? >> When you look at cities, it
does help under state law, if a city is growing like Madison is,
and adding new property value. However this the property tax
levy for the city of Madison and any other city, it's limited by
the increase in net new construction and you know, the
city, in other words, can have hundreds of millions of dollars
in new construction and what that that adds is just a 1 or 2
or $3 million on the existing levy. It's a relatively small
amount, and so, you know, when you look at a budget where they
need to generate in a given year, tens of millions of
dollars to pay for the inflationary costs, then that
ends up translating into something of a shortfall.
Madison, in particular, hasn't gotten a lot of state aid in
recent years, you know, so that's another factor for
Madison. And then also, there's inflation and local governments
in some cases. And school districts have promised wage
increases that they know their revenues are not sufficient to
pay for. So that leaves them with either cutting in other
areas or going to referendum, which is what many of them are
doing. hole kind of circumstance. But
as to property taxes, you've said that lawmakers over the
decades obviously have tried to implement ways to constrain
property tax increases and you feel like that might be coming
up again? >> Yes. I mean, I think
particularly since 2011, in Wisconsin, state officials,
elected officials have taken very many efforts to rein in
local property taxes, and they have been very successful. So,
you know, the property tax burden in the state has fallen.
The state's overall tax burden ranking nationally has fallen.
But this approach, which is to essentially put state mandates
on the local government, that they can't do those increases
without a referendum and then, you know, some state aid. But
not in general, huge amounts. Although there was some big
increases last year, what that, that approach, I think seems to
be coming to an end or faltering. And I think we still
need to see. But I think the December bills are probably
going to demonstrate that. And spark a conversation in 2025 at
the state Capitol about, well, what do we do about this? How do
we respond? with a new report on
post-pandemic pandemic job recovery in Wisconsin. What's
the takeaway? >> You know, what we're seeing
is a pretty strong recovery from the pandemic in which we've now
made up for the job losses that we had and employment levels
overall statewide have reached their highest levels. But at the
same time, in more than half the counties of the state, that is
not the case. So in some of our urbanized areas like Dane County
and then some suburban Twin Cities suburbs area in northwest
Wisconsin, other Chicago suburbs like Kenosha County doing well,
but at a statewide level. Still many places that have been left
behind that have not caught up. And in particular, one industry
that really stands out is manufacturing our signature
industry in Wisconsin. Again you're seeing some weakness
there in terms of the jobs numbers for manufacturing, food
processing strong. But other legacy industries like printing
and paper making have just not recovered and are areas of