You
The good news if you're sitting in a house you own your home values remain high and the 2024 increase while
slowed is still up more than eight and a half percent now that's not great news if you are 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 happening so the
headline of your report Wisconsin property tax levy 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 two hundred fifty million
dollars 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 District so I think we're going to see some significant
increases in December so we were also talking about home values now those increases and 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 a pick in construction of particularly a
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 in 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 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 city of Madison in 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 adds is just a one or two or three million dollars 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 cost then that ends up
translating into something with shortfall Madison 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 in school districts have promised wage increases
that they know their revenues are not sufficient to pay for so that leads them with either cutting
in other areas or going to referendum which is what many of them are doing so there we are on the
budget whole kind of circumstance but as to property taxes you've said that lawmakers over the deck
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 reign 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 so you are also out today 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 City 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 as 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 in our areas of weakness we'll do
more reporting on that Jason Stein thanks very much thank you
good question about prescriptions for the next legislative session but I did I threw it in oh no
I think that was I mean I think