Gov. Evers seeks $4 billion for state building projects, including UW science facilities and new juvenile prison
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers wants to spend about $4 billion on state building upgrades across Wisconsin under a plan released Monday.
About $1.6 billion would go to the University of Wisconsin System for brick-and-mortar building projects. Other big-ticket items include $634 million for the Department of Corrections, $137 million for upgrades to veteran homes and $40 million to restore the state Capitol building.
Evers said the projects are critical to address the state's aging infrastructure and plan for the future. He blamed the Republican-controlled Legislature for a more than $13 billion deferred maintenance backlog, including $3.4 billion worth of projects that he said demanded immediate attention to prevent system failures and safety hazards.
"We can't afford to kick the can down the road on key infrastructure projects across our state, most especially as the cost of building materials may only get more expensive with each day of delay due to potential tariff taxes and trade wars," he said in a statement.
Unlike the last budget, when the state used cash from the state's surplus to pay for the projects, Evers suggested borrowing taxpayer money from the state's general fund to pay for the bulk of the projects.
Evers' plan will first head to the state building commission on March 25 for consideration. Lawmakers also need to sign off but have a history of trimming down Evers' list. In the last budget, they cut Evers' $3.8 billion proposal down to about $2.7 billion.
Republican legislative leaders did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment about Evers' plan.
Evers proposed funding most of the UW System's requests. Among the top priories for the state universities are:
$194 million to add on to the UW-La Crosse Prairie Springs Science Center. This would pave the way for the demolition of Cowley Hall, a 62-year-old academic building that lacks a fire suppression system and is incapable of being renovated for its intended use. Money for the first phase of the project was included in the 2013-15 budget but the second phase has been pushed off by lawmakers in more recent budgets.
$189 million for UW-Milwaukee to renovate portions of its Northwest Quadrant so its College of Health Sciences can be housed in one building instead of five. UWM has been waiting years to renovate more of the old Columbia St. Mary's Hospital complex. The projects would allow programs in high demand to expand.
$293 million for UW-Madison to demolish the Brutalist-style Humanities building, and relocate the music and art departments to new or renovated facilities. The building is in "extremely poor condition," UW officials said in planning documents, and was closed for a few weeks in 2021 because of potential structural concerns that posed an immediate problem.
Other projects Evers' plan includes are $98 million for an addition and renovation to UW-Stevens Point's Sentry Hall, $293 million for new UW-Madison dorms, $35 million to renovate Wylie Hall at UW-Parkside and $137 million for an addition and renovation to Polk Learning Commons at UW-Oskhkosh.
Looming over the UW System during this budget is a desire to avoid what happened in the last one. Republican lawmakers withheld funding for a widely supported UW-Madison engineering building, using the project as a bargaining chip for months to negotiate over campus diversity efforts.
Corrections are another large area of focus in Evers' proposal. His plan calls for the closing of Green Bay Correctional Institution by 2029. The facility is over 100 years old and has had issues with rodents, heating and cooling and layout safety in recent years.
His budget also calls for the rehabilitation for the Waupun Correctional Institution, which is also over a century old and has struggled with problems for the last several years, including many inmate deaths.
Evers also called for closing Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls in the northern part of the state. The two schools have been plagued by issues for years and were the source of a federal consent decree. The Legislature voted to close the embattled facilities years ago and turn them into adult institutions, but the process has stalled time and time again.
To close the two youth schools, Evers proposed building a new youth facility in Dane County and set aside money to begin design on another youth facility in northeastern Wisconsin. He also called for the expansion of the Grow Academy in Oregon, Wisconsin.
Other capital projects include:
$195 million for health services facilities
$25 million for investments in clean energy project
$1.2 billion to tackle deferred maintenance on state buildings across Wisconsin
This story will be updated.
Contact Kelly Meyerhofer at kmeyerhofer@gannett.com or 414-223-5168. Follow her on X (Twitter) at @KellyMeyerhofer. Contact Laura Schulte at lschulte@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers wants $4.1 billion for building projects
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