Gov. Tony Evers declared 2025 “The Year of the Kid” Wednesday night at his seventh State of the State address, highlighting the tax cuts and employment rates of 2024 and solutions to gun violence in Wisconsin.
In the 2024 State of the State address, Evers focused on improving worker outcomes with tax cuts and employment increases, expanding abortion rights, eliminating environmental issues and prioritizing mental health.
Fiscal outcomes of 2024
Tax cuts have been a “bipartisan priority,” according to Evers. His cuts resulted in at least a 15% decrease in income taxes targeted to the middle class, allowing taxpayers to keep more of their income compared to the last 50 years. Wisconsin’s tax burden also dropped to the bottom 16 states in the country from the top five 20 years ago.
Evers also declared 2024 “The Year of the Worker” in Wisconsin, recording historically low unemployment rates. He said nine counties reported the lowest rates on record, and the state ended the year with seven straight months of record-high employment.
Wisconsin has also erased its 30-year budget deficit, with Evers ending his five fiscal years as governor with a positive balance.
2025: The Year of the Kid
Evers plans to make 2025 “The Year of the Kid,” aiming to lower child care costs for working families.
The bipartisan bill Evers signed in 2024 to expand child and dependent care credit goes into effect this year and will be visible on residents’ taxes. This bill will result in a $650 average benefit per filer for over 110,000 Wisconsin taxpayers.
“Child care is too darn expensive,” Evers said. A 2023 study showed Wisconsin child care costs take 18 to 36 percent of a family’s income. He plans to invest over $500 million to lower child care costs after investing $170 million 15 months ago.
Another child care relief proposal, the “Less for Rx” plan, aims to set price caps for prescription drugs, remove the sales tax on over-the-counter medicine and reduce insulin copay to $35.
Additionally, the “Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids” plan will end school meal debt and ensure a healthy breakfast and lunch for students at school free of charge. The $154.8 million budget includes reimbursements to all participating schools for each free meal, efforts to increase healthy eating behavior and water filtration systems to reduce contaminants.
The plan also prohibits schools from preventing a student with unpaid fees such as school meal debt from participating in a graduation ceremony.
Statewide crime and gun violence reduction
Evers announced the creation of the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention Jan. 14, which he said will introduce efforts to “help keep our kids, families and communities safe.” Additional funding from the Legislature would be required to make the office permanent in Wisconsin.
Under Evers’ proposed gun safety package, mental and behavioral health services will also receive investments, particularly for recovery resources directed toward crime victims, survivors and families. Victim support services will receive a $66 million investment in the next state budget.
Evers also plans to implement two gun restriction policies, which he said Wisconsinites statewide support. Following the Abundant Life Christian School shooting in December that killed two and injured six, Evers said the Legislature “must do better than doing nothing.”
The first policy will take steps to keep guns away from dangerous individuals by requiring background checks for all firearm purchases from anywhere in the state with no exceptions.
The second proposed policy is a “red flag” law that would allow law enforcement to intervene when a dangerous risk is posed rather than after the crime has been committed. This red flag allowed law enforcement in California to impose an emergency protective order on the man who potentially plotted with the Abundant Life shooter who lived in another state. Evers said this law “almost certainly saved lives” and should be implemented in Wisconsin.
With bipartisan support, Evers aims to get “common sense stuff done,” such as keeping guns from domestic abusers or out of homes with young children.
