Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 6:14 and sunset is 7:36 for 13 hours 22 minutes of daylight. The moon was full overnight and is now 99.8 percent illuminated.
On this day in 1944, the Battle of Marseille ends in an Allied victory that liberates the city.
Wisconsin’s state budget surplus continues to grow:
“Wisconsin is now projected to end the current state budget cycle with a surplus of nearly $3 billion – a pot of money that continues to outpace original projections from when it was enacted last year.
The latest revenue update comes three months after a popular bipartisan tax deal offering school funding and individual tax relief collapsed in the state Senate, in part because some who voted against it said it could put the state on shaky ground if it experienced a period of stalled economic growth.”
[…]
“Preliminary calculations from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau released Thursday Aug. 27 showed the state has collected $23.1 billion in tax revenues for the 2025-26 fiscal year – a 3.4% increase from the previous year, and 2% more than what the state expected to bring in..
That puts the state on track to increase its projected $2.5 billion surplus by more than $450 million, to nearly $3 billion at the end of the 2025-27 budget cycle.”
[…]
“An overwhelming majority of Wisconsin adults – 80% – told the Marquette University Law School poll in May that state lawmakers should have passed the bill negotiated by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican legislative leaders that cut property and income taxes, routed more state funds to schools and sent income tax filers a rebate check.”
See Jessie Opoien, Projected budget surplus grows to $3B after bipartisan deal failed, August 28, 2026.
The pressing — yet unanswered — question remains why the state should hold a surplus this large. It’s not sufficient to claim that the state should have some surplus (albeit a modest one as a contingency). This three-billion-dollar surplus plainly rests on a political failure to compromise rather than a specific, rational policy explanation. A decisive election outcome would serve Wisconsin well by breaking the political logjam that has led the state to hoard so much despite Wisconsinites’ unaddressed needs.
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Forthcoming topics (in no particular order): Development in Downtown Whitewater (Follow-Up), A New Ethics Ordinance, Polling Places in the City (Further Considerations), and Steps for a Public Interest Campaign.
Last night’s partial lunar eclipse, as seen from Spain: