Joint Finance Reduces Cuts to Municipalities; Eliminates Emergency Services MOE

On June 2, the state legislature's Joint Finance Committee voted to eliminate the emergency services maintenance of effort funding requirement and restored some of the shared revenue cuts for counties and municipalities.

Omnibus Motion 450, passed on vote of 11-4, provided a net reduction in shared revenue payments of $76,750,000, rather than the reduction of $96,000,000 proposed by Governor Walker. The committee also eliminated the requirement that counties and municipalities maintain their level of spending for emergency services at the 2009 level. This emergency services maintenance of effort law was passed in the prior biennium.

Note that the governor had eliminated maintenance of effort funding for public libraries in his budget proposal. Efforts to restore MOE for public libraries have not been successful to date.