River News: Our View

So, you finally paid off your mortgage, and you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, aren’t you?

You look around, surveying all that is yours, knowing it’s paid for, and now you’ll have some extra cash for those vacations and other pleasantries you’ve worked so hard for. It’s a pretty satisfying feeling.

That is, it was until you opened up your latest property tax bill. Suddenly, that paid-off house felt more like a deflated balloon. You read the tax bill again, just to make sure you weren’t hallucinating. 

After all, in recent decades Wisconsin has been a relatively affordable place to live, especially after Republicans took power after 2010 and enacted billions of dollars in tax cuts.

And then along came Gov. Tony Evers. It’s an understatement, but the bargain that was Wisconsin has unraveled under the tax-and-spend Democrat. Taxes are now sky-high, and, if he and his fellow Democrat tyrants have their way, you’ll pay the higher freight for the next four centuries. 

Not that you’ll actually have to worry about it that long, since you’ll be dead and buried in a pauper’s field — unless you take out a second mortgage in what we now not-so-proudly call the indentured state of Wisconsin.

OK, Wisconsinites are not literally taking out second mortgages just to pay their property taxes. But the direction is unmistakable. Evers’s 400-year tax hike is real, and property taxes are rising faster than they have in decades. For many homeowners — especially retirees, working families, and people on fixed incomes, of which there are many in the Northwoods — this is a rising tide that could drown them.

Last week in these pages, we  reported on soaring property taxes across the nation, including Wisconsin, and the numbers were not reassuring. According to a December 2025 report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, gross statewide property tax levies are on pace to rise by roughly 5 percent this year, the largest increase in 18 years. School property taxes alone are rising by 7.8 percent, the biggest jump since 1992. 

Nearly half of all property taxes in Wisconsin now flow to K-12 schools, the Policy Forum reports, and that share is growing. 

That kind of increase is not an abstraction. According to the Tax Foundation, Wisconsin ranks 10th in the nation in property taxes paid as a percentage of owner-occupied housing value, while a WalletHub survey last year ranked our state’s property taxes 8th highest in the United States.

This is real money out of real households. It is the difference between staying put and downsizing, between making repairs and letting things slide, between feeling secure and feeling trapped. And it hasn’t happened by accident. Wisconsin did not stumble blindly into this problem. 

Over time, the state had placed some limits on property tax growth, largely in response to the out-of-control tax-and-spend policies of the Democrats under Gov. Jim Doyle. Runaway school levies in the early 1990s produced annual increases of up to 8 percent statewide.

Subsequent reforms worked — until they didn’t.

The immediate cause of rising property taxes is the increase in K-12 school levies, which the Policy Forum estimates will rise by more than $476 million this year alone, bringing the total statewide school levy to roughly $6.58 billion. It is the largest percentage increase in more than three decades.

If taxpayers will recall, during the 2023-25 budget process, lawmakers passed a  $325 per-pupil revenue increase — a deal with the governor — to apply for two years. The governor then used his veto pen to stab the GOP in the back, using his partial-veto power to strike digits from the bill to put annual revenue increases on autopilot until the year 2425, regardless of future economic conditions, enrollment changes, or legislative intent. 

The veto turned a two-year increase into a four-century heist.

While districts don’t have to levy the maximum, most do. When have you seen a tax entity not take the money and run? Only 58 of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts levied less than the maximum amount allowed by the governor’s veto, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau has reported.

That absurdity, which should never have been allowed to escape the asylum, was kept on the lam by the nutcase Supreme Court, which effectively let what is a politically criminal act escape through its side door.

Republicans warned at the time that the veto would fuel long-term property tax growth. They were right. And because the increase is baked into law, future legislatures inherit a problem they did not create and cannot easily unwind. 

This is not responsible budgeting. It is a tax pillow over our face. But don’t worry, Democrats will call it a mercy killing.

This week, the governor conceded — implicitly — that something has gone wrong. He should have been looking in the mirror, but instead he was taking a selfie.

Suddenly, the 400-year tax man wanted property tax relief, unveiling a plan to pursue $1.3 billion in property tax cuts. Never mind that his partial veto of the tax hike will likely cost up to $2 billion over the next four years.

Then, too, the proposal is targeted toward specific groups of taxpayers and heavily weighted toward increased government spending rather than structural reform. Not surprisingly, business groups are unimpressed.

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce correctly called the plan a dodge, noting that the “obvious solution” is to repeal the 400-year veto that put the system on autopilot in the first place. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos went further, accusing the governor of asking lawmakers to backfill a crisis of his own making. 

“We will pass a repeal of his 400-year veto and we ask him to urge Democrats in the legislature to join that effort,” Vos said. “Recent property tax increases fall primarily on his shoulders and unless he’s willing to fix that, taxpayers in Wisconsin will be driven out of their homes due to these unaffordable increases.”

GOP gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany agreed: “Evers raised your property taxes for the next 400 years with his partial veto. Now he’s trying to use $1.3 billion of your tax dollars to cover up his mistake and label it ‘relief.’ He should end the 400-year tax hike and stop playing political games with your money.”

While school levies dominate the headlines, they are not the only pressure point.

County property taxes are rising as well, up nearly 3 percent statewide, with some counties — especially in the Northwoods — experiencing double-digit increases. Property taxes remain the primary lever, and in many cases, the only one. 

A lucid observer — we say ‘observer’ because lucid people never seem to become policymakers, or remain lucid once they do — might suggest that government at all levels cut spending. But heaven forbid.

For homeowners, all this means a nightmare in December. Instead of a Christmas present, Democrats have delivered a lump of coal. Retirees on fixed incomes or young families trying to stay in their first homes are the victims of cold-hearted Democratic policy, which is literally robbing Wisconsinites of the American dream, and, in some cases, ruining lives.

What we are witnessing is the familiar pattern of modern budgeting: tax-and-repeat until an intractable long-term structural deficit is assured, then propose short-term relief funded by more spending, more borrowing, or both. Taxpayers get temporary relief at best, while the underlying engines of massive debt are primed.

It’s a prescription for sure-fire massive tax increases and a deeply red government bottom line — and for bankruptcy, both state and personal.

We would remind the governor that, unlike income taxes, property taxes are not proportionate to income. They arrive whether your income rose or fell. They do not care if you are retired, unemployed, or struggling. They are owed because you dare to own a home because government demands that you share your equity. It’s another way the government actually steals your property rights.

The governor’s veto shattered one of the strongest restraints protecting property owners, which is another way of saying protecting the American dream. Now, faced with predictable consequences, the administration is asking for a bailout.

Repealing the 400-year increase would not solve every problem in school funding, but it would restore legislative intent, reassert democratic accountability, and force a real conversation about how Wisconsin pays for education.

As Vos said, Wisconsinites should not have to worry about being taxed out of homes they already own. They should not feel punished for prospering. And they should not be told that the solution to rising taxes is — somehow — more government spending.

You shouldn’t have to mortgage your house to pay your property taxes. And if Wisconsin continues down this path, far too many people eventually will.