You may remember that back on 06/02/2021 the Common Council voted to approve Resolution #8-R-21 regarding the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.
The resolution called for the program to be renewed for 10 years with an annual budget of $70 million. There had been some differing views among Council members regarding the appropriateness of that specific language. Although there was widespread support for the concept of renewing the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, some alderpersons disagreed with asking that it be funded at a certain dollar amount and thought it was more appropriate to leave the specifics of state-wide budget decisions to the state legislators. Other alderpersons thought that the program was underfunded and that supporting the specific dollar amount of $70 million, which was the amount Governor Evers was calling for it to be renewed at, was a way to encourage the legislature to increase the amount for the program even if they didn’t end up increasing it the full asked for amount.
The Common Council did go ahead and approve the resolution, maintaining the language requesting that the program be renewed for 10 years with annual funding of $70 million.
The most recent state budget has been signed. The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was renewed for 4 years at an annual funding level of $33,250,000.
During the budget prior to that it had been renewed for 2 years at $33,250,000 per year. So this most recent budget includes no increase to the funding level but does renew the program for 4 years instead of 2.
You can view the current state budget as well as previous budgets here: https://doa.wi.gov/Pages/StateFinances/CurrentBiennialBudget.aspx
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