Wisconsin Legislature Council Addresses HSHS Emergency Funds

Wisconsin Legislature Council attorneys wrote a memo last week regarding the Joint Finance Committee’s refusal to release emergency funds.

The memo, written by Principal Attorney Anna Denning and Senior Staff Attorney Steven McCarthy, found that the Joint Finance Committee could release the $15 million in approved funding to address the Western Wisconsin health care crisis as well as funding to address PFAS contamination across the state, but there could be some legal risk involved.

According to the memo, the legal risk for the emergency funding involves the vetoes made by Governor Tony Evers, which allowed the $15 million in emergency funding to be used more flexibly. While it maintains that the Joint Finance Committee is able to transfer those funds to the Department of Health Services, it notes that a court might invalidate the approval and claim that “grants to support hospital services” is insufficient legislative language.

Reaction to the memo was split between members of the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee and Democratic lawmakers. A press release from the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee argued that the memo proves that releasing the funding proposes a legal risk that the committee can not take. In their own press releases, State Senator Jeff Smith and State Representative Jodi Emerson argued the memo clearly shows that the Joint Finance Committee has the authority to release the money to support essential services in the emergency situation.

The memo notes that if the Joint Finance Committee finds that an emergency exists, no funds are available for the relevant purposes, and the purposes for which the supplemental appropriation is requested have been authorized or directed by the Wisconsin State Legislature, they do have the authority to supplement an appropriation.

As the legal issues of the emergency funding unfold, local officials in the Chippewa Valley have taken other steps to pursue more permanent solutions. In addition to increased services being offered by individual providers in the area, the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative has taken important steps in establishing a new independent community hospital.