Broadband expansion grants; assistance for paying for Internet service; regulations of broadband service; electric providers using easements to provide broadband; municipal broadband service; counting pupils for state school aid purposes; calculating the amount to be appropriated for state general school aid; school aid factors; special adjustment aids; hold harmless aid; per pupil aid; school district revenue limits; the first dollar and school levy property tax credits; creating a one-year fee remission program to cover tuition and fees for resident students enrolled in technical colleges and University of Wisconsin System two-year campuses; granting rule-making authority; making an appropriation; and providing a penalty. (FE)

Broadband line extension and planning grants The bill requires PSC to make grants to residents of properties that are not served by a broadband service provider to assist in paying the customer costs associated with line extension necessary to connect broadband service to the properties. The maximum size of a broadband line extension grant is $4,000. The bill also requires PSC to give priority to primary residences and to establish other criteria for awarding the grants.

The bill also requires PSC to make grants to cities, villages, towns, counties, school districts, tribal governments, regional planning commissions, nonprofit organizations, and local economic development councils for the following: 1) broadband planning; 2) feasibility engineering related to broadband infrastructure construction; 3) broadband adoption planning; and 4) digital inclusion activities.

The maximum size of a broadband planning grant is $50,000. The bill also requires PSC to provide training, technical assistance, and information on broadband infrastructure construction, broadband adoption, and digital inclusion.

Internet assistance program The bill requires the Department of Children and Families to establish an Internet assistance program, under which it makes payments to Internet service providers on behalf of low-income individuals to assist with paying for Internet service. The bill requires that other assistance program options be exhausted before assistance is provided under this program. The bill allows DCF to contract for the administration of the program. The bill requires DCF to promulgate rules to implement the program, including a requirement that the family income of a recipient not exceed 200 percent of the federal poverty line. Under the bill, the new program is funded through an appropriation from the general fund and from $20,000,000 that the bill requires DCF to allocate from federal moneys, including moneys received under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant program.

Prohibiting discrimination in broadband and broadband subscriber rights The bill prohibits a broadband service provider from denying access to a group of potential residential customers because of their race or income. Under the bill, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has authority to enforce the prohibition and to promulgate related rules. The bill also authorizes any person affected by a broadband service provider that violates the prohibition to bring a private action.

The bill also establishes various requirements for broadband service providers, including the following: 1) broadband service providers must provide service satisfying minimum standards established by PSC, and subscribers may terminate contracts if broadband service fails to satisfy those standards; 2) broadband service providers must provide service as described in advertisements or representations made to subscribers; 3) broadband service providers must repair broadband service within 72 hours after a subscriber reports a broadband service interruption that is not the result of a major systemwide or large area emergency; 4) broadband service providers must give subscribers credit for interruptions of broadband service that last more than four hours in a day; and 5) broadband service providers must give subscribers at least 30 days' advance written notice before instituting a rate increase.

Allowing electric providers to use easements for broadband service The bill allows electric providers to use easements that they hold to do the following: 1) install or maintain broadband infrastructure; and 2) lease or provide excess capacity in broadband infrastructure to a supplier of broadband services.

Under the bill, “electric provider” includes both electric public utilities and electric cooperatives. The bill also provides that except for an easement that expressly prohibits, by its terms, using the easement for those purposes, the terms or conditions of an easement held by an electric provider that inhibit it from using the easement for those purposes do not apply.

Before an electric provider uses an easement for the purposes allowed under the bill, it must provide notice to the owner of the property subject to the easement. After providing notice, an electric provider may record a memorandum including certain information in the office of the register of deeds of the county where the property subject to the easement is located. The bill also establishes requirements for actions brought by a property owner against an electric provider, subsidiary of an electric provider, or supplier of broadband services because of the electric provider's use of an easement for a purpose allowed under the bill, and the bill prohibits owners from bringing such actions if the bill's requirements are not satisfied.

Municipal construction, ownership, or operation of broadband facilities Current law prohibits, with several exceptions, a municipality from constructing, owning, or operating a facility for providing video service, telecommunications service, or broadband service to the public unless 1) the municipality holds a public hearing on the proposed action; 2) notice of the public hearing is given; and 3) the municipality prepares and makes available for public inspection a report estimating the total costs of, and revenues derived from, constructing, owning, or operating the facility for a period of at least three years.

This bill eliminates the requirement that a municipality prepare and make available for public inspection that report if the facility is a broadband facility intended to serve an area designated as underserved or unserved by PSC.

Currently, under another of the exceptions, the public hearing and cost report do not apply to a facility for providing broadband service to an area within the boundaries of a municipality if the municipality asks, in writing, each person that provides broadband service within the boundaries of the municipality whether the person currently provides broadband service to the area or intends to provide broadband service to the area within nine months and 1) does not receive an affirmative response within 60 days; 2) determines that a person who responded does not currently provide broadband service to the area, and no other person makes the response to the municipality; or 3) determines that a person who responded that the person intended to provide broadband service to the area within nine months did not actually provide the service within nine months, and no other person makes the response to the municipality. Under the bill, for this exception in the case of an underserved or unserved area, rather than asking whether a person plans to provide broadband service to the area within nine months, the municipality must ask whether the person actively plans to provide broadband service to the area within three months.

School district funding; fair funding for our future The bill also makes a number of changes in the laws relating to public school financing, including the following:

1. Currently, the amount appropriated each fiscal year for general school aid is a sum set by law. Beginning in the 2022-23 school year, the bill directs the Department of Public Instruction, the Department of Administration, and the Legislative Fiscal Bureau annually to jointly certify to the Joint Committee on Finance an estimate of the amount necessary to appropriate in the following school year to ensure that state school aids equal two-thirds of partial school revenues (in general, the sum of state school aids and school property taxes). Under the bill, JCF determines the amount appropriated as general school aids in each odd-numbered fiscal year and the amount is set by law in each even-numbered fiscal year.

2. For purposes of determining a school district's general school aid amount, the bill changes how a pupil enrolled in a four-year-old, full-day kindergarten program is counted for purposes of general school aid from 0.5 pupil to one pupil.

Additionally, for purposes of the general school aid formula, the bill requires each pupil who is eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch to be counted as an additional 0.2 pupil solely for the purpose of determining a school district's property value per member.

3. Currently, if a school district would receive less in general state aid in any school year than 85 percent of the amount it received in the previous school year, its state aid for the current school year is increased to 85 percent of the aid received in the previous school year. The bill increases the percentage to 90 percent.

4. The bill provides that a school district's state aid in any school year may not be less than an amount equal to the school district's membership multiplied by $3,000.

5. Under current law, there is a per pupil adjustment for purposes of calculating a school district's revenue limit of $175 per pupil for the 2019-20 school year and $179 for the 2020-21 school year, and there is no per pupil adjustment for the 2021-22 school year or any school year thereafter. Under the bill, there is a per pupil adjustment of $204 for the 2022-23 school year and, in the 2023-24 school year and thereafter, the per pupil adjustment is the per pupil adjustment for the previous school year as adjusted for any increase in the consumer price index.

6. Current law provides a minimum per pupil revenue limit for school districts, known as the revenue limit ceiling. Current law also provides that during the three school years following a school year in which an operating referendum fails in a school district, the school district's revenue limit ceiling is the revenue limit ceiling that applied in the school year during which the referendum was held. The bill eliminates this consequence for a failed operating referendum.

7. The bill creates a revenue limit adjustment for a school district that incurs costs to remediate lead contamination in drinking water in the school district, including costs to test for the presence of lead in drinking water, to provide safe drinking water, and to replace lead pipe water service lines to school buildings in the school district.

8. Currently, if at least 50 percent of a school district's enrollment is eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch under the federal school lunch program, the school district is eligible for a prorated share of the amount appropriated as high-poverty aid. The bill eliminates this aid beginning in the 2022-23 school year. The bill provides additional state aid for the 2022-23 school year to hold school districts harmless from the loss of high-poverty aid.

9. Under current law, in the school district equalization aid formula, the guaranteed valuations represent the amount of property tax base support that the state guarantees behind each pupil. There are three guaranteed valuations used;

each applies to a different level of expenditures. The first level is for expenditures up to the primary cost ceiling of $1,000 per pupil. The second level is for costs per pupil that exceed $1,000 but are less than the secondary cost ceiling, which is set at 90 percent of the prior school year statewide shared cost per pupil. The bill changes the secondary cost ceiling to 100 percent of the prior school year statewide shared cost per pupil.

10. The bill eliminates the school levy property tax credit and the first dollar property tax credit in 2023.

11. The bill provides additional funding of $1,090,000,000 in the 2022-23 school year for general school aid for purposes of maintaining compliance with maintenance of effort requirements of the federal Consolidated Appropriations Act and the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

Technical college and two-year UW campus fee remission program The bill creates a one-year fee remission program to cover resident tuition and fees at technical colleges and two-year University of Wisconsin System schools (UW branch campuses).

The bill creates a Freedom to Learn Program to provide full fee remission in the 2022-23 academic year to resident students enrolled in technical colleges or UW branch campuses who have completed the federal Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Under the program, students receive full remission of the balance of tuition and fees after other grants and scholarships awarded to the student are applied. The bill creates a sum sufficient appropriation for the UW System to fund the program for UW branch campus students and a sum sufficient appropriation for the Technical College System Board to make grants to technical colleges to fund the program for technical college students. The UW System and TCS Board must establish requirements for the completion of community service as a condition of receiving fee remission under the program.