Economy and Infastructure
Transportation policy for the way Wisconsinites actually want to travel
Executive summary Transportation policy debates frequently drift toward promoting particular modes of travel while discouraging others. However, roads, rail lines and buses are not ends in themselves; their purpose is to help…
Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha rail idea back on radar, despite costs, existing options
Cities tout costly plans for trains on route already served by commuter buses A costly proposed commuter rail system between Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee is back on the radar of municipal leaders, even as frequent service on…
Data center boom means good times for old-line manufacturing, 50 or 500 hires at a time
Moving around data turns out to demand a lot of Wisconsin-made metal If data centers are supposed to wipe out everyone’s job, they’re making a pathetic go of it in Waukesha, where a manufacturer with a 120-year-old plant is…
Strong foundations, untapped potential: Wisconsin’s economy
Exploring the mismatch between strong labor, business inputs and our lagging productivity and income outputs Executive summary Wisconsin’s economy displays many of the conditions that typically precede stronger growth in…
How a development tool can increase property taxes
Development-spurring TIF has consequences in Wisconsin’s taxpayer-protecting levy limits, but there’s a way around tradeoff “There’s good TIFs and bad TIFs,” as one economic development figure, the head of the Metropolitan…
Wisconsin should stop treating data centers worse than other taxpaying industries
Sales tax exemption isn’t a subsidy but a common shield against increasing consumers’ prices with hidden levies Wisconsin’s sales tax exemption for data center equipment is increasingly controversial, with many policymakers…
Data centers could be a godsend — if communities let them
Anti-tech sentiment ignoring staggering job and revenue projections A growing number of Wisconsin communities are choosing to act against considerable economic interest and sit out the data center revolution. Vantage Data…
Data centers often bring faster connections to world
For some users, microseconds count, so proximity is important; ‘We spent a lot of money bringing in a ton of fiber’ The internet may, in fact, be a worldwide web, but being in the neighborhood of one of its bigger nodes can…
Referendums on development could kill state’s growth
Process and uncertainty likely to scare off developers Subjecting big development proposals to popular vote risks killing statewide economic growth, observers say in the wake of a successful effort by Port Washington data…
Wisconsin’s southern border shows what freedom brings
Post-2011 prosperity depends on an ongoing stream of good decisions Want to see what good decisions look like? You can watch the results filling in the industrial parks of southern Kenosha County. In a steady stream,…
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