Wisconsin
Wisconsin official urges lawmakers to act on $70M to bolster FoodShare
Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary Kirsten Johnson on Jan. 21 urged the state Legislature to take up a nearly $70 million measure to shore up the state’s food assistance program, following months of discussions.
The state faces the possibility of tens of millions in extra costs from changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, made by the sweeping tax and spending law, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” that President Donald Trump signed last summer.
The law imposed new work requirements on some people who receive benefits through the food assistance program, which is called FoodShare in Wisconsin. It also shifted more of the administrative costs of the program onto states and will force states to foot potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in benefit costs if they make too many overpayment or underpayment errors.
“Due to federal red tape and changes made over the summer, Wisconsin needs to act now to protect this vital program,” Johnson said in comments to reporters. “We needed these resources yesterday and delaying this investment hurts Wisconsin.”
As part of the nearly $70 million measure, Gov. Tony Evers’ administration has proposed spending $16.2 million in state funds over the 2025-27 biennium to hire dozens more quality control staff to ensure error rates remain low and the state does not incur penalties. Additional administrative costs beginning in October are expected to cost the state $32.3 million in its next fiscal year. Plus, state officials anticipate having to spend about $20.7 million over the biennium to cover increased enrollment in a job training program for FoodShare recipients, according to the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The Evers administration made its initial request for the nearly $70 million in August, Johnson said, and discussions are ongoing between the Democratic governor’s office and the Republican-controlled Legislature.
In a December interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he was “optimistic” about negotiations to reach a deal.
“I feel like it’s a decent package. I feel like the Assembly Republicans are there,” he said at the time. “We just have to kind of keep working with all of our colleagues to see if we can get everybody across the finish line.”
A spokesman for Vos did not immediately return a request Jan. 21 for comment. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu did not immediately respond to a separate request.
Republican legislative leaders have floated the idea of attaching the funding to a bill that would bar FoodShare recipients from using benefits to purchase sugary foods like soda and candy.
Johnson did not comment on whether she supported the idea. She called for urgency in addressing the funding shortfall, saying her biggest concern was the possibility of the state’s error rate getting too high and costing taxpayers.
The state faces tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars in additional costs if county and state workers commit too many errors in calculating FoodShare payments.
State officials expect the state’s error rate to be above 6% for federal fiscal year 2025 because of a change in how errors are counted, according to an October memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
If the state does not bring its error rate below 6% this year, taxpayers would be on the hook for anywhere from $68 million to $205 million in federal fiscal year 2028, according to the memo.
Under Trump’s tax and spending law, the higher a state’s error rate, the more it owes in benefit costs. Previously, the federal government covered the full cost of benefits for the food assistance program, while splitting administrative costs evenly with the states. Trump’s tax and spending law cut the percentage of administrative costs covered by the federal government from 50% to 25%, beginning in October.
Under Evers’ proposal, the state would add 56 employees and would increase funding for counties to hire an additional 76 workers to review FoodShare cases for accuracy and avoid errors, the memo says.
Last year, nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites per month relied on Foodshare benefits to pay for groceries, according to state data.
Addition of work requirements make FoodShare verification more difficult
New work and eligibility requirements for some FoodShare recipients also have complicated the process for reviewing cases and ensuring accuracy.
Work requirements that previously only applied to adults up to 54 years old without children now extend to all adults up to 64 years old without a child under age 14 in the home. The law also removed exemptions for veterans and homeless people.
State and county workers who determine eligibility for FoodShare have struggled to phase in the new work and eligibility requirements imposed by last summer’s law, amid a tight timeline to comply, confusing federal guidance and the interruption caused by last fall’s federal government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history.
Last fall, Wisconsin and other states sued the Trump administration over eligibility guidelines for the food assistance program related to non-citizens and argued the timeline for implementing the changes was unrealistic and inadequate.
“We have begun working with our counties to implement the work requirements and continue to update them as we get new information,” said Wisconsin Medicaid Director Bill Hanna. “It’s an ongoing process.”
In Dane County, older adults will be expected to comply with work requirements to remain eligible for FoodShare as soon as February, said Tanya Andersen, a spokesperson for Dane County Human Services.
Meanwhile, Brown County officials say they are awaiting more guidance.
“Trying to do this as fast as has been requested has been a challenge,” said Erik Pritzl, executive director of Brown County Health and Human Services.
Brown County leads the Bay Lake Consortium, which processes FoodShare applications for residents of Brown, Door, Shawano, Oconto and Marinette counties.
“It’s complicated work and our specialists go through a lot of intense training to do this. They have to be accurate about benefits, assess who’s eligible, and make sure people are getting the right amount of benefits,” Pritzl said. “Changes have to be implemented carefully and we want to get it right.”
Reporter Jessie Opoien, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, contributed to this story.
Reporter Sarah Volpenhein can be reached at svolpenhei@usatodayco.com or at 414-607-2159.
Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com.
Wisconsin
A Wisconsin family is suing Target after their 10-month-old died from swallowing a water bead
A Wisconsin family lost their ten-month-old daughter after she swallowed a water bead. They blame Target and the water bead manufacturer for her death.
This week, Taylor and Tyler Bethard filed a lawsuit against Target in Hennepin County, claiming that the company failed to warn them and other customers about the dangers of a water beads product that used to be sold exclusively at Target.
Water beads are marketed as toys that come with sensory kits or craft sets, but data shows the products are prone to injuring young children. The polymer material is extremely absorbent, allowing water beads – which are often colorful – to expand around 100 times their original size when they interact with water or liquid. This presents a hazard for kids; the United States Product Safety Commission states that between 2017 and 2022, there were 6,300 water bead-related ingestion injuries that required treatment from emergency departments across the country.
In 2023, a 10-month-old girl died. Her name is Esther “Jo” Bethard. According to court filings, Taylor Bethard found her daughter unresponsive in her crib on the morning of July 7, 2023, after she had suffered symptoms of a stomach illness overnight. Medical examiners told the family that her death was caused by swallowing a single water bead.
The Bethards had purchased a Chuckle and Roar water bead set in the spring of 2022 for Esther Jo’s older siblings, never intending for the infant to interact with the water beads.
Target and the Chuckle and Roar manufacturer, Buffalo Games LLC, mutually agreed to pull the product from the shelves in November of 2022. Court records show an email exchange between Buffalo Games and a product safety employee at Target where the manufacturer noted that while their water beads had met safety standards at the time, they wanted to “avoid any future unintended misuse of the product.”
That conversation was prompted after Buffalo Games was informed that an infant required surgery after ingesting a water bead from the Ultimate Water Beads kit. Target agreed to end sales, indicating that this would be classified as a “safety removal.”
The Bethard’s lawsuit alleges that Target clearly knew how dangerous these water beads could be, but failed to warn them or other customers. Target stopped selling the product about eight months before Esther Jo died. Daniel Mann, a personal injury attorney representing the Bethards in this case, said that Esther Jo would still be alive if Target had acted.
“With all this information Target didn’t do anything to reach out to the family or other consumers to let them know about this problem,” Mann said, “I think 10/10 people would say Target had a responsibility to do more than what they did, which was nothing.”
A spokesperson for Target said that they would not comment on ongoing litigation, but the company had already responded to an identical complaint filed by the Bethards in the State of New York. In 2025, the Bethards sued both Target and Buffalo Games in Erie County, N.Y., because that was where the manufacturer was based. In response to the lawsuit there, court filings show that Target denied the allegations that they knew of an extraordinary danger posed by the water beads and failed to notify customers.
The complaint was dismissed against Target in New York, Mann explained, due to jurisdiction. This lead to them refiling in Hennepin County this week.
In a statement to WCCO on the new legal action, a Target spokesperson said “We extend our deepest sympathies to those affected by this tragedy, and we worked closely with the manufacturer of the product at the time the incident occurred.”
Taylor Bethard, Esther Jo’s mother, has lead the charge to ban water beads entirely. Her efforts lead to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commision recalling the more than 52,000 Chuckle and Roar Ultimate Water Beads Activity Kits that were in circulation. The recall took effect in September of 2023. Target, Walmart and Amazon announced that they would stop marketing water beads to children.
Bethard is also working with Wisconsin U.S. State Senator Tammy Baldwin to establish federal legislation to permanently outlaw all water beads. This past spring, the CPSC established new legal guidelines that restrict the size of water beads to try to ensure high safety standards.
(WLUK) — Wisconsin State Patrol troopers are teaming up with truckers to better spot dangerous driving behaviors.
The annual Trooper in a Truck initiative kicks off next week in Wisconsin.
Troopers will ride along with with semitruck and bus drivers to use the higher vantage point to spot dangerous driving behaviors, especially near commercial motor vehicles.
Troopers will be looking for risky driving behaviors, including distracted driving, speeding, following too closely and seatbelt violations. When an officer identifies a violation from the truck or bus, they will radio to patrol cars in the area for appropriate enforcement action.
Drivers can expect to see Trooper in a Truck enforcement in the following areas:
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New Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, who spent the last eight years at Texas, believes his new and old schools have much in common.
Both are well-regarded research universities in state capitals that belong to major conferences and have relatively similar enrollments.
He also pointed out one difference.
“There’s swag at Texas, right?” Eichorst said Tuesday during his introductory news conference. “There’s 30 million people in Texas. We’ve got swag, too, but we have a little humility with that deal. We need to get our shoulders up. We need to feel good about what it is that we’re doing.”
Wisconsin could gain more of that Texas swagger if its football program gets back to winning the way it did the last time Eichorst was employed in Madison. Eichorst, who most recently worked as a deputy athletic director at Texas, received a five-year deal worth $1.6 million annually, with provisions for increases and incentives. He was hired 2½ months after Chris McIntosh left to become the Big Ten’s deputy commissioner for strategy.
Eichorst worked at Wisconsin from 2006-11 when Barry Alvarez was AD and Bret Bielema was leading the football program. He followed that up with stints as an athletic director at Miami (2011-12) and Nebraska (2012-17) before Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte hired him in 2018.
He returns to Wisconsin with the Badgers coming off back-to-back losing seasons in football, a notable fall for a program that had 22 straight winning seasons from 2002-23. Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell has gone 17-21 after posting a 53-10 record with one College Football Playoff appearance in his last five years at Cincinnati.
Eichorst hasn’t worked with Fickell before but said he’s encouraged by their initial conversations.
“Obviously he’s won every place he’s been,” Eichorst said. “My expectation is more of me than him, meaning I need to pour into him, learn more about his program, how he has things set up, how his athletes are taken care of, how we’re supporting that endeavor. And then we can figure out, as we move along, what that might look like.”
Football struggles led to Eichorst’s downfall the last time he was an athletic director.
He fired Nebraska coach Bo Pelini in 2014 and hired Mike Riley, who had gone 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State. Eichorst was dismissed shortly after Nebraska suffered an early-season loss to Northern Illinois in 2017. Riley was fired at the end of that season after going 19-19 in three years.
When Eichorst’s hiring was announced last week, he spoke about how much he had grown from that Nebraska stint. Wisconsin interim chancellor Eric Wilcots led the search and has emphasized Eichorst’s accomplishments at Texas, which has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup all-sports standings five times in the last six years.
Texas ranked anywhere from fifth to ninth in the Directors’ Cup standings in the five years before Wilcots’ arrival. Texas’ football team went a combined 23-27 from 2014-17 but has made two College Football Playoff appearances in the last three years.
“Everybody looks at the end result of what we did at Texas,” Eichorst said. “When we got there in 2018, we weren’t very good in a lot of areas. And that didn’t change overnight.”
Eichorst said one thing that has caught his attention about Wisconsin is the overall quality of its head coaches.
“You’re going to be as good as your coaches,” Eichorst said. “That’s it. If you have an elite group of coaches who are working together and uniting and galvanizing and learning from one another and taking it out to their individual programs, I think you can start to build something special. I go back to Texas. We built a room of really elite head coaches and put them at the top of everything we did to help guide us.”
Eichorst said this job is particularly important to him because of his Wisconsin roots. He was born in Lone Rock, about 45 miles northwest of the Madison campus.
He treasured his previous stint at Wisconsin and says he believes this school “represents everything that is great about higher education and college athletics.”
“Nobody will work harder for Wisconsin athletics,” Eichorst said. “I love this state, and I love everything that it represents. The passion is there. You can see it. I don’t have to make it up. I’ve lived it. It’s in my heart.”
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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
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