Repealing Act 10 Could Cost $1.8 Billion for Wisconsin Schools, New Report Finds

Overturning a 2010 Wisconsin law reining in teachers unions could cost schools close to $1.8 billion in additional expenses, resulting in $624 in new property taxes on homeowners across the state each year.

That’s the conclusion of a powerful new report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a free market think tank that examined the school savings generated by Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 law under fire by liberal Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford.

Repealing the law—which limited collective bargaining for government workers—will substantially raise costs on school districts everywhere in Wisconsin, requiring them to raise taxes to maintain current services or cut funding for schools.

Racine homeowners can expect to see their property taxes rise by an average of $650 statewide. In Green Bay, the anticipated tax hike is over $764, while Waukesha homeowners could see a whopping $865 tax hike.

Homeowners in Prairie du Chien and Kenosha can expect ever bigger property tax increases in the state, skyrocketing as much as $1,040 and $1,126, respectively.

Costs only go up from there. Beloit homeowners could face the highest property tax increase anywhere in Wisconsin, at $2,568 each year.

The report also includes a tool for Wisconsinites to calculate their property tax hike by school district.

Credit: Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty

“Wisconsin families are already struggling to make ends meet under the pressure of high taxes and inflation,” Dr. Will Flanders, research director for WILL and author of the report, told Restoration News. “Ending Act 10 would bring massive new costs to Wisconsin families at a time they can ill afford them.”

(RELATED: More Far-Left Dark Money Pours into Susan Crawford’s Campaign for WI Supreme Court)

Vowing to Overturn Act 10

Despite this, Wisconsin Democrats have promised for years to abolish Act 10 should they take control of the state Supreme Court—which they did in April 2023 with liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who called the law “unconstitutional” on the campaign trail but won’t recuse herself from future decisions involving Act 10.

Now control of the court is again up for grabs with Susan Crawford, the Democrat-endorsed candidate for the open Supreme Court seat on April 1 who’s also been endorsed by Protasiewicz.

“I fought against Act 10,” Crawford boasted in her 2018 race for Dane County Circuit Court judge. In 2012, she helped convince a judge to strike down "significant portions" of Act 10 while working as a private lawyer in Madison.

Who is the real Susan Crawford? Learn the truth about Wisconsin's dangerously liberal candidate for Supreme Court here.

Crawford now publicly plays down her opposition to Act 10 on the 2025 campaign trail, not mentioning it on her campaign site. Yet as recently as October she bragged before Democrat insiders that “I represented Madison teachers in the legal fight against Act 10." The Wisconsin teachers union, which calls abolishing Act 10 “our shared goal,” endorsed Crawford a month later.

Yet the left-leaning Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported in 2016 that Act 10 actually helped local schools replace “underachievers” with higher-quality teachers while also raising teacher pay, mimicking the private sector practice of “linking pay to performance and prizing skill over seniority”—putting merit above union tenure.

"Performance is the key consideration now," not union seniority, the liberal newspaper noted.

Waukesha County’s Oconomowoc High School, for instance, replaced 15 underperforming teachers with better educators, offering $24,000 pay hikes and solving its budget deficit in a single stroke.

All of that would be lost if the Supreme Court ends up in the hands of Crawford and Protasiewicz, giving radical teachers unions an opportunity to overturn Act 10—and gutting school budgets in the process.

What’s clear is that a vote for Susan Crawford is a vote to raise taxes, fire high-performance teachers, and return Wisconsin’s schools to the hands of unaccountable union bosses.

Susan Crawford faces former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel on April 1. Early voting in the February 18 spring primary begins February 4.

(READ MORE: Why Did Susan Crawford Let a Rapist Go With a Slap On the Wrist?)