More than half of U.S. households paid no federal income taxes in 2021, a temporary spike attributed to massive COVID-19 relief spending in the form of tax credits and stimulus payments.

A recent analysis from the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimated that 57% of Americans paid no taxes last year. While that’s down slightly from last year’s 60%, it marks a significant increase from the 44% recorded before the pandemic began.

The increase stems from the pandemic-driven surge in government spending, including three stimulus checks, expanded federal unemployment aid and the expanded child tax credit.

Because the stimulus checks were designed as refundable tax credits, they significantly reduced tax liability in both 2020 and 2021, the analysis said. And in some cases, the checks flipped some households from paying income tax to not doing so.

Essentially, no household making less than $28,000 paid federal income tax last year, nor will a majority – about 75% – of those making between $28,000 and $55,000. Among middle-income households, about 43% paid no federal income tax.

Still, while many households did not pay federal income tax, most Americans still owed payroll or state income taxes. The study shows that about four out of five individuals paid at least one of these taxes. Nearly everyone paid the government in another form, whether through state and local sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes or state income taxes.

The United States Supreme Court ruled March 23 that redistricting maps for the state legislature created by Governor Tony Evers under a Wisconsin Supreme Court-ordered “least change” requirement contain a racial gerrymander. The nation’s top court sent the maps back to the state’s top court, and ordered it to hold proceedings to fix these maps or approve different ones.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to overturn the “least change” congressional maps submitted by Evers and approved by a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, meaning those new district boundaries will be in place for the fall 2022 election.

The issue at the heart of the legislative maps is whether it was lawful to expand the number of Milwaukee-area Assembly seats with a majority of Black voters. In the maps approved in 2011, there have been six districts with a majority of Black voters. The maps submitted by Evers would increase that number to seven districts, by adjusting the lines and lowering the percentage of Black voters in each district to just above the 50% mark.

After the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved the governor’s “least change” legislative maps, Republican lawmakers and a conservative legal group asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in, saying the Evers maps illegally used race as a primary factor in drawing the district lines.

The issue of the legislative maps now returns to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which may pursue a number of options.

“On remand, the court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider the Governor’s maps rather than choose from among the other submissions,” stated the U.S. Supreme Court’s order.

Essentially, the Wisconsin high court can ask parties to submit a revised version of the Evers maps that would keep the number of majority Black districts at six, or it could reverse its earlier decision and choose the maps submitted by the Republicans in the state Legislature, which contained six black districts in Milwaukee.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday stayed a district judge’s injunction against President Joe Biden’s social cost of carbon, reinstating the metric used to measure the climate impacts of rulemakings and projects.

The social cost of carbon, which is used by the federal government when issuing regulations, approving infrastructure projects or taking other actions, is an estimate of the present and future damages resulting from emitting one ton of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Climate activists hope a higher estimate will significantly increase the value assigned to pollution reductions, which in turn will help justify stronger climate regulations.

The stay allows EPA, the Departments of the Interior, Energy and Transportation and other federal agencies to resume using the interim SCC figures in rulemakings and other decisions. At least one major rule, regarding emissions from heavy-duty trucks was published without quantifying its climate benefits because of the injunction.

The stay is pending a fuller appeal of the injunction, but the order issued on Wednesday indicates the appellate court is not amenable to Louisiana’s arguments.

The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it would raise interest rates for the first time in three years as policymakers look to cool red-hot inflation.

The widely anticipated move – that the Fed would raise rates by 25-basis points – brings to an end the ultra-easy monetary policy put in place two years ago to prop up the economy through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The rate liftoff, which puts the benchmark federal funds rate at a range between 0.25% and 0.5%, is likely just the start of a series of increases intended to curb runaway inflation.

New economic projections released after the meeting show that policymakers expected six more, similarly sized increases over the course of 2022 after consumer prices hit a 40-year-high. It marks a considerable shift from just six months ago, when half of the central bankers believed interest rate increases were not warranted until at least 2023. Fed officials also expect inflation to remain elevated, ending 2022 at 4.3% – far above the Fed’s annual target of 2.3%.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday it would use the “least changes” redistricting plans submitted by Governor Tony Evers as Wisconsin’s congressional and legislative district maps for the next decade. In the 4-3 decision, conservative swing Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that of all the plans submitted, Evers’ plan best complied with criteria laid out by the court and met all the requirements of the Wisconsin and United States constitutions.

Choosing Governor Evers maps over competing plans submitted by Republican members of Congress and the Legislature was, under the circumstances, a win for Democrats. In the Legislature, it could mean the difference between simple Republican majorities and supermajorities that could override any governor’s vetoes.

While the state Supreme Court’s say is typically final in the state court system, Justices Ziegler and Roggensack took the unusual steps of suggesting appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, suggesting Evers’ plan amounted to a racial gerrymander.

Compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act, or VRA, is likely to be a key part of any future litigation. Evers’ map creates seven majority-Black districts, one more than the 2011 map. Hagedorn wrote that Evers’ map gives minority voters better representation. “The risk of packing Black voters under a six-district configuration further suggests drawing seven majority-Black districts is appropriate to avoid minority vote dilution,” Hagedorn wrote.  However, Ziegler wrote the creation of a new majority-Black district was premature, arguing no clear violation of the Voting Rights Act was shown by Evers.

It would be unusual, though not unheard of, for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling.  The map could still be challenged on a more limited basis in an ongoing federal lawsuit brought by Democrats. That case had remained largely dormant while the state lawsuit proceeded.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will tell lawmakers Wednesday the central bank will likely hike interest rates later this month with inflation “well above” the central bank’s target range.

The Fed chief is set to tell members of the House Financial Services Committee that bank officials “expect it will be appropriate” to raise the baseline interest range from its current level of zero to 0.25 percent, according to prepared remarks released ahead of Powell’s appearance before the panel.

“We understand that high inflation imposes significant hardship, especially on those least able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing, and transportation. We know that the best thing we can do to support a strong labor market is to promote a long expansion, and that is only possible in an environment of price stability,” Powell will say.

The Fed slashed interest rates to near-zero levels in March 2020 as the emerging coronavirus pandemic derailed the global economy. The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s monetary policy panel, is on track to hike interest rates at the conclusion of its meeting on March 15-16, almost two years to the day it cut rates to current levels.

Powell will highlight the rapid recovery of the U.S. economy from the depth of the pandemic-driven recession, including the record-breaking gain of 6.7 million jobs in 2021 and economic growth of 5.5 percent. The Fed chief credited the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines along with substantial fiscal and monetary support deployed by the federal government in 2020 for the swift rebound.

Even so, the speed of the recovery also fueled a rapid rise in prices as it ran up against stubborn pandemic-related obstacles, Powell will note.

“As a result, employers are having difficulties filling job openings, an unprecedented number of workers are quitting to take new jobs, and wages are rising at their fastest pace in many years,” Powell will say.

“Demand is strong, and bottlenecks and supply constraints are limiting how quickly production can respond. These supply disruptions have been larger and longer lasting than anticipated, exacerbated by waves of the virus, and price increases are now spreading to a broader range of goods and services.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service found the total amount of land in Wisconsin farms was 14.2 million acres last year. That’s 100,000 acres fewer, or a less than 1 percent decline, from 2020, but it’s the first decrease in the amount of land in farms since 2017.

Heather Schlesser is an agriculture educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in Marathon County. She said the state has seen many producers transition out of dairy farming, which requires a lot of land for growing feed.

“They were transitioning out of dairy, making that decision to retire because they’re getting older. Or maybe they’re still younger, but they’re switching into beef production,” Schlesser said. “You can only do that for so long before you’re like, ‘You know what, I really don’t need this land. I don’t want to deal with the renters anymore. There’s no one new coming on the farm.’ And then they’re just deciding to sell it off.”

Some land is sold to other producers, especially the largest farms in the state. The amount of land farmed by producers earning at or above $500,000 annually grew by almost 4 percent from 2020 to 2021.

But for farms around urban areas, land is often sold to individuals looking to transition out of city living or looking for recreational land for hunting.

“They want to be close enough to that downtown center so that they don’t have a long commute to get to work, where they’re still close to the cultural centers and everything that town has to offer,” she said. “But they want that country feel.”

Schlesser said urban sprawl is not a new trend for the state, but it may have been more of a factor in 2020 after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A federal judge in Louisiana on Friday shot down President Biden’s interim estimates on the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions, dealing another judicial blow to the administration’s climate agenda.

A 2021 executive order directed agencies to use an interim metric that estimated costs to society that would come from burning carbon in environmental permitting and regulatory decisions. But Louisiana, Alabama, and eight other states “sufficiently identified the kinds of harms” needed to block the metric’s use, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled.

“The Court agrees that the public interest and balance of equities weigh heavily in favor” of ordering the administration to disregard the calculations Judge James D. Cain Jr. wrote in the opinion.

States challenged the temporary cost, claiming Biden didn’t have the authority to issue such a significant decision without notice-and-comment rulemaking. They also claimed that its use in decisions would hamper their economies through higher costs and more stringent standards.

The Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to argue that the states’ claims were premature until the metric was actually used in a decision. The DOJ said it’s “reviewing the decision” and declined to comment further.

The court did make it clear that it was ruling on whether Biden had flown against administrative procedures with his interim metric and not on “the scientific issues regarding greenhouse gas emissions, their effects on the environment, or whether they contribute to global warming.”

A group of Republican lawmakers is hoping to block local governments from using a relatively new approach to fund road maintenance through what are known as transportation utility fees.

On Wednesday, Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, introduced bills that would punish local governments that enact transportation user fees by forcing them to lower the amount they can collect from property taxes by however much they raise from the new transportation fees.

A statement from Stroebel’s office said lawmakers have worked to ensure a favorable tax climate and have increased local transportation aids in recent state budgets.

“A municipality must not be allowed to circumvent the popular levy limit law through the creation of a transportation utility to extract more money from taxpayers,” Stroebel said. “The option of a referendum is always available if the people actually want higher taxes.”

At the same time, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is arguing in Outagamie County Circuit Court that transportation utility fees are unlawful taxes. The firm is suing the Town of Buchanan for adopting a transportation utility district and corresponding fees in 2019.

A 2020 legal opinion written by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities states that local governments have “broad statutory and/or constitutional home rule powers to create a transportation utility and charge property owners transportation utility fees.”

Wisconsin spent or made plans for some $2.8 billion in federal pandemic aid funding through the end of 2021, and the state has more than $1.8 billion in federal funds that have yet to be spent.

Gov. Tony Evers this week issued an update on how the state has spent the COVID-19 relief funding it received as a result of federal aid bills passed in 2020 and 2021. The data show the state has spent or allocated the great majority of aid intended for businesses, schools and local governments. What remains of the $4.6 billion the state was granted include major investments in broadband expansion, health care and neighborhood infrastructure. Some of the new grants are set to be announced this month.

According to data released by the governor’s office, some of the federal funds yet to be allocated in Wisconsin include:

• $205 million in Neighborhood Investment Fund grants, which could go to the creation of new buildings or other infrastructure aimed at “help(ing) neighborhoods recover from negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
• $125 million in workforce innovation grants aimed at addressing worker shortages.
• $83.9 million for broadband access expansion. The state has spent or allocated $21 million of a total $113.7 million in funds.
• $75 million for health care infrastructure, especially in areas disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
• $59 million in public safety grants, including grants to fund victim services and violence prevention initiatives.

The data release comes as Republicans in the Legislature are proposing a constitutional amendment that would give the Legislature greater oversight on the spending of federal funds. In Wisconsin, the governor has authority to allocate federal funding. Given the large amounts of aid that have come from federal pandemic relief, this has meant an unusually large amount of spending in the last two years was overseen by Evers rather than allocated through the state’s budget process.

The constitutional amendment proposal passed the state Senate and may pass the Republican-controlled Assembly as well. But in order to change the state constitution, it would have to pass two consecutive sessions of the Legislature and win a statewide popular vote. That process would necessarily take years.

Short of amending the constitution, some lawmakers are calling for more information about how funds have been spent. On Tuesday, a legislative committee considered a proposal to have the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau review the state’s use of COVID-19 funding. That audit proposal, which appeared to have bipartisan support, would be aimed at assessing whether funds were used appropriately.