Welcome to the Wisconsin Way! You are joining thousands of citizens across Wisconsin in a continuing public conversation about modernizing and refining taxes and government in Wisconsin.

In the spring of 2007, after spending more than a year researching public attitudes and concerns about these issues and studying the trends driving them, representatives from the Wisconsin Counties Association, the Wisconsin REALTORS^® Association, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association, the Wisconsin Transportation Development Association, the League of Wisconsin Municipalities and Wood Communications Group considered this devastating disconnect between public demand and tax capacity and concluded that they had an obligation not just to their individual members, but to all the citizens of Wisconsin to sound the alarm and start the struggle to build a better future for our state.

These associations pledged their time and resources to an effort, called the Wisconsin Way, to engage citizens in a meaningful public discussion about what sort of future they wanted for Wisconsin and how they thought we might best go about getting from here to there.

Within the last two years, the Wisconsin Way completed its first and second phase, and it was a remarkable success. More than 6,000 residents from every walk of life and demographic participated in 28 public forums and more than 100 presentations discussing their concerns, thoughts, ideas and hopes about the current challenges and opportunities they see facing their state.

Blueprint for Change

As a result of these forums and presentations and additional research, a Draft Blueprint for Change was developed. It represents the Wisconsin Way’s best efforts to organize and focus this on-going public conversation around the topics and ideas that emerged and were refined during the open forums and meetings.

The Draft Blueprint is organized around the three major areas of public interest and concern, including economic development; tax reform and modernization; and governmental spending and management reform and modernization. In each area, the Wisconsin Way has identified specific strategic initiatives and, under each strategic initiative, listed a series of possible action options.

All of the strategic initiatives and action options should be viewed as ideas that have been identified for discussion and further exploration and, at this point in time, have not been adopted as recommendations by the Wisconsin Way project.

Next Steps

As we continue our public dialogue, the Wisconsin Way will first concentrate on providing citizens with as much information as we can and stimulating public conversation about these critical strategic initiatives and possible action options.

The Wisconsin Way is hosting three conferences focused on the Blueprint for Change initiatives and will again convene a series of public forums around the state in order to develop the recommendations that will become the final Wisconsin Way Agenda for Change.

Please join us on this exciting and vitally important journey by reviewing the Draft Blueprint for Change, discussing the ideas and options with your friends and family, sharing your thoughts and comments, and working with us as we examine the Blueprint for Change during the first of our conferences on April 27. The Wisconsin Way will post additional conference dates and community forum dates throughout the summer. To register, please visit our Conference Registration page. We look forward to seeing you there!