Amid Inflation Wave, Municipal Spending in Wisconsin Increased Sharply in 2023
cities and village report to the Department of Revenue. They include items such as public health, parks and recreation, public works, conservation, and development. The four largest of these – general government, street maintenance, fire-EMS, and police – are grouped together as basic spending. • T he total municipal property tax levy across all cities and villages exceeded $3 billion for the first time in 2024 . This high mark represents a 4% increase over 2023 and a 38% increase over the last decade. The average per capita property tax levy also grew but at a slower rate of 3.3% to $710 in 2024. Meanwhile, the statewide average tax rate per $1,000 of equalized property value for cities and villages decreased to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, at $5.70. • A cross all municipalities, total general obligation (G.O.) debt rose to $8.8 billion in 2023, increasing by 2.9%. This is the smallest annual increase in the past decade in G.O. debt , which is backed by municipal tax levies. Only 33.7% of individual municipalities actually increased their debt, while the majority reported lower debt in 2023. As a share of the state debt limit on municipalities, total G.O. debt decreased from 35.2% in 2022 to 32.2% in 2023. This information is a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org
Total operating spending across all Wisconsin cities and villages increased sharply in 2023 after a period of high inflation, the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s 2025 Municipal DataTool shows. Across all cities and villages in the state, average operating spending per resident reached $1,192 in 2023 compared to $1,112 the prior year, an increase of 7.1%. This may be attributed in part to the high rates of inflation in 2022 and 2023, which put upward pressure on labor and other municipal costs. These are among the findings from the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s newly updated Municipal DataTool, or MuniTool. The tool provides interactive data on municipal government spending and services for all 606 cities and villages in Wisconsin – from the village of Yuba (population 53) to the city of Milwaukee. The data for each metric goes back 10 years and is drawn from reports compiled by the state Department of Revenue for 2023 and 2024. Dashboards within the tool focus on property taxes, municipal spending, debt, fund balances, shared revenue (a key form of state aid), property values, and income and population.
Other key statewide findings from the tool include:
• Net basic spending also rose in 2023 across all cities and villages, but not at the same high rate as total spending. Net basic spending increased 3.6% to $745 per capita. Total operating spending is the sum of 68 expense line items that
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