Is the Wisconsin Policy Forum the most respected nonpartisan thing left in our hyperpolarized Badger State? “It’s a testament that, after 112 years, we don’t have enemies,” says Rob Henken, the semi-retired immediate past president of the independent research nonprofit. “Facts are nonpartisan.”
The Forum’s statewide influence is palpable, even if it rarely draws much attention. Policy nerds don’t often get their laurels.
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On a near-weekly basis, the Forum publishes four-page dives into hot-button issues shaping public discourse. A recent sampling: an analysis of school districts’ policies on student cell phones, how the Trump administration’s tariffs would affect Wisconsin’s exports, and trends in opioid overdose deaths.
The Forum is often contracted by local governments to analyze issues and provide options to their decision-makers. Two such recent reports have included potential trajectories for South Milwaukee’s cash-strapped library system, and how Lafayette County’s rural communities could plan for a future that doesn’t rely on volunteer-led emergency responses.
“They have the ability to do large-scale studies that help us better analyze the state of affairs on a given issue,” says Alexandria Staubach, a policy analyst with the progressive Wisconsin Justice Initiative.
Staubach and the WJI rarely find themselves in the same camp as right-leaning groups like the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and the MacIver Institute – except that they all follow and cite the Forum’s research. This kind of work has become increasingly essential as traditional news outlets have cut staff.
If the Forum shows bias, it is in favor of intergovernmental collaboration – a stripe it’s shown since the organization’s founding by Milwaukee businessmen in 1913. It was instrumental in the unification of parks under Milwaukee County’s management in 1936.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum’s origins lie in “The Efficiency Movement.” As longtime leader Rob Henken tells it: After muckrakers in the late 19th century brought so much governmental corruption to light, the ensuing Progressive Era saw private groups organizing “independent, citizen-led research bureaus” that pushed governments to do their jobs better. The Forum’s roots were formally planted in 1913, when 13 of Milwaukee’s top business leaders founded the Milwaukee Citizens’ Bureau of Municipal Efficiency specifically to investigate waste in city government. The Forum entered its current iteration when the bureau’s offspring, the Public Policy Forum, merged with the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance in 2018.
Decades later, it was a Forum study that led seven suburbs to merge their fire and EMS services into the North Shore Fire Department in 1995. By 2014, that consolidation was saving taxpayers an estimated $2.8 million annually.
More recently, Milwaukee may not have won its expanded sales tax authority two years ago via Act 12 if it weren’t for an 80-page study from the Forum. Politicians and media outlets had long touched on the issue, but only the WPF took the time to dive deep and compare Milwaukee to 39 of its peer cities across the country; in so doing, the Forum’s 2017 report discovered that MKE was the only U.S. city of its size unable to levy a local sales tax.
The report is quintessential Wisconsin Policy Forum: framing the issue and presenting possible paths forward. The Forum “is not trying to pull the strings and be a puppet master,” says Jason Stein, a former newspaperman who succeeded Henken as Forum president last year. “We did not say, ‘The state of Wisconsin must give Milwaukee sales tax authority.’” Instead, “Our research was taken by others, which is what’s supposed to happen.”
