Toll Roads Becomes an Issue in Wisconsin’s Race for Governor

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, left, and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, right, debate Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

During their only debate in the race for governor, Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany were asked a quick series questions about the thorny issue of funding transportation.

Tucked in the middle of the pop quiz was a question about tolling, and whether they’d be open to using tolls as a means of creating a more permanent source of road funding.

“I think we should be open,” Crowley said.

It was a noteworthy answer in the closing weeks of a statewide campaign for governor, when candidates typically like to avoid risky positions. Tiffany answered “no” to the tolling question, along with others.

But Crowley is hardly alone when it comes to being open to tolling, especially at the Wisconsin Capitol. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and former state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald pushed the idea a decade ago. Tiffany, then a state senator, supported it.

Lawmakers have borrowed and transferred billions to pay for roads

The reason tolling comes up from time to time in Wisconsin is that the state’s current mix of road funding sources is tenuous.

How to change that has long been a political landmine in Madison. Despite Tiffany’s debate claim that the state has enough money to fund road maintenance, lawmakers have been leaning on a mix of borrowing and budget transfers for decades.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau shows Republicans under former Gov. Scott Walker’s leadership used the state’s general fund, which typically pays for expenses like schools and healthcare, to borrow nearly $743 million for roads and transfer another $531 million. Since Democratic Gov. Tony Evers took office in 2019, the state transferred another $1.1 billion from the general fund to the transportation fund.

Tiffany voted for a tolling study as a state legislator

The longstanding funding issue didn’t stop the Republican Party of Wisconsin from attacking Crowley’s debate comment, claiming he’d be “forcing drivers to pay just to get to the grocery store, go to work or take their kids to school.”

“David Crowley has never met a tax or fee hike he doesn’t like,” read a statement from Republican Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Anika Rickard.

But Tiffany himself was in the thick of a 2017 budget debate where Republicans were fighting among themselves in search of a road-funding answer.

As a member of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee on Finance in 2017, he voted to spend $2.5 million on tolling feasibility study. The money never materialized because of a partial veto from former Gov. Walker.A year later, Fitzgerald, who is now in Congress, was still pushing for toll roads, saying they would have happened if it weren’t for Walker’s veto.

“We cut the deal already,” Fitzgerald said of the tolling plan Tiffany and other Republicans passed. “The deal was in the budget.”

Crowley and Tiffany both oppose return of gas tax indexing

One of the main drivers of the transportation budget shortfalls is a gas tax that hasn’t changed since 2006 because legislators stopped tying automatic increases to the rate of inflation.

At the same time, vehicles have become more fuel efficient, which means less revenue.

Crowley and Tiffany were both asked if they’d support bringing back gas tax indexing. On that question, they both said “no.”Collin Driscoll, a lobbyist for the Wisconsin Counties Association, told WPR it was unfortunate, but not surprising, to see both candidates rule out bringing gas tax indexing back. He said with gas prices well above $4 per gallon, you’d be “shooting yourself in the foot on a campaign if you say you’re going to increase the gas tax right now.”

“So, it’s hard when you watch a debate like this and you watch a pointed question come, because now you have two candidates on the record saying they’re not going to do something,” Driscoll said. “You take a tool off of the table.”

Without the state’s general fund surplus, major cuts to road funding would be required

Crowley said he’d confer with stakeholders to find ways to better fund transportation by way of a blue ribbon commission. Those have been used to find potential solutions to large fiscal problems in the past, but they’ve rarely led to big legislative shifts.

As part of the yes-no quiz, Crowley also said he’d be open to new transportation user fees. Tiffany opposed that idea, too.Tiffany said if he’s elected governor, his administration will put more money into transportation through the “budgeting process”, while claiming he’d shorten construction times on major projects like the I-94 East-West expansion in Milwaukee. But he didn’t explain how he would do it.

Driscoll said local government leaders don’t want to tell lawmakers how to find additional money for transportation, just that they need a longer-term solution. He said tolling is an option, but it requires federal approval.Driscoll also said that with a surplus in Wisconsin’s general fund, the argument can be made that the state does have enough money to cover an ongoing hole in the road budget.

But that doesn’t fix the bigger problem, he said, of what happens if the surplus in the general fund dries up.

Toll roads come up as an issue in Wisconsin’s race for governor was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.