Reports

A new report from the WISPIRG Foundation finds that usage of seven recently completed highways has not developed as projected, and questions whether building massive and costly new highways is the best way to spend Wisconsin’s scarce transportation resources. The report, Road Overkill: Wisconsin Spends Big on Questionable Highways Even as Driving Declines, also finds that Wisconsinites are driving less per capita today than we did in 1997, further raising doubts as to whether expensive new highways are the best investments for Wisconsin’s transportation future. 

The 2013-2015 biennial executive budget, proposed by Governor Walker, includes an exemption for the rent-to-own industry from Wisconsin’s consumer protection laws. Rent-to-own businesses are appliance and furniture retailers that arrange “lease agreements,” rather than typical installment or credit sales contracts. These leases are regulated as a form of credit because the consumer is buying a product over time and paying a very high premium over the product’s sale price. As such, rent-to-own businesses in Wisconsin currently are regulated under the Wisconsin Consumer Act, providing strong protections for consumers from a predatory industry. The rent-to-own industry has effectively dismantled similar strong consumer protections that apply to these installment contracts in most states and replaced them with industry-friendly laws. In order to highlight why the rent-to-own industry should not be exempted from Wisconsin’s consumer protection laws, WISPIRG staff conducted a survey of five rent-to-own (RTO) stores in the Rockford, IL area in March 2013. We compared the cost of rent-to-own to the cost of buying the same or similar goods at major appliance and electronics retailers.