From the Article:

Public worker and teachers unions argued Tuesday that their lawsuit seeking to strike down a Wisconsin law that drew massive protests and made the state the center of a national fight over union rights should be allowed to proceed, even as the Republican-controlled Legislature sought to have it dismissed.

It is the first challenge to the law known as Act 10 since Wisconsin’s Supreme Court flipped to liberal control last year.

Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost questioned Tuesday whether there was another remedy to address alleged problems with the law short of striking it down. He did not rule from the bench and said he would issue a written order on the Legislature’s request to dismiss the case.

The unions’ attorney argued that the 2011 law should be struck down because it creates unconstitutional exemptions for firefighters and other public safety workers. Attorneys for the Legislature and state agencies countered that the exemptions are legal, have already been upheld by other courts, and that the case should be dismissed.

The judge questioned why different classes of employees were created under the law and some public safety workers were “cherry picked” to retain their collective bargaining rights while others were not.

From the Article:

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is requesting that the state budget committee release $20 million meant to create a grant program that would support communities where a University of Wisconsin branch campus has closed.

The request is the third submitted to the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) by Gov. Tony Evers’ administration this week, bringing the total amount to be released to $45 million. The requests come as lawmakers and Evers have been in conflict over the release of other state funding that was improved in the budget, including funds for fighting PFAS contamination of local drinking water supplies, grants to support hospitals in western Wisconsin and a new literacy program in schools.

The closure of UW branch campuses, including UW-Platteville’s Richland campus, UW-Milwaukee’s Washington County campus and UW-Oshkosh’s Fond du Lac campus, have left local communities facing potential economic crises.

WEDC’s request would allow the agency to implement the grant program as instructed by a law passed by the Legislature in February and signed by Evers in March. Under the law, communities will be eligible for a $2 million grant.

Evers said in a statement that a lack of “meaningful investments” in the UW system has caused the recent campus closures along with staff layoffs, and the state needs to quickly work to address the challenges to prevent additional layoffs and closures.

“This funding is critically important in the meantime to help communities like Richland Center, Washington County, Fond du Lac, and Marinette find new uses for the infrastructure and existing buildings to support local communities and economies,” Evers said.

From the Article:

A Republican appointee to the Universities of Wisconsin’s Board of Regents says he’ll continue to serve on the board, even though his term officially expired at the start of May.

In 2017, Republican Gov. Scott Walker first appointed Robert “Bob” Atwell, the founder of Nicolet Bankshares, to a seven-year term on the board overseeing Wisconsin’s public university system.

But in an email this week, Rothman wrote that, acting on the advice of Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, he intends to stay on the board indefinitely.

WisPolitics first reported on the existence of the email sent from Atwell to UW leaders, including UW System President Jay Rothman.

“Speaker Vos brought to my attention that the statute directs that, in the absence of a resignation regents remain in office until their successor is appointed and confirmed,” Atwell wrote using his business email for Nicolet Bank. “Jay has recently confirmed this understanding. In light of that, I will remain on the Board until I resign or my successor is seated. I hope that my temporary continuation as a regent can support good communication between the Legislative Council and the BOR.”

A successor to Atwell would need to be appointed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and confirmed by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Senate.

From the Article:

Anyone familiar with the local dog community knows there is an abundance of pups in Wisconsin who were rescued from southern states like Texas, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama – just to name a few. This leads to the question: Why are so many dogs rescued in one state, but then transported to Wisconsin for adoption?

Experts and animal enthusiasts speculate some of the reasons why Wisconsin is home to a surplus of rescues is because, generally speaking, attitudes towards pets are different here. In Midwest culture, dogs are more often than not viewed and treated as family members. Of course, there are many loving and responsible dog owners in the South, but there are many who are not.

Glenna Tucker operates Sweetpups, a rescue and sanctuary in Winnie, Texas, and she has taken in thousands of ailing and abandoned dogs over the past decade. She then nurses them back to health and then transports the pups to rescues in Wisconsin.

"The situation is bad here – you’d probably think I was making these stories up, but I’m not. It’s common here for people to throw a litter of puppies into a garbage can like they’re disposable diapers," says Tucker. "We get emails every day. Yesterday we found out about 20 dogs living about five miles from here whose owner has been gone for more than two months and a neighbor finally contacted us. Some of the dogs died, and the others are emaciated."

Tucker says Texas animal advocates rely on Wisconsin for our animal compassion and low euthanasia rates.

"We have euthanasia rates of 80 to 85 percent here. Wisconsin is filled with people who want to help because they know what’s going on in Texas where dogs are looked at like property not pets," says Tucker.

From the Article:

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will close its Waukesha campus at the end of the spring 2025 semester.

At a Monday news conference, UW-Milwaukee chancellor Mark Mone cited declining enrollment, shifting demographics and budgetary issues as reasons for the closure, which was made under a directive from Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman.

“Today, higher education is challenged,” Mone said. “We need to make very difficult decisions, to, in every possible hope for opportunity, avoid some of the more consequential types of decisions that we may see in the future.”

Around 550 full-time equivalent students are enrolled at the campus currently according to Mone. The campus closure will impact more than 100 employees and require layoffs of staff and tenured faculty as well.

The university’s Waukesha campus, which used to operate independently of UW-Milwaukee as the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha until 2018, has seen a total enrollment decline of more than 65 percent from 2014 to 2023.

“These are double digit enrollment declines, that make things rather challenging and they’re not unlike other some of the numbers that we’re seeing at other two-year campuses in this state and certainly nationally,” Mone said.

The cost to run the Waukesha campus is the same per student as it is to run the main UW-Milwaukee campus, but students in Waukesha pay half the tuition.

“So that puts us in a very untenable, very difficult situation,” Mone added.

From the Article:

Wisconsin taxpayers paid millions for the Talgo trainsets, but will need to spend even more on a plane ticket if they ever want to ride them.

Instead of welcoming passengers traveling between Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison, the Badger-colored trainsets are ferrying passengers in Lagos, Nigeria.

The first 17 miles of Lagos’ planned 23-mile Red Line opened to passengers on Feb. 29. The line is the second commuter rail line in Africa’s largest urban center, which boasts a population of greater than 21 million. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who initiated the project more than two decades ago as governor of the city-state, attended the much-anticipated opening.

“This is the dream realized,” said Tinubu. But it certainly wasn’t Wisconsin’s dream.

In 2010, then-governor-elect Scott Walker refused a $823 million federal grant to build an Amtrak Hiawatha Service extension to Madison and plan an extension to Minneapolis, but the state was still on the hook to pay for the trainsets ordered in 2009 by predecessor Jim Doyle. Rather than invest in a maintenance facility to put the trainsets into use on the existing line, Walker and the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature had the state default on the contract. Talgo, which assembled the trains in a facility in Milwaukee’s Century City business park, sued in 2012 as the trainsets were completed and the equipment was placed into storage for a decade.

From the Article:

Two lawsuits seeking to kick former President Donald Trump off Wisconsin ballots were dismissed this week in the wake of a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Monday, justices rejected an attempt to disqualify Trump from the Colorado primary ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The unanimous Supreme Court decision came a day before Super Tuesday primary elections happening in Colorado and other states.

It also ended similar attempts to knock Trump off the ballot in Wisconsin, prompting Dane County judges to dismiss two lawsuits Monday.

One suit was filed in January by Kirk Bangstad, a liberal activist and owner of Minocqua Brewing Company. The other was filed in August by John Anthony Castro, a Texas resident and longshot Republican candidate who’s filed similar challenges across the country.

The legal arguments for disqualifying Trump pointed to Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which bars anyone who’s previously taken the oath of office from holding public office if they’ve engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.

But this week, a majority of justices concluded that Congress, rather than the states, is responsible for enforcing that provision against federal officeholders and candidates.

From the Article:

A bipartisan effort to unlock federal funding to expand electric vehicle charging stations in Wisconsin is one step closer to becoming a reality.

Last week, the state Assembly passed two bills involving electric vehicles in its hectic final session of the year.

One would exempt electric vehicle charging stations from being regulated as utilities. The other would authorize the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to establish and fund an EV infrastructure program. Both bills passed the Assembly last week on near unanimous votes.

The funding bill is now on its way to Gov. Tony Evers, while the other heads back to the Senate because of a Republican amendment.

The changes were required to unlock around $78 million in federal funds to build out a state electric vehicle charging network.

Environmental advocates cheered the development.

“We’re really excited about the bill passing the Assembly with such broad bipartisan support. It’s not something that we often see in the Legislature,” said Emma Heins, policy manager for the nonprofit Electrification Coalition. “This is a great demonstration that EVs really extend beyond traditional party lines and they’re just a great transportation option for a lot of people across the state.”

EV charging stations must charge customers by the amount of electricity used, also known as a kilowatt-hour. In Wisconsin, current state law allows only regulated utilities to charge per kilowatt-hour. That’s why an exemption is necessary.

Republicans amended the bill that would exempt EV chargers from being regulated as utilities.

The amendment would ban local governments from requiring private developers to install electric vehicle charging stations as a condition of receiving a building permit. A City of Madison ordinance requires some multi-family residential buildings and commercial developments to install EV chargers at a small number of parking spots.

From the Article:

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is proposing a compromise to GOP lawmakers that would provide $125 million to help local governments and landowners address PFAS pollution.

The request comes as Evers has all but promised to veto a Republican bill that passed the Legislature to address contamination from so-called forever chemicals known as PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Last week, the Republican-controlled Assembly voted 62-35 to pass the bill along party lines. The Senate passed the legislation in November.
Evers has signaled concerns with provisions in the GOP plan that would limit the authority of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to test for and clean up the chemicals. The governor called those a “poison pill” that gives polluters a free pass.

“In Wisconsin, if someone pollutes our water, property, and natural resources, Wisconsinites expect them to pay to clean it up. That’s just common sense,” Evers said in a statement. “I’m not signing a bill that lets polluters off the hook for cleaning up their contamination and asks Wisconsin taxpayers to foot the bill. No way.”

From the Article:

The former chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party said Sunday he was “tricked” into signing documents alleging then-President Trump won the 2020 election as part of the state’s “fake elector” scheme.

Andrew Hitt told Anderson Cooper in a “60 Minutes” interview that he was advised by the state GOP’s legal counsel to sign the documents as a contingency, in case the Trump campaign’s legal case against Wisconsin’s election integrity succeeded.

Hitt said he “wasn’t comfortable with” Trump campaign attempts to toss out votes in Wisconsin, and that he didn’t believe the legal claims of widespread fraud.

“We got specific advice from our lawyers that these documents were meaningless, unless a court said they had meaning,” he said.

He added that he felt pressured into signing the document, fearful that he would be held responsible in the situation that Trump won the suit and the electors were not prepared.

“It was not a safe time,” he said. “If my lawyer is right, and the whole reason Trump loses Wisconsin is because of me, I will be scared to death.”

“If I knew what I knew now, I wouldn’t have done it,” he continued. “It was kept from us that there was this alternate scheme, alternate motive.”

The 10 Wisconsin GOP electors met at the state Capitol on Dec. 14 to sign the document under supervision of Kenneth Chesebro, the Trump campaign lawyer whom federal special counsel Jack Smith described as the “architect” of the fake elector scheme.

From the Article:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative district maps into law on Monday that he proposed and that the Republicans who control the Legislature passed to avoid having the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court draw the lines.

Democrats hailed the signing as a major political victory in the swing state where the Legislature has been firmly under Republican control for more than a decade, even as Democrats have won 14 of the past 17 statewide elections.

“When I promised I wanted fair maps — not maps that are better for one party or another, including my own — I damn well meant it,” Evers said prior to signing the maps into law at the state Capitol. "Wisconsin is not a red state or a blue state — we're a purple state, and I believe our maps should reflect that basic fact.

Democrats are almost certain to gain seats in the state Assembly and state Senate under the new maps, which will be in place for the November election. Republicans have been operating since 2011 under maps they drew that were recognized as among the most gerrymandered in the country.

Democrats tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to overturn the Republican-drawn maps. But it wasn’t until control of the state Supreme Court flipped in August after the election of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz that Democrats found a winning formula.

From the Article:

A Wisconsin bill would require an ignition interlock device to be placed in the vehicle of all drunken driving offenders in the state.

That device requires a driver to pass a breath alcohol test before their vehicle starts. The legislation’s sponsor, Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, said it’s aimed at changing behavior for what he called a “toxic culture” of drinking and driving that exists across the state.

“It’s time that we do more to curb the culture of drinking and driving in Wisconsin, while mitigating fatalities, injuries and property loss caused by drunk drivers,” Larson said during a press conference in Milwaukee Thursday.

Current state law requires the device for people with two or more charges for operating while intoxicated, or OWI. It’s also mandatory for first-time offenders with a blood alcohol content above 0.15, according to an analysis from the Legislative Reference Bureau. The bill expands the ignition interlock requirement to all OWI offenses that involve the use of alcohol.

This isn’t the first time Larson has introduced a similar version of the bill. He’s introduced the measure every legislative session that he’s been in office since 2011 — a total of seven times.

Larson said the measure has received some bipartisan support in the past, but with the Republican-controlled state Legislature, the bill has only gotten one hearing in the past 13 years.

“I would hope that as there’s more pressure, that people realize, ‘Hey, this is something that we can change,’” Larson said after the press conference.

Larson said he’s open to discussion on amendments to the bill to help move it along. Rep. Deb Andraca, D-Whitefish Bay, is also a co-sponsor of the bill.

“We want to get something passed, we would like to see this happen,” Larson said.

The device would be in the vehicle for one year under Larson’s measure. The driver would also need to blow under a .02 during the breath alcohol test.

Erin Payton, the regional executive director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also spoke in favor of the bill Thursday. Payton said since 2019, drunken driving deaths have increased 31 percent across the nation.