Wisconsin

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.

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If you’ve ever been to WI and driven 94 south from Milwaukee to Chicago, you’ve see the sign below and done your best Beavis and Butthead, snickering at it.

But the park is named for Major Richard Bong, and he was a WWII war hero, with 40 confirmed Jap kills.

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.

The new laws free up nearly $80 million in federal construction aid and make it easier for gas stations, convenience stores, and other businesses to operate electric vehicle charging stations.

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.