Probably the most commonly used — and, in my opinion, abused — exemption in our state’s Open Meetings Law is the one that lets governmental bodies meet behind closed doors “whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session.”
The exemption, 19.85(1)(e) in Wisconsin state statutes, is used by all manner of public bodies, from city councils to school boards. It is supposed to be used sparingly, when needed to protect ongoing negotiations. But many bodies use this exemption to conceal everything about a potential deal or development, keeping the public in the dark until it is too late for their input.
Thankfully, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals issued a recent opinion, in a case known as Oitzinger v. City of Marinette, that should significantly curtail such abuses. The court ruled that the city’s attempts to use this exemption on two occasions violated the law.
The first involved an agreement (negotiated for months behind the scenes and presented to the common council for the first and only time in that closed session) that released a PFAS polluter from liability in exchange for a “donation” toward equipment to help address the pollution it caused. The second involved an engineering analysis of methods to provide safe drinking water for people whose well water had been contaminated.
Both closed sessions were illegal, the appeals court ruled, because neither included discussions of negotiation strategies that needed to be kept secret. The court’s ruling does three very important things.
Tom Kamenick is the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project.
First, the court held Marinette officials accountable for their illegal behavior. The plaintiff, Douglas Oitzinger, was a city council member who thought his colleagues had abused this exemption. He was willing to stand up to his colleagues, endure their scorn and not give up until he won. (His efforts earned him an award from the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council in 2022.)
Second, the case reaffirms an important principle: The law’s exemption protects bargaining tactics, not all discussions about a possible deal. It exists so that government boards don’t have to negotiate at a disadvantage by divulging their strategies, such as the most it is willing to pay to buy a piece of land. But those kinds of discussions are the only thing that is supposed to happen in closed session. Other discussions — particularly debates about the merits of a course of action — need to be held publicly.
Third, the court emphasized that a board’s members need to cast an informed vote to go into closed session. That means it needs to be explained to them — on the record in open session — what kind of information is going to be discussed and why secrecy is necessary. Too often the process for going into a closed session is just a formulaic reading of a vague agenda item and a vote with no explanation or discussion. The court of appeals concluded that more is necessary, not just in this case but whenever this exemption is invoked.
I believe this is the part of the court’s decision that has the most impact. Government board members usually do this work on a part-time basis for little or no pay. They’re frequently happy to follow the lead of full-time government administrators or experienced board members. Administrators or presiding officers now must take the time to explain why they want to go into closed session. That will not only provide more information to the public, it will help board members think about and answer the question of whether secrecy is really necessary.
As an advocate for government openness, my hopes are high. I’ve seen reports from around the state that government attorneys are advising their clients about this case and explaining these requirements. I’m hopeful that abuse of this exemption will significantly decline.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Tom Kamenick, a council member, is the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project.
A widely anticipated list of “ sanctuary jurisdictions” no longer appears on the Department of Homeland Security’s website after receiving widespread criticism for including localities that have actively supported the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies.
The department last week published the list of the jurisdictions. It said each one would receive formal notification the government deemed them uncooperative with federal immigration enforcement and whether they’re believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes.
The list was published Thursday on the department’s website, but on Sunday there was a “Page Not Found” error message in its place.
The list was part of the Trump administration’s efforts to target communities, states and jurisdictions that it says aren’t doing enough to help its immigration enforcement agenda and the promises the president made to deport more than 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal authorization.
The list is being constantly reviewed and can be changed at any time and will be updated regularly, a DHS senior official said.
“Designation of a sanctuary jurisdiction is based on the evaluation of numerous factors, including self-identification as a Sanctuary Jurisdiction, noncompliance with Federal law enforcement in enforcing immigration laws, restrictions on information sharing, and legal protections for illegal aliens,” the official said in a statement.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that there had been anger from some officials about the list. However, she didn’t address why it was removed.
“Some of the cities have pushed back,” Noem said. “They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify. They are giving sanctuary to criminals.”
The list, which was riddled with misspellings, received pushback from officials in communities spanning from urban to rural and blue to red who said the list doesn’t appear to make sense.
In California, the city of Huntington Beach made the list even though it had filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s immigration sanctuary law and passed a resolution this year declaring the community a “non-sanctuary city.”
Jim Davel, administrator for Shawano County, Wisconsin, said the inclusion of his community must have been a clerical error. Davel voted for President Donald Trump as did 67% of Shawano County.
Davel thinks the administration may have confused the county’s vote in 2021 to become a “Second Amendment Sanctuary County” that prohibits gun control measures with it being a safe haven for immigrants. He said the county has approved no immigration sanctuary policies.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
The Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS), the agency responsible for licensing about 200 credentials, including in health care, business and the trades, would face a 31% staff cut starting Oct. 1 under the budget Republicans advanced in committee last week.
The reduction would mean longer wait times for licenses and worse call center customer service, DSPS Communications Director John Beard said.
During Thursday’s Joint Finance Committee meeting, Republicans rejected the agency’s proposal to add 14 full-time call center positions and 10 licensing positions for DSPS to replace the temporary positions funded through federal stimulus set to expire this fall.
DSPS warned lawmakers that without the additional staff, licensing wait times could double from about eight to 16 days and answer rates at the call center could fall below 40%, reaching pre-pandemic lows. In 2018 only a little over half of the calls were answered.
Gov. Tony Evers granted DSPS federal stimulus funding in 2023. At the time, licensees were stuck waiting months at a time to receive their licenses. After DSPS used the stimulus to hire additional, temporary staff, they saw those wait times decline sharply, now averaging about 2-5 days to review application materials.
The agency’s recommendations highlighted the impact additional staff members would have on the agency, including maintaining high answer rates for the agency’s call center and minimizing wait times for licensees.
If the agency were to fall back into a similar backlogging crisis from 2023, DSPS warns it could lead to drastic reductions in licenses issued to Wisconsin workers.
“That’s a staffing shortage in our clinics, in our hospitals, and it’s a problem for us individuals who are depending on these individuals to be licensed as quickly as possible and move onto the floor,” Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, said during the budget committee meeting.
The day before the meeting, the Wisconsin Medical Society and health care providers and institutions sent letters to lawmakers, urging them to vote in favor of the agency’s budget proposal, which Evers included in his budget recommendation.
“If the DSPS request is not approved, we fear a return to increased license processing times, longer call center hold times, and less responsiveness overall,” Wisconsin Medical Society Chief Policy and Advocacy Officer Mark Grapentine wrote. “These types of delays in the past resulted in applicants choosing to practice in other states due to languishing frustrations.”
DSPS said more efficient licensing created $54 million in additional wages for Wisconsin workers in 2023, compared with a projected $2 million annual cost to create the permanent positions.
Wisconsin Watch previously reported on an alcohol and drug counselor from Minnesota who waited 16 months before being told she had to take additional courses through University of Wisconsin-Superior to be eligible.
The DSPS legislative liaison at the time boiled it down to inadequate staffing, reducing the efficiency of the agency.
The Republican-controlled committee approved only five limited term positions for the agency. The JFC co-chairs said in a press release Thursday the committee voted to fund important government services, while limiting spending.
“We provided funding for DSPS call center staff who work to help credential holders and the public navigate licensure platforms. This investment ensures the department can operate effectively and provide these critical services to professionals,” Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, and Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, said.
Republican lawmakers have previously rejected Evers’ recommendations to add staffing to the agency, even though the funding comes from department licensing fees — not taxpayer dollars. As a result, the agency’s surplus of unspent licensing fees increased from $4.4 million to $47 million, all while its services deteriorated.
In 2021, the committee approved two of the 13 positions Evers recommended. In 2023, the committee granted 18 of the 80 positions Evers requested.
Evers used federal stimulus funding for temporary positions, including adding additional project positions. But the funding for those temporary positions will run out this year.
Beard said by Oct. 1 the call center staff will go from 28 to 11 positions and total staff will go from 58 to 40.
Republicans also voted to transfer $5 million in program revenue — the money collected from the fees paid when applying for, obtaining and maintaining a license — to the general fund, which is expected to have a $4.2 billion surplus at the end of the month.
At the end of the last fiscal year, the DSPS surplus was around $39 million, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Despite having the huge surplus of program revenue — including money accumulated from fees applied to permit and license applications — DSPS can’t use those funds to hire more staff without JFC approval.
“Licensees pay fees so that they can be appropriately regulated, and what we are doing is starving that system and making it harder for every single one of us to access needed professional services,” Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said in support of adding 24 permanent positions using program revenue.
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The percentage of Wisconsin schoolchildren not receiving state-mandated vaccinations because of their parents’ personal beliefs is four times higher than it was a generation ago.
That rise in personal conviction waivers has driven a decrease in all immunizations among Wisconsin children ahead of new measles outbreaks hitting the U.S. that are linked to three deaths.
Wisconsin’s measles vaccination rate among kindergartners was the third-lowest in the nation in the 2023-24 school year, behind Idaho and Alaska. (Montana didn’t report data.)
Here’s a look at how we got here.
Vaccine laws in all 50 states
Immunizations are so common that all 50 states have laws requiring them for schoolchildren. Wisconsin was among the first, in 1882.
In the 1950s, the child mortality rate was 4.35%, largely due to childhood diseases. That rate dropped to 0.77% by 2022, according to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
“Vaccines have brought about one of the largest improvements in public health in human history, making diseases that once caused widespread illness and many deaths, such as measles, mumps, and rubella, rare in the United States,” the agency reported.
For the 2024-25 school year, Wisconsin required seven immunizations (18 doses) for children to enter school. That included shots for measles (MMR), polio and hepatitis B. COVID-19 and influenza vaccines are not included.
Overall, the vast majority of Wisconsin students, 89.2%, met the minimum immunization requirements in the 2023–24 school year, according to the state’s latest annual report.
That’s essentially unchanged from the previous two school years.
But it’s down more than three percentage points from 92.3% in 2017-18.
For highly communicable diseases such as measles, a threshold above 95% is needed to protect most people through “herd immunity.”
More parents refusing to get kids vaccinated
Wisconsin had been a nationalleader in childhood immunizations.
But increasingly, Wisconsin parents are opting out:
For all childhood immunizations, vaccination rates statewide were lower in almost every quarter from 2020 through 2024, in comparison with the average rate in the three years before COVID-19.
Wisconsin was one of the states with the largest drops in the measles vaccination rate for kindergartners between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, and no county had an MMR vaccination rate above 85%, The Economist reported.
By a different measure, the measles vaccination rate for 2-year-olds in 2024 was as low as 44% in Vernon County and under 70% in 14 other counties.
On exemptions, Wisconsin differs from most states
All states have exemptions that allow parents not to have their children vaccinated. Medical and religious reasons are the most common.
In Wisconsin, there’s also a third waiver.
Wisconsin regulations say the Wisconsin Department of Health Services shall provide a waiver for health reasons if a physician certifies that an immunization “is or may be harmful to the health of a student”; or, if the parent of a minor student, or an adult student, submits a signed statement that “declares an objection to immunization on religious or personal conviction grounds.”
That philosophical exemption, based on personal beliefs, exists only in 15states, including Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.
“The bottom line is: If you don’t want your child vaccinated, you don’t have to,” said Kia Kjensrud, interim director of Immunize Wisconsin, which supports vaccination organizations.
In 2023-24, 6.1% of Wisconsin students used a waiver.
That includes 5.2% who had a personal conviction waiver — a rate more than four times higher than the 1.2% in 1997-98.
Waiver use has increased because the number of required vaccines and the legal protections given to vaccine manufacturers have “fueled skepticism about vaccine safety and testing rigor,” Wisconsin United for Freedom said in an email. The De Pere-based group works to protect “rights to medical freedom” and promotes vaccine skepticism.
Rep. Lisa Subeck, D-Madison, one of the lawmakers who introducedlegislation in 2023 to repeal the personal conviction waiver, said she believes some parents have genuine convictions against vaccinations. But “many of the folks who are choosing this exemption are doing it because of misinformation” claiming that vaccines are dangerous, she said.
Groups that registered to lobby in favor of Subeck’s bill included associations of physicians, nurses and local health departments. Wisconsin Family Action, which works to advance Judeo-Christian values, opposed it. The bill did not pass.
Kjensrud also blamed Wisconsin’s declining immunization rates on misinformation. But she said that rather than legislation, her group wants to improve “messaging the safety, efficacy and lifesaving importance of vaccines, and increasing vaccination rates however we can.”
Bipartisan support for personal exemption
Wisconsin’s modern student immunization law was passed in 1975 with only the medical and religious waivers. In 1980, the Legislature added the personal conviction waiver.
The waiver was included in a broader amendment proposed by 10 Democratic members and 11 Republican members of the Assembly.
The lead sponsor was the late Richard Flintrop, who represented Oshkosh and was known as a child welfare advocate. He also was a former staff member to maverick Democratic U.S. Sen. William Proxmire.
Wisconsin United For Freedom said the recent measles outbreaks “raise valid concerns,” but that “the focus should be on balanced public health strategies that prioritize sanitation, nutrition, and informed choice alongside vaccination, rather than relying solely on mandates.”
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Building an underground tunnel for an aging Enbridge oil pipeline that stretches across a Great Lakes channel could destroy wetlands and harm bat habitats but would eliminate the chances of a boat anchor rupturing the line and causing a catastrophic spill, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Friday in a long-awaited draft analysis of the proposed project’s environmental impacts.
The analysis moves the corps a step closer to approving the tunnel for Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. The tunnel was proposed in 2018 at a cost of $500 million but has been bogged down by legal challenges. The corps fast-tracked the project in April after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies in January to identify energy projects for expedited emergency permitting.
A final environmental assessment is expected by autumn, with a permitting decision to follow later this year. The agency initially planned to issue a permitting decision in early 2026.
With that permit in hand, Enbridge would only need permission from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy before it could begin constructing the tunnel. That’s far from a given, though.
Environmentalists have been pressuring the state to deny the permit. Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are trying to win court rulings that would force Enbridge to remove the existing pipeline from the straits for good.
Construction could have major short-term, long-term impacts
The analysis notes that the tunnel would eliminate the risk of a boat anchor rupturing the pipeline and causing a spill in the straits, a key concern for environmentalists. But the construction would have sweeping effects on everything from recreation to wildlife.
Many of the impacts, such as noise, vistas marred by 400-foot (121-meter) cranes, construction lights degrading stargazing opportunities at Headlands International Dark Sky Park and vibrations that would disturb aquatic wildlife would end when the work is completed, the report found.
Other impacts would last longer, including the loss of wetlands and vegetation on both sides of the strait that connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and the loss of nearly 300 trees that the northern long-eared bat and tricolored bat use to roost. Grading and excavation also could disturb or destroy archaeological sites.
The tunnel-boring machine could cause vibrations that could shift the area’s geology. Soil in the construction area could become contaminated and nearly 200 truck trips daily during the six-year construction period would degrade area roads, the analysis found. Gas mixing with water seeping into the tunnel could result in an explosion, but the analysis notes that Enbridge plans to install fans to properly ventilate the tunnel during excavation.
Enbridge has pledged to comply with all safety standards, replant vegetation where possible and contain erosion, the analysis noted. The company also has said it would try to limit the loudest work to daytime hours as much as possible, and offset harm to wetlands and protected species by buying credits through mitigation banks. That money can then be used to fund restoration in other areas.
“Our goal is to have the smallest possible environmental footprint,” Enbridge officials said in a statement.
The Sierra Club issued a statement Friday saying the tunnel remains “an existential threat.”
“Chances of an oil spill in the Great Lakes — our most valuable freshwater resource — skyrockets if this tunnel is built in the Straits,” the group said. “We can’t drink oil. We can’t fish or swim in oil.”
Julie Goodwin, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental law group that opposes the project, said the corps failed to consider the impacts of a spill that could still happen on either side of the straits or stopping the flow of oil through the Great Lakes.
“My key takeaways are the Army corps has put blinders are in service to Enbridge and President Trump’s fossil fuel agenda,” she said.
Tunnel would protect portion of Line 5 running through straits
Enbridge has been using the Line 5 pipeline to transport crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953. Roughly 4 miles of the pipeline runs along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac.
Concerns about the aging pipeline rupturing and causing a potentially disastrous spill in the straits have been building over the last decade. Those fears intensified in 2018 when an anchor damaged the line.
Enbridge contends that the line remains structurally sound, but it struck a deal with then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration in 2018 that calls for the company to replace the straits portion of the line with a new section that would be encased in a protective underground tunnel.
Enbridge and environmentalists spar in court battles
Environmentalists, Native American tribes and Democrats have been fighting in court for years to stop the tunnel and force Enbridge to remove the existing pipeline from the straits. They’ve had little success so far.
A Michigan appellate court in February validated the state Public Service Commission’s permits for the tunnel. Nessel sued in 2019 seeking to void the easement that allows Line 5 to run through the straits. That case is still pending. Whitmer revoked the easement in 2020, but Enbridge challenged that decision and a federal appellate court in April ruled that the case can proceed.
Another legal fight over Line 5 in Wisconsin
About 12 miles (19 kilometers) of Line 5 runs across the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s reservation in northern Wisconsin. That tribe sued in 2019 to force Enbridge to remove the line from the reservation, arguing it’s prone to spilling and that easements allowing it to operate on the reservation expired in 2013.
Enbridge has proposed a 41-mile (66-kilometer) reroute around the reservation. The tribe has filed a lawsuit seeking to void state construction permits for the project and has joined several other groups in challenging the permits through the state’s contested case process.
Noem announced an arrest of a 54-year-old man who was living in the U.S. illegally, saying he had written a letter threatening to kill Trump and would then return to Mexico. The story received a flood of media attention and was highlighted by the White House and Trump’s allies.
But investigators actually believe the man may have been framed so that he would get arrested and be deported from the U.S. before he got a chance to testify in a trial as a victim of assault, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Law enforcement officials believe the man, Ramon Morales Reyes, never wrote a letter that Noem and her department shared with a message written in light blue ink expressing anger over Trump’s deportations and threatening to shoot him in the head with a rifle at a rally. Noem also shared the letter on X along with a photo of Morales Reyes, and the White House also shared it on its social media accounts. The letter was mailed to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office along with the FBI and other agencies, the person said.
As part of the investigation, officials had contacted Morales Reyes and asked for a handwriting sample and concluded his handwriting and the threatening letter didn’t match and that the threat was not credible, the person said. It’s not clear why Homeland Security officials still decided to send a release making that claim.
In an emailed statement asking for information about the letter and the new information about Morales Reyes, the Department of Homeland Security said “the investigation into the threat is ongoing. Over the course of the investigation, this individual was determined to be in the country illegally and that he had a criminal record. He will remain in custody.”
His attorneys said he was not facing current charges and they did not have any information about convictions in his record.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s records show Morales Reyes is being held at a county jail in Juneau, Wisconsin, northwest of Milwaukee. The Milwaukee-based immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, which is advocating for his release, said he was arrested May 21. Attorney Cain Oulahan, who was hired to fight against his deportation, said he has a hearing in a Chicago immigration court next week and is hoping he is released on bond.
Morales Reyes had been a victim in a case of another man who is awaiting trial on assault charges in Wisconsin, the person familiar with the matter said. The trial is scheduled for July.
Morales Reyes works as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, where he lives with his wife and three children. He had recently applied for a U visa, which is carved out for people in the country illegally who become victims of serious crimes, said attorney Kime Abduli, who filed that application.
The Milwaukee Police Department said it is investigating an identity theft and victim intimidation incident related to this matter, and the county district attorney’s office said the investigation was ongoing. Milwaukee police said no one has been criminally charged at this time.
Abduli, Morales Reyes’ attorney, says he could not have written the letter, saying he did not receive formal education and can’t write in Spanish and doesn’t know how to speak English. She said it was not clear whether he was arrested because of the letters.
“There is really no way that it could be even remotely true,” Abduli said. “We’re asking for a clarification and a correction from DHS to clear Ramon’s name of anything having to do with this.”
The Associated Press’ Mike Balsamo, Scott Bauer and Adriana Gomez contributed to this report.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Real median wages, or the inflation-adjusted amount of money the middle earner makes, have risen in the U.S. since the 1980s.
Real median weekly wages were 19% higher in Q1 2025 than in Q1 1985, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A similar pattern can be seen across other measures of earnings: Real median household income rose from $58,930 in 1984 (in 2023 inflation-adjusted dollars) to $80,610 in 2023, an increase of 37%. Both real median weekly wages and household income faced their greatest increases in the 2010s. The former peaked in Q2 2020 at $1,195, and the latter peaked in 2019 at $81,210.
“Real” means the actual purchasing power of wages accounting for increases in the price of goods over time.
“Median” is the middle value, meaning large income increases for top earners do not affect it.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
EconoFact is a nonpartisan publication designed to bring key facts and incisive analysis to the national debate on economic and social policies. Launched in January 2017, it is written by leading academic economists from across the country who belong to the EconoFact Network.
Both “global warming” and “climate change” continue to be used as global temperatures continue to rise.
The two terms refer to different but related phenomena. Global warming captures increasing average global temperatures observed since the Industrial Revolution. Climate change speaks to the various environmental outcomes of this warming.
The last 10 years (2015-2024) were the 10 hottest on record, with 2024 breaking the record set in 2023. The last colder-than-average year was 1976. Climate scientists calculate global temperatures by averaging readings from thousands of weather stations, ships, buoys, and satellites around the world.
The 1956 paper “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change” outlined CO2’s role in altering climate. Google Books indicates usage of “climate change” predated and surpassed “global warming” since the 1980s.
The only notable political push to favor “climate change” was a 2002 Bush administration memo that claimed the term was “less frightening” than “global warming.”
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A newly opened commercial-scale sawmill in Antigo is the only training sawmill of its kind in the U.S.
The sawmill at Northcentral Technical College’s Antigo campus will be a teaching tool for northern Wisconsin students and members of the lumber industry. It’s part of the school’s wood sciences program and was funded by about $4.5 million out of an $8 million state Workforce Innovation Grant to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Wisconsin Forestry Center. That grant is meant to provide career training that will help address worker shortages in the lumber industry.
In late May, wood sciences program director Logan Wells, who has been an instructor there for five years, stood by a stack of recently sawn lumber from cherry wood — the first batch of cuts from the sawmill to have gone through the kiln-drying and finishing process. The boards are all eight feet long, but of different widths.
“We take whatever width the log will give us,” Wells said.
Instructor Logan Wells uses a scanner at Northcentral Technical College’s Antigo sawmill to determine the best cuts to make lumber out of a basswood log. (Rob Mentzer / WPR)
Scanners in the sawmill find knots and other imperfections inside the logs like woodpecker holes or bark pockets. Boards that are at least 83% “clean” are top-grade. The lowest-grade cuts will be used for pallet wood. Part of the art and science of milling is figuring out how to cut each log to yield the most high-quality lumber possible.
In addition to the eight students enrolled full time in the program for the fall, Wells leads certificate programs and continuing education courses for industry professionals looking to sharpen their skills or gain experience with new technology. About 100 students per year come through those programs.
Wisconsin’s forest industry employs about 58,000 people, according to the state Department of Natural Resources, and its forest products are worth more than $24 billion per year. In addition to building materials and pulpwood used for papermaking, notable Wisconsin-made wood products include white oak staves used for whiskey or wine barrels and high-grade maple for the hardwood basketball courts used by NBA teams and in the NCAA’s Final Four.
But the industry faces challenges, made worse by aging and declining populations in much of northern Wisconsin, where many of the state’s hardwood forests are located.
Wells, a Green County native who has worked in sawmills and as a forest products specialist for the Department of Natural Resources, said the industry is also in a time of technological advancement. Like other manufacturing industries, lumber companies are incorporating robotics and artificial intelligence. Advances in engineered wood have led to new uses for wood, such as the mass timber skyscrapers now going up in Milwaukee and elsewhere.
“It’s a very dynamic industry,” Wells said. “It’s been around a long time, and it’s gonna continue to be around.”
Inside the 10,000-square-foot mill, most equipment is elevated. Logs move on conveyor belts through the process of being debarked, sawn into slabs and refined.
From a cockpit with computer controls, Wells demonstrates how operators calculate cuts to the outside of the log until it resembles a massive railroad tie, then slice it into boards that are shaped and given square edges by other machines.
Sawdust flies as a board is milled at Northcentral Technical College’s Antigo sawmill. (Rob Mentzer / WPR)
Sawdust from the mill is collected and used for packaging material by a local potato farmer. Other byproducts are turned into wood chips used for landscaping at NTC.
Wells said giving students and industry professionals a chance to work on professional-grade tools will help the industry continue to adapt to fast-moving technological changes.
“We’re just scratching the surface with the new sawmill,” he said.
Wisconsin Republicans are proposing an expansion of early voting, with new requirements for municipalities statewide, but some local officials say the one-size-fits-all mandate wouldn’t make sense for Wisconsin’s smallest communities.
The proposal would require every municipality in Wisconsin, regardless of its size, to offer at least 20 hours of in-person absentee voting at the clerk’s office, or an alternative site, for each election. The bill’s authors say they want to reimburse local governments for the added costs, though they haven’t yet clarified how they would do that.
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, a Republican, said she wrote the bill after noticing the stark difference in early voting availability between rural and urban municipalities.
In the Fox Valley cities that used to be part of her district — Appleton, Oshkosh and Neenah — early voting was widely available, she said. But in many of the rural areas that she began serving after the latest redistricting cycle, she said, “nobody has early voting.”
She argues the proposal would provide more flexibility for voters and offer an alternative for those who are uncomfortable voting by mail.
Local election officials generally welcome increased access, but worry about the 20-hour mandate being a burden on smaller communities.
Acknowledging the pushback, Cabral-Guevara said, “Why should we have hesitation about giving people the opportunity of voting? Why shouldn’t there be equity across the state for rural versus urban?”
In-person absentee voting access varies across Wisconsin
In cities like Madison and Milwaukee, voters have nearly two weeks before an election to cast an in-person absentee ballot. They can vote in one of multiple locations, and at almost any time of the day.
That isn’t the case in rural Wisconsin.
Some rural municipalities provide just a one- or two-hour window for in-person absentee voting during that two-week period. In others, in-person early voting is done by appointment only at a clerk’s home, which acts as an official office for that purpose. Many have no clear policy at all for in-person absentee voting.
Clerks in smaller towns expressed mixed feelings about the proposed changes.
In Luck, a northwest Wisconsin town with about 900 residents, Patsy Gustafson serves as a part-time clerk, generally working three or four hours per week and arranging in-person early voting by appointment only. This proposal would require her to work over double her normal hours during the early voting period.
“I think I’d be sitting around a lot of that time for nothing, but hopefully it would make more people that wouldn’t otherwise vote come,” she said.
Gustafson said she supports state reimbursement to municipalities — “elections are expensive,” she said — but questions how the state would cover her added costs, especially because she’s salaried.
Cabral-Guevara said the funding formula is still being finalized.
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, is seen when she was a state representative at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Feb. 22, 2022. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
In Elcho, a town of about 1,200 people in northern Langlade County, the 20-hour requirement would be unnecessary, Clerk Lyn Olenski told Votebeat.
“I guess I wouldn’t want that,” she said about the proposal. “We don’t have that many people that want to vote early.”
The 20-hour mandate would make even less sense for smaller municipalities, Olenski said.
“If we had 100 people, I sure wouldn’t want to sit in there for 20 hours,” she said.
Cabral-Guevara said she believes behavior could shift as early voting becomes more accessible.
“I believe that there is a duty as a clerk to make sure that there is easy access for people to be able to vote,” Cabral-Guevara said. “And if they’re sitting around, well, then they can find other things to do if they would like.”
That may be wishful thinking in places like the village of Yuba, which has only 43 registered voters. Clerk James Ueeck, who also works full time for the county in another role, said he would have to request time off from his main job to be able to provide 20 hours of early voting.
Even if every voter in the village cast a ballot early, the total time required wouldn’t come close to 20 hours. And his office would still have to keep polls open on Election Day.
“For us, it makes no sense,” he said. “I would rather just leave it where I can do it by appointment.”
Ueeck added that many clerks in Richland County also work full-time jobs and might resign their clerk positions if the mandate becomes law.
Rep. Scott Krug, a Republican from Rome and co-author of the measure, told Votebeat that he has heard concerns from small-town clerks over the 20-hour requirement. He said he’s open to tweaking the measure — for example, requiring fewer hours in communities with fewer than 250 voters. But he said there must be “access everywhere” to early voting.
Similar versions in Washington County and Connecticut
The Republican proposal mirrors a local initiative in Washington County, where officials have offered to cover the costs for municipalities that voluntarily expand early voting hours.
For the April 2025 election, the county compensated municipalities at 150% of the added cost for extending their early voting hours beyond what they were in the April 2023 election. About 90% of the municipalities in the county participated. Unlike the state proposal, Washington County’s plan had no mandated minimum hours.
Early voting has been taking off across the country, too. At this point, 47 states offer some version of in-person early voting. In Connecticut, which recently passed an early voting initiative, the program requires every municipality to be open between four and 14 days for early voting, depending on the election, regardless of population size.
In Union, Connecticut — a town of just 800 residents — Clerk Heidi Bradrick said only eight voters showed up during the 14 days of early voting in May.
“I understand their desire to have it,” she said, “but they definitely need to take into account the size of the municipality. We always laugh, like, ‘What if we get everybody to vote the first day? Can we close?’”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
It’s the kind of exchange that criminal justice data is meant to clarify: a police official insisting that law enforcement practices are fair and targeted, while a city commissioner questions whether those practices contribute to racial disparities.
“If I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly, it’s the police department position – not that you are policing in a racially motivated way, but just that it’s Black youth that are committing more crimes,” asked Krissie Fung, a commissioner on the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission during a recent meeting.
“I would not say Black youth are committing more crimes,” responded Heather Hough, chief of staff for the Milwaukee Police Department. “I would say that when we are arresting suspects, we are ensuring reasonable suspicion or probable cause, whether or not the identity of those youth is one race or another.”
Such misinterpretations have been common, said Kelly Pethke, administrator for Milwaukee County Children, Youth and Family Services, which hosts the dashboard.
“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding,” Pethke said. “We are in the process of making some changes.”
The point of the dashboard
The dashboard was designed to provide real-time transparency about Milwaukee County youths in secure custody.
“We didn’t have a good, single place to go to really look at the scope of the child incarceration problem,” said Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, who helped move the dashboard through the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors when he served as a supervisor.
But the dashboard doesn’t yet offer a complete picture, including when it comes to race.
Because of this limitation, conversations about racial disparities in Milwaukee’s youth justice system – like those during the Fire and Police Commission meeting – are incomplete.
What’s missing?
To understand what’s missing from the dashboard, it helps to know that Milwaukee youths in secure custody can fall into three categories.
Some youths are held at the county-run Vel R. Phillips Youth and Family Justice Center for lesser offenses, remaining fully under Milwaukee County’s responsibility.
Others, deemed serious juvenile offenders, are in the custody of the state and housed at state-run youth prisons such as Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls.
A third group consists of youth who are the county’s responsibility but are housed in state-run facilities. The dashboard currently only shows racial data for this third group.
Pethke provided NNS with point-in-time data that helps fill out the racial picture of youths in county custody. As of May 19, there were 113 youths in the county detention center: 92 were Black, 12 were Hispanic, seven were white, and two were Asian.
Persistent problem
Even with the updated county data, overrepresentation of youths of color – especially Black youth – in the criminal justice system continues, said Monique Liston.
She’s the founder and chief strategist of UBUNTU Research and Evaluation, a Milwaukee-based strategic education organization.
“The disproportionality is still the same for me. Still the same flag,” she said.
Liston doesn’t dispute Hough’s claim that Milwaukee police are acting legally and fairly. Still, she argued, the city’s criminal justice system is structured in such a way that disproportionately targets Black youths.
“Black youth are more surveilled. That means you’re going to end up with more incidents.”
It’s a cycle, Liston said – data collected on these incidents presents an imbalanced picture of who is committing crime.
That picture reinforces the notion that more money and policing are needed to address crime by Black youths, resulting in continued – or escalated – monitoring, she said.
Yes, Liston wants to see clearer and more complete data from the dashboard. But she also wants that data to be used for real accountability and change.
“Whatever we measure becomes a priority,” she said. “The cycle is not disrupted if we don’t think about the data.”
MPD and root causes
Hough does not dispute the county’s data and acknowledges that racial disparities exist in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system. But she told NNS she is confident the city’s police department is not the source of those disparities.
“We get a call for service, and we respond,” she said.
Hough emphasized that the department holds officers accountable if they fail to meet standards of reasonable suspicion and probable cause.
She also said that the police department – and Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman – are committed to working with the community to address the root causes of the disparities highlighted by the county’s dashboard.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended a Dane County judge for a week Tuesday for leaving court to try to arrest a hospitalized defendant herself and getting into a sarcastic exchange with another defendant seeking a trial delay.
The court agreed with a judicial conduct review panel’s suspension recommendation for Ellen Berz, finding that she deserved more than a reprimand because she behaved impulsively and showed a lack of restraint. The suspension will begin June 26, the court ordered.
“We believe that the recommended seven-day suspension is of sufficient length to impress upon Judge Berz the necessity of patience, impartiality, and restraint in her work, and to demonstrate to the public the judiciary’s dedication to promoting professionalism among its members,” the justices wrote in the suspension order. Justice Jill Karofsky, herself a former Dane County judge, did not participate in the case.
The suspension order noted that Berz has acknowledged the facts of the case and has accepted full responsibility. Andrew Rima, one of two attorneys listed for Berz in online court records, declined to comment. Her other attorney, Steven Caya, didn’t immediately respond to an email.
Berz is the second Wisconsin judge that the state Supreme Court has suspended in the last five weeks. The justices suspended Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan indefinitely on April 29 after federal prosecutors accused her of helping a man evade U.S. immigration agents by showing him out a back door in her courtroom.
A federal grand jury has indicted Dugan on one count of obstruction and one count of concealing a person to prevent arrest. She has pleaded not guilty and is set to stand trial in July.
The Wisconsin Judicial Commission filed a misconduct complaint against Berz, the Dane County judge, in October accusing her of failing to promote public confidence in judicial impartiality, failing to treat people professionally and failing to performing her duties without bias.
According to the complaint, Berz was presiding over an operating-while-intoxicated case in December 2021. The defendant didn’t show up in court on the day the trial was set to begin. His attorney told Berz that the defendant had been admitted to a hospital.
Berz had a staff member investigate and learned that he was in a Sun Prairie emergency room. The judge ordered her bailiff to go arrest him, but was told the bailiff couldn’t leave the courthouse. She declared that she would retrieve the defendant herself, and if something happened to her, people would hear about it on the news, according to the complaint. She then left court and began driving to the emergency room with the defendant’s attorney in the passenger seat, the complaint says. No prosecutor was present in the vehicle.
She eventually turned around after the defense attorney warned her that traveling to the hospital was a bad idea because she was supposed to be the neutral decision-maker in the case, according to the complaint. She went back into court and issued a warrant for the defendant’s arrest.
The complaint also alleges she told a defendant in a child sexual assault case who had asked to delay his trial for a second time that he was playing games and should “go to the prison and talk to them about all the games you can play.”
When the defendant said her sarcasm was clear, she told him: “Good. I thought it would be. That’s why I’m saying it to you that way, because I thought you would relate with that.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
A common idea in recent years among the information-hungry public is “doing your own research.” People have lost trust in traditional news sources, so they scour the dark, fact-lacking corners of the internet to find out what’s really going on.
I call this the bucket brigade approach to information gathering. It can work, but it doesn’t make much sense in other areas of modern life.
For the most part, people don’t make their own shoes, they don’t build their own cars, and when their house is on fire, they don’t rouse the neighborhood to form a line to the nearest watering hole.
At Wisconsin Watch, our driving purpose is to provide a small brigade of nonpartisan, fact-focused journalists to research topics on behalf of our readers — with transparency surrounding where we find information. One way you can take full advantage of that free service is to submit questions via Ask Wisconsin Watch.
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Southwest Wisconsin Technical College was named the top community college in the nation after revamping its curriculum and counseling to better position students for higher-earning careers.
The college cut majors that often led to low-paying jobs and added training for industry certifications that garner premium pay. It also raised pay for some of its own workers, then urged local employers to increase wages.
Southwest Tech alums five years after graduation earn $14,000 more a year than other newly hired workers in their area.
Eight years ago, Southwest Wisconsin Technical College faced a crisis. An accreditation agency had placed the Grant County community college on probation for shortcomings in using evidence to advance student learning.
Without improvements the college risked losing its accreditation, which would have affected the roughly 3,700 students near the Iowa border training for careers as mechanics, midwives, farmers and more. Without Southwest Tech, many would have to travel farther, pay more or forfeit their plans.
The news jolted the college into action.
“We had some issues that we had to address,” Holly Clendenen, chief student services officer, recalled. “That really brought the campus together to find the best way to improve our assessment work and ensure students were learning.”
The efforts paid off and then some. Last month, Clendenen walked across a Washington, D.C., stage to accept an award in a competition former President Barack Obama once called “the Oscars of great community colleges.”
Organized every two years by the nonprofit Aspen Institute, the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence recognizes schools setting an example in their field. It awards a total of $1 million to the top handful of institutions and publicizes their best practices for serving students.
Southwest Tech took home the top prize: $700,000 for revamping its curriculum and counseling to better position students for higher-earning careers after graduation. It cut majors that often led to low-paying jobs and added training for industry certifications that garner premium pay. To practice what they preached, campus leaders raised pay for some of the college’s own workers, then urged other local employers to do the same.
Southwest Tech alums five years after graduation now earn $14,000 more a year than other newly hired workers in their area, the Aspen Institute found.
Community colleges educate about two in five U.S. college students. But they don’t always set up those students for family-supporting careers, said Joshua Wyner, who oversees the Aspen Prize.
Community colleges have been underperforming for years, Wyner said. “If we are going to enable economic mobility and achieve the talent that we need for the economy, for democracy, etc., community colleges, frankly, just have to do better.”
On that front, Wyner said, Southwest Tech stood out. “This commitment to making sure every program leads to a living-wage job, and to actually confront programs that lead to low-wage work, is really unusual.”
Precision agronomy yields higher wages
Jamin Crapp, 19, already knew plenty about farming when he enrolled in Southwest Tech’s agribusiness management program last fall. Growing up on his family’s farm just outside of nearby Lancaster, he learned to tend dairy and beef cattle and use basic equipment.
But when he got a job at a farm in Rockville, he encountered a tractor he didn’t know how to drive. The newer model, which steers itself using GPS, was just one example of the kind of “precision farming” tools farmers are increasingly using to boost efficiency.
Crapp was in luck. Southwest Tech had begun shifting to precision agriculture as part of its broader effort to set up graduates for higher wages.
Two years ago, college leaders categorized academic programs by graduates’ average earnings: Programs leading to hourly wages of $16.50 or less were considered low-wage. Programs yielding at least $25 an hour were designated high-wage. A medium-wage category covered those in between.
Then the college set out to raise pay in every low-wage program.
First, college officials turned to local employers. “We met with all of our partners to find out: Why aren’t these students making more money?” college spokesperson Katie Glass said.
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College agriculture instructor Christina Winch, second from left, talks with agribusiness management student Jamin Crapp as the students plant soybeans.
Agronomy was one low-wage program at the time. Local agriculture businesses, it turned out, needed workers who could fly drones or apply pesticides — training Southwest Tech didn’t offer.
“If our graduates could do those things, they could pay them more, because they could reorganize their business somehow,” Glass said.
So the college added that training.
Southwest Tech agronomy graduates can now raise their starting hourly pay by up to $2 with drone and pesticide certification, the college said.
This fall the agronomy program will be completely reshaped and renamed precision agronomy, focusing on using technology to measure and analyze data to inform farming decisions. The college spent $1.3 million to purchase 85 acres of farmland to provide space for students to maneuver drones and gather the data they need.
‘Oh, that’s how you run that’
Agriculture instructor Andrew Dal Santo, who will lead the new program, likens the agronomy overhaul to switching from an analog clock to digital.
On a sunny May afternoon, he led agribusiness management students as they filled compartments of an industrial planter with one soybean variety after another. The students took turns driving a tractor that recorded data throughout the drive. Students would later take those data back to the classroom.
“We can read everything from how many seeds per inch to how much pressure we’re putting into the ground, so the seed’s at the right depth,” Dal Santo said. “Instead of coming out here for five hours and collecting all that data, it’s right at your hands.”
Soybean seeds sit in a planter at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College.
Jamin Crapp, a Southwest Wisconsin Technical College agribusiness management student, takes his turn driving a tractor as his class plants soybeans. Though he’s spent his life on his family’s farm, it wasn’t until he came to college that he learned to drive a tractor like this one, which uses GPS to steer itself.
One of the busy students was Crapp, who learned to operate an auto-steer tractor in another of Dal Santo’s classes — a lesson he brought to his job in Rockville.
“The next time I went to that farm, I said, ‘Oh, that’s how you run that,’” Crapp said.
He’s still weighing post-graduation plans, but he expects his new knowledge of precision techniques will help whether he’s running his own farm or writing loans for other farmers.
“With my degree, I believe I can do almost anything,” Crapp said.
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College agribusiness management student Jamin Crapp checks the planter he and his classmates use to plant soybeans.
Changes to the agronomy program have already elevated it to the medium-wage category, Glass said. Six other previously low-wage programs made the same jump, while two more moved from medium-wage to high-wage.
The college also added a new radiography program, training students to use medical imaging equipment like X-rays and CT scanners. That profession promises a median wage of around $38 an hour nationally, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The overhaul at Southwest Tech drew criticism from some business leaders, including a few members of its advisory boards, Glass said.
“They built a business model off of paying our graduates lower wages, and we asked them to step down from our advisory board,” she added. “That’s not the direction that we’re going.”
Creative solutions to grow child care wages
Some programs weren’t worth saving, campus leaders found. Culinary arts and culinary management — programs considered successful by other measures — got the ax when the college couldn’t find ways to raise graduates’ wages.
“If our graduates don’t make family-sustaining wages, we’re not going to offer the program anymore,” Glass said. “Our degrees have to have value.”
But some low-wage majors proved too important to cut, such as pathways for certified nursing assistants and child care workers.
Grace Kite, center, serves snacks at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College’s child care center on May 7, 2025, in Fennimore, Wis. She is one of two early childhood education students earning $19 an hour in a role the college created to raise wages for students and graduates. Kite works alongside Paula Timmerman, who taught her when she was two.
“Child care is so essential to our area that we can’t entertain the idea of not having the program anymore,” Glass said. “We have to find all the other avenues for what we can do to raise wages.”
Elementary school teachers, also high in demand, earn more than child care teachers. To set Southwest Tech graduates on a higher-earning path, the college revised the early childhood education curriculum to ease transfers to teacher training programs at Wisconsin’s four-year colleges. Faculty began talking “early and often” about that option, said Renae Blaschke, an early childhood education instructor.
To improve immediate job prospects, the college began offering substitute teacher training, along with in-demand nonviolent crisis intervention training.
Lab assistant Paula Timmerman applies sunscreen to students at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College’s child care center.
The school also helped students qualify for the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association’s TEACH scholarship, which supports Wisconsin students studying early childhood education. To be eligible, students must work at least 25 hours a week in a child care job. Southwest Tech students regularly perform such work to gain required field experience, but they struggle to find jobs that meet the scholarship requirements.
To help, the college created two substitute teacher jobs paying $19 an hour at its on-campus child care center. To set an example for other area child care providers, the college raised full-time staff salaries at the center to $40,000 a year, and it urged other local providers to raise wages too. According to the Aspen Institute, the center is now the region’s highest-paying child care provider.
Second-year early childhood education student Autum Butler, 20, who has worked at the on-campus center since 2023, is now a substitute in a toddler room. At Blaschke’s recommendation, she applied for a TEACH scholarship, which covered 90% of her school tuition this year and provided additional stipends for certain materials and technology.
Butler hopes to continue working with toddlers after graduation and possibly open her own day care.
Leaders vow to keep improving
Southwest Tech’s recognition comes during a tumultuous time for Wisconsin community colleges, several of which have recently closed amid declining enrollment.
Nationwide, college enrollment is down since the COVID-19 pandemic, with many students questioning whether the benefits of a degree are worth the growing cost. Community colleges with the biggest drops during the pandemic experienced bigger jumps than other types of colleges this year, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Southwest Tech isn’t the only Wisconsin community college earning kudos. The Aspen Institute, which analyzes data on about 1,100 U.S. community colleges, included seven others from Wisconsin on a list of 150 top institutions invited to apply for an Aspen Prize.
One of those schools — Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay — joined Southwest Tech as one of 10 finalists for the top prize, with judges citing dual enrollment opportunities for high schoolers and engagement with local employers to help more students learn on the job.
Southwest Tech prevailed after judges visited each finalist’s campus and compared data on how many of the students go on to transfer to four-year colleges or earn bachelor’s degrees — along with post-graduation earnings.
More than half of the college’s full-time students graduate within three years, far above the 35% national average. The school wants to raise that rate to 70%.
Other colleges could learn plenty from Southwest Tech, Aspen Institute judges said. Rural students often struggle to gain relevant work experience during school due to limited jobs and internships in smaller communities. But Southwest Tech leaders filled the gap by creating relevant work opportunities on campus.
Building trades students at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College pose for a photo outside the student housing duplex they built with instructor Andy Reynolds. Rural students often struggle to gain relevant work experience during school due to limited jobs and internships in smaller communities. Southwest Tech leaders fill that gap by creating relevant work opportunities on campus in Fennimore, Wis.
Construction students now build student housing. A recent class completed an eight-bedroom duplex in just two semesters. Across campus, graphic design students create brochures and billboards advertising the college.
Staff provide hands-on support outside of the classroom, including directing students to child care, mental health and food pantry services. They also help students draw up budgets that incorporate their income, financial aid, rent and school costs.
“It’s a very sophisticated way of thinking about supporting students,” Wyner of the Aspen Institute said. “Other colleges often have lots of services that they offer, but it’s not tied to a particular sense of what students’ budgets are.”
Southwest Tech even won high marks for how it assesses student learning — the very worry of accreditors eight years ago. The college, which has since returned to good standing, now continually evaluates whether students are learning what instructors intended. When they don’t, faculty must create course improvement plans that everyone in the college can see, something Wyner calls “radical accountability.”
Parker Reese, an agricultural power and equipment technician program student at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, walks behind the planter as agribusiness management students plant soybeans on May 7, 2025.
Looking back, Clendenen said the bad 2016 accreditation review was instrumental in bringing the college where it is today — rolling “a snowball that started us on this continuous improvement path.”
“This prize is not the finish line,” Clendenen told the Aspen Prize crowd. “It’s also fuel for the road ahead. We accept this honor not just as recognition of our past success, but as a challenge to keep growing, innovating, leading and serving our community.”
In the latest assessment, Mississippi’s fourth grade public school students scored higher than Wisconsin’s in reading proficiency, though the ratings “were not significantly different.”
The National Assessment of Educational Progress ratings, issued every two years, are administered by the U.S. Education Department.
In 2022, 33% of Wisconsin fourth graders rated “at or above proficient” in reading, vs. 31% in Mississippi.
In 2024, Wisconsin dropped to 31%; Mississippi rose to 32%.
NAEP said the states’ scores were “not significantly different.”
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents most of northern Wisconsin, claimed May 17 at the Wisconsin Republican Party convention Wisconsin had “fallen behind” Mississippi in reading. His office cited 2024 fourth grade scores.
Mississippi’s fourth grade scores surged in the past decade.
Among eighth graders, Wisconsin outperformed Mississippi in 2024 (31%-23%) and 2022 (32%-22%).
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is weighing a dispute between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature over releasing $50 million in literacy funding.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
National Assessment of Educational Progress: About NAEP
The Wisconsin Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Social Development Commission on Friday to secure back pay for former employees.
At the same time, three state legislators are asking the agency, also known as the SDC, to consider voluntarily giving up its community action status.
According to court records, the Department of Justice lawsuit filed on behalf of the Department of Workforce Development alleges that SDC failed to pay $359,609.73 in wages and benefits owed to former employees.
However, the department is seeking double that amount – a total of $719,219.46 – as a penalty for “willful failure to pay.”
Sarah Woods’ claim against SDC seeks roughly $4,800 of back pay.
“These are not small payments,” said Woods, a former youth and family services supervisor for SDC.
This marks the latest stage in a long-running wage dispute following the agency’s abrupt April 2024 shutdown, leaving some employees unpaid. SDC, which reopened in December, has provided a variety of programs to serve low-income residents in Milwaukee County.
SDC’s response
William Sulton, the attorney for SDC, said Thursday that the agency will file a third-party complaint against the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, which he claims failed to reimburse the agency for services SDC provided.
“DCF needs to be held to account,” he said, adding that SDC should sue the Department of Children and Families regardless of what the Department of Justice does.
Woods remains skeptical that further legal back-and-forth will get people what they’re owed.
“I just want the workers to get paid,” she said. “SDC needs to … just leave it alone.”
Dispute over proper documentation
Sulton said a major dispute between SDC and the Department of Children and Family Services is about documentation.
“They had all of the required paperwork, but they kept asking for additional information that had never been asked for before,” he said. “We met every one of those obligations.”
In a letter sent last month, the Department of Children and Families said SDC failed to meet federal audit requirements and had not provided enough documentation to justify its reimbursement request.
Statelegislators ask for voluntary de-designation
Earlier this month, the Department of Children and Families decided to rescind SDC’s status as a community action agency effective July 3, making the agency no longer eligible to receive certain federal block grants that support anti-poverty work.
SDC plans to request a review of the decision from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Sulton said, whichcould take up to 90 days after the department receives documentation.
On Thursday, however, State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, Sen. Dora Drake and Rep. Kalan Haywood — all Milwaukee Democrats — sent a letter to SDC’s Board of Commissioners, asking the agency to voluntarily de-designate.
In the letter, the lawmakers said voluntarily de-designating would create a pathway for $1.182 million in block grant funding that had been allocated to SDC to be used in Milwaukee to support services such as food security, rent assistance and workforce development.
“These dollars must be spent by September 30, 2025, or they will be lost to the federal government,” the letter states. “At present, SDC’s operational instability prevents these funds from reaching the people who need them most.”
Sulton said this pathway does not seem viable because the state has not presented a plan. There is, he said, a lack of alternative agencies prepared to provide these anti-poverty services.
“If you want the board to consider de-designating so that these funds can go to another program, you gotta tell us what that is,” Sulton said.
Additionally, SDC leaders argue the state lacks authority to make this de-designation decision without also getting approval from the city and county’s boards, based on state statute.
A letter from State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, State Sen. Dora Drake and State Rep. Kalan Haywood to the Social Development Commission’s board. (Photo provided by the office of State Sen. LaTonya Johnson)
Even if SDC steps down, Johnson said in an interview, there is no guarantee the money will be spent in time, as the state must meet federal requirements to move the funds and find another agency to administer services.
“This is a really difficult place to be if you are an African American elected official because this is an agency that has been in the community forever that has a lot of support,” Johnson said.
“Everybody is rooting for SDC to be successful. … But the reality is that I cannot choose the side of an organization over the community’s needs.”
Edgar Mendez contributed to this report.
Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Wisconsin would lose about $314 million in food assistance from the federal government under the massive budget bill passed by the U.S. House last week, according to an analysis of the proposed cuts by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
The legislation, which President Donald Trump refers to as the “big, beautiful bill,” would require states to start matching federal funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. It would also impose new work requirements on families with young children and older people, and it would require regular paperwork to prove exemptions from such requirements for some groups, such as families with special needs children.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Wisconsin Medicaid Director Bill Hanna said those changes amount to new red tape that could cause 90,000 Wisconsinites to lose some or all assistance.
He said that would put new pressure on nonprofits like food pantries and have ripple effects at the retailers where people spend what’s commonly known as food stamps.
The proposal would push many costs onto the state, where lawmakers and the governor are in the process of deciding the next two-year budget.
“There’s going to be more demand to put state money into a program that has been 100 percent federally funded for really its entire existence, which will strain the state’s ability to put its state dollars towards other things like education, our health care system and other important aspects of what we do with our state dollars,” Hanna said.
Those state costs are calculated based on a given state’s error rates, which tend to occur when a person’s income or residence changes unexpectedly. Hanna said that Wisconsin has a low error rate but is lumped into a bracket with states with much higher error rates, and charged accordingly.
“These errors are not fraud,” DHS wrote in a statement. “For the first time ever, Congress is proposing an extreme, zero tolerance policy for payment errors harming states like Wisconsin that consistently keep error rates low.”
States would also be responsible for covering new administrative costs and for providing job training to people newly obligated to fulfill work requirements.
All six of Wisconsin’s Republican congressmen voted for the bill. Both of Wisconsin’s Democratic House members voted against it.
Over the weekend, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, argued that anyone “legally receiving SNAP benefits should not see a single reduction in their SNAP.”
Hanna argued that’s because the federal government is “changing the definition of ‘legally receiving SNAP.’”
“They are adding additional red tape to folks to meet that by expanding those work requirements,” he said. “There certainly will be people who get caught up in the new red tape that they have to meet in order to achieve the benefits.”
Currently, about 700,000 Wisconsin residents — or an eighth of the state — receive SNAP.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune can afford to lose three Republican senators and still pass the bill, and there are more than that, right now, who have problems with it. Like the House, he will have to balance the concerns from moderate and conservative members of his conference.
Republicans’ aspirational deadline is July 4, ahead of a potential debt default. Thune said groups of senators had already been meeting to discuss the legislation and that they would want to take some time to review it. “And then we’ll put our stamp on it,” he said.
“We’ll see how it goes,” Thune said. “What does it take to get to 51?”
A look at a few of the potential sticking points in the Senate:
Spending
Several Republican senators have said the House’s multi-trillion-dollar tax package doesn’t have enough savings. Thune said many in his GOP conference favor the tax breaks in the bill but “when it comes to the spending side of the equation, this is a unique moment in time, in history, where we have the House and the Senate and the White House, and an opportunity to do something meaningful about how to control government spending.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a sharp critic of the House bill, wants the United States to go back to pre-pandemic spending levels. He has indicated he would be a no on the bill as it stands now, and he says he has at least three other senators aligned with him.
Medicaid and food stamp cuts
Senate Republicans are generally on board with stricter work requirements for older Medicaid recipients that make up much of the bill’s $700 billion savings from the program. But Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Susan Collins of Maine, among others, have voiced concerns about other changes in the bill that could potentially cut funding to rural hospitals or increase copays and other health care costs for recipients.
The senators could have a powerful ally in Trump, who has frequently said he doesn’t want cuts to Medicaid, even as he’s endorsed the House bill. Hawley said he talked to Trump this week on the phone and “his exact words were, ‘Don’t touch it, Josh.’”
Others have been wary of the House bill’s effort to shift some costs of the food stamp program to states, potentially a major issue for some red states that have high numbers of food aid recipients. The House bill saves $290 billion from the food aid, and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman said the Senate savings will be “probably be a little bit lower.”
Permanent tax cuts
Thune said this week that “one of the principal differences” between the House and Senate is that Republican senators want to make many of the tax cuts permanent while the House bill has shorter time frames for many of its cuts — including no taxes on tips, overtime pay, car-loan interest and others.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo said Thursday that trying to make some of the cuts permanent is “an objective right now.”
How to pay for it all
One of the biggest questions for the Senate: whether the tax breaks really need to be offset by cuts elsewhere.
To offset the costs of lost tax revenue, House Republicans have proposed more than $1 trillion in spending reductions across Medicaid, food stamps and green energy program rollbacks. However, Republicans in the Senate do not believe there is a cost associated with permanently extending the existing taxes, setting up a political and procedural showdown ahead.
Debt limit
The House bill includes a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned that the United States is on track to run out of money to pay its bills as early as August without congressional action.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he won’t support the bill if the debt ceiling increase is included. He said he’s willing to consider it if it’s taken out.
But most Republican senators want it to avoid a separate fight that would require 60 votes in the Senate. Texas Sen. John Cornyn said that if they deal with the debt ceiling outside of the legislation then they would have to “pay a king’s ransom” to Democrats to get enough votes.
Energy tax credits
Several Republican senators have said they are concerned about House provisions that repeal or phase out clean energy tax credits passed in 2022 that have spurred investment in many states.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, John Curtis of Utah and Moran wrote Thune a letter last month arguing that removing the credits could “create uncertainty, jeopardizing capital allocation, long-term project planning, and job creation in the energy sector and across our broader economy.”
Artificial intelligence
The House bill would ban states and localities from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade, giving the federal government more control over the policy. It’s an approach that has been favored by the AI industry but has drawn concern from members on both sides of the aisle.
And even if it has enough support, the provision may not pass muster from the Senate parliamentarian because it’s unlikely to have impact on the federal budget.
Other issues
With a narrow margin for victory and only 53 Republicans in the Senate, every senator’s top priority takes on outsize importance. South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds said he supports the House bill but that the way that it deals with spectrum auctions — selling off telecommunications signal rights — is a “dealbreaker” for him. He said he’s in talks with other senators on the issue.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said one of his main goals is that they include money for certain farm safety net programs and set up passage for a broader farm bill later this year.
“In the end, we have to have 50 plus one supporting it,” Hoeven said. “So we’ve got some work to do.”
Most Americans would not face a tax increase near 65% if President Donald Trump’s tax cut extension does not become law.
The bill would extend income tax cuts set to expire Dec. 31. It would offset some costs with Medicaid and food stamp cuts.
The Tax Foundation estimates that if the cuts expire, 62% of taxpayers would see a tax increase in 2026. The average taxpayer’s increase would be 19.4% ($2,955).
House Republicans estimated 22%, a figure cited by the White House.
GOP U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents western Wisconsin, claimed May 17 at the Wisconsin Republican Party convention that “the vast majority of Americans” would see a 65% increase.
His office did not respond to requests for information.
Tax Policy Center expert Howard Gleckman said “there is no income group that would get anything like a 65% tax hike.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky also said the 65% claim is far from accurate.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Since January, Milwaukee has been dealing with dangerous levels of lead dust in some public schools, resulting in nine school closures.
On Tuesday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Senate committee there was a federal “team” in the city from the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program — though the positions were cut in April.
“We are continuing to fund the program in Milwaukee, we have a team in Milwaukee, we’re giving laboratory support to the analytics in Milwaukee, and we’re working with the health department in Milwaukee,” Kennedy said when questioned by Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Appropriations.
The Milwaukee Health Department disputed Kennedy’s statement.
“There is no team from HHS or CDC in Milwaukee assisting with the MPS lead hazard response,” department spokesperson Caroline Reinwald wrote in an email.
Kennedy has previously suggested the childhood lead program would be reinstated and told U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin last week that lead poisoning in children is an “extremely significant” concern. Reed had asked Kennedy about the program’s fate in light of those comments.
“If the secretary had information that hasn’t been proffered to myself or my team yet, I would welcome, again, continued support from the CDC,” said Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis on Wednesday.
“Admittedly, I was wondering if they potentially got stuck in traffic in Chicago and didn’t make it to Milwaukee,” he said of Kennedy’s statements about a “team.”
Federal experts were part of Milwaukee’s lead crisis response
Childhood lead poisoning experts from the CDC communicated with the Milwaukee Health Department at the start of the city’s school lead crisis, Totoraitis told WPR.
“They validated our concerns about the testing results that we were finding in the schools,” he said.
He said federal experts recommended school closures as a response, which the city’s health department had originally avoided, not wanting to disrupt learning.
“But given the significant threat of permanent brain damage from lead poisoning, we had to rely on our federal partners to make that decision,” Totoraitis said.
Milwaukee’s Trowbridge Street School of Great Lakes Studies, which had to temporarily close due to unsafe levels of lead, pictured on Feb. 28, 2025. (Evan Casey / WPR)
In March, the city requested that a CDC Epi-Aid team come to Milwaukee, hoping to beef up the city’s school lead crisis response.
But in early April, Totoraitis learned that the experts who would’ve managed that team had been laid off. His request was denied.
The team would’ve expanded the city’s testing capacity, he said, and could’ve used its lead specialization to detect trends city officials wouldn’t catch.
But even without a special team, losing the ability to remotely consult CDC experts had an impact. Totoraitis said they had helped his department make investigation plans for lead-contaminated schools and do “epidemiological, long-term digging” into where kids are getting poisoned.
“Those are the parts that are really lacking now,” Totoraitis said.
After the layoffs, one CDC expert offered to help the city as a volunteer, he said.
Totoraitis said the city might contract with some of the laid-off staff members directly. “We’re really hopeful that I can secure the funding, through one of our grants, to bring some of these former CDC staff on in June,” he said.
But he stressed that his department already has a “really robust” lead poisoning program, handling about 1,000 cases a year.
“We’re continuing our work with or without federal resources,” the Milwaukee Health Department’s Reinwald said.
One CDC laboratory specialist visited Milwaukee
One of Kennedy’s claims was that “we’re giving laboratory support to the analytics in Milwaukee.”
In response to a question from WPR about Kennedy’s contention that a team is working on the issue in the city, a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services said the CDC was assisting on laboratory testing.
“At the request of the Milwaukee Health Department Laboratory (MHDL), CDC is assisting with validating new lab instrumentation used for environmental lead testing. Staff from MHDL are focused on the lead response and other routine testing while CDC will assist with testing validation, laboratory quality management, and regulatory requirement documentation to onboard the new laboratory instrument,” the spokesperson said in an email.
According to Reinwald, a CDC laboratory specialist visited the city for two weeks in May to help the health department set up a new machine.
The machine processes lead samples from across the city — including those related to the school lead crisis.
But that visit was planned before the school lead crisis started, Totoraitis said. He said the city had already been expanding its lead-testing capacity before the crisis.
The lab specialist was “requested independently of the MPS situation,” Reinwald said, and served a “narrow technical role specific to onboarding the equipment.”
“It’s a single person,” Totoraitis said. “I know the secretary had said a team was in Milwaukee helping us, but I don’t know who he’s referring to.”
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