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A deputy known for making a large number of arrests, but who had a history of unreliability in his reports and court testimony, resigned from the Waushara County Sheriff’s Office in early December.

Scott Schaut had worked for the sheriff’s office since 2018 and was making about $34 per hour, according to county administration.

After The Badger Project requested records of his disciplinary record in September, Scott Schaut resigned a few days later from his leadership position as the night shift sergeant, dropping himself down to a patrol deputy. In November, The Badger Project published a story about Schaut’s work history, including a performance improvement plan he had been under, and at least two documented instances of the officer’s changing testimony led to a dismissal of criminal charges.

“After careful consideration, I have decided that it is best for me to move on,” he wrote in his resignation letter, which The Badger Project obtained from the county via a records request. “The current direction and internal environment of the department no longer align with what I believe is necessary for me to be successful in my role. For that reason, I feel it is in everyone’s best interest for me to step away at this time.”

The Waushara County Sheriff’s Office has been under great scrutiny in recent months, as an investigation from The Badger Project found that Sheriff Wally Zuehlke had collected more than $20,000 in stipends for his K9 after quitting the law enforcement trainings with the dog. The county board voted to force Zuehkle to repay that sum plus interest.

Another investigation by The Badger Project found the sheriff’s office promoted a deputy who had been sending and requesting lewd photos to and from officers in the department. That deputy resigned after The Badger Project requested his records.

And the sheriff’s office’s second-in-command, Chief Deputy Jim Lietz, resigned in October after pressure from citizen journalist Sam Wood, who makes online videos watched by thousands in the county and beyond, regarding his handling of the lewd photo investigation and other accusations.

Schaut had previously been on a performance improvement plan with the department, during which he conducted what may have been an illegal search, documents from the plan note.

Wood had also been criticizing Schaut in his recent videos, derisively calling him “Schnauzer” due to his aggressive and frequent searches for drugs.

But documents show that, on at least a couple occasions, Schaut failed to follow department policy, and the law, when executing searches.

Before conducting a house check in the village of Coloma in April, Schaut and other deputies received verbal permission from a caller to ensure no person was in the home. But body camera video showed Schaut looking in boxes, the refrigerator and a washing machine, areas too small for a person to hide, according to a sheriff’s office report.

For his breaking of department policy, the top administration of the sheriff’s office decided Schaut would be penalized with two unpaid days off, Lietz wrote in the report.

Upon Schaut’s resignation from the sergeant’s position, Lt. Stacy Vaccaro ended the improvement plan.

“Overall, Sgt. Schaut’s performance has been mediocre without much change,” Vaccaro wrote in the final report. “After speaking with Schaut about concerns or issues, he would acknowledge his understanding, improve for a short period of time, and then regress back.”

Schaut, Vaccaro and Zuehlke did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Schaut also had trouble with reliability in his police work in other documented instances.

In a case from 2024, Schaut reported receiving consent to enter a man’s home, in which he found drug paraphernalia. However, when a judge asked Schaut to note on an audio recording where he had received that consent, the officer said he could not, according to the court transcript. That led to the judge dismissing the paraphernalia charge because Schaut had not obtained consent and had no warrant.

In another case involving underage drinking in 2023, Waushara County District Attorney Matthew Leusink and Assistant District Attorney Joshua Zamzow alerted the court that Schaut had misremembered facts during his testimony, leading to the dismissal of a citation.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Waushara County deputy quits sheriff’s office following The Badger Project’s investigation is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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In the national war for affordable housing, a familiar battle is raging in Richland Center, a little city in the Driftless Area that’s surrounded by wilderness and farm fields.

A move to put duplexes on a six-acre village green has pitted some residents against their city government.

“It’s the soccer field, it’s the picnic field, it’s the place where everybody goes,” said Jeri Rust, who grew up in town and now splits time between Richland Center and Arizona.

But “the city needs housing, and we have before us a proposal that would be the envy of any other community,” Richland County Board Chair David Turk said at a September city council meeting. 

Since 2017, the average home price in Richland Center has increased from about $102,000 to $180,000, a 76% change, according to Zillow, the real estate marketplace. 

Stori Field is the “crown jewel” of the neighborhood, said Greg Dettmann, a resident who grew up in the city and lives across the street. 

The field is named for teacher and coach Dave Stori, who revived the high school’s track team in the 1940s. For decades, Stori Field hosted athletic practices and P.E. classes.

“I threw up more than once on that field,” Dettmann, 74, joked about his own time exercising on the field as a kid. “You can’t get green spaces back once they’re gone.”

But Richland Center has between three and six times more parkland than what the National Recreation and Park Association recommends for the city’s population, city attorney Michael Windle estimated. And there are other venues for recreation around the city, he said.

It’s a common fight across the country as residents resist new housing to keep their neighborhoods from changing.

“When you say it’s easy to find places to build, no, it isn’t,” Mayor Todd Coppernoll said at a September city council meeting. “We don’t have adequate housing stock at any income level, in my opinion.” 

Richland Center, like many communities, is struggling to provide affordable housing, especially for older people, as its population ages and the number of small home builders declines, according to a Richland County analysis.

The community’s median income is lagging behind its median home value, and “there is not enough affordable housing,” according to a Richland Center study from 2024. 

The city has struggled to find companies to build. When one developer, Enke Properties, zeroed in on Stori Field and agreed to cover the costs for major expenses like utilities, sidewalks and street lights, the city jumped at the offer. On top of the additional housing, the 16-unit development would also generate about $100,000 in annual tax revenue to be split among the city, county and school district, Richland Center city officials estimate. 

The city greenlit the sale of Stori Field on Oct. 7. In response, but before the transfer officially went through, residents submitted a petition with nearly 700 resident signatures asking the city to prohibit any sale without the voters’ consent. Richland Center has a population of about 5,000 people.

On Nov. 13, the same day the clerk certified most of the signatures, the city rejected the petition, saying it omitted necessary language. The city officially sold the land for $1 to the developer the same day. 

“PR-wise, I think they fell on their face,” Mary Collins, a resident of Richland Center and the chair of the Richland County Democratic Party, said of city officials.

But “from a legal perspective, I’m not sure that there’s anything stopping the city in this instance,” said Derek Clinger, a senior staff attorney for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

On Nov. 21 residents submitted a second petition, which the city acknowledged but says conflicts with the Oct. 7 ordinance it passed authorizing the sale.

In Wisconsin, Clinger said, a direct legislation attempt, in this case the residents’ petition, can’t be used to pass a city ordinance that clearly conflicts with an existing city ordinance. But the city’s actions could certainly have political consequences in future local elections, he noted.

Shelly Dobbs, another leader in the push to protect Stori Field who has also taken the issue to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said her citizen group is considering legal action. 

But the city’s focus on Stori Field has angered some who feel there are opportunities for development elsewhere. The city says it is considering more options in addition to Stori Field.

Ellen Kellar Evans owns two rental properties near Stori Field with her husband and had been working to build 19 single-family homes in the city. She said Richland Center even offered them a $1.5 million federal grant for the project. But she said the city’s unrealistic deadlines and the ire she feels about the Stori Field project have changed things.

“We don’t think we can trust them anymore to make good decisions,” she said.

The city has since pulled the grant.

Residents have repeatedly pointed to the decommissioned University of Wisconsin campus owned by the county as an alternative to Stori Field. In response, the mayor asked Turk, the county board chair, to give an update on the campus at a special meeting Sept. 24.

“The campus is a big chunk of land,” Turk said. “Is it ready to be developed? No.”

But in his emails to The Badger Project, Windle referenced a Nov. 19 presentation the city gave at a county meeting about a proposed subdivision on the campus.

“We feel like we were fooled by thinking that couldn’t be available for years,” Kellar Evans said. “I’m very confused, myself, and I think everyone else is. We just don’t understand.” 

The campus project, Windle said, would be in addition to Stori Field. 

“At this time,” Windle said, “Stori Field is the sole and exclusive property of Enke Properties, LLC.”

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Richland Center residents fight to spare park from city’s affordable housing plans is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Gov. Tony Evers just made proposed legislation designed to help local EMS — and therefore, the public — the law of the land. The move comes as EMS agencies across the state continue to feel the pressure from rising costs and an increasing number of 911 calls.

“Nobody should ever call for help in an emergency and have to wonder whether help is going to come,” Evers said in a news release. “We must continue to invest in and support Wisconsin’s EMS professionals.”

One provision requires the state’s technical college system to give grants to schools that offer EMS courses. It also provides for educational reimbursements to individual EMS students or the agencies that sponsor them.

“This is a huge step forward for emergency medical services,” wrote Alan DeYoung, executive director of the Wisconsin EMS Association, in a news release. The new law is “removing the financial barriers to entry into EMS and expanding the pipeline of professionals who want to advance their skills and knowledge.”

In another law, Evers signed off on an increase in the maximum reimbursement EMS agencies are allowed to receive when patients are treated but not transported. EMS agencies traditionally get most of their funding from calls involving patient transports and very little from non-transports. The same law removed a disincentive for areas that opt to form joint EMS or fire crews with neighboring communities.

The new legislation is a win for EMS and the communities that are served, DeYoung wrote.

Trouble in Wisconsin EMS industry

“In 10 years, I don’t know where the fire, police and EMS service is going to be.”

So says Christopher Garrison, Sun Prairie’s fire and EMS chief.  

Fewer volunteers, more 911 calls and the rising costs of medical care are stressing EMS agencies statewide.

“It’s a vital service,” said Tyler Byrnes of the Wisconsin Policy Forum about EMS. “More people are trying to use it, and the revenue to pay for it is not growing quite as quickly.” 

EMS activations in the U.S., which include 911 calls and events like scheduled ambulance transports, increased by about 25% between 2021 and 2023, according to data from the National Emergency Medical Services Information System.

Not addressing funding and staffing challenges may “soon have a real impact on public safety,” according to a report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum published in 2021. Recruitment, difficult for all departments, “is reaching a crisis point for many volunteer and combination departments.”

DeYoung, representing the Wisconsin EMS Association, has received reports of some EMS agencies in Wisconsin not responding to as many as 80% of their calls. 

When an agency can’t respond, ambulances stationed farther away usually take the call. It stresses the system and can slow response times for everyone. 

A lot of it has to do with volunteers, who have historically made up the bulk of EMS staffing. About 65% of Wisconsin EMS agencies, many of them rural, still employ volunteers, according to a report from the Wisconsin Office of Rural Health.

Volunteers have subsidized the taxpayers for years, DeYoung said. But declining volunteer rates mean something has to give.

That probably means higher taxes to pay for professional EMS responders, or worse EMS service than you used to get, experts say.

The “biggest issue” is the availability of volunteer and part-time staff, Garrison said. It’s a generational difference, he continued. Younger generations simply place a higher premium on work-life balance and family.

The job is demanding and intense, and the schooling required for paramedics is “ridiculous,” he continued. “We see death every day. It’s hard on people.” 

Ideas exist to relieve some pressure. 

Some of them include charging repeat 911 users a “utilization fee,” promoting EMS as a profitable career with benefits and paying volunteers.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signs bills bolstering EMS workforce, funding is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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“You look familiar,” state Rep. Lee Snodgrass recalled a customer saying while she was bartending at a restaurant in her district.

“Well, I’m probably your state representative,” she replied.

Snodgrass, a Democrat from Appleton, is one among many of her colleagues to also work a job outside the state Capitol.

After the state budget passes in the summer of odd-numbered years, and with campaign season many months away, the pace in Madison usually slows until the fall. Lawmakers will dial up their side gigs in the meantime.

Some own businesses, rental properties or maintain law licenses. For example, state Rep. Ryan Clancy, a Democrat from Milwaukee, is a gig driver; state Rep. Travis Tranel, a Republican from Cuba City, owns a dairy farm; and state Sen. Sarah Keyeski, a Democrat from Lodi, is a professional counselor and operates a private practice.

State Rep. Shae Sortwell, a Republican from northeastern Wisconsin, sits behind a big wheel most Fridays.

“I think they find it a little bit amusing that a politician or whatever is driving the freight trucks,” Sortwell said of his employer. But “it’s been fun.”

He left a full-time factory job when he was elected to the Assembly in 2018, he said, but after a few years of working solely as a legislator, the married father of six began looking for more work to earn some extra cash. Having another job also “gives you better perspective when dealing with policy decisions,” Sortwell wrote in an email.

Sortwell had experience operating larger vehicles from his time in the military, so he now steers a rig the size of a U-Haul for a small company in Green Bay. He typically works one 12-hour shift on Fridays but grabs extra hours in the summer, around Christmas and during hunting season, he said.

The position has helped him stay mindful of where Republicans are in 2025, he said.

“We picked up a lot of plumbers and steam fitters and carpenters and former union Democrats,” Sortwell said of the 2024 election. “I think that is certainly a perspective that we want to make sure is not lost. And I do find myself at times having to remind colleagues that, ‘Hey, don’t forget, this is actually affecting regular working class folks.’”

A ‘full-time lite’ legislature

Wisconsin’s statehouse is one step down from being considered full-time by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Wisconsin lawmakers are not as busy as those in higher-population states that have longer sessions and larger districts.

In Wisconsin, state senators and representatives will earn a salary of about $61,000 in 2025. State legislators can also claim a per diem allowance for cash spent on food and lodging when they travel to Madison. The median household income in Wisconsin is about $78,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The statehouses in Illinois, Ohio and Alaska are in the same “full-time lite” category as Wisconsin. But Illinois lawmakers’ base salary in 2024 was about $90,000. In Ohio, it was about $70,000, and about $84,000 in Alaska.

“People assume our salaries are much higher than they are,” said Snodgrass. “To be able to make ends meet, maybe have a tiny bit extra, in this economy, it really does take having another job.”

When she’s not doing the people’s work in Madison, Snodgrass is a part-time bartender and server at a restaurant on the Fox River. Snodgrass, who is single and has two adult chidren, lives in Appleton and was first elected in 2020. She started picking up hours at the restaurant last year when she found herself needing a little more cash.

“To be honest, they raised my rent,” Snodgrass said. 

The gardening, bartending legislator

Snodgrass has a background in professional communications. She didn’t tend bar or wait tables in her twenties. Now she usually picks up weekend shifts at the restaurant. 

In the spring, you can also find her moving tomato flats and ringing out customers at the garden center in Appleton’sNorthside True Value. Between both jobs, she’s learned never to serve white wine in a warm glass and that the Latin name for Black-eyed Susan is Rudbeckia hirta.

“It demystifies who I am,” Snodgrass said about her other jobs. “When I’m there, I really do forget. I take off that hat.”

There were times in May when she’d spend eight hours at the garden center, pick up a couple shifts behind the bar and attend her legislative meetings during the regular work week.

It was a “juggling act,” she said. 

After the legislature passes the state budget, it’s “adult field trip time,” Snodgrass said. She schedules meetings and tours with organizations in her district with a goal of learning more about her community.

Snodgrass tries to leave politics at the door, but sometimes customers or coworkers recognize her. Once at the garden center, an employee who works for the hardware store approached her. She knew he wasn’t a Democrat, she explained.

“I hear you’re a politician,” he said.

“I just said, ‘You know, I don’t like to talk politics in front of the plants, it’s not good for their growth.’ He started laughing,” she said. 

“The people that come into the garden center, the people that come into the restaurant, their politics may not be the same as mine,” Snodgrass continued. “But it’s a really good thing for me to interact with them and have casual conversation and just learn what’s top of mind for them.”

‘Tethered to reality’

Sortwell believes the Assembly’s Republican Caucus represents a breadth of experience. Snodgrass, however, acknowledged that the compensation of state representatives virtually ensures that only a select few can afford to run for office.

“We are never going to be able to recruit a real variety of people and working-class people to do this job if we don’t find a way to make it affordable” for people to support themselves, she said. 

Many of her colleagues, Snodgrass said, have a spouse or partner with a lucrative profession.

There are also dozens of business owners, multiple attorneys and a handful of realtors between the state Assembly and state Senate, according to a review by The Badger Project. Dozens more do not list any other employment on their bios.

State Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) runs a land development business that builds single-family homes in Brown County. He also secures book deals and speaker engagements as the business manager for Immaculée Ilibagiza, an American author and motivational speaker from Rwanda.  

“I’ve been able to manage that effectively for a decade, and I’ve had two or more jobs for almost my entire life, so it feels very normal for me,” Steffen said. “I think it’s something that benefits, not detracts from my ability and output as a legislator.”

He understands the issues of small business owners personally, he said. And when he’s in the business mindset, the political hat comes off. 

“I’m just a normal small business owner in those times,” Steffen said. “And I like that.”

The list goes on. 

State Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere) — yes, that’s his real name — is the director of operations for Papa John’s Pizza in Wisconsin. State Rep. Karen Hurd (D-Withee) is a nutritionist, and state Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) is a chiropractor. State Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) helps large companies prepare their taxes. State Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) is an interim police chief in Chippewa County. State Rep. Chanz Green (R-Grand View) owns a northwoods tavern.

It “informs us and keeps us very closely tethered to reality,” Steffen said. 

Sortwell echoed the sentiment: “It’s an important perspective that people who are representing the people of Wisconsin … are still employed and still feeling the same pressure in the job market that every other Wisconsinite is feeling. I actually think it brings strength to the Legislature.”

Her “number one priority is obviously the legislature,” Snodgrass said. But at other moments, it’s simply time to start “pouring wine.”

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

An Uber driver, a dairy farmer and a therapist walk into the Capitol: Many Wisconsin lawmakers have side gigs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.