Author: jplucas

The non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau has released its summary of the 2011-2013 state budget which includes a detailed analysis of the proposed UW-Madison Authority.  You can find the entire text of the summary here.

Gov. Scott Walker?s top aide is defending the governor?s proposal to allow the University of Wisconsin-Madison to break off from the rest of the university system and to remove the state mandate that communities provide recycling programs.

A Dane County judge has restated her order that implementation of the budget repair bill should be stopped. Judge Maryann Sumi amended her restraining order Tuesday evening, as a legal challenge that claims the bill?s passage violated the open meetings law continues.

A free market-oriented think tank in Michigan has sent the state?s three largest public universities open-records requests for any e-mails from their labor-studies faculty members dealing with the debate over collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

Recent efforts by conservative-leaning groups to obtain the e-mails of Michigan and Wisconsin public-university professors have shed light on this much: Citing a need to protect “academic freedom” is, in itself, unlikely to help the universities avoid complying with requests for e-mails under state open-records laws.

A conservative research group in Michigan has issued a far-reaching public records request to the labor studies departments at three public universities in the state, seeking any e-mails involving the Wisconsin labor turmoil.Enlarge This ImageNarayan Mahon for The New York TimesWilliam Cronon, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

A new nonpartisan analysis of Gov. Scott Walker?s two-year budget plan shows that overall state spending would increase by a mere 1 percent over the life of the plan. The Legislature Fiscal Bureau report released Monday shows that spending would go up that much compared with the current two-year budget. That includes money transferred to quasi-public authorities created, most significantly the proposed breaking off of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Been quiet here on the western front. Some links and thoughts on the WIP as proposed by the UW System versus the New Badger Partnership, proposed by UW-Madison and Chancellor Biddy Martin. One fundamental difference: the WIP was a hastily put together document with no consultation happening between UW-Madison students and the UW System Regents. Alternatively, the New Badger Partnership is an extremely public document with thousands of hours of debate and analysis behind its name.

Several university faculties in Wisconsin have voted overwhelmingly to join the American Federation of Teachers, a move the union says amounts to a backlash against Gov. Scott Walker?s bid to strip their collective bargaining powers. 

UW-Madison students got to voice their concerns about the New Badger Partnership at a campus forum Monday.

The legislature?s powerful joint finance committee will begin work this week on the governor?s budget proposal.This is the week when cabinet secretaries appear before the finance panel to brief lawmakers on the governor?s plans for state agencies. On Thursday, two of the most controversial pieces of the governor?s budget will get an airing as the University of Wisconsin and the Department of Public Instruction appear before the finance committee

In a public forum Monday, the University of Wisconsin dean of students and several deans of individual schools said university operation is hampered by a human resources structure that does not fit a world-class institution.

Both the American Association of University Professors and the American Historical Association are opposing efforts by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to obtain e-mails sent by William Cronon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, following his publication of a blog post critical of that state?s Republican governor, Scott Walker.

The American Historical Association has jumped into the ring to defend William Cronon, the University of Wisconsin professor whose emails?some of them, anyway?had been requested by a top official with the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Once upon a time, professors led quiet lives, walking slowly from seminars to tea in panelled rooms. Nowadays they wake up in the middle of media storms. The latest scholar to whom this has happened is William Cronon, who teaches environmental and Western history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Ray Cross, Wisconsin?s new chancellor overseeing the state?s 13 two-year colleges and the UW-Extension, could play an influential role in the growing debate over Gov. Scott Walker?s proposal to spin off UW-Madison as a public authority. Many students entering the colleges hope to later transfer to the flagship university ? a process that could become more difficult if UW-Madison leaves the UW System.

Gov. Scott Walker’s first budget is a spending plan that seems to uniformly favor Republican pets such as school vouchers, transportation and tax cuts while targeting nearly every Democratic sacred cow. Walker?s proposal, aimed at eliminating the state?s $3.6 billion shortfall, would cut more than $1 billion from education, knock more than 50,000 people off BadgerCare, roll back recycling and water purity requirements, and cut aid to the poor. Supporters say it is the first honest budget in a generation, since any real reform requires serious cuts to entitlements and education. Critics say Walker is turning Wisconsin into a laboratory for the GOP.Mark Bugher, director of University Research Park and a former administration secretary under Thompson, said the governor has rightly targeted the ?Big Five? of state budgeting: schools, Medicaid, local aid, corrections and the University of Wisconsin System. ?If you want to reform things, you start there,? he said.