Category: State news

Democrat Tom Barrett went on the offensive against Republican Scott Walker in the first governor?s race debate Friday, saying his tax cut plans would bury the state in debt and force deep cuts to public safety, education and property tax relief. Barrett is scheduled to appear with Obama at the rally on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Budget requests coming in from just three state agencies would increase Wisconsin?s projected deficit by almost a billion dollars. The Department of Health Services, the University of Wisconsin and the Department of Corrections are collectively asking for an additional $988-million in state tax funding over the next two years.

Pay attention, gubernatorial candidates, it looks like your job is getting tougher. The state deficit for the 2011-?13 budget is now estimated to be as much as $3.1 billion — $370 million more than previously forecast. Economist Andrew Reschovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison arrived at the projection by building on the work of the Legislature?s budget shop.

Wisconsin has one of the better-funded public worker retirement systems around, but can it continue? According to data compiled for the recent Bloomberg Cities and Debt Briefing held in New York last week, less than half of state retirement systems had enough assets to pay even 80 percent of the benefits they?ve already promised.

When UW-Madison leaders quietly made it known last month they were searching for a consultant to examine how the university might run more efficiently and effectively, the few faculty and staff on campus aware of the proposal may well have been a bit uneasy with the whole idea.

The world of higher education, after all, is not an enterprise with an easy-to-measure bottom line. Of course, with the state facing a projected budget shortfall of at least $2.7 billion, no one was going to speak out against a project designed to save a few bucks during these economically challenging times.

But after university administrators told faculty leaders last week that such an endeavor would likely cost UW-Madison at least $3 million, some on campus started to openly question the merits of such a project.

When Chancellor Biddy Martin announced in this month?s issue of Madison Magazine her initiative to revamp the University of Wisconsin?s financial model and related partnership with the state and Board of Regents, tuition increases were presented as an unavoidable part of the plan.

One day before Wisconsin?s primaries, Time Magazine?s political columnist and blogger Joe Klein will stop by UW-Madison to talk about the election season.

Noted: UW Madison?s Research Park.

When President Barack Obama arrives in Milwaukee for Monday?s Laborfest rally, he?ll be confronted by another troubling economic report that shows the toll the Great Recession has taken on America?s workers.

Only, this report isn?t national – it?s local.

Wisconsin has lost 155,200 jobs since the December 2007 start of the recession, according to a paper to be published Monday by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.Researchers at the nonprofit think tank based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison document the recession?s impact, as well as longer-term job trends, in a biennial survey, “The State of Working Wisconsin 2010.”

More than 11% of Wisconsin?s residents – including one in seven children – lived in poverty in 2008, according to the second Wisconsin Poverty Report. Authors of the report, to be published Thursday, said they created a new Wisconsin-specific measure of poverty.