Category: State news

The state Department of Health Services expands the H1N1 vaccination group to include healthy school age children and young adults.

Mentions a Sept. 27-29 political poll by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

At UW-Eau Claire, campus leaders say they must close three computer labs, offer fewer classes, and leave faculty positions open because of tight budgets. Thatâ??s why administrators are proposing a tuition increase of $1,500 over four years. Called the Blugold Commitment, itâ??s how UW-Eau Claire hopes to maintain services in the face of stagnant state support. If the initiative sounds familiar, itâ??s because UW-Eau Claire is the third University of Wisconsin System school in as many years to introduce a campus-wide tuition increase, a move called differential tuition.

The State Engineering Association filed suit Wednesday against numerous state agencies to halt layoffs and collect unemployment compensation benefits from the state.

A state union bargaining unit representing about 1,100 engineers filed a lawsuit against the state Tuesday seeking to stop temporary layoffs. The union argued in the lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court that the state purposefully structured the layoffs so it could recoup unemployment compensation benefits the engineers claim they are entitled to receive. According to the union, its engineers and technical workers are employed in more than a dozen state agencies as well as the University of Wisconsin System.

As Wisconsin prepares for its critical Big Ten Conference finale Saturday at Northwestern before enjoying its second bye week of the season, UW fans are pondering Big Ten title chances and bowl game possibilities.

Following intervention by Gov. Jim Doyle, the University of Wisconsin System on Tuesday backed down in a funding dispute with Milwaukee-area legislators over control of the stateâ??s efforts to catalyze jobs and investment in the fast-growing water technology sector.

A spokesman says the University of Wisconsin System will ask an agency to dismiss a unionâ??s request to move 130 academic staff members into collective bargaining units.Three unions affiliated with AFT-Wisconsin asked the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission last week to declare the employees members of their unions. They contend the UW System has improperly classified them as academic staff when they should be covered be union members.

The leaders of three unions have filed petitions asking a state panel if they can add about 130 University of Wisconsin System employees to their ranks. If the petitions are approved, it would mean those employees – ranging from physicians to associate athletic directors – would be automatically assigned to a union.

Six finalists from a field of 11 applicants have been selected to fill a pending vacancy on a federal appeals court which handles appeals from Wisconsin and other states.

Two finalists are University of Wisconsin-Madison law professors Anuj Desai and Victoria Nourse.

Universities, with their global reach and increasingly international missions, can use their overseas connections and expertise to improve their state and local economies. That was the argument made by speakers at a panel discussion Sunday on global partnerships and economic development, one of the sessions held on the first day of the annual meeting here of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, formerly the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.

In Wisconsin, the president of the state-university system, Kevin P. Reilly, recently appointed a group of educators, business leaders, and economic-development officials to explore how academic know-how could be used to help attract overseas investment to Wisconsin and expand the stateâ??s presence in global markets. “In a truly global economy, we need to build bridges between our international efforts and our economic-development efforts,” said Gilles Bousquet, one of the Wisconsin commissionâ??s co-chairmen and a speaker at Sundayâ??s session. “International work and economic development,” continued Mr. Bousquet, who is dean of international studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, “are intrinsically linked.”

Quoted: Ralph Cagle, a legal ethics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

If Wisconsinâ??s essence were distilled to one four-note riff, it would be this: D, C-sharp, E, D.Whether played on trumpets or pianos, sung by sopranos or tenors, thumped from synthesizers or shouted by rappers, those four musical notes are encoded into Wisconsinâ??s DNA.

The faculty adviser to College Republicans at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point says a recent event there did not violate a political fundraising ban. Professor Justin Rueb spoke one day after two Democratic lawmakers asked for an investigation into the Nov. 2 event.

Paul Soglin might have imagined himself as a gubernatorial candidate at one point or another on the long strange trip that has been his political career. But the former Madison mayor, who has been out of office for more than a dozen years, has scrupulously avoided the lure of electoral politics since his narrow defeat in a 2003 comeback bid.

So why did Soglin declare last week that “if there is no viable Democratic gubernatorial candidate by Thanksgiving, I will announce my candidacy on Dec. 1, 2009”?

(Soglin is an adjunct associate professor in the LaFollette School of Public Affairs)

A plan to break Wisconsin into seven districts with a University of Wisconsin regent in each part of the state is awaiting the governorâ??s signature to become law. But a state senator sees this as a raw deal for smaller campuses. (Fourth item.)

State Rep. Jon Richards on Monday demanded that the University of Wisconsin System fire the newly appointed staff member “whose role is to move freshwater research and economic development dollars away from Milwaukee.”

A bill aimed at reducing monetary waste and aiding state employees was introduced and sent to an Assembly committee Thursday.

At least half of the citizen members on the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents would have to come from different parts of the state under a bill passed by the Legislature. Fourteen citizen members currently serve on the board. The bill would carve the state into seven geographic districts. At least one citizen member would have to live in each district. The governor would have to begin making appointments to meet the new standards in 2012. Both the Senate and Assembly passed the measure Thursday.

The state Supreme Court has refused to directly take up a challenge to Wisconsinâ??s domestic partner registry, a move gay rights advocates touted Wednesday as a triumph for same-sex couples.

A conservative group named Wisconsin Family Action said the registry violated the stateâ??s constitutional ban on gay marriage and argued the issue was so important that the Supreme Court should take it up immediately, bypassing the lower courts.

The Supreme Court justices did not explain the refusal in a terse order issued Tuesday and released Wednesday.

The UW System Board of Regents may become more geographically diverse if the state Legislature passes a bill requiring representation from all main regions throughout the state.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday for a case that has the potential to overturn a 2006 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions in Wisconsin.

When President Barack Obama leaves Air Force One at the Dane County airport and heads across the city Wednesday, he will be the first president to visit Madison while in office in 59 years. President Harry S. Truman was the last occupant of the Oval Office to visit the city on May 14, 1950, where he gave a “peace” address to a crowd at the UW-Madison Field House and a nationwide radio audience.

Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin on the president’s visit. “Obama in this area has a chance to win more friends than he makes enemies.”

MADISON (WKOW) — 14 years ago, three lives changed forever. A woman was visiting a friend in Reedsburg. Alone in the house, she laid down to take a nap. When she woke up, she found two teen boys about to steal her car. What happened next, makes Jackie Millar â??Someone You Should Know.â??

(The University of Wisconsin Law School’s Restorative Justice Project is part of this story.)

President Obama will have the opportunity to discuss federal stimulus incentives such as the â??Race to the Topâ? education program during his visit to Madison next week, Gov. Jim Doyle said Thursday.