The Obama administration is dropping hints that a proposed Midwest high-speed rail network connecting Minneapolis, Madison and Chicago has a good chance of landing part of the $8 billion in federal stimulus earmarked for passenger trains.
Quoted: Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE)
Research by botanists at the UW-Madison has revealed a disturbing secret lurking in Wisconsin’s forests.
Suspecting that increasing development might be affecting forests in ways we cannot see, UW-Madison botanist Don Waller led a study of plants on the floor of forests throughout the state. Comparing those surveys with data collected in the 1940s and 1950s, the researchers found far fewer species of the shrubs, grasses and herbs that have traditionally been found in the understory of Wisconsin forests.
Amid pay cuts, furloughs and larger class sizes, University of Wisconsin System officials see one silver lining in the otherwise harsh state budget: a big investment in new buildings.
The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has approved 36 major UW System building projects, including new residence halls, state-of-the-art research laboratories and academic buildings.
UW System building and maintenance projects would receive $380 million in taxpayer support and another $486 million in student fees, private donations and other non-tax sources under the plan pending in the Legislature.
The Legislature’s budget committee has approved 36 major University of Wisconsin System building projects. Some of the notable ones include:
â?? UW-La Crosse: $49.5 million residence hall.
â?? UW-Madison: $59 million lakeshore residence hall and dining facility, $27.7 million Kohl Center Hockey facility addition.
State workers who get paid by federal or private funds could be exempt from having to take furloughs, under legislation proposed by Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced last month that most of Wisconsinâ??s 60,000 state employees would have to take 16 unpaid days off over the next two years to help the state cope with a swelling budget shortfall.
Some UW-Madison employees paid by federal grants criticized the widespread furloughs, noting the state wonâ??t be able to use the federal money to help close the budget gap.
Facing state-mandated furloughs, University of Wisconsin System employees are struggling with how to handle unpaid days off in an academic environment.
Professors and instructors aren’t sure if they will have to cancel classes. And many argue that a break from federally funded research does nothing to help the state budget.
Frustration with the plan became a point of discussion at last week’s meeting of the UW Board of Regents.
The state budget the Legislature takes up this week would change your life, have the potential to change it or cost you more. Also quotes UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.
University of Wisconsin officials are complaining that furloughs, proposed for all state employees as a way to reduce a $6.6 billion budget deficit, will create many difficulties for them.
Now there’s a news flash.
Furloughs are meant to save money. They are difficult for everyone, and all state agencies will be asked to sacrifice if they are implemented. UW is no exception.
The Wisconsin Legislatureâ??s budget-writing committee has approved three measures that will help alleviate Wisconsinâ??s nursing shortage: a nurse workforce survey; a home for the UW School of Nursing to expand capacity; and support for a bachelorâ??s degree nursing program in Rock County.
You must do better than this.
That should be Wisconsin’s response to the state budget proposal to go before the Assembly for a vote this week.
This budget amounts to a huge, irresponsible gamble likely to haunt the state for years.
Rather than seizing the current economic downturn to put the state’s fiscal house in better order for the future, the Legislature’s budget committee shrank from the opportunity.
The state budget hasnâ??t been approved yet, but state labor organization AFT-Wisconsin has already posted a job announcement for someone who could help university employees form unions.
Gov. Doyleâ??s budget included legislation that would allow UW System faculty and academic staff to form unions and collectively bargain for better wages, hours and working conditions. They donâ??t currently have that right.
The University of Wisconsin regents are trying to prepare for the impact state budget cuts will have on employees and students. At yesterdayâ??s meeting in Madison, UW officials told the Regents there will likely be cuts in student financial aid, and lay offs of university staff are still on the table.
While the financial picture for the university system won’t become clear until the legislature approves the budget and the governor signs it later this month, UW campuses are bracing themselves for significant cuts.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin says all campuses are dealing with how unionized employees will be affected. Contracts for the next biennium have already been signed including a 2-percent raise. She says that’s something each campus will have to absorb, noting that the UW Madison campus alone will be hit up for â??millions of dollars.” (Second item.)
The state budget hasnâ??t been approved yet, but state labor organization AFT-Wisconsin has already posted a job announcement for someone who could help university employees form unions.
All University of Wisconsin employees will have to take the unpaid furloughs mandated by Gov. Jim Doyle, even though salary cuts for workers paid with federal funds or other non-state money may not help the stateâ??s budget situation, officials said.
In the wake of the elimination of the 2% raise most state employees were scheduled to receive beginning June 1 and the 16 furlough days Gov. Jim Doyle mandated for all state employees over the next two years, the UW athletic department is trying to get a handle on what the cost-cutting measures mean to its employees.
It’s hard to take state lawmakers seriously when they talk about how difficult the state budget is when they’re splurging on pet projects.
Just look at the laundry list of earmarks Democrats who control the Legislature’s budget committee slipped into the budget in the middle of the night last week before quickly advancing the state’s two-year spending plan:
â?¢ $28 million in state-funded borrowing for a nursing building on the UW-Madison campus — something the university didn’t ask for or prioritize.
All Wisconsin state employees will be subject to 16 days of forced time off, whether they are totally funded with federal money or are part time only.
Those details and others are contained in a document released by a state agency answering some of the most frequently asked questions about the furloughs ordered by Gov. Jim Doyle to deal with a projected $6.6 billion budget shortfall.
Doyle has the power under the collective bargaining agreement to issue up to eight furlough days a year. That is roughly a 3 percent pay cut.
Thousands of state employees who get paid by federal or private funds will need to take 16 days of unpaid time off, according to a document (http://oser.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=6977) posted on the Web site for the Office of State Employee Relations.
We reported (http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/453127) on some employees who were critical of that plan in Sundayâ??s paper. They argued that money saved by forcing those employees to take furloughs could not be used to help the state close itâ??s $6.6 budget gap because of restrictions on its use.
Last-minute additions to the state budget early Friday morning elicited cries of â??pork-barrel spendingâ? from state Republicans, though Democrats defended their actions as addressing local needs.
Critics particularly singled out projects in the Madison area, such as $500,000 for a climate change education center in Monona and $4 million to begin relocating the Wisconsin Historical Museum and Veterans Museum to a new joint site.
It wasnâ??t at the top of UW-Madisonâ??s wish list for new buildings. But in the early hours Friday, Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, inserted a $47 million facility for the UW-Madison School of Nursing into the state budget.
It was one of a number of projects that were included as part of a sweeping motion passed by the Legislatureâ??s budget committee as it worked to bridge a new $1.6 billion budget shortfall.
From UW-Madison basketball coach Bo Ryan to stem cell pioneer James Thomson, there are thousands of state employees paid at least in part by private or federal funds who will likely have to take unpaid days off over the next two years as mandated by Gov. Jim Doyle.
But much of that money canâ??t be used to help the state close its budget gap due to tight restrictions on its use, prompting criticism from some of those employees.
….While reading reports about the Joint Finance Committee’s actions late Thursday and early Friday, I noticed the following two tidbits and figured they were worth noting here:
*** First, jsonline.com is reporting that the committee signed off on $28 million in bonds for a School of Nursing facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
*** And the Wisconsin State Journal reported that the committee’s plan will make UW System research assistants part of existing unions for teaching assistants.
A two-year spending plan that relies on furloughing and laying off state workers, cutting aid to schools and raising taxes on large oil companies, cell phone users and the rich passed the Legislature’s budget committee early Friday morning.
All 12 Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee voted for the plan, while all four Republicans opposed it. The $63 billion budget now heads to the state Assembly, where it could be debated as early as June 9. It must pass there and in the Senate and be signed by Gov. Jim Doyle before it becomes law.
Democrats on the Legislature’s budget committee approved new taxes and fees and billions of dollars in cuts to deal with the largest projected budget shortfall in state history during a marathon session that stretched into early Friday.
Democratic lawmakers late Thursday voted to bridge a $1.6 billion budget gap by taxing outpatient surgery centers in the same way as hospitals, refinancing state debt and making promised cuts to schools, local governments and state agencies.
After days of intense, closed-door talks, Democrats on the budget committee also approved mandates on insurers to cover the treatment of autism and mental health as well as controversial overhauls of rules governing automobile insurance and liability lawsuits.
Debate on a major amendment to the state budget bill broke down into partisan attacks Thursday night, after nearly five hours of majority Democrats rejecting amendments offered by Republicans.
Tempers flared after State Representative Robin Vos (R-Racine) began reading listings for attorneys out of a phone book, claiming they were the only people who would benefit from the budget plan being considered. When co-chairs on the committee challenged Vos, he launched in to reading from the actual amendment.
Thousands of state employees and University of Wisconsin faculty and staff members won’t see any salary increases until July 2011, under budget-cutting action that legislative leaders took Wednesday.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations unanimously voted to rescind a 2% pay increase that was to take effect in June. The action is final; the full Legislature will not take up the matter.
Gov. Jim Doyle had recommended the salary freezes as a way to make up for a shortfall in tax collections that increased the two-year state deficit by $1.6 billion, putting it at $6.6 billion.
Wisconsin legislative leaders on Wednesday stripped more than 26,000 state employees of 2 percent pay raises they had been promised, froze their salaries for two years and moved to increase their health insurance premiums.
The Joint Committee on Employment Relations voted 8-0 for the measures affecting 7,000 nonunion state employees and elected officials and 19,500 University of Wisconsin System faculty and staff members. The cutbacks, which are final and don’t need approval from the full Legislature, are meant to help close an expected $6.6 billion budget shortfall.
Unlike most state employees, faculty and academic staff working within the University of Wisconsin System don’t have the right to form unions with collective bargaining powers.
Yet if ever there was a time when such an option might look appealing, it’s now.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced May 7 that he hopes to start filling the state’s massive $6.6 billion budget deficit over the next two years by rescinding 2 percent pay raises for non-union state workers. He also plans to make all non-emergency state personnel take eight days of unpaid furloughs in each of the next two years — which equates to another 3 percent pay cut.
Lawmakers protected state universities from further deep cuts Friday as they moved to try to fill a $1.6 billion hole in the state budget.
The move by the budget committee comes as Gov. Jim Doyle and lawmakers seek to impose cuts on schools, local governments and most other state agencies in response to falling tax revenues.
But Democratic lawmakers said they feared doing more harm to the UW System, which absorbed severe cuts in 2003 and isnâ??t receiving enough money in the upcoming budget to keep pace with rising costs.
The Legislatureâ??s budget committee has voted to cut $120 million from the University of Wisconsin Systemâ??s budget over the next two years.
The committee, however, also approved spending $15 million for a retention fund for high-demand faculty members and to pay for UW research initiatives in bioenergy, DNA and biotechnology.
A proposal to allow illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition rates at UW schools will remain in the state budget.
The provision allows students who graduated from a Wisconsin high school to qualify for an in-state tuition break at any UW campus or technical college.
It’s curious that, in a time of belt-tightening, the state Legislature is considering allowing the University of Wisconsin System to unionize its faculty and academic staff, which could cost the System $2.2 million per year.
What’s even more curious is that this proposal is included in the state budget.
The Joint Finance Committee voted to allow professors, researchers, instructors and other university employees in the UW System’s 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year colleges the same right to collectively bargain that other state workers have.
Gov. Jim Doyle said up to 1,400 state employees could be laid off under his new budget-balancing plan that cuts funding for state agencies, schools and local governments.
Doyle stood with the two Democratic co-chairs of the budget-writing committee on Thursday to announce a deal that he said will close a $1.6 billion budget shortfall.
Up to 1,400 state employees could be laid off under a new budget-balancing plan announced Thursday that cuts funding for state agencies, schools and local governments.
Gov. Jim Doyle stood with the two Democratic co-chairs of the Legislatureâ??s budget-writing committee to announce a deal that he says will close a projected $1.6 billion budget shortfall without raising sales or income taxes.
The state will spare universities but slice money to schools and cities and lay off up to 1,400 workers â?? 300 more than announced earlier this month â?? under a budget agreement unveiled by Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders.
The plan cuts spending, squeezes more out of a state hospital tax and refinances state debt to solve a $1.6 billion budget hole opened by falling state tax revenues. Doyle said it holds up his promise to solve the deficit without raising taxes more than the $2.9 billion he has already proposed or signed into law since February. Republicans disagreed.
State agencies, local governments and even education will make sacrifices.
The struggle to fill the ever-expanding state budget hole, calls for even deeper cuts.
“Now in order to address this larger shortfall, in addition to cuts I’ve already proposed, we will cut another $1-billion from state government.”
Employees at state prisons and hospitals will be furloughed along with all other state workers under a cost-saving plan being drafted by Governor Jim Doyle’s office. The inclusion of those employees is a step back from what Doyle originally announced, and will likely drive up overtime costs for state government.
The furloughs will force state employees to take eight days of unpaid leave in each of the next two years. The Governor had said he wanted to exempt workers who have to staff state institutions like hospitals or prisons around the clock. But now, Office of State Employee Relations Director Jennifer Donnely says these furloughs will apply to everyone.
The University of Wisconsin-Parkside Teacher Education Program has allowed some students to student-teach without passing required tests or completing necessary field hours, an investigation by the state Department of Public Instruction has found.
A report said Wisconsin’s biofuels market must be expanded so Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to convert a power plant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be successful.
In 1931, Madison newspapers reported an ominous sign of the economic gloom that would lower like a fog over Dane County by the middle of the following year: a spike in the number of households evicted on Sept. 1, the city’s traditional “moving day,” for owing back rent.
Construction could start next year on a plan to convert the Charter Street heating plant from burning coal to burning biomass and natural gas, a state official said Tuesday.
By December 2013, the UW-Madisonâ??s Charter Street heating plant will be off its diet of coal and may start digesting wood chips, if state lawmakers approve a $251 million project.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of the world’s biggest research universities, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation one of its biggest technology transfer organizations, Gov. Jim Doyle said. The $150 million public/private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, along with the expanded tax credits, should help the state grow even more young, high-tech companies, Doyle said.
Uncertainty about the availability and cost of biomass fuels makes Gov. Jim Doyle’s $251 million plan to overhaul a University of Wisconsin-Madison power plant somewhat risky, according to a report released Tuesday.
Doyle has proposed converting the coal-fired Charter Street plant, long a major polluter in the area, to run on cleaner-burning biomass fuels such as wood chips and paper pellets. His administration says it would be one of the nation’s largest biomass projects and the plan has delighted environmentalists.
State employees are struggling to understand how Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle will implement his plan requiring them to take 16 unpaid days off over the next two years.
Doyle said details are still being worked out, but in the meantime state workers don’t know who will be affected, whether part-time workers risk losing benefits and who will decide when the time off must be taken.
It’s been nearly two weeks since Gov. Jim Doyle announced that state workers will experience what many in the private sector have already gone through because of the national recession.
Awaiting some 67,000 state employees, 30,000 of whom work in Dane County, are 16 furlough days over the next two years and the rollback of a 2 percent pay raise each of the next two years for those who manage to keep their jobs. Upward of 1,100 state workers are expected to face layoffs. While the bare bones of the governor’s plan have been released, the specifics still are under discussion, leaving state workers able to do little more than take a wait-and-see approach to what the economic downturn will mean for them.
A legislative analysis says Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to allow some illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition would affect few students and cost very little.
A student at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire is one of 655 now confirmed cases of swine flu in Wisconsin.
The study of the La Isabela skeletons grew out of a project in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, where in 2000 researchers were surprised to find the remains of West Africans among those buried in a mid-16th-century church cemetery in Campeche. Vera Tiesler and Andrea Cucina from the Autonomous University of Yucatan invited T. Douglas Price, director of the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, to do isotopic analysis of those skeletons’ teeth.
Story quotes James Burton, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin involved in the La Isabela and Campeche projects.
State employees are struggling to understand how Gov. Jim Doyle will implement his plan requiring them to take 16 unpaid days off over the next two years.
Doyle said details are still being worked out, but in the meantime state workers don’t know who will be affected, whether part-time workers risk losing benefits and who will decide when the time off must be taken.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — State employees are struggling to understand how Gov. Jim Doyle will implement his plan requiring them to take 16 unpaid days off over the next two years.
Doyle said details are still being worked out, but in the meantime state workers don’t know who will be affected, whether part-time workers risk losing benefits and who will decide when the time off must be taken.
State Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine, made an excellent point when he urged the Legislature’s budget committee to approve a plan to allow the nearly 20,000 faculty members and academic staffers of the University of Wisconsin System to form unions and bargain collectively with the state.
Five heralded University of Wisconsin-Madison athletes and coaches are among six individuals honored Thursday as the class of 2009 inductees into the State of Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.
Athletic director and former head football coach Barry Alvarez, former head basketball coach and world-class tennis player John Powless, three-time national wrestling champion Lee Kemp, former NCAA president Judith Sweet and all-American basketball player and philanthropist Albert “Ab” Nicholas will be inducted into the hall in ceremonies Nov. 20 in Milwaukee.
In a case that could have broad legal implications for when some patients are allowed to die, an advocacy group is alleging that doctors at UW Hospital broke the law by withholding treatment from two developmentally disabled patients with apparent cases of pneumonia.
An analysis prepared for lawmakers says Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to give same-sex couples some legal protections likely does not violate the state ban on gay marriage.
The Wisconsin State Journal recently endorsed Senate Bill 175. If passed, it would change the rules for math and science teacher licensing in Wisconsin.We strongly disagree with the endorsement.
A column by Peter Hewson, a professor of science education at UW-Madison, and Eric Knuth, a professor of mathematics education at UW-Madison.
…despite past state budget rants, I’m not glad to see anyone take a pay cut. But welcome to 2009. You could be one of the thousands who once toiled at General Motors, Consolidated Papers, Harley-Davidson or GE Healthcare. Those jobs are not coming back anytime soon.
Still, with a $6.5 billion state budget hole that keeps on growing, something had to give. At least 15 other states, including once-envied Minnesota, are also furloughing public workers.
In the continuing fiscal crisis, magical thinking afflicts the State Capitol. Gov. Jim Doyle is again busy pushing — and some legislators are buying into — the politically handy myth that laying off public employees and cutting their wages are effective in helping ease the state’s multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Not even close.
According to this university website, there are three confirmed cases of the swine flu at UW-Milwaukee. The school reports that none of those who have the H1N1 virus live in university housing, although UW-Milwaukee anticipates “additional cases will be confirmed given the widespread nature of the virus in Milwaukee (319 confirmed cases in Milwaukee County as of May 11).” The university — in the midst of final exams week — will remain open.
