Gov. Jim Doyle signed the 2007-2009 budget Friday at the UW Madison Memorial Union, ending the 118 days late legislative process, despite some legal disputes remaining due to the makeup of the finalized version.
A University of Wisconsin System regent has quit because he’s upset over how the governor has treated illegal immigrants.
A transfer contract agreement to be signed Monday between UW-Madison and College of Menominee Nation is a win-win situation for both schools, said Verna Fowler, president and founder of the small school with just more than 350 full-time students on the southern edge of the Menominee Indian Reservation.
MADISON â?? A University of Wisconsin System regent has quit because he’s upset over how the governor has treated illegal immigrants.
Jesus Salas sent his resignation letter Friday morning as Gov. Jim Doyle signed the new two-year state budget.
Salas accused Doyle in his letter of not fighting hard enough for a budget provision that would have allowed illegal immigrants who graduate from Wisconsin high schools to pay in-state tuition.
Jesus Salas, a member of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents since 2003, resigned today to protest the lack of a state budget provision for tuition aid for the children of undocumented workers.
The resignation came just before Gov. Jim Doyle signed the 2007-09 budget into law this morning. Salas blamed Doyle for not pushing harder to keep the student tuition remission provision in the budget, calling the failure “intolerable.”
More than three months behind schedule, Gov. Jim Doyle signed the second-latest budget in state history today in a ceremony at the Memorial Union.
In part because of his active involvement in negotiating the final budget deal, Doyle used his veto pen the most sparingly of any governor in more than 35 years — only 33 times in the 1,500-plus-page budget bill.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced today that he used his veto pen to let local governments raise property taxes by 3.86 percent this year instead of the 2 percent limit agreed to by lawmakers in the new two-year budget deal.
In a ceremony at UW-Madison, Doyle signed the budget and announced vetoes.
Gov. Jim Doyle will sign the 2007-â??09 state Budget into law Friday morning at Memorial Union, according to a statement released Wednesday.
UW System spokesperson David Giroux said he was happy the governor was coming to campus and hoped other legislative leaders would be able to participate in the event.
Thousands of University of Wisconsin students waiting for financial aid received notice yesterday that the funds have been included in the new state budget, and they will soon receive the money.
After countless hours of negotiations over taxes, education funding and health care, the Wisconsin state Legislature finally came to an agreement late Tuesday night, approving a budget that increases spending by $763.3 million dollars, which will affect the city and University of Wisconsin in many areas.
….For more than a decade, the Wisconsin Republican Party has pursued an anti-education campaign, starving one of the best public school systems in the country through revenue caps and making the great University of Wisconsin dead last among its peers in faculty salaries.
The latter has resulted in a tripling of outside offers to top UW faculty over the past three years and a halving of retention rates. As many of the state’s top researchers and intellectual entrepreneurs leave Madison, the UW, the city and the state will be much poorer.
Madison may, for the first time in 22 months, have a city treasurer before Christmas if Mayor Dave Cieslewicz gets his way.
Dipping into Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration for the second time this month to fill a city position, Cieslewicz named Gerald Pacer, currently Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Revenue, as city treasurer Wednesday.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) â?? Thousands of University of Wisconsin students on a waiting list for the stateâ??s premier financial aid program should get money soon now that the long-overdue state budget has been passed, officials said Wednesday.
UW campuses notified the low-income students on Wednesday they will receive grants in the coming days.
â??This is extremely good news!â? UW-Parkside financial aid director Randall McCready said in an e-mail to hundreds of students on its campus in Kenosha.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) â?? J.B. Van Hollen says heâ??s a true-blue Republican. But his bridges with the GOP faithful could be smoldering.
Just nine months into his term as the stateâ??s attorney general, Van Hollen has taken a number of stances that run counter to traditional Republican philosophy.
MADISON, Wis. — The state Senate and Assembly approved a budget Tuesday night, and it has been sent to the governor’s desk.
In the Assembly it faced some opposition but eventually passed on a bipartisan vote of 60-39, with 23 Republicans voting to pass the bill and 10 Democrats voting against it.
In the Senate, the vote was strictly along party lines, passing 18-15 with all the Democrats voting for it and all the Republicans against.
A day after passing one of the state’s hardest-fought budget bills, Senate Democrats today ousted their leader, Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson of Beloit, who helped negotiate the final deal, and replaced her with veteran Sen. Russ Decker of Schofield.
The news came when Decker, the co-chairman of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, emerged from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats that lasted for about three hours.
The state Legislature passed the 2007-2009 budget Tuesday evening, 115 days after it was supposed to be passed and only needs approval by Gov. Jim Doyle to become law.
The vote in the Republican-controlled Assembly was 60 to 39, with 23 Republicans and 37 Democrats voting in favor. In the Democrat-controlled state Senate, the vote was 18 to 15 on party lines.
University of Wisconsin regents, deans and financial aid officers are relieved the Legislature finalized a state budget Tuesday, but also say its waiting process caused months of stress and falls millions of dollars short of the requested funding.
WisconsinEye, a public broadcasting network that provides live coverage of legislative processes and state Supreme Court proceedings, was added to the statewide BadgerNet system last week.
The 2007-09 state budget passed through the Legislature Tuesday night, after more than 100 days of partisan feuding.
Madison, Wis. – Every state budget debate produces winners and losers among the politicians – Democrat and Republican, executive and legislative. It’s just as certain that some policies prevail over others, and some stakeholders fare better than others.
Winner: The University of Wisconsin System. The folks in Van Hise Hall didn’t get everything they wanted, but it was more than half a loaf. The budget included $32 million in new financial aid and backs the system’s plan to increase enrollment, which should improve access to higher education in Wisconsin at a time when the â??knowledge economyâ? needs more skilled workers. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s $8.4 million engineering campus also survived the budget negotiations.
The University of Wisconsin System was facing a serious funding shortage just a week ago, when it seemed as if the state would never have a budget. Officials had been talking about tuition surcharges, students being left without financial aid, and the possibility of campuses shutting down for the spring semester.
However, a deal expected to gain approval from lawmakers today has many UW officials breathing a sigh of relief. Spokesman Dave Giroux says the simple fact of having a budget allows them to set aside all of the contingency plans that had been in the works because of a projected $150 million shortfall.
Electric companies all across the U.S. are scrapping plans for new coal-fired power plants — but not in Wisconsin where coal remains king.
At least 16 coal-fired power plant proposals nationwide have been ditched in recent months and another three dozen are facing delays as utilities face growing concerns over global climate change coupled with soaring construction costs.
Pricey campaign contributions by college students raise red flags about potentially illegal giving, says the head of a state watchdog group.
A Wisconsin Democracy Campaign analysis released Monday shows that 177 contributors identified as “student” in campaign finance reports gave $86,243 to candidates for statewide office and the Legislature from 2002 through June 2007. Of those, 31 contributed $1,000 or more.
“The typical money struggles people associate with college students certainly did not appear to be a problem for many of these 177 student contributors,” the group said in a news release, and Executive Director Mike McCabe said in a telephone interview that “I think the kids and their parents have some explaining to do. The circumstances around these donations is clearly curious.”
The University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Broadcasting, and the city of Madison are all big winners in the final state budget package that comes up for approval by state lawmakers today.
Each of those entities had been targeted for major cuts by Assembly Republicans, but their funds were restored as part of the negotiations between Senate Democrats, Assembly Republicans, and Gov. Jim Doyle.
Assembly Republicans had targeted the University of Wisconsin for more than $95 million in cuts; all but $25 million of that amount has been restored.
By Britney Tripp The Daily Cardinal A nonpartisan watchdog group recently showed students have contributed almost $100,000 to political campaigns from 2002 to June 2007 in the state, with some of the larger donations raising ethical concerns.
The newest version of the 2007-09 state budget passed through the conference committee 7-1 late Monday afternoon.
After threats of escalating tuition costs and drastic cuts in course availability, members on the state of Wisconsin Budget Conference Committee agreed on a budget that University of Wisconsin officials said is sufficient.
With the state budget finally wrapping up, Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, needs to jump-start a legislative committee to oversee state computer issues.
The committee has not met in years — even though an audit six months ago recommended reviving it.
The brokers seeking to solve the state’s budget problems have found one major point of agreement â?? push many of them into the next budget.
The 2007-09 budget agreement approved by a legislative committee Monday would leave a potential shortfall of $892 million in the 2009-11 budget, according to the Legislature’s budget office. The budget, which is 114 days late as of this morning, is expected to be voted on and approved today by the full Legislature.
MADISON, Wis. â?? The property tax bill for the typical Wisconsin home would rise $98 over the next two years under the long overdue budget plan that moved toward completion Monday.
A median-valued home of $170,305 would see its bill go up an average of $80 during the budget year that ends June 30, 2008, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The 2.9 percent increase would make the bill $2,814, the agency says.
Some UW officials initially felt uncomfortable about asking students awaiting financial aid to appear at a Gov. Jim Doyle press event held in early October, according to recently released documents.
….The theater-of-the-absurd character of the budget debate has caused most Wisconsinites to lose interest in the details of a document so long delayed that the average citizen’s response has been to scream: “Just finish it!”
Now that the final resolution is within reach, however, it is necessary to ask the fundamental questions:
1. Is this a worthy budget for Wisconsin?
2. If so, should legislators vote to approve it this week?
The answer to both questions is “yes,” but just barely.
After more than three months of delay and countless hours of closed-door negotiations, Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders announced Friday they have a final deal on a new state budget.
“For the first time in a long time, Wisconsin has a budget,” said Doyle, who was flanked by top Democratic and Republican leaders during a press conference Friday night.
Average tuition and fees at four-year public colleges rose 6.6 percent this year, again outstripping increases in financial aid and pushing students into more borrowing. Community colleges once again did the best job keeping the lid on prices.
In-state students at four-year public schools are paying $6,185 this year, up $381 from last year, according to the nonprofit College Board’s annual survey of college costs, released today. At four-year private colleges, tuition and fees rose 6.3 percent to $23,712.
Public and private colleges in Wisconsin rose at lower rates than the national average, though the UW-Madison was slightly higher.
For the past few weeks, state legislators have gone to bed with visions of their version of the state budget dancing in their heads. Taxpayers, school districts and the University of Wisconsin System slept with dread, as they worried that hopes for a budget before Christmas were dead. But this weekend all woke to a compromise deal instead.
Linking education closely to industry can be a key component of economic development, as places such as Madison and Ireland have shown. The Waukesha County Higher Education Coalition recently launched an effort to create a closer link by conducting a survey of some businesses in the county on what education and skills they require. Now, Racine County has made that link an element of a newly launched countywide study on work force issues.
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders said Friday they’ve reached a budget agreement after a nearly four-month impasse — the longest in the nation.
The budget will raise cigarette taxes by $1 per pack but it doesn’t include proposed taxes on hospitals and oil companies.
The deal also includes plans to make all children and thousands more low-income adults eligible for state-subsidized health insurance and to spend $30 million in smoking prevention programs.
Mold at Ingraham Hall on the UW-Madison campus burst into public view last week, but the persistent fungi also have attacked air quality in other buildings at the university.
MADISON, Wis. â?? University of Wisconsin-Madison officials were concerned about asking low-income students to participate in a press conference with Gov. Jim Doyle but they did so anyway, e-mails show.
Republicans have blasted UW-Madison for helping set up the Democratic governorâ??s press conference last week on the steps of the student union in which he criticized â??extreme Republicansâ? for blocking a budget.
Local hospitals have increased efforts to find and prevent the spread of a deadly drug-resistant form of a common staph bacterium.
The death of a Virginia high school student this week from an infection has sparked national concern at the same time a federal study reported that deaths tied to staph infections exceeded those caused by AIDS, with 19,000 people dying nationally in 2005.
University of Wisconsin Hospital epidemiologist Dennis Maki said hospital officials have been concerned about the bacteria — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — for decades.
Popular images of â??green-builtâ? homes often come in two distinct shapes: do-it-yourself rustic cottages made of straw bales, or million-dollar â??eco-mansionsâ? with state-of-the-art technologies that only the wealthy can afford. Middle-income families have traditionally had fewer options when it comes to living â??green.â?
A study by UW-Madison researchers showed almost half of women who have recently given birth in Wisconsin engage in excessive alcohol use, causing numerous problems for themselves and their children.
With the budget still in limbo, Governor Doyle mentioned the possibility of delaying the spring semester at University of Wisconsin system campuses.
Talking with students walking around U.W.-Green Bay on Wednesday, many seemed unaware the governor is considering keeping campus quiet come January if a state budget isn’t approved soon. The possibility of that happening isn’t even chatter among the co-eds.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced Tuesday that the state government might temporarily shut down in the coming months if the budget process is not finished soon.
With the Republican-controlled state Assembly rejecting Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s amended budget in a special session Monday, University of Wisconsin System representatives are still unsure of what the stateâ??s future will hold.
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle said the state may experience a partial government shutdown in the wake of the Wisconsin Legislatureâ??s failure to pass a budget in a special session Monday night.
While Capitol leaders took a break from talks on the overdue budget Tuesday, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle warned he might order a “partial shutdown” of non-emergency state services by the end of the year if lawmakers don’t adopt a new spending plan soon.
The failure of Gov. Jim Doyle’s second budget proposal in the state Assembly Monday isn’t the end of the world, as Democrats seem to argue. But it’s wrong to take such a cavalier approach to the budget process, as so many Republicans have done over these past 108 days.
If you had looked last spring at the number of minority students accepted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Marquette University, youd probably have thought the schools were on track to boost the ranks of minority students this fall.
More minorities applied. More minorities got in.
But when administrators tallied fall enrollment numbers at the two largest Milwaukee universities, some results didnt match expectations.
State agencies will be paying off a questionable computer project for the next 20 years, according to a report by the state’s top computer official. That’s in spite of the fact the project was originally supposed to save the state millions of dollars over just a few years.
“Wisconsin’s legislature is the only state that has failed to pass a budget and now it is having real consequences for real people in this state,” says governor spokesman, Matt Canter.
It’s turning into what appears to be a domino effect.
“We are now three months into the short fall and with each passing day we get deeper and deeper into the red,” says UW executive director, David Giroux.
The longer lawmakers take to make decisions on the budget, businesses are being forced to make cutbacks. It’s a topic that’s heating up on the state’s University system.
Because of the budget impasse, the Governor warns that we could see a partial shutdown of state government.
Just one day after the state Assembly voted against his new budget proposal, Governor Jim Doyle says a partial shutdown might be needed in order to “plan for the disaster” caused by the inaction of the legislature.
MADISON â?? Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle warned Tuesday he might have to partially shut down state government unless lawmakers break their impasse over the state budget soon.
University of Wisconsin System campuses might not be able to open for the second semester because theyâ??ll run out of money in April, Doyle said. State employees might be temporarily laid off, he said, among many other possibilities.
Gov. Jim Doyle today warned of plans to possibly shut down parts of state government if lawmakers can’t reach a budget agreement.
“My administration is preparing for serious consequences of not having a budget. I am reviewing options to deal with this emergency,” said Gov. Doyle. He said he’s asking his cabinet secretaries to tell him what services are essential, and what can be frozen
One in eight new mothers in Wisconsin drinks excessively, putting their children’s health at risk, a study by UW-Madison researchers found.
The self-reported survey of 8,706 postpartum mothers found that 12 percent reported at-risk alcohol-related behaviors — consuming seven or more drinks per week or four or more drinks on a single occasion at least once in the past month.
“Maternal alcohol consumption has been linked to violence toward children, and the interaction of maternal alcohol use and lactation on infant development remains unclear,” the researchers reported in an article in the Wisconsin Medical Journal.
A day after Assembly Republicans rejected his “compromise” state budget proposal, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle today warned that “the threat of a government shutdown remains very real.”
During a press conference this afternoon, Doyle alternated between warnings of dire consequences if lawmakers don’t pass a budget soon — including the possibility of a partial government shutdown and closing University of Wisconsin campuses — to more cautious appraisals of the situation.
The budget impasse remains, with the Democrat-controlled state Senate having passed Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s budget Monday, and the Republican-controlled state Assembly having rejected it.
The Wisconsin Legislature will convene in a special session today in an attempt to pass the 2007-09 Wisconsin state budget.
The Wisconsin Legislature failed to pass the 2007-09 state budget Monday after spending eight hours in a special session at the Capitol.
