Category: State news

A lack of funding means police and security units on University of Wisconsin campuses are understaffed and cannot afford crime prevention programs, a new UW System report warns.

Authorities investigating a state travel contract given to a major donor to Gov. Jim Doyle’s campaign are also looking for links between donations from utility executives and state regulators’ approval of the sale of a nuclear power plant, sources said.

Wisconsin residents and businesses paid a record $56.5 billion in state, local and federal taxes and fees this year, a 10% increase from last year and the biggest jump in more than two decades, according to a study by a non-partisan taxpayers group. The article quotes Andrew Reschovsky, professor of public affairs and applied economics at UW-Madison.

Wisconsin’s high school students are smoking less than they did eight years ago. They’re wearing car seat belts and bike helmets more. And of those who have sex, almost eight in 10 use birth control.

That’s according to the Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a biennial report whose 2005 results were released last week by the state’s Department of Public Instruction.

Experts say the findings show teens have absorbed basic lessons from health class and public service announcements – wear seat belts, don’t smoke – but they also point to underlying data showing students still experiment, often dangerously.

William Proxmire, a maverick Wisconsin Democrat who gained national fame for his crusade against government waste and served 32 years in the U.S. Senate, died early today at age 90 at a convalescent home near Baltimore.

Proxmire had fought a decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

The Associated Press was told of the former senator’s death by an unnamed congressional official. As of this morning, Proxmire’s family had not made a formal announcement.

William Proxmire parlayed tireless shoe-leather campaigning, a mile-wide independent streak and golden political instincts into a record 32-year tenure, a place among Wisconsin’s political giants and a measure of national fame as a crusader against government waste.

He died early this morning at a long-term care facility near Baltimore, at the age of 90, after struggling for years with Alzheimer’s disease.

A conservation activist and former chief of the U.S. Forest Service says that it’s up to the nation’s politicians and its citizens to preserve and protect the legacy of American land conservation, a legacy secured in part by the late politician and environmental activist Gaylord Nelson.

Speaking Tuesday night at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Michael Dombeck, professor of global environmental management at UW-Stevens Point, said that political partisanship is hampering efforts to improve land and water conservation efforts.

Kevin Reilly, president of the University of Wisconsin System, weighed in Tuesday on a policy at UW-Eau Claire prohibiting resident assistants from leading religious and political activities in their dorms, saying he believed the assistants should be allowed to do “anything they want” in their dorms as long they don’t coerce other students.

Graduate students in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are studying the Superior economy. For three months, they have been working to get a better idea of the economic benefit to the Twin Ports based on a variety of development.

A few years ago, when students moved out for the summer from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, Marlin D. Schneider pulled his Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon onto a sidewalk near his daughter Molly’s dormitory. Cars, many of them parked illegally, jammed the campus. After lugging a heavy refrigerator and microwave down from his daughter’s room, Mr. Schneider returned to his car and groaned at the sight of a parking ticket. Unlike most parents, he had direct recourse: As a state representative from Wisconsin Rapids, he struck back with legislation.

The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater has demoted a black dean who has been at the forefront of the campus’s efforts to diversify, and it is starting proceedings that could lead to his termination.

UW Board of Regents President David Walsh urged lawmakers to stop playing politics with university business, saying it worked against the Regents’ efforts to get past recent controversies and focus on far-reaching changes to financial aid and tuition policies.
Walsh at Friday’s board meeting in Madison said he was dismayed to see that critical press releases were issued soon after the board finished its preliminary discussion on ways to make college more affordable for low-income students at Thursday’s meeting.

University of Wisconsin System leaders hope fresh thinking and ideas from other states can help turn around a 10-year trend in reduced enrollment by low-income students at state campuses.
“Many of our fellow citizens do doubt their ability to afford a UW education for themselves or their children,” System President Kevin Reilly said at Thursday’s UW Board of Regents meeting in Madison.

Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, has been selected by Gov. Jim Doyle, to head the state Building Commission�s Higher Education Subcommittee. She took over the post and oversaw her first committee meeting last week.

Records indicate a state consultant being paid $140 per hour advised members of a contract evaluating committee that a lucrative travel contract should go to a rival of Milwaukee-based Adelman Travel Systems.

The selection of Adelman for the $750,000 contract is under investigation by U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic.

University of Wisconsin-Madison administrators and a travel consultant disagreed with state officials when the bidding process for a statewide travel contract was changed, according to e-mails.

Former UW President Katharine Lyall’s idea that parties such as business interests might appoint a share of regents, and not just the governor, didn’t find fans among the regents at a meeting here.

Last week, Lyall suggested that because state financial support for the university has slipped in recent years, those who are picking up the slack, including private interests, might reasonably expect more of a voice in the university’s governance.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is planning an expensive facelift over the next 20 years with the goal of creating academic districts, shorter buildings and more open space on campus.

A blueprint of the projects, some of which are already under way, will be presented to the UW Board of Regents today.

(UNDATED) University of Wisconsin professors and other academic staff could vote on forming a union. A bill in the state legislature would allow faculty to vote and decide if they want the right to collective-bargaining. (Second item.)

A Wisconsin judge authorized the release of a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater audit of former Graduate Studies Dean Lee Jones Monday.

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater failed to monitor the spending of a former dean who improperly used $50,000 on an academic group he founded and took trips that may not have been in the university’s interest, according to an audit released Monday.

The attorney for Lee Jones called the errors minor and said Monday they were the result of poor training and were blown out of proportion because the former dean is black.

MADISON, Wis. – University of Wisconsin-Whitewater failed to monitor the spending of a former dean who improperly used $50,000 on an academic group he founded and took trips that may not have been in the university’s interest, according to an audit.

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater hired a dean months after he resigned from Florida State University, where auditors contended he spent thousands of dollars of school money for personal benefit, the Associated Press has learned.

MADISON, Wis. – A second black dean at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is raising questions about whether his race played a role in a campus audit of his spending.