After hours of negotiations behind closed doors, Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee put off any vote Tuesday on whether to slash the University of Wisconsin System’s budget by $32 million in an attempt to gut funding for diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programming.
Funding for the University of Wisconsin system is being held up by Republicans, who control the Legislature and who want to kill all spending on diversity, the Associated Press reported.
Legislative Republicans and Gov. Tony Evers reached an agreement on changes to Wisconsin’s shared revenue system. Two guests help us better understand how the local funding bill will affect communities across the state. Interview with Ross Milton, assistant professor of public affairs at UW-Madison.
Timothy Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” that the tight labor market has helped low-wage workers the most.
“The good news is that there’s a lot of demand for low-skilled workers beyond bars and restaurants now (with) the expansion of infrastructure and construction,” Smeeding said.
Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at UW-Madison, said that wage gains haven’t been evenly distributed by economic sectors. He noted leisure and hospitality workers have seen the largest wage gains since the pandemic, while wages for workers in all other non-farm sectors have seen slower wage growth.
“As far as we can tell, (leisure and hospitality workers) are beating inflation, at least in terms of the wage rate,” he said. “Now, I don’t know how many hours they’re working, and it’s going to be spotty because not everybody is going to be in a restaurant that saw their wages rise.”
Beyond wages, Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at UW-Madison, said the tight labor market also gives workers more leverage to negotiate with their employers for more flexible hours or to confront workplace harassment.
“I think there’s a lot of evidence that in this tight labor market, low-wage workers especially have found ways to ask more from work to see their own value,” she said.
A new chief diversity officer hired by the University of Wisconsin System will start just weeks after Assembly Speaker Robin Vos called for eliminating DEI staff at the state’s 13 universities.
State Republicans have a long-standing tradition of supporting economic development in Wisconsin, but – bafflingly—they missed the boat recently when the powerful GOP-controlled state-budget-writing committee axed a proposal for a much-needed new engineering building on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Wisconsin has other fine engineering campuses, public and private, but demand for UW-Madison graduates is stronger than ever at a time when industry needs well-trained engineers in all disciplines. Let’s hope negotiations breathe new life into a project that will help Wisconsin’s economy for decades to come.
A bill that would renegotiate the Wisconsin-Minnesota tuition reciprocity agreement and allow University of Wisconsin System schools to retain more tuition dollars amid financial strain is again moving through the state legislature.
The University of Wisconsin System has hired a new chief diversity officer amid a Republican push to dismantle diversity programming on campuses and under threat of budget cuts.
Wisconsin residents who borrow from payday lenders face some of the highest costs in the nation, according to a 2022 Pew study. The head of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s Madison branch discusses its upcoming microloan program as an alternate to traditional lenders. And J. Michael Collins, a UW-Madison professor, talks about the state of Payday lending in Wisconsin.
“As a pharmacist who works in a rural primary care clinic, I’ve seen how challenging it can be for patients to get in for an appointment with their primary care provider,” Marina Maes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy said. “The provider schedules are booked two to three months out, which limits patients’ access to timely and convenient care from trusted health care professionals.”
And in keeping with Walker’s hostility toward the UW, just last week, Republicans axed $350 million for a new engineering school at UW-Madison, a top priority for the university that officials say is needed to keep the school competitive.
Over the last several years, state workers have been leaving their jobs at higher rates and those jobs are remaining unfilled for longer than they typically do. The analysis shows that turnover and vacancy rates for state workers outside of the University of Wisconsin System rose to record levels in fiscal year 2022, with 16.4% of the 28,000 employees leaving their jobs, including 10.2% who left for voluntary reasons other than retirement.
In addition, 5,770 full-time positions, or 17.7% of the total authorized positions in state government outside of the UW System, were vacant as of June last year.
No one is ever going to accuse the Republicans who run Wisconsin’s legislative Joint Finance Committee of being the sharpest tacks in the box. And their failure to approve funding for a new College of Engineering facility for the University of Wisconsin-Madison is another example of their profound cluelessness.
Among agencies that fall outside the University of Wisconsin System, 16.4% of the state’s nearly 28,000 workers left their jobs in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022, including 10.2% who left for voluntary reasons other than retirement, according to the report. What’s more, 5,770 full-time equivalent positions, or 17.7% of the total positions in state government outside the UW System, were vacant at the end of last June.
Around $100 million in private donations for a planned engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are at risk after Republican lawmakers pulled the project from the state’s capital budget.
After a stinging defeat by the Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee, which last week rejected a new engineering building at UW-Madison, campus and University of Wisconsin System leaders vowed to bring the project to fruition.
Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee voted for a $2.4 billion capital budget Thursday, the largest of any state building program in years but considerably smaller than the one proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
The capital budget would also leave out funding for several key projects, including a new school of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the UW System’s top priority.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s new engineering building is in jeopardy after the state Legislature’s powerful state budget-writing committee voted to leave the project out of its $2.4 billion spending plan for state building projects.
Republican lawmakers have rejected funding for the University of Wisconsin’s top priority, the proposed replacement of an engineering building on the Madison campus.
The Legislature’s powerful budget writing committee on Thursday signed off on state building projects for the next two years that total more than $3 billion.Not on that list, however, was a new engineering building for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which university officials have said is a “top priority.”
Gov. Tony Evers raised the Progress Pride flag over the Wisconsin State Capitol for the fifth annual Pride month celebration today. This follows his signing of Executive Order #204, which orders the Progress Pride flag to be flown during June in celebration of Pride month.
GOP lawmakers rejected funding Thursday for the University of Wisconsin’s top priority, the replacement of an engineering building on its flagship Madison campus, approving allocations for about 60% of the state government and UW projects sought by Gov. Tony Evers.
The GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee on Thursday also rejected Evers’ request to spend nearly $350 million to fund a new engineering building on UW-Madison’s campus, a top priority for the school.
“Today is certainly a sad day for UW-Madison, but the real tragedy is for the state of Wisconsin,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said. “This building would promote the state’s economic development. It would create significant workforce opportunities. It would propel innovation.”
Republicans’ proposed capital budget does not include the $347 million that Evers proposed to build a new engineering building on UW-Madison’s campus, a top priority for the university. A new building would replace the College of Engineering’s 83-year-old facility, which is currently in “poor and unsatisfactory condition,” adding over 1,000 engineering students per year.
To help people find culturally-inclusive foods and food services, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension Brown County launched a new map to help people find food and food services in northeast Wisconsin. It includes things such as food pantries, electronic benefit transfer locations, meal programs and community gardens.
“We collect food pantry statistics and in the last couple of months we have seen an increase in the number of households using food pantries,” said Clarice Martell, one of the extension staff members who worked on the map project. “We hope that this map can make it easier for food insecure households to locate food resources near to them.”
Quoted: “If you’re drinking one to two drinks (per day) because it’s good for you, it doesn’t necessarily increase the length of your life,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison medical school. “There’s no evidence in this large, well-designed study of a life-extending benefit.”
Quoted: “A lot of things obviously have changed in 15 years, including a lot of cost increases particularly for things like labor and for utilities,” said Chuck Nicholson, an ag economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So it has become harder and harder to use that old value to accurately represent what it takes to transform a pound of farm milk into a certain amount of cheese.”
The president of the University of Wisconsin System warned Thursday that all but three of the four-year UW campuses will run at a deficit by the end of the 2023-2024 school year.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman is calling on lawmakers to provide more funding to the system.
Without increased state funding, the University of Wisconsin System is projected to reach a $60.1 million structural deficit by the end of 2023-24, according to figures released Thursday by UW System President Jay Rothman.
Most University of Wisconsin System schools will fall millions of dollars short of the money needed to maintain operations by the end of 2023-24 without additional state support, System President Jay Rothman warned Thursday.
UW-Madison medical entomologist Susan Paskewitz explains how black-legged ticks, also known as deer ticks and transmit Lyme disease to humans, are increasingly found in more areas around the state.
Noted: Thanks to more than $3 million in grant funding, the University of Wisconsin-Madison now plans to establish 90 sites to monitor weather and soil conditions throughout the state by fall of 2026. The state currently has 14 weather stations.
Chris Kucharik, a UW-Madison agronomy professor, is overseeing the university’s effort to build the new network. He recently joined Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Morning Show” to discuss how more weather and soil reports could be used and how researchers will decide where to build the new stations.
As lawmakers consider the next round of spending on higher education in Wisconsin, new data shows per-pupil taxpayer funding for state technical colleges is more than twice as high as it is for state universities. At the same time, the University of Wisconsin System says 10 of its 13 universities have structural deficits ranging from millions to tens of millions of dollars.
Noted: The University of Wisconsin, also founded in 1848, took on a higher calling in 1905 when President Charles Van Hise said he would “never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state.” The UW has since served as a laboratory of social and scientific innovation helping people within and beyond our borders thanks to an idea, the Wisconsin Idea, formed in Wisconsin.
As Republican state lawmakers consider limiting future University of Wisconsin System tuition increases for residents, UW officials say most campuses cannot meet ongoing expenses with current revenues.
Noted: If the upper Mississippi River had to shut down for one season because of lock and dam failures, the amount of agricultural goods displaced would equal between 367,000 and 489,000 loads by truck, according to a 2017 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with the Mid-America Freight Coalition. It could cost up to $283 million to move those loads by truck, and upwards of $300 million if road damage is taken into account, the report said. And those estimates — the most recent available — were from six years ago. Today, according to the Consumer Price Index, the cost likely would be above $350 million.
The state’s Legislative Black Caucus pushed back against Republicans who are targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programming on University of Wisconsin System campuses.
Quoted: “As long as (the ballot language) doesn’t say the opposite of what the amendment accomplishes, then it’s sufficient under this standard,” said Dustin Brown, an attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “This decision gives the Legislature very broad authority to present constitutional amendments to the people, and it very much limits the degree of oversight that courts can exercise over that process.”
A report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension found the average price of agricultural land sold in the state last year was $5,551 per acre. That’s 11 percent higher than in 2021 and nearly 24 percent higher than in 2020.
Heather Schlesser, the Extension agriculture educator who prepared the report, said the sustained increases trace back to the cash farmers received from federal COVID-19 assistance programs. She said at the same time, many farmers decided it was the right time to sell land.
“It’s all about give and take, supply and demand,” she said. “There’s not a lot of ag land out there. So if there’s more money out there and there’s less land, the farmers that are selling are going to want more for it. So I think that started driving it.”
Noted: Data from the Department of Children and Families’ 2022 Child Care Market Rate Survey showed that in Milwaukee County, the average annual child care cost for a 4-year-old is $12,142; for an infant, it’s $16,236.
Comparably, the annual tuition cost at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2022 to 2023 was $9,273.
The public has voted and three peregrine falcon chicks at the Oak Creek We Energies power plant will be named Ollie, Ember, and Bucky.
The names honor local mascots, Ollie for Waukesha County Technical College, Ember for Carthage College, and of course, Bucky for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The DNR and the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System would be required to reach an agreement to decrease the price of PFAS testing at the state lab of hygiene by at least 10% within two years.
Currently, the cost of a single PFAS test can range from about $350 to $500.
Wisconsin’s budget forecast dipped slightly Monday, but the latest projection still calls for the state to collect about $6.9 billion more than anticipated by the end of June.
The new forecast also comes ahead of votes in coming weeks over tax cuts, funding for K-12 schools and the University of Wisconsin System and a host of other priorities and programs as lawmakers piece together the next two-year state budget.
Coumbe Gitter, who got her degree in biochemistry with an environmental science minor, graduated in good company outside of her own family tree — Saturday’s ceremony was the largest commencement in UW-Madison history, with 7,826 degrees conferred, according to UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.
That’s OK, because Madison’s economy isn’t dominated by state government and UW-Madison the way it used to be. Technology companies such as Epic Systems and Exact Sciences employ thousands of young professionals, many of whom live Downtown.
The University of Wisconsin will no longer require diversity, equity and inclusion statements from job applicants, UW System President Jay Rothman announced Thursday.
The move comes after Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to cut state funding to Wisconsin’s public universities. Specifically, Vos has criticized DEI programming at UW as an attempt to “indoctrinate” students with taxpayer dollars.
The University of Wisconsin System will no longer ask job applicants to sign statements about their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on campuses in an effort to depoliticize the hiring process.
Bird expert and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Stanley Temple said most of the birds that will make Wisconsin home on Friday were in Missouri or Arkansas on Thursday afternoon.
“There are so many factors that go into predicting where they will land, like wind and route, but it’s very likely they will be in Wisconsin by Friday morning,” Temple said.
The potential Milwaukee and Milwaukee County sales taxes that could be implemented under the Assembly bill would not be without consequences, said Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“You don’t pay attention if you have plenty of money,” he said of the increased prices that come with a sales tax. “But if you’re having trouble getting through the month, those extra pennies can make a big difference.”
In an Assembly committee hearing focused on concerns about free speech on campuses, Rothman said diversity statements could be perceived as political or ask an applicant to agree with a particular viewpoint. He told chancellors in a Wednesday letter to eliminate the requirement of such statements by June 30.
More than 10,000 Madison-area college students will receive degrees this weekend over a two-day span starting Friday.
The University of Wisconsin System will eliminate questions on how prospective employees would advance diversity, equity and inclusion missions in an effort to de-politicize hiring as Republican lawmakers have claimed the universities suffer from a lack of conservative faculty.
Family child care providers make an average of $7.46 an hour, while center-based teachers make an average of $12.99. Both make less than the average Wisconsinite with a high school diploma, according to research by Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an assistant professor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She found poor wages and lack of career advancement opportunities are top reasons why 18% of family child care providers and 28% of ECE teachers plan to leave the field within a few years.
Guest column authored by Nathan Kalmoe, executive cirector of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, Michael W. Wagner, professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and faculty director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, and Dhavan Shah, Maier-Bascom professor and research director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, all of UW-Madison.
In just the past two weeks, the state’s top Republican announced a push to defund the University of Wisconsin System’s diversity efforts — a move the Democratic governor lambasted as ridiculous. A student from UW-Madison posted racial slurs online, triggering bitter protests but no announced discipline. And a state medical college canceled a diversity symposium featuring Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson out of concerns the discussion would be too disruptive, resulting in cries of bias from conservatives.
Patient groups are urging the board that oversees benefits for state workers to reject a pharmacy plan the groups say would increase patient costs by preventing drug assistance programs from counting toward deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums.
These changes would cut back on delays and roadblocks that drive up prices, said Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Housing dies a death of a thousand cuts because every change, every delay, just adds costs,” Paulsen said.
