Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: Annual inspections might offer peace of mind, but building professionals said the expenses would be astronomical. Besides, it’s when the building is being constructed that inspectors have the most critical safety checklist to ensure its longevity, said Steven Cramer, vice provost for instructional continuity & academic affairs and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We have a great set of building codes in Wisconsin, but the greatest scrutiny occurs at the time of construction or remodel when building permits are required and inspections occur,” Cramer wrote by email.

Quoted: “Often, probation is sort of the default sentence,” said Cecelia Klingele, associate professor at University of Wisconsin Law School, where she teaches criminal law, including sentencing.

Quoted: “This is just a stunning change in the American social policy context,” says Tim Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics with the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an advocate for the policy.

Some form of universal child allowance benefit is found in 17 affluent countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

“They allow parents who don’t have enough money to do things for their kids,” he adds. “It says kids are important.”

Quoted: “It’s transformative,” said Tim Smeeding, a professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s a recognition that kids are expensive, and that we as a society have an obligation and an interest in having them grow up well, and do well.”

Smeeding noted that it’s particularly remarkable for including families who aren’t typically reached by the Earned Income Tax Credit, like the children of immigrant parents and “grandfamilies” — families where kids live with grandparents at least half of the year, and for whom grandparents provide at least half of the support. Unlike the Earned Income Tax Credit, which families receive as a credit when they file taxes each year, families can be eligible for the child tax credit even if they don’t make enough to file taxes.

Quoted: “It is a little bit gray whether or not courts have the authority to do that,” said Cecelia Klingele, a law professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Wisconsin law alludes to the inherent authority of the court over its sentence, but it has not been fleshed out fully in case law, sort of, what are the outer bounds of that power,” she said.

Quoted: “We haven’t seen these kinds of protests in Cuba, in part because the system is not one that grants the legitimacy of that kind of civic protest,” said Patrick Iber, an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The Cuban government often sees and accuses people who are involved in these protests as being interests of foreign powers, and that is the kind of accusation that the current president has used against the protestors.”

An increase for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools in the state’s budget coupled with one-time federal pandemic aid still falls short according to public school advocates. Julie Underwood, former dean of the UW-Madison School of Education and board president for the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, explains.

Quoted: The proposals, which would broadly make absentee voting more difficult, are in line with legislation that’s moved forward in other battleground states with Republican-majority legislatures, said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. Similar bills advanced in Florida, Georgia, and Arizona.

“The bills we’re seeing in Wisconsin and other battleground states are really just an immediate reaction to legislators’ discontent with what happened in 2020,” said Burden. “Its roots are in Donald Trump’s complaints about absentee voting. He railed for about a year, consistently and publicly, in speeches and on Twitter, about what he believed was fraud happening with mail-in voting,” he added.

Quoted: “This is just a stunning change in the American social policy context,” says Tim Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics with the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an advocate for the policy.