The Republican-controlled state Assembly agreed to hold a Monday vote on Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s proposed compromise budget bill, with the outcome of the budget crisis likely to be decided by roughly four votes.
Kevin Hughes is haunted by the unsolved homicide cases he has worked on during his 24 years as a detective with the Dane County Sheriff’s Office.
Hughes, who has investigated nearly 20 homicides, guesses that roughly six remain to some degree unsolved.
Can a coaching legend break the state budget impasse?
Even though he wasn’t in the Capitol today for that purpose, Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez says the 14-week budget has come up in his talks with lawmakers.
Alvarez said everybody says it’s a tough, brutal fight.
UW-Madison College Republicans and a GOP state lawmaker are criticizing e-mails that were sent by UW officials to low-income students still awaiting financial aid grants, asking whether they wished to appear at a press conference with Gov. Jim Doyle today urging legislators to complete the state budget.
The 33 students contacted are among 420 at UW-Madison and 5,544 in the University of Wisconsin System who will not know whether they receive their Wisconsin Higher Education Grants until the budget is concluded.
If state funding support for UW-Madison remains uncertain or declines, one of the possible ramifications could be reducing the size of the incoming freshman class for fall 2008, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said.
“We’ll have to make the decision soon on whether to slow down admissions,” Wiley said in a recent address to the faculty senate. “That is always an unpopular decision.”
The City Councilâ??s recent passage of the Alcohol Density Plan â?? which prohibits the issuance of new liquor licenses in the downtown area â?? was not the first time this decade that city officials attempted to regulate students into a state of sobriety, as proceedings at the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week reminded us.
There’s a chance that a lawsuit over efforts to curb binge drinking on the UW Madison campus could be revived. Wednesday, the state supreme court heard arguments involving drink specials and price fixing. Shamane Mills reports. (Audio.)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — More than 600 self-described geeks are expected in Madison this weekend for a two-day convention that includes role playing, video games, and lots of science fiction.
Others might call it Revenge of the Geeks. The organizers call it Geek.kon, with .kon standing for convention. Like any conference, it’s a place for people with common interests to gather.
“Your average American citizen does not know what a LAN party is, nor Warhammer, nor LARP, nor cosplay,” organizer and panelist Jackie Lee said.
The convention at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is sponsored by Geek.kon, a registered student organization made up mostly of members of the university’s sci-fi and anime clubs, and the university’s East Asian studies department.
Tickets go on sale today for Freakfest, Madison’s Halloween party on State Street.
New this year for the party, to be held Oct. 27, a Saturday, will be a third stage and corporate sponsors.
Officials, however, hope to again see the kind of reduction in the drunken mayhem and violence that made last year’s event noteworthy in comparison to previous years.
The Wisconsin State Legislature has become dysfunctional, ineffectual, and counter-productive. It is an embarrassment and it is harming the state’s reputation and image. And the few good public servants in its ranks can do nothing. It is time for fundamental change.
The most important change will only come with reform of the redistricting process and the way campaigns are financed. Currently, government is pretty much run by rabidly partisan legislative staff members whose jobs are basically to cater to special interest money and keep it flowing. There is no longer even a façade of caring for the interests of the citizens of this state or responsible public policy. Cash and reelection are all that matter.
MADISON, Wis. | While its neighbors avoided government shutdowns by passing state budgets in the nick of time, Wisconsin has quietly operated 13 weeks without a new spending plan and is the only state left without a budget.
There is no hammer of a government shutdown in Wisconsin as lawmakers bicker over raising the cigarette tax and imposing new taxes on big oil companies and hospitals. And there’s no limit to how long lawmakers can be in session. Current taxing and spending levels continue even when there is no budget in place by the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
MADISON, Wis. â?? Drinkers in this college town were wrongly cut off from two-for-one beer deals and cheap shots of liquor by bar owners who fixed their prices, a lawyer told the state Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Lawyer Kay Hunt asked the justices to reinstate a lawsuit claiming a 2002 agreement by bars to ban drink specials on weekend nights was an illegal price-fixing conspiracy. Her Minneapolis law firm represents drinkers who claim they were overcharged as a result of the ban.
In response to the author of a recent letter titled “Student fans failed to be classy, ” I feel your concern, but I hardly feel sorry for you. No bodily harm was done, just a bruised ego.
MADISON, Wis. — Although ghouls and monsters and other unruly creatures of the night packed Freakfest on State Street last year, Madison’s annual Halloween celebration went off without the riots and police confrontations that marred the party in past years.
Officials said that success was due in large part to the city’s increased involvement in the 2006 event. For the first time, revealers were required to purchase tickets for admission onto State Street during the party, and authorities erected fences and set designated entry and exit points to help control the flow of the large crowds.
University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley urged UW faculty to join efforts to pass the much-stalemated state budget Monday.
Closed-door meetings continued for the second week at the Capitol, but as they do, some are talking about measures that might have brought compromise long ago.
The governor’s office said Monday that it has lawyers looking into emergency actions the governor could take to break the stalemate.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly has been going around the state urging people to contact their legislators.
The message is a sound one: Higher education needs more state support, and it needs an end to budget cuts that are tougher than other agencies have had to bear. It needs these things because higher education can help the economy.
he troubled 19-year-old, whom police suspect was the man behind Tuesdayâ??s campus lockdown, was caught early Friday morning in San Diego, according to the University of Wisconsin Police Department.
Now they’re costing us real money.
That’s why property taxpayers throughout Wisconsin should be hopping mad at the state Legislature for blowing another deadline for the state budget.
Lawmakers deserve credit for finally making some progress this week on a budget compromise. But they didn’t get far enough.
One of the inescapable conclusions from the impressive recent community public safety conversations in neighborhoods around Madison is that home ownership matters. Certainly, renters are important members of our community and we need rental properties and engaged owners and tenants.
But, it is homeowners who feel a sense of investment and commitment to a neighborhood and it is simply good policy to encourage homeownership as much as possible. Affordability is key.A recent University of Wisconsin study found residents of the Park Street corridor for example valued their neighborhoods and want to stay there. But more than half of respondents are paying more than a third of their incomes for housing and that’s tough to sustain. The survey itself was significant because it used a community-based model that suggests a high level of credibility.
Jesse Miller – the 19-year-old who escaped from Dane County Jail last month and triggered Tuesday’s lock down of UW Hospital and a campus search by claiming he had a gun and wanted police to shoot him – repeatedly sought help for suicidal thoughts during a week last summer when he threatened to jump from the top of the Veterans Hospital parking garage, court records show.
Dear Editor: The governor and state Senate have proposed a state budget that includes the University of Wisconsin System Growth Agenda, which improves access to the UW System, increases the number of baccalaureate degrees and graduating rates, and strengthens campus communities and local businesses. For example, it would facilitate much-needed and long-delayed capital projects that include student unions, residence halls and academic buildings.
As a parent of a college student, your article on student privacy (“Families Grapple With Student Privacy,” Personal Journal, Sept. 20) rang true. I was absolutely floored by the statement from the University of Wisconsin administrator that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act “is about judgment.” I have found the exact opposite to be true.
When confronted by parents and others, school officials abandon judgment and hide behind the privacy act. They use it as an excuse to do nothing about legitimate concerns. I hate to admit it, but my wife had to pose as my daughter over the telephone to clear up a relatively simple issue. What a mess.
State lawmakers on the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities are on the right track in asking the University of Wisconsin to drop the practice of “preferred” lender list of financial institutions offering loans to college students.
Lists of preferred lenders have come under fire recently when investigations found that at least some were offering colleges gifts or financial inducements, presumably in exchange for getting on the “preferred” list.
Madison Police Department spokesman Joel DeSpain said a suspect is being questioned in connection with the armed robbery earlier today of the Italian grocery store Fraboni’s, 822 Regent St.
The man is not yet under arrest, DeSpain said, but added that he is not aware that police are searching for anyone else.
DeSpain said the man was found by police in the University of Wisconsin administration building at 21 N. Park St. after it had been cleared because a UW employee in the building saw someone suspicious. UW employees and students in two nearby dormitories were alerted about the robbery at 12:15.
The downtown Madison business climate is thriving and ready for growth, according to a year-long Downtown Madison Market Analysis study published Thursday.
University of Wisconsin faculty and staff asked lawmakers to endorse a plan that would allow them to form unions. AFT-Wisconsin delivered a letter to budget negotiators that includes the names of more than 2,000 employees at UW campuses who support the plan. Under the proposal, employees on each campus could decide whether to form a union. All other state employees have that right. Supporters want the plan included in the final version of the state budget
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin said that it will continue to provide students with a list of preferred private lenders even though some colleges and universities have decided to scrap the practice.
The lists came under scrutiny this year after an investigation by the New York attorney general turned up quid-pro-quo relationships between schools or college financial aid officials and lenders.
UW-Madison is in danger of massive cuts and reductions if the state Assembly version of the budget is passed, according to a letter sent by Chancellor John Wiley to legislative leaders currently debating the stalled issue.
….The fact that university staff and faculty are singled out is one of the reasons they rank among the lowest paid among their peers in the Big Ten and behind the technical college staffs in the state.
Perennial UW haters Rep. Steve Nass of Whitewater and Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend like to claim that this would mandate unions on our campuses — one of their many misleading statements about the university.
Let’s make it clear: This budget language doesn’t unionize UW faculty and staff. It merely gives them the right to make that choice. Some campuses may indeed vote to join a union, others not. There’s no justification, however, to keep them as second-class employees of the state and deny them the right to make that choice for themselves.
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley warned Tuesday that proposed budget cuts would devastate the Madison campus, as lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle’s aides continued to negotiate a new state budget.
Wiley said the budget proposed by the Assembly would force layoffs of staff members, thousands of classes to be canceled in the spring semester and enrollment caps in some major fields of study.
The result would be fewer students graduating on time and diminished student services, he wrote in a memo distributed to legislators.
UW-Madison and Madison police continue to search for a suicidal man who claimed to have a weapon and said he wanted officers to shoot him.
Police, however, said it was not clear whether the man was ever in the hospital area. UW-Madison Police said they believe the man is a threat to himself but not to UW-Madison students or staff. UW Police Sgt. Jason Whitney said Wednesday that officials did not believe Miller was armed or on campus.
MADISON â?? Legislative leaders called to Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s residence to reach a deal on the 12-week late state budget worked in private all day Monday and were expected to resume on Tuesday.
Those of us who went to college with David Obey no doubt find it hard to believe that the Wausau Democrat is now the longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress in Wisconsin’s history.
He was so young in the 1960s and he is so powerful today. What happened?
When an ambitious master plan to upgrade UW Athletic Department facilities was outlined Friday, it triggered a series of questions for which there were few answers.
MADISON, Wis. â?? Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders plan to meet privately starting Monday to work out a budget deal that all involved said could be done by the end of the week.Announcement of the meeting to be held at the governorâ??s residence came Friday after Democrats made a major concession designed to kick-start negotiations over the budget that is three months late.
MADISON, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin-Madison alumnus is facing a charge of violating a restraining order.
Police said Albert Wellstein was arrested Wednesday when he showed up at the Red Gym on the UW-Madison campus.
He was banned from campus this spring. Authorities accused him of sending a threatening poem to a female acquaintance and making a death threat to a campus police detective.
From Raymond Road to West Badger Road to West Mifflin Street, Madison Police are investigating six separate cases where people say they’ve been attacked and mugged across the city.
Madison’s thug factor seems to be rising as fall approaches, with a slew of purse and bag snatchings this week â?? typically by pairs of young men targeting women walking alone in the city’s Downtown and South Side, police said.
A man officially banned from stepping foot on the University of Wisconsin campus was arrested Wednesday evening after entering the Red Gym.
Wisconsin continues to lead the nation in binge drinking and the percentage of adult drinkers.
Raising a glass to toast those rankings is an inappropriate response.
University of Wisconsin students wonâ??t be seeing any new bars downtown in the near future, as the Madison City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday night that will prohibit new liquor licenses from being granted in the downtown area.
Landlords with problematic properties will be held accountable for improvements â?? or face penalties â?? in an ordinance passed by the Madison City Council early Wednesday in an 18-2 vote.
The chronic nuisance abatement ordinance will identify addresses where police are often needed and hold landlords responsible for an improvement plan. The city could penalize landlords who fail to submit a plan or do not make an effort to end the nuisance.
Following months of debate and public hearings, the Madison City Council plans to vote tonight on a proposal to ban most new liquor licenses in the downtown area.
Madison, Wis. – As he works to turn a research prototype into a breakthrough network security product, Paul Barford envisions quite a large potential market for his technology – basically, any organization with a computer network.
Barford, an assistant computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is developing that product as the founder of Nemean Networks, LLC.
MADISON, Wis. — The reward for information in the search for who killed the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student who disappeared from downtown Madison earlier this summer has increased to $12,000.
As the Kelly Nolan case has begun to slip from headlines and TV screens, her family appealed to the public for help once again on Monday afternoon. At Library Mall on the UW-Madison campus, Madison police and the Nolan family announced that the reward for information leading to solving Nolan’s killing was increased to $12,000.
Kelly Nolan’s two sisters joined police Monday to make a plea for additional tips in the nearly three-month-old murder case of the UW-Whitewater student.
Police have not yet identified a suspect, but they’re confident whoever is responsible has ties to the community.
“We wish to locate anyone who was in the State Street area Friday night, June 22nd, into the early morning hours of June 23rd, who may have seen Kelly alone or with any other persons, male or female. We believe there are other persons in the community who know what happened to Kelly who have not yet contacted the police,” April Nolan says.
MADISON â?? The sisters of a slain Wisconsin college student asked the public Monday to come forward with information that could help in the search for her killer.
Kelly Nolan, 22, disappeared early June 23 after a night of bar hopping with friends in downtown Madison. Her decomposing body was found more than two weeks later in a ditch about 10 miles south of the city.
….Whether it’s clearing a path to get an ambulance through a tightly packed crowd outside a Badger game or getting quickly to a fight brewing at bar time on State Street, mounted police have some advantages in some venues that officers on foot or bicycles just can’t match.
Sgt. Kari Sasso of the University of Wisconsin police department often works with her horse, Vegas, a quarter horse-thoroughbred cross, at Badger football games, and the pair patrols on campus, as well.
Dear Editor: Thank you for Dave Zweifel’s excellent Sept. 10 column on the Charter Street power plant. That this travesty even happened, let alone that it’s allowed to continue, and worse yet that the University of Wisconsin and the state are trying to defend it, is nearly beyond belief.
I think that the people responsible should be summarily dismissed for this unbelievable disregard for human welfare. Or perhaps we can give them an option: Drink that bottle of water.
Don Ferber, Madison
Metro bus riders on the UW-Madison campus won’t be able to use the bus stop southbound on Charter St. at its intersection with Johnson St., because of safety concerns when the route 80 bus has to cross over from the right lane to make a left turn eastbound onto Johnson St.
….Passengers are asked to use the stops on Johnson St. at Mills St. one block east of the affected intersection, or on Charter St. between Linden Dr. and University Ave. a block and a half north, to get on or off the bus.
Five hybrid electric buses will hit the streets in the next couple of weeks, WISC-TV reported. Two will run on the University of Wisconsin-Madison Campus routes that get about 90 rides an hour and three others will run in the rest of the city. All have a new hybrid battery perched on the roof.
The ride on a handful of Madison Metro buses is about to get quieter and cleaner. The agency unveiled of five hybrid buses on Tuesday at the UW Arboretum.
The UW helped purchase two of the buses, which will run on campus-specific routes. The seat configuration in those buses are also different. A wider aisle should help accommodate large backpacks. The other three buses will rotate on other routes in Metro’s service area.
Madison Police worked overtime this past Labor Day weekend to ensure the streets of downtown Madison were safe for everyone.
157 arrests were made total.
Madison Police enforced a plan called Downtown Safety Initiative Special Operations over four nights this past weekend, Thursday through Sunday.
The University of Wisconsin announced last week nearly $140,000 in new research grants have been awarded to the Division of International Studies.
LA CROSSE, Wis. – There is no serial killer, investigators insist, no boogeyman lurking in college-area bars, waiting to drown good-looking young men.
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz thought he would be in the thick of the action Saturday night.
He rode from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m. Saturday night and Sunday morning with Sgt. Dave McCaw in an unmarked police car as part of the Madison Police Department’s Downtown Safety Initiative.
MADISON, Wis. — There are many fun-loving terms for Wisconsin residents â?? Wisconsinites, Cheeseheads, Packer-Backers.
But one term is turning into big business for some recent UW grads.
The term is â??Sconnie.â?
FOR A grumpy old Badger, Art Luetke sure is having a lot of fun.
The well-known Madison real estate broker phoned this week from Hawaii, where he was engaged in grueling advance work for the Maui Channel Swim, a famous open-water relay race that starts Saturday.
Civic and business leaders paying for a study on higher education needs in Waukesha County share a common goal: resolving a debate that has continued for nearly three years.
More than a dozen individuals, companies and educational institutions are funding the $50,000 study, which could determine the future of the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.
