Top Stories, July 18th

Lake Mills Teen Killed In Watertown Rollover

7/18/10 - A 19-year-old Lake Mills will killed early Saturday in a one-vehicle rollover accident in the Town of Watertown. Sheriff Paul Milbrath says Ashley Johnson was the passenger in a car that failed to negotiate a curve on West Road, near Navan Road, just before 2:30am. Johnson was not wearing a seatbelt and was pronounced dead at the scene by the Jefferson County Coroners Office. The driver of the vehicle was her best friend, 18-year-old Michelle Mess of Lake Mills. Mess was transported to Watertown Hospital for treatment of her injures. Authorities say Mess may have been drinking and she is currently in custody and faces possible charges this week. Milbrath says the investigation is continuing.

La Crosse Reverend Accused of Child Porn Possession

7/18/10 - The web master for the Diocese of La Crosse is accused of possessing child pornography, but the investigation of the Reverend Patrick Umberger started much earlier. He had lost his season pass to Noah's Ark Water Park when he was accused of following young boys into a bathroom last summer. An attorney for the church calls the report an "unsubstantiated allegation." The diocese placed no restrictions on the priest after it learned of the allegations. In addition to losing his pass, he was also placed on a watch list at the water park. According to a state investigation, Umberger denied intentionally following the boys and was quoted as saying he has prostate problems which cause him to need to urinate often.

Manitowoc Man Faces 12th OWI

7/18/10 - A Manitowoc man will have to face charges in his 12th Operating While Intoxicated case. Witnesses reported 49 year old Daniel Frisch was driving his pickup the wrong way on a Manitowoc street last August. A motion to have the charges tossed out was rejected by a Manitowoc County Circuit Court judge. Frisch has been convicted of nine OWIs in Wisconsin and two more in Florida.

Immigration In Milwaukee Sheriffs Dept Scrutinized

7/18/10 - Immigration advocates want to know the exact details of the way the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department handles illegal immigration. They want an immediate formal investigation -- what they got was an informal inquiry into Sheriff's David Clarke Junior's policies. Those asking want a probe into the connections between the sheriff's office and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. They have heard stories about undocumented immigrants who were deported after they had been arrested on minor offenses.

Kennedy Holds Open Door Meeting Tuesday

7/18/10 - Beaver Dam Mayor Tom Kennedy will hold another one of his regular open door meetings on Tuesday. Kennedy says city residents are invited to meet with him, one-on-one, without appointment on the first and third Tuesday of every month. Kennedy says he feels it is important that constituents have the opportunity to speak with him the day after each regular meeting of the common council. The meetings will be held in Room 109 on the first floor of City Hall from 10am until noon on Tuesday. Kennedy says he also make himself available for private meetings by appointment by contacting the mayor office.

Gassman On Unemployment

7/18/10 - Wisconsin Labor Secretary Roberta Gassman says compared to the national level and similar states, the recent unemployment news is encouraging. For a third month in a row the state’s unemployment rate is down. She says Wisconsin is consistently doing better than Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan. Those are the other big manufacturing states of the Midwest. Wisconsin’s seasonally-adjusted jobless rate in June was 7.9 percent, down from 8.2 percent in May. Some economists say the seemingly positive numbers are the result of thousands of Wisconsinites who’ve simply stopped looking for work, meaning they vanish from unemployment statistics. Republicans say voters have to look at the big picture, saying Wisconsin has lost nearly 100,000 jobs since Democrats took over in Madison.

Rock County School Salvages YMCA Demolition Site

7/18/10 - After voters recently turned down a referendum to make building improvements, a Rock County school district is finding creative ways to replace some outdated fixtures. Parkview School District Superintendent Steve Lutzke says they recently took advantage of an offer from a salvage company to take items from a YMCA in Waukesha that was in the process of being demolished. Lutzke says they were able to recover items such as hand railings, sports equipment, light fixtures, and bathroom hand dryers that the district can put to good use. Overall, Lutzke says they probably saved the District up to $2,000 that would have been needed to buy the items brand new.

Doyle Approval Rating At Record Low

7/18/10 - Governor Jim Doyle’s approval rating is at a new low, as he gets ready to leave office in five-and-a-half months. 38-percent in the latest U-W Madison Badger Poll say they approve of the job Doyle’s doing. That’s down from 46-percent last November, and a high of 52-percent in June of 2007. Doyle, a Democrat, announced last August he would not run again. He’s had to deal with multi-billion-dollar budget deficits throughout his eight years in office. And like most other states, Wisconsin has had to make ends meet with unpopular spending cuts and a number of specialized tax-and-fee increases. The governor’s office has not commented on the new Badger Poll. But Doyle isn’t the only one feeling the people’s wrath. Only 42-percent approve of what the state Legislature has done. On the national level, Wisconsinites give President Obama a 49-percent approval rating – down from 60-percent last November. Only 29-percent said they approved of the job done by Congress. Wisconsin’s two U-S senators fared better, but even their numbers were down from last November. Democrat Russ Feingold’s approval rating is at 55-percent as he heads a toward a re-election battle this fall. Senate Democrat Herb Kohl is at 62-percent. The Badger Poll interviewed 500 Wisconsin adults over the last month, and the error margin is plus-and-minus four percent.

State Supreme Court Rules on Surrogates

7/18/10 - It’s against the law for Wisconsin health insurance companies to deny coverage to surrogate mothers. The State Supreme Court made that clear Friday. The justices threw out a circuit court’s ruling that the Mercy-Care H-M-O of Janesville did not have to approve medical payments to two surrogate mothers during their pregnancies. The company had a policy of not covering mothers who act as “gestational carriers” for other people’s babies. But the Supreme Court said it was illegal to deny routine maternity services based solely on a woman’s methods or reasons for becoming pregnant. The state Insurance Commissioner ruled in favor of the two women in 2002, and Mercy-Care took the matter to court. Records showed that the two mothers got over 35-thousand dollars in medical bills when they were pregnant in 2003-and-’04.

Turtle Trapping Season Underway

7/18/10 - Wisconsin's turtle-trapping season started last week and will run through November 30th. You can't just trap any turtle. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reminds you three species of turtles are listed as endangered or threatened in the state. The ornate box turtle, the Blanding's turtle and the wood turtle are all off-limits. Anyone who tries to trap turtles has to have a state license. You can catch them by hand, with a hook and line, or with hoop net traps -- and you must check those traps every day.

Bike-In Restaurant Planned

7/18/10 - Most of us have eaten at a drive-in restaurant -- how about a "bike-in" eating place? The co-owner of Madison's Restaurant Magnus wants to build an eatery on that city's Near West Side that you could only reach from a bike path. He'd call it the Badger Den and it would only be open April through October. Chris Berge says it would be eco-friendly, too, because it would produce no garbage. Food would be served on plastic or ceramic dishes at seating made from tree trunks. Berge wants to serve the city's rapidly-growing bicycle-riding community. He says the new business would be on the Southwest Commuter Path near the public Glenway Golf Course. He says it's the one place you don't hear cars, right in the middle of the Capitol city.