Top Stories February 11th

Horicon PD Contract Progress

2/11/12 - The dissolving of the Horicon Police Department has been put on hold for now. Mayor Jim Grigg says a casual meeting Thursday that included city leaders, Chief Joe Adamson, a couple of police officers and a union official was the most productive gathering they’ve had since negotiations for the 2011-2012 police contract began. While it wasn’t an official bargaining session, Grigg says he believes they’ve made progress towards coming to an agreement. A bargaining session is set for February 15th and Grigg says until that meeting takes place they won’t take any more steps toward shutting down the department. The city had a meeting earlier this week in which it was given a basic overview of the costs of contracting with the Dodge County Sheriff’s Department for coverage. Grigg says any further talks with the county will come after the bargaining session.

Dems Say Challenges Won’t Hold Up

2/11/12 - A Democratic organizer says four Republican state senators will not be able to escape recall elections by convincing the state to invalidate thousands of petition signatures. Zac Kramer told the A-P he made a cursory review of the challenges filed yesterday by the four senators – and he doesn’t believe the Government Accountability Board will uphold all those challenges. According to preliminary numbers, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau is challenging 11-hundred more signatures than he needs to have stricken in order to avoid a recall vote. And Chippewa Falls Senator Terry Moulton is challenging about a hundred more signatures than he might need to ward off his recall. Kramer said Fitzgerald made a number of frivolous challenges that won’t stand – like counting some of his challenges twice, and wrongly claiming that some of the petitions did not have required information. Pam Galloway of Wausau and Van Wanggaard of Racine apparently fell short of challenging enough signatures to avoid their recall elections. But they still hope to invalidate more signatures, by asking that the G-O-P’s new hand-made Senate districts be used for the elections instead of the old ones drawn up by a federal court a decade ago. The new boundaries are not scheduled to take effect until this fall, pending legal efforts by Democrats and Hispanics to strike them down. Also, Fitzgerald said petitioners were improperly given 61 days to circulate petitions instead of the required 60, due to the King Day holiday last month.

Controversy Over Foreclosure Settlement

2/11/12 - Democratic lawmakers have been showed their displeasure to the attorney general’s decision to use part of a legal settlement for homeowners to help balance the state budget instead. Democrats proposed a bill to require the Legislature’s approval to spend any of the settlement to balance the budget. Majority Republicans are not expected to pass the measure. On Thursday, Wisconsin learned that it would get 140-million-dollars to help those in Milwaukee and elsewhere who lost their homes due to shoddy practices by five large national lenders. The state government’s share is around 32-million-dollars. And Attorney General J-B Van Hollen said he decided to put 25-million of it toward reducing a newly-discovered budget deficit of around 143-million dollars. Van Hollen said it was justified because the state’s efforts to create jobs suffered due to the foreclosure crisis. But Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has spent the past couple days criticizing Van Hollen’s move. Yesterday (Fr), Barrett said he would invite Van Hollen and Governor Scott walker to see the neighborhoods devastated by the foreclosure crisis. Barrett said there are 48-hundred abandoned homes in Milwaukee – and they would cost 48-million dollars to tear down. Barrett is a potential Democratic candidate in the governor’s expected recall election this summer, but he said it had nothing to do with his criticism of the mortgage funding. In Barrett’s words, “It would be mayoral malpractice if I didn’t talk about this.”

Dozens of Accident and Runoffs

2/11/12 - The region recorded a couple inches of snow yesterday. Beaver Dam and Watertown had a total of three inches from the storm while Jefferson recorded two-and-a-half. Dodge County Sheriffs Department Director of Communications Scott Smith says there were a dozen runoffs and at least 21 motor vehicle accidents since the snow started falling late yesterday morning. At 3:20pm, there was an accident with injuries reported on County Road E near Horicon. Just before 4pm, a two-vehicle, head-on collision resulting in injuries occurred in the Town of Trenton on County C at Jersey Road. A semi jack knifed on the Highway 151 off ramp at County Road G just after 2pm and portions of the southbound lanes were closed to remove the truck from the ditch. In the morning, a deputy stopped to assist a motorist on Highway 41 near Lomira and his squad car was struck by a passing vehicle. There were no injuries.

Walker Speaks in Washington DC

2/11/12 - Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker got a big welcome from a crowd of about a thousand Friday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. Walker told the C-PAC audience if he loses a recall election this summer it would be a lasting blow to political risk-taking. The Republican says he’s not planning to fail, but if he does it would preclude any courageous act in American politics for a decade or more. Walker was a featured speaker at the 39th annual event. Walkers trip to Washington comes almost exactly a year after his effort to stop most collective bargaining for public employees set off a firestorm of protests at the Wisconsin state Capitol. C-PAC organizers have called Walker a hero of the movement.

Obama Coming to Wisconsin this Week

2/11/12 - President Barack Obama plans to talk about the importance of American manufacturing when he visits Wisconsin next week. The White House has announced he will be at Master Lock on Wednesday, talking about the need for companies to invest in American manpower. Obama singled out Master Lock in his State of the Union address last month, pointing out the Milwaukee company had returned about 100 jobs to Milwaukee from China since the middle of 2010. The company has said that decision was at least partly-driven by the rising cost of labor in Asia and the more expensive logistics of doing business from that far away.

Review Shows Big Loss Possible

2/11/12 - An independent review of a loan program for green energy projects shows the federal government could lose almost three billion dollars. Former Treasury Department official Herb Allison looked at 30 loans or loan guarantees totaling almost 24 billion dollars. Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner was among those criticizing the report released yesterday. The Republican said it’s, quoting here, “less a report than an umbrella to deflect the criticism pouring down on the administration.” Sensenbrenner said he was disappointed the review didn’t evaluate two major loans which failed given to Solyndra and Beacon.

Mining Bill Almost Finished

2/11/12 - State Senator Neal Kedzie says a mining bill is almost complete in its preliminary form – and could be ready for a vote next Monday. Kedzie chairs the Senate Selection Committee on Mining Jobs. He says the legislation isn’t in its final form yet, with revisions, additions or deletions still coming. The Assembly passed a mining bill a little over two weeks ago. It is anticipated the Senate version will differ dramatically. The Wisconsin Legislature is expected to pass mining legislation which would ease the path for a planned iron ore mine near Hurley. A public hearing could be held next Friday if the measure is finished Monday.

Hope for Housing Market in Milwaukee

2/11/12 - Growing sales of houses in Milwaukee are bringing some hope to real estate professionals in the state’s largest market. Sales of existing homes were up 15 and a half percent in January. A total of 760 homes were sold in the four-county area. That’s still far below the thousand-plus homes sold in January 2005. A spokesman for the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors says the market still offers low prices, an adequate supply of homes for sale and extremely low interest rates. January was the seventh straight month to see sales up by more than 10 percent when compared to the year before.