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Ty Pennington would not approve

May 27, 2009 By

You don't normally hear the sounds of home improvement at 2:30 in the morning, which is why a Madison resident called police over the weekend. "This evidently was a very loud power tool," says Madison police spokesman Joel Despain. "Loud enough that a citizen in the area heard it, and then alerted us."

Despain says an officer arriving on the scene of a plumbing business on Madison's east side found a man cutting a hole in the side of the building, using a cordless reciprocating saw. "The officer orders the guy to drop the sawzall, the officer has his service weapon drawn at this point, and the guy drops the sawzall and we take him under arrest."

Despain says suspect Raynard Lambert had already cut a 3 foot by 4 foot hole when officers arrived and put a halt to his project. 

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Innkeeper exemption sought for smoking ban

May 27, 2009 By

The ink on the statewide smoking ban is barely dry, and already there's an attempt to alter it. State Representative Gary Sherman wants to restore the right of Wisconsin innkeepers to offer smoking rooms , and says the ban on hotel and motel smoking is bound to be broken, anyway.

"If you're a consumer of a hotel room and you don't smoke, and if like me you're very sensitive to smoke, you need to know whether the last person in that room had smoked or not," says Sherman. "Without the designation of smoking rooms, there's nothing to keep people from smoking. They're just going to do it."

Then there's the impact on tourism for towns like Hurley in Sherman's district. "Competing hotels are less than a mile away," says Sherman. "There's absolutely no reason for tourists to stay at a hotel in Hurley, when all they have to do is drive over to Ironwood, Michigan. Hurley has one industry right now, and that's tourism." Michigan is the only state bordering Wisconsin without a statewide smoking ban.

The exemption for innkeepers didn't make it into the final smoking ban because the Tavern League said it would be a deal breaker. "In both houses, this exemption had the votes to pass, and only the threat of it being a deal breaker, kept it from passing," notes Sherman. "We were one vote over in our house, one vote over in the Senate, votes had to be changed to keep from blowing the whole thing up."  

AUDIO: Bob Hague reports (:55 MP3)

Filed Under: Politics & Government, Top Story

Cigarette tax could be nation’s 3rd highest

May 27, 2009 By

Approval appears virtually certain for a tax hike on smokes in Wisconsin. Members of the legislature’s Finance Committee are expected to decide on cigarette taxes today. Governor Jim Doyle wants a 75 cent increase, something Wisconsin Grocers Association President Brandon Scholz says that’ll hurt his members.

“They’ve closed their eyes to the problems it (the cigarette tax) causes for retailers,” charges Scholz. “For retailers on the border, you’ve got competition from other states. For brick and mortar retailers around the state, people are selling them on the Internet and they’re not getting chased down (to pay the state tax). And if you’re competing with a tribal smoke shop, because they get a whole bunch of that money back from the state, that put retailers at a disadvantage.”  

The 75 cent increase, which is expected to be approved, would make Wisconsin’s cigarette tax among the highest in the nation at $2.52 a pack. “People that choose to smoke, this is gong to hurt them the most,” says Scholz. “For those folks, middle class, poor people, people on fixed income, they’re the people who are going to get hurt the most.” Scholz adds that whether smoking is bad for people or not, “it’s a personal choice.”  

John Colbert, WIBA

Filed Under: Budget, Politics & Government, Taxes Tagged With:

Fixing the "food economy"

May 27, 2009 By

An expert on food economies says farming is just not paying off for producers and consumers, and encouraging people to "buy local" may be the best hope for the industry.

Ken Meter is the president of the Minneapolis-based Crossroads Resource Center, and has studied food economy regions in 20 states. Meter recently studied southwest Wisconsin's four-county region of Monroe, Crawford, Richland, and Vernon Counties. He says farmers in those areas are producing an average $404 million worth of commodities each year, at a cost of $434 million each year.

Meter says the emphasis on more "efficient" operations is playing out the same way across the country. Farmers are doing worse and worse, even with government subsidies. He says farm families are surviving by taking an off-the-farm job to support their "habit" of farming. Meter says the combination of farm losses, inputs bought elsewhere, and consumer spending leaving the region adds up.

Meter says that points to the good news though; if everyone in the region bought 25-percent of their food from local farms, it would amount to $33 million a year. That would be enough to offset the current losses. Meter says considering this, and the state of the overall economy, local food networks may be the solution to keeping farms alive.

Meter says it's a choice of paying cash for commodities or investing in communities.

AUDIO: John Helgeson reports (MP3 1:54)

Filed Under: Agriculture

Feingold: Sotomayor could make wonderful addition

May 27, 2009 By

President Obama's nominee for US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor The president picks his first U.S. Supreme Court nominee, and both Wisconsin Senators are involved in the confirmation process.

Federal appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York is the choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. United States Senator Russ Feingold (D-Middleton) says he needs to study all the facts before making any decisions, but he already likes what he knows about Sotomayor.

“The way she was brought up, what she's accomplished in her life, her brilliance really are exciting things that could make a wonderful addition to the U.S. Supreme Court. So we're gonna give her a thorough look, but I'm hopeful she'll do well.”

The Middleton Democrat is a member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on President Barack Obama's appointment for the High Court.

Democrats have the majority in Congress, but Feingold says confirmation is not necessarily not a guarantee – although, Sotomayor has been through this grueling process before.

“The only thing that really could stop this is if it turns out that there is something wrong in this person's background. That can happen. Certainly if she checks through as she has – I voted for her for the Court of Appeals, she's been vetted many times. The odds are it will not be a hard confirmation, but you never know.”

Democrat Herb Kohl from Milwaukee is also on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kohl praises Sotomayor as, “accomplished, exceptionally bright, and well-respected by her peers.”

If confirmed, she would be the first Latina to sit on the nation's highest court. Confirmation hearings could get underway in June or early July, after the familiar FBI background check.

Thanks to Paul Knoff, WCCN Neillsville for contributing to this story.

AUDIO: Jackie Johnson report (1:33 MP3)

Filed Under: Politics & Government, Top Story
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