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Vigil for health care reform

September 3, 2009 By

There’s been a lot of talk about what’s wrong with President Obama’s health care plan but Wednesday night supporters of that plan spoke out at a candle light vigil.

Judy Sachs’ son is musician who has no health care. Despite him working five nights a week playing in bands, he cannot afford coverage. Sachs says many young people are in the same position.

Harry Davis, who drove from Adams-Friendship, says he can’t tell how the health care debate is going, because we are only hearing from one side.

“The loudest people are the ones who are opposed to it,” says Davis.

Almost 200 people turned out for the vigil. Organizers held the event at a cemetery to remind everybody that some people are dying because there is no affordable health insurance. The gathering was organized by the liberal group “Move On.”

Contributed by Dave McCann-WIBA

AUDIO: Dave McCann reports (MP3 :42)

Filed Under: Health & Medicine, Politics & Government

Starting school on a positive note

September 3, 2009 By

As students across Wisconsin head back to class this week, schools that help low-income students achieve are recognized. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers says this year’s 137 Wisconsin Promise Schools of Recognition are “schools that are beating the odds.

“”They have high poverty, based on free and reduced lunch rates, but they also met various criteria on No Child Left Behind, basically indicating that they have high achievement,” Evers says. Student achievement on statewide reading and mathematics assessments in these schools is higher than the state average for schools with similar poverty rates and grade configurations.

What does Evers think is the key to these schools’ success? “This may sound vague, but there’s meaning to it,” says Evers. “They have strong partnerships with their community. They have strong parent organizations, they have strong volunteer volunteer organizations. They reach out to the community in various ways in their
instructional programs.”

Evers says it would be great if we could bottle what makes these schools succeed and pass it out to every school in the state. “That’s one of the important parts of this recognition program, to start that ‘bottling process,’ to make sure that we recognize good achievement when we have the opportunity, but also have these schools serve as an incubator for the rest of the state.”

Twenty two of the schools have received the award five or more consecutive years. The schools will receive award plaques at an October 20 ceremony at the State Capitol, and each school receives $2,000.

 AUDIO: Bob Hague reports (:60 MP3)

Filed Under: Education

Concerns over ballast water bill

September 3, 2009 By

A bill requiring treatment of ballast water from oceangoing ships on the Great Lakes received a public hearing Wednesday at the Capitol. Todd Ambs with the state Department of Natural Resources says ballast water may be responsible for the introduction of up to seventy percent of invasive species in the Great Lakes. “It is a very significant problem, and I haven’t heard anybody in the room say we don’t need to address it, it’s just how do we do it in a way that makes sense,” Ambs told the Assembly Natural Resources Committee.

But officials and workers from the ports of Superior and Milwaukee don’t think the proposal makes sense. They worry that if Wisconsin enacts legislation, and other states don’t, their ports will lose millions of dollars worth of shipping. “We are not here to say ‘save our jobs, to hell with the lake.’ We care about that lake.We are fishermen and hunters, too, and we want a healthy state,” said Tom Schwartz, a longshoreman at the Port of Milwaukee. But, added Schwartz, “we would like to be able to work in the state as well. Vessels will simply call at Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Illinois, rather than meet stringent restrictions proposed only by the state of Wisconsin.” The bill’s language calls for implementation of ballast water cleaning technology within seven months of being signed into law, but Phil Smith, another Milwaukee longshoreman, said shippers will almost certainly stop offloading in Milwaukee sooner than that. The longshoremen said that, even if other states eventually enact similar legislation, it will be extremely difficult for Wisconsin ports to recapture the cargo stream from the ocean going ships, known on the Great Lakes as “salties.”

The DNR’s Ambs told committee members that the agency wants to employ a “commercially viable” technology to treat ballast water from the salties, which enter the lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway. “If you’ve got a technology that exists within the laboratory, that could work, but it’s going to cost so much to put it on a particular facility that the facility would go out of business . . . that’s not a commercially viable technology.” Potential methods to treat ballast water could include filtration, thermal treatment, ultraviolet light, biocides or others approved by the DNR.

AUDIO: Bob Hague reports (1:10 MP3)

Filed Under: Economy, Environment & Conservation, Labor, Politics & Government

Governor optimistic about Mercury Marine’s future

September 3, 2009 By

The governor says he’s pleased to see another contract vote scheduled at Mercury Marine.

Union workers at the company’s Fond du Lac facility will take a third vote starting today. While Governor Jim Doyle isn’t commenting on the contract concessions they’re being called on to make, he’s happy workers are getting another chance to vote.

Doyle says he expects to see more jobs added if Mercury Marine remains in the state. Based on the incentives he says have been offered to the company, as many as 600 jobs could be in place in the coming years.

However, the governor says it may be awhile before that happens and is highly dependent on sales picking up for outboard motors again.

Union workers initially rejected the proposed contract changes and a second vote was called off after the company said it would not accept the results.

AUDIO: Andrew Beckett reports (MP3 :54)

Filed Under: Business Tagged With:
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