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City, county incentives to Mercury total $53 million

September 8, 2009 By

Mercury Marine’s local incentive package for staying in the city of Fond du Lac includes $3 million from the city and $50 million from the county. Fond du Lac city and county officials revealed details about an incentive package Tuesday morning.

The county’s share would in part be funded by a county sales tax. County Executive Al Buechel said the county has always held off implementing a half percent sales tax until it was needed to address crucial situation, and Mercury’s possible relocation to Oklahoma provided that critical moment. “I think in view of what the impact of Mercury leaving Fond du Lac would be, I certainly felt that this was the time,” Buechel said.

“There’s certainly always going to be some pain, and there will be some reaction, concerning any number of the parts of this economic development package,” said City Manager Tom Herre, conceding that local leaders realize that the incentive package won’t be agreeable to everyone, but Mercury’s impact in leaving would have touched thousands of lives. “When you stack it up against the long term good for the city of Fond du Lac and the county, we think that’s a decent trade off.”

Fond du Lac County Economic Development Corporation President Brenda Hicks-Sorensen said the package is no different than what has been offered other businesses, except they did much more due diligence and the incentives are on a much bigger scale. Fond du Lac County Board Chairman Marty Farrell said the incentive package is not a precedent for the county. Farrell said similar, but smaller packages were offered to keep Alliance Laundry and Ripon Foods from leaving Ripon several years ago.

If Mercury were to leave Fond du Lac and Fond du Lac County the $50 million loan would become due immediately. The City Council and County Board will act on approving the incentive package this week. City Council President Tim Lakin and Farrell believe there support for the package in both bodies.

Contributed by Bob Nelson, KFIZ

AUDIO: Bob Hague reports (:70 MP3)

Filed Under: Business, Economy

Health co-ops may face difficulty in upstart

September 8, 2009 By

Health Care cooperatives are among ideas popular with Congressional Republicans as a way of health care reform. Republicans have suggested an initial government investment into developing non-profit co-ops which participating members could be insured with.

Despite examples in Seattle and Madison, a former big insurance public relations executive doesn’t think health care co-ops are feasible to start up in today’s marketplace. Wendell Potter, with the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, says both cities are examples of long time existing co-ops. He says now is a time of consolidated, conglomerate insurance companies with a third of Americans enrolled with one of seven major insurers.

Potter worked at both Humana and CIGNA for more than 20 years and also believes insurance companies use third party agencies to inject misleading information about some proposals in Washington. The former PR man says these “front groups” effectively use the media to spread “buzz phrases” to create opposition to health care reform.

AUDIO: Wendell Potter on front groups (MP3 :68)

Republicans have argued the emotional reactions at public gatherings are the result of lawmakers trying to rush through bills that would empower government too much.

Potter now advocates for “responsible health care reform.” He calls it a shame that the lawmakers have not seriously considered a single payer option which he says has shown to be successful in other countries.

Filed Under: Economy, Health & Medicine, Politics & Government

Falk not ruling out Governor’s run

September 8, 2009 By

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk was working the crowd at the Labor Day rally in Madison but says it wasn’t as a candidate for Governor next year. She says raising enough money, probably at least two million dollars, in the Democratic primary alone is a factor on whether she’ll run. Falk recalls losing a close race for Attorney General in 2006.

AUDIO: Falk on raising money (MP3 :19)

Falk says she’s concentrating now on balancing Dane County’s budget for next year which she says is in the worst shape since the Great Depression.

At the rally there was a lot of concern over job security according to Jim Cavanaugh President of the South Central Federation of Labor. The labor leader says there are especially worries in the manufacturing and construction sectors where there have been layoffs and downsizing.

Since Labor Day last year 140-thousand jobs have been lost in Wisconsin and Cavanaugh says indications that recovery from the recession will take a considerable amount of time.

Cavanaugh says workers are “holding their breath” to see what President Obama has to say about health care in speech to Congress tomorrow night.

Contributed by John Colbert-WIBA

Filed Under: Economy, Labor, Politics & Government

Mercury incentive package to be revealed

September 8, 2009 By

Union ratification of proposed contract changes from Mercury Marine paved the way for the company to stay in Fond du Lac; now comes some follow through by the city and county. City Manager Tom Herre says thousands of people were affected by last Friday’s union vote. The City Council and County Board now have to follow through with incentive packages for the company that were only discussed in closed sessions of both bodies. County Executive Al Buechel believes the county supervisors will support the incentive package. Herre also thinks city council members will back the incentive package.

AUDIO: Al Buechel (MP3 :13)

Details of the incentive package will be announced today during a press conference at the City-County Government Center at 10:30 a.m. It’s designed to assure Mercury Marine will stay in Fond du Lac for at least the next 12 years.

Contributed by Bob Nelson-KFIZ

Filed Under: Business, Economy

Serial killer nabbed

September 8, 2009 By

Milwaukee Police say they nabbed a serial killer during the holiday weekend. 49-year-old Walter Ellis has been charged with two killing women – and he’s a suspect in six other slayings. Charges are expected in some of those cases this week. Ellis was picked up Saturday at a motel in Franklin.

That was after Milwaukee cold-case investigators found DNA on his toothbrush which matched samples found on 25-year-old Irene Smith and 32-year-old Carron Kilpatrick. They were killed two years apart in the early 1990′s, and their bodies were found within a block of each other. Officials said both were stabbed and strangled.

Police Chief Ed Flynn said Ellis’s DNA was on at least nine women killed from 1986-to-2007, but investigators say somebody else killed one of those people. One victim was a teenage runaway, and the others were all African-American prostitutes. Most were strangled, and three were stabbed or slashed to death.

AUDIO: Flynn on police investigation (MP3 :17)

Chaunte Ott spent 13 years in prison for the murder of the runaway, Jessica Payne. But Ott was freed in January after it was learned that the DNA on the victim’s body belonged to somebody else. Another man had been charged in 1994 with Kilpatrick’s slaying, but a jury found him innocent. Authorities said earlier that the same suspect’s DNA was found at numerous murder scenes. A police task force was then created, which got almost 200 tips in its first three months.

Ellis was charged a dozen times in the 1990′s with numerous crimes. But his last conviction in 1998 came two years before a state law that all felony convicts had to leave DNA samples with a statewide police data-base.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts
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