Wisconsin News and Sports
The Wisconsin State Capitol will remain closed to the public. The Wednesday announcement from Governor Tony Evers’ administration also stated that state employees will have to wear masks at all times while they are inside state facilities, starting Monday.
The Capitol has been closed since March. It was supposed to reopen next week but the escalating number of coronavirus cases put that on hold.
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson thinks the country closed too much of its economy when the coronavirus outbreak started.
The Wisconsin Republican told the online news publication Axios the country “overreacted” at first.
“We closed too much of our economy down, and I don’t think we focused enough on what we needed to do: isolate the sick, quarantine them, protect the vulnerable.”
“At the same time, elected officials. I’m not overly critical . . . . they’ve had to make really tough decisions with imperfect information.”
Johnson said the federal government needs to come up with additional plans to help businesses that are suffering. He said those businesses shouldn’t be blamed for a downturn in performance. He calls the pandemic “an act of God.”
The state of Wisconsin is shipping millions of cloth face masks and other types of personal protective equipment to schools, food processors and businesses.
Wisconsin Emergency Management is providing 4,200 infrared thermometers to public, charter and private schools.
The Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection is sending another 60,000 face masks to local food processors and other businesses.
When the Evers administration asked last month if Wisconsin schools were interested in the equipment, more than a thousand said yes, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
A coalition of Milwaukee business owners who want the city to require face masks is taking their case to the internet.
A new public service announcement asks Milwaukee to be “safer and smarter than Florida.” Several dozen businesses last week signed a letter to the mayor and the city council president, asking them to impose a mask order in order to “level the playing field” for businesses who don’t require masks on their own. The business group says masks are needed to stay safe, and the city needs to order people to wear them.
While many of us are taking a financial hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, a handful of Wisconsin billionaires a doing quite well for themselves. Citizen Action of Wisconsin executive director Robert Kraig believes they’re benefiting from a tax cut included in the CARES Act.
“When people are literally having trouble figuring out how to get food on the table and rent, and unemployment benefits . . . are going to run out at the end of July, it’s just stunning to think that the one thing that does get done is to make these folks even richer,” Kraig told WCLO.
The liberal advocacy group is endorsing the new HEROS Act passed by the Democratic controlled House of Representatives, which would repeal the tax break from the CARES Act.
Citizen Action cites data compiled by Forbes, which shows 8 Wisconsin billionaires collectively saw their wealth increase by more than 14 billion dollars, or 36 percent, during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
WCLO
Some self-employed or independent contractors in Wisconsin have been waiting up to four months for benefits under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance plan.
The PUA covers non-traditional workers not normally eligible for unemployment benefits.
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development confirms that only about 10 percent of 70,000 applicants had received benefits.
According to DWD, it takes longer to determine eligibility and the amount of benefit the applicant should receive, a difficult process that can’t be streamlined.
Department of Workforce Development Secretary Caleb Frostman says additional hiring has enabled the agency to more unemployment cases. “We’ve added a thousand either employees or contractors since the start of COVID-19 to go from 500 to about 1600, and that’s starting to pay off,” Frostman told WHBY. “When we first brought them on in late May, we were making and taking a total of about 2,000 calls a day.”
Frostman said DWD is now able to handle 12,000 cases a day, and that people should continue to file weekly claims, even if it can be frustrating. DWD has come under fire for lengthy delays in processing new unemployment claims, and not being able to handle the call volume in its offices.
WHBY
The Madison school board voted unanimously on Monday to terminate the district’s contract with the Madison Police Department for school resource officers, effective immediately.
Opponents of the SRO program say the presence of police in schools negatively impacts students of color and makes them feel unsafe.
Prior to Monday’s vote, board member Ananda Mirilli said the action sends the message that “the bodies of black and brown students will no longer be criminalized.”
“We are also saying that we don’t have all the answers. We are learning to do this anti-racism work alongside many other communities across the U.S., and we won’t stop until we actually get it right.”
Police and supporters say SROs have specific training that makes them better suited to dealing with issues that arise at schools.
Acting Police Chief Vic Wahl said in a statement that SROs “have played an instrumental role in maintaining a safe learning environment” in the high schools.
Acting @madisonpolice chief Vic Wahl wrote this statement about the board’s vote. pic.twitter.com/eSBEAowBPL
— Jeffrey Dahdah (@jeff_dahdah) June 29, 2020
School board president Gloria Reyes, a former police officer, said the community was clearly telling the board to act now rather than in the future.
“The majority of my colleagues on the board have expressed their support for the removal of SROs. The Madison teachers’ union . . . have supported the removal. The mayor and other elected officials have expressed support to remove.”
Security plans for the district’s high schools have yet to be determined. Reyes announced during the meeting the creation of a safety and security committee to work on what those will look like going forward. The Madison City Council is expected to vote to terminate the contract next month as well.
The U.S. Department of Justice says cards exempting folks from wearing face masks are not legit.
The DOJ issued a statement that the cards claiming the holder is exempt from wearing a mask in public are fake.
Many cities have made wearing masks mandatory in public as COVID-19 cases spike. The bogus cards are purportedly issued by the “Freedom to Breathe Agency.”
As Wisconsin slowly reopens amid the global coronavirus pandemic, gasoline prices are creeping up.
AAA reports the average price for regular unleaded gas in Wisconsin is $2.14 a gallon. That’s seven cents higher than last week, and 24 cents higher than last month.
Some of the cheapest gas in Wisconsin is in Outagamie County, where the average price is $2.05.