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Assembly Republicans propose middle class tax cut

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Speaker Robin Vos

Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are pitching a middle class tax cut, one that puts them at odds with Democratic Governor Tony Evers.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Thursday that it will be paid for from the state budget surplus. “We actually have this huge surplus that’s been generated, and rather than allowing it to stay in Madison and be spent on growing government, we’d prefer to keep Tony Evers’ campaign promise and make sure that we have an opprtunity to do a middle class tax cut,” Vos said.

Vos and Assembly Republicans held a press conference at the Capitol on Thursday. Other members of the Assembly GOP caucus held similar press conferences in Wausau, Green Bay and La Crosse. In Wausau, state Representative Pat Snyder said he
doesn’t think that using surplus funds will be an issue as long as business growth continues. “I want to keep that momentum going, and with that momentum going, we’ll see surpluses every year.”

Governor Tony Evers

Evers campaigned on a tax cut which he’d proivide by scaling back a tax break for farmers and manufacturers. “Why jeapordize what has brought us to this point of prosperity by undoing a tax cut that has brought us to today,” State Representative John Nygren said.

An Evers spokeswoman said the Republican plan falls short of what the governor has proposed.

The governor’s sustainable plan to cut taxes for middle-class families-which is funded by rolling back tax giveaways for millionaires-would provide relief for 86 percent of taxpayers without adding to the deficit or relying on one-time funds.
In contrast, Speaker Vos’ spending plan continues to grow. Between this unfunded proposal, their refusal to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid, and growing legal fees for outside counsel to defend their lame-duck laws, Republicans are willing to leave taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Under the Republican proposal, couples filing jointly and making between $60,000 and $70,000 would see the largest average decrease – $311.

Packers make coaching change, fire McCarthy

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Mike McCarthy fired as head coach of the Packers.

Following Sunday’s 20-17 Packers loss to the Arizona Cardinals at Lambeau Field, Green Bay President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Murphy announced the immediate firing of head coach Mike McCarthy.  He named offensive coordinator Joe Philbin as the teams interim head coach.

In a statement from the Packers, Murphy said, “The 2018 season has not lived up to the expectations and standards of the Green Bay Packers.  As a result, I made the difficult decision to relieve Mike McCarthy of his role as head coach, effective immediately.  Mike has been a terrific head coach and leader of the Packers for 13 seasons, during which time we experienced a great deal of success on and off the field.  We want to thank Mike, his wife, Jessica, and the rest of the McCarthy family for all that they have done for the Packers and the Green Bay and Wisconsin communities.  We will immediately begin the process of selecting the next head coach of the Green Bay Packers.”

McCarthy is the first Packers coach to be fired in-season since Gene Ronzani departed with two games left in the 1953 season.

McCarthy led the Packers to a Super Bowl title in 2010.  He departs with a 125-77-2 record in Green Bay, the second-best win total in franchise history behind Curly Lambeau (209-104-21).  Under McCarthy, the Packers also won six NFC North division titles and advanced to four NFC championship games.

Mark Murphy is scheduled to meet with reporters at 1:45 p.m. on Monday.

Aaron Rodgers donates $1 million to California fire relief

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Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Roders is stepping up, to help with wildfire relief in his native California. Rodgers tweeted a video on Wednesday, in which he requested others to contribute. “Raising money for both immediate needs and the long term recovery is what’s needed now,” Rodgers said.

Dozens of people have died and hundreds remain unaccounted for in the Camp Fire, the most destructive in the state’s history.

“In northern California where I was born and raised, the city of Paradise burned to the ground and many of the residents who got out are now displaced in my hometown of Chico and across the north state,” Rodgers said in the tweet.

Vos reelected as Assembly Speaker

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Republicans in the state Assembly have reelected Representative Robin Vos to serve as Speaker. Vos said on Monday that Republicans will be willing to work with Governor-elect Tony Evers when they agree. “But we are not going to roll over and play dead, like they assume we probably should,” Vos said. “We’re not going to accept that the answer to our problems in Wisconsin is higher taxes. We are not going to accept that the answer to some of our issues is growing the size of government, or taking a big old u-turn from our economy’s success.”


Vos has served as Speaker since 2013, and his caucus voted unanimously for him to retain the post. “Our leader is playing chess while the other team is playing checkers,” said Representative Travis Tranel in seconding Vos’ nomination. Republicans will return with a 63-36 Assembly majority in the next legislative session, after losing one open seat in last week’s election.

“Our policies, our pragmatic vision for Wisconsin, is what Governor Evers needs to buy into,” Vos said. Republicans also reelected Representative Jim Steinke as Majority Leader.

Packers reach record extension with Aaron Rodgers

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The Green Bay Packers have reportedly reached a deal with quarterback Aaron Rodgers that will make him the highest-paid player in the NFL.

James Jones of the NFL Network reports the four-year extension is worth $33.5 million in new money, plus incentives per year and over $100 million in guarantees.

The deal is expected to be signed soon and it’s said to be worth $134 million over the four years.  Rodgers is set to collect more than $80 million this coming March.  He is scheduled to earn $40 million in the final two years of the contract which means he’ll earn around $174 million over the next six years.

ESPN’s Ian Rappaport reports the deal includes a signing bonus of $57.5 million. [Read more…]

Cephus facing felony charges

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Quintez Cephus

Wisconsin wide receiver Quintez Cephus has been charged with third-degree sexual assault and second-degree sex assault of an intoxicated victim.  Both of these offenses are felonies.

Maximum penalties for the second-degree sex assault of an intoxicated victim charge is 40 years in prison and/or a $100,000 fine.  The third-degree sexual assault charge carries with it a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and/or a $25,000 fine for the second charge.

The 20-year-old Cephus is due to make his first court appearance on Thursday morning.

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez says Cephus is suspended from competition and practice pending the “availability of further information relating to the case.”

According to the criminal complaint, UW wide receiver Danny Davis, who is Cephus’ roommate, also was present at the time and took photos of one of the women.  Davis has not been charged with any crime and has not been suspended by the university.  UW officials have had no comment about Davis’ alleged involvement.

 

Former State Senator Mike Ellis dies at 77

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Mike Ellis, a former leader of the Wisconsin State Senate, died Friday morning. He’d been in state politics for more than 4-decades and represented Neenah in the legislature for 32-years.

Ellis began his career on the Neenah City Council in the 1960s and served as council president before running for the state legislature in 1970. He’d served in the state senate from 1982 to 2015, and was majority leader from 2011 to 2015.

Ellis announced he would not seek re-election two days after the release of a video that showed him talking about creating a political action committee to run attack ads against a political opponent. He did not go forward with the idea.

Governor Scott Walker issued the following statement: “Tonette and I are saddened to hear of the passing of Senator Mike Ellis. He was a giant in the Legislature and a bigger-than-life personality in Wisconsin politics. I enjoyed serving with him as a lawmaker and as governor. We were just on the radio together recently and I love his wit and passion. He will be missed by so many of us. Tonette and I send our prayers to his entire family.”

Ellis was 77. Funeral arrangements are pending.

WSAU

US Supreme Court sends redistricting case back to lower courts

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The US Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge to Wisconsin’s elections map, but not for good. 

In a 7 – 2 decision, the US Supreme Court has sent the case back to the federal district courts.

Writing for the Majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said this was not a ruling on the merits of the case.

Instead, he says that Wisconsin Democrats lacked standing to bring a lawsuit when it came to the entire state’s voters as a whole, and that they needed to prove that individual voters in a district were harmed by having their votes cast in uneven districts.

John Marshall Law School professor Steven Schwinn says the Justices decided that the case couldn’t rule on Wisconsin’s entire voting map at once. “They said, look this has been our prior practice. We’ve allowed these kinds of challenges on a district by district basis, when a voter can show harm as a voter in their district.”

UW Law School professor Robert Yablon says we’re likely to see a refining of the plaintiff’s case when it comes back to the federal court level. “You now are likely to have a situation in which the case goes back to the trial court and more individual plaintiffs who live in districts across the state are added as plaintiffs, and maybe the Democratic Party itself becomes a plaintiff.”

Democrat Party of Wisconsin Chair Martha Laning responded today, saying that her party won’t be giving up that easily. “Regardless of today’s ruling, Democrats in Wisconsin will continue to compete everywhere possible in 2018. We will continue to mobilize, and we will continue to build the infrastructure necessary for more victories for the people of Wisconsin.”

Attorney General Brad Schimel issued the following statement in response. “I am pleased that the highest court in the land has unanimously reversed the trial court’s erroneous decision invalidating Wisconsin’s Assembly map. Today is win for the rule of law in Wisconsin, and a testament to the talented attorneys at the Wisconsin Department of Justice.”

We will continue to update this story throughout the day.

Supreme Court rules in favor of Wood County dairy farm

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has overruled an appeals court and granted the owners of a proposed dairy operation in the Central Wisconsin town of Saratoga the right to use over 6300 acres of land despite a town zoning ordinance

The case of Golden Sands Dairy LLC vs the Town of Saratoga was announced Tuesday morning. At stake was whether the Wysocki family can expand their operation to cover 6,388 acres, allowing for over 5 thousand head of cattle and supporting crops.

The two sides have been at odds over the expansion for the better part of five years. A previous Appeals Court ruling in 2014 determined that the family was legal in obtaining a permit for seven buildings on the land.

Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and Shirley Abrahamson both dissented. Abrahamson wrote that decision creates uncertainty in the building permit process.

The current issue was with the acres outside the area where the buildings will be constructed. At the time of the application that land was zoned as unrestricted, meaning it could be used for any lawful purpose. The town re-zoned that land shortly after the initial permit application was submitted in a way that prohibited Golden Sands’ planned agricultural use. The issue has been tied up in the court system ever since.

Town officials have stated that it’s not possible for an expanded Golden Sands Dairy to keep its pollution levels down, saying in November of 2016 that the area’s drinking water was already showing an unhealthy level of nitrates.

The Wysocki family says it still plans to work with the Town to alleviate their concerns.

WSAU

Wisconsin set to test entire backlog of sexual assault kits by end of year

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Wisconsin’s backlog of untested sexual assault kits is no more.

Attorney General Brad Schimel says the remaining kits were sent for testing on Tuesday. “When I took office in 2015, I inherited more than 6,000 sexual assault evidence kits that had never been submitted for testing, some of them dating back to the 1980s.”

Schimel says roughly 4,200 of the kits met the criteria for testing. “The kits that we’re testing are kits that have the victim’s consent, and haven’t otherwise been uploaded to the databank.” Schimel says having a kit tested can sometimes be a traumatic experience for victims, and some of the tests they had on hand were collected without the victim’s consent.

Another roadblock to getting the tests completed was the sheer glut of kits that were sent off to be tested in the past several years. “No labs initially said they’d do this work. We went back with a second request for bids, and we were able to convince Bode Cellmark Labs to get involved.”

Schimel says over 100 thousand sexual assault kits were submitted for testing nationally after media reports criticizing the lack of investigation went public. Three agencies are now testing Wisconsin’s kits.

The DOJ is working from $4 million in grants to get this done, but that they had to do some work for that funding.

“It meant getting the police reports, getting all the other collateral evidence together identifying the circumstances of the sexual assaults. We had to report that to our grant providers before we could start testing a kit,” says Schimel.

The Department of Justice says they’ll be able to start working on investigations and prosecutions once the testing is completed by the end of the year.