Latest news with #Evers
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Evers raises Pride flag over Wisconsin State Capitol
The Progress Pride Flag flies over the Wisconsin Capitol. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner) For the seventh time, Gov. Tony Evers ordered the Progress Pride Flag to fly over the Wisconsin State Capitol for LGBTQ Pride Month. This year, Pride Month begins on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which gave same-sex couples the right to get married in 2015. But Evers' celebration of LGBTQ pride is occuring as the administration of President Donald Trump attacks the rights of transgender people and a recent Gallup poll found that Republican acceptance of same-sex marriage has fallen to its lowest level in nine years. 'When the Pride Flag flies above the People's House, it sends a clear and unequivocal message that Wisconsin recognizes and celebrates LGBTQ Wisconsinites and Americans,' Evers said in a statement. 'Every day, but especially today and this month, we reaffirm our commitment to striving to be a place where every LGBTQ kid, person, and family can be bold in their truth and be safe, treated with dignity and respect, and welcomed without fear of persecution, judgment, or discrimination. I promised long ago that, as governor, I would always fight to protect LGBTQ Wisconsinites with every tool and every power that I have. I will never stop keeping that promise.' In the executive order Evers signed Friday, he notes that the LGBTQ has been under attack in recent years, including in Wisconsin where Republicans have tried more than once to pass legislation attacking transgender children. 'Despite historic victories, in the last several years, there has been a significant increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation introduced in state Legislatures across the country, including in Wisconsin, that have targeted LGBTQ kids and people and increased dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, as well as efforts on a state and national level to erase LGBTQ history and stories.' The Progress Pride Flag flying above the Capitol includes the recognizable LGBTQ rainbow colors and a chevron of additional stripes that represent LGBTQ people of color, the transgender community and people with HIV/AIDS. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Budget committee Republicans again cut increases in licensing agency staff
State Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) argues Thursday in the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee for including the full budget request from the state Department of Safety and Professional Services in the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget. (Screenshot/WisEye) Republicans on the Legislature's budget committee rejected a proposal Thursday to add permanent staff to the state agency responsible for ensuring that a range of professionals have licenses they need to do their jobs. Instead, the Joint Finance Committee voted along party lines to extend five contract positions for three more years as well as add a handful of other positions. The 2025-27 state budget marks the fourth one in which Gov. Tony Evers has been rebuffed after urging lawmakers to increase staffing at the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) to speed up the agency's license and permit administration. There was no debate during the 45-minute meeting Thursday. All four Democrats on the committee spoke up, either to advocate for their proposal for the agency or to criticize the GOP proposal as inadequate. None of the Republicans, however, made arguments for their plan for DSPS or against the Democrats' alternative. In addition to issuing professional licenses in health care, personal services, professions such as accounting or architecture and for skilled tradespeople such as plumbers and electricians, DSPS also oversees a variety of building and other public safety licenses and permits. Starting more than three years ago, Republican lawmakers raised criticism of the agency amid heavy backlogs in the licensing process for a wide range of professionals. Democratic lawmakers — as well as some outside groups representing licensed professionals — have charged the backlog was a result of the Legislature's failure to authorize more positions at the department. The department is almost entirely self-funded through the fees it collects from license applications, but the size of its staff requires the approval of the Legislature. In the 2023-25 draft state budget, Evers requested 74 new positions at DSPS, but the final spending plan drafted largely by the Republican majority on the finance committee added 17.75 positions. Evers redirected pandemic relief funds to DSPS to hire more contract workers to help manage the licensing process. In the last couple of years, the backlog has been reduced so that on average a license is issued in two weeks, according to state Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay), a finance committee member. In his 2025-27 budget draft, Evers requested 30 new positions at the agency. On Thursday, Democrats on the finance committee proposed adding 31 positions, including 14 to staff the department's call center serving license applicants and nine additional employees to process license applications. Authorizing fewer people than DSPS has requested 'has a tremendous risk of causing significant delays or or even just making it a little bit harder for people to be able to get their license,' said Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha). 'We want people to be able to get the licenses that they need so they can go to work. We want people to get the renewals that they need so they can continue working.' State law requires about 10% of the fee revenue from professional licenses in health and business professions to be transferred to the state budget's general fund. 'We have been pulling funds out of an agency that's almost basically self-sufficient and dumping the money into the general fund, all while the demand for licenses is exploding,' said Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee). Johnson warned the committee that if the licensing process gets bogged down again, shortages in fields such as health care in particular are likely to worsen. Falling short of funding the department's full request 'impacts every single person in the state, whether you're a licensee or not,' said Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). 'What we are doing is starving that system and making it harder for every single one of us to access needed professional services.' The Democratic proposal failed on a 4-12 vote, with all the Republicans on the 16-member committee voting against it. The Republican measure passed 12-4, with only Republicans' support. It extends five contract call center positions that expire Sept. 30 for another three years. The GOP motion omits three lawyers and three paralegals the department had requested for professional regulation compliance and for the state's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. The motion also transfers $5 million from DSPS revenues to the state budget's general fund, in addition to the annual 10% from license fees. The Republican measure authorizes a consultant for pharmacy inspections that was part of the original budget draft. It also includes funding to continue a youth firefighter training grant that was in the original request and the Democratic proposal. The committee's co-chairs, Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), released a joint statement later Thursday declaring that 'Joint Finance Republicans voted to invest in important government services while holding the line on spending.' The statement cited funding for DSPS call center staff 'to help credential holders and the public navigate licensure platforms' and said the funding 'ensures the department can operate effectively and provide these critical services to professionals.' Immediately after the final vote, however, Andraca told her colleagues that the outcome was a missed opportunity. 'We could be sitting here claiming a bipartisan success story, because today the median time to get a license is only 15 days,' Andraca said. 'We should be continuing the success story and taking a victory lap, and instead we're chipping away the progress that we've made — and that's very disappointing.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Grassroots pressure on Gov. Evers reflects nationwide impatience with Dems
Robert Kraig of Citizen Action at the podium in the Senate parlor in the Wisconsin State Capitol on Tuesday, May 27 , surrounded by representatives of other grassroots groups | Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner More than 100 citizens from an array of grassroots groups packed the Wisconsin state Senate parlor and marched on Gov. Tony Evers' office Tuesday, their chants bouncing off the marble walls inside the Capitol. They were there to deliver a letter — which they urged others to sign online — demanding that Evers veto the state budget if it doesn't include key elements of the governor's own budget proposal. 'The whole Democratic grassroots is now demanding that national leaders stand and fight,' said Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, who helped organize the effort, 'and I think that spirit is now being translated down to the state level.' Public school advocates, child care providers, teachers' unions and advocates for criminal justice reform and health care access came to demand that Evers take a stronger stand and threaten to use his significant veto power in negotiations with Republicans. 'There has been a lot of talk over the last year about whether or not we can get this done as adults, or whether we have to be impolite,' Michael Jones, president of Madison Teachers, Inc., said of state budget negotiations. 'Too much gets conceded about being polite,' he added. 'Politeness without reciprocal respect is just being a sucker.' In their letter, the advocates assured Evers that Wisconsinites were behind his original budget proposal — the one Republican legislative leaders threw in the trash. The advocates urged him to 'hold the line' and reject any budget that doesn't accept federal Medicaid expansion money, provide a 60% state reimbursement to schools for special education costs, close the Green Bay Correctional Institution, restore his proposed $480 million for child care and reject the snowballing growth of school vouchers. Brooke Legler, a child care provider and co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (W.E.C.A.N.), has been leading a recent high-profile effort to sound the alarm about the loss of child care funds. 'So many of us are going to be closing our doors because we cannot keep going and parents can't afford to pay what they are paying,' she said during a press conference in the Senate parlor. Treating child care like any other business doesn't work, she added. Instead, it needs to be seen as a public good. 'Gov. Evers declared this the year of the kid,' Legler said, but 'it's not going to be' if Evers signs a budget that leaves out crucial funding for child care. Tanya Atkinson of Planned Parenthood Wisconsin spoke at the press conference about congressional Republicans' effort to cancel Medicaid funding for patient care at Planned Parenthood. In Wisconsin, 60% of Planned Parenthood's patients have Medicaid as their form of insurance, she said. Most of them live in rural areas, are low-income, or are women of color who 'continue to be further pushed out of our health care system,' Atkinson said. 'And it doesn't have to be that way. It is time for us to take the politics out of sexual reproductive health altogether.' Atkinson and the other assembled advocates praised Evers' budget proposal, including the part that would finally allow Wisconsin to join the 40 other states that have accepted the federal Medicaid expansion, making 90,000 more Wisconsinites eligible for Medicaid coverage and bringing about $1.5 billion into the state in the next budget cycle. Shaniya Cooper, a college student from Milwaukee and a BadgerCare recipient who lives with lupus, talked about how scary it was to realize she could lose her Medicaid coverage under congressional Republicans' budget plan. 'To me, this is life or death,' she said. When she first learned about proposed Medicaid cuts, 'I cried,' she said. 'I felt fear and dread.' She described having a flare-up of her lupus, with swelling and fluid around her heart, and then finding out she had to fill out paperwork to reapply for Medicaid, since it was unclear if her treatment would still be covered. 'It isn't just about the paperwork. It's about waking up each day with the fear that the care I might need might be gone tomorrow,' she said, 'It's about knowing that people are quietly suffering mentally and emotionally from the stress and the anxiety that these policies are creating.' Her voice broke and people around her yelled encouragement. 'You got this!' someone shouted. 'What's at stake here is humanity,' she continued, 'and if we do nothing, we allow these cuts to happen, we are silently endorsing the neglect and slow death of those who cannot afford prime insurance. That is not a civil society. That is not justice.' 'We are here because we will not be pitted against each other to fight for crumbs in a time of plenty,' said Heather DuBois Bourenane of the Wisconsin Public Education Network. 'We will not be divided on the issues that matter most where we live, because some people refuse to listen to us.' DuBois Bourenane derided what she called a 'cycle of disinvestment, first of all, but it's also a cycle of disrespect,' by Republicans who dismissed Evers' budget proposals despite overwhelming public support. Increasing funding for schools, expanding Medicaid coverage and reforming the criminal justice system by closing prisons and reducing incarceration are popular measures. 'Gov. Evers has the power, with his veto pen, to break [the cycle],' she said, 'and we're calling on him to use the full force, the full power of that pen, to say, enough is enough. It stops with me.' 'There's a tremendous amount of Democratic leverage in this budget, if you consider both the number of Democratic members in the Senate and the veto,' Kraig said. 'These are groups with large memberships calling on the governor to stand and fight,' he added. Evers did not make an appearance or respond to the rowdy group at the Capitol. But it was clear they have no intention of going away quietly, SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Gov. Evers continues annual statewide 'Pothole Patrol' Tour in Oshkosh
OSHKOSH, Wis. (WFRV) – Gov. Tony Evers made a stop in Oshkosh as part of his annual 'Pothole Patrol' tour, highlighting the need for continued investment in Wisconsin's roads, bridges, and infrastructure in the upcoming state budget. Now in its fifth year, the 'Pothole Patrol' tour gives the governor a chance to meet with local public works crews and transportation leaders, while also drawing attention to the state's ongoing infrastructure needs. This year's visit was joined by representatives from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and local officials. Cops, kids & kindness: 'Lemonade With The Law' kicks off in Oshkosh Since taking office in 2019, Gov. Evers has made infrastructure a top priority, overseeing improvements to more than 8,600 miles of roads and 2,000 bridges across the state. To put that in perspective, that's enough road to drive from Wausau, Wisconsin, to Disney World in Florida and back, three times. 'Infrastructure isn't just about fixing potholes. It's about making sure our communities can grow and thrive,' Gov. Evers said. 'We've made historic progress, but there's still more work to do.' In his 2025-27 Executive Budget, Gov. Evers proposed over $2.6 billion for the State Highway Rehabilitation Program, marking a $397 million increase from the previous cycle. Other key transportation proposals in the budget include: $100 million for the Local Roads Improvement Supplement Program; $50 million for the Agricultural Roads Improvement Program (ARIP); $790 million for major highway development, including I-41 and I-43 expansions; More than $300 million to continue work on the I-94 East/West project; Increases to general transportation and county forest road aid programs. Camper in Door County a complete loss after fire, owner's call to 911 fails several times due to Cellcom outage However, many of these proposals were recently stripped from the budget by the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee. Among the cuts were funds for ARIP, transit capital assistance, expressway policing, and local traffic calming grants. 'We're doing everything we can to keep moving forward, but these cuts are a step in the wrong direction,' said Evers. 'Strong infrastructure means safer roads, more jobs, and better opportunities for families and businesses across Wisconsin.' The governor's visit in Oshkosh is part of a broader push to rally public support for restoring these investments in the final budget. With infrastructure shaping up to be a key issue in the upcoming legislative session, the 'Pothole Patrol' is once again putting Wisconsin's roads, and those who depend on them, front and center. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
One dead in three-vehicle crash in Fond du Lac County, investigation ongoing
TOWN OF EDEN, Wis. (WFRV) – A three-vehicle crash in rural Fond du Lac County left one man dead and two others evaluated at the scene. According to a press release from the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office, the incident occurred just after 2:10 p.m. at the intersection of County Highway B and County Highway K in the Town of Eden. Multiple 911 calls were reported, altering authorities to the crash. Responders from the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office, Eden Fire Department, and Campbellsport Ambulance arrived on scene shortly after the initial reports. Gov. Evers continues annual statewide 'Pothole Patrol' Tour in Oshkosh According to the preliminary investigation, a SUV traveling east on County Highway B attempted to turn left onto County Highway K. The SUV failed to yield to an oncoming dump truck headed westbound, resulting in a collision. The impact pushed the SUV into the north ditch, while the dump truck continued off the roadway into the south ditch. Before coming to a stop, the dump truck also struck an eastbound cement truck. The driver of the SUV, a 79-year-old man from Fond du Lac, was found unresponsive at the scene. Despite life-saving efforts by emergency personnel, he was pronounced dead from his injuries. The dump truck was driven by a 67-year-old Fond du Lac man, who suffered minor injuries and was evaluated at the scene by EMS. He is cooperating with the ongoing investigation. The cement truck driver, a 61-year-old man from Van Dyne, was not injured and was released from the scene. Camper in Door County a complete loss after fire, owner's call to 911 fails several times due to Cellcom outage The Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office Crash Reconstruction Team continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the crash. The names of those involved are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. County Highway B was closed for approximately four hours as crews worked at the scene. The Sheriff's Office was assisted by Wisconsin State Patrol, the Fond du Lac County Medical Examiner's Office, Eden Fire Department, Campbellsport Ambulance, City of Fond du Lac Ambulance, and the Fond du Lac County Highway Department. No further information is being released at this time. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
