Morning State News Briefs: Milwaukee's bond rating downgraded

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MILWAUKEE - Wisconsin’s largest city has had its bond rating reduced – but Milwaukee officials say it will not have a major effect on interest rates for the city’s borrowing.

Moody’s Investors Service dropped Milwaukee’s bond rating from Double-“A”-One to Double-“A”-Two. Deputy city comptroller Mike Daun said the new rating bond matches that of Standard-and-Poor’s, which continues to give Milwaukee a Double-“A” grade. Moody’s gave high marks to Milwaukee’s fiscal management and its cash reserves. But it was concerned about the city’s high poverty rate, its future property tax base, and cuts in state aid.

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Wisconsin’s largest city has 23 homicides this year, six more than at this time in 2011. Milwaukee Police identified the city’s latest victim today as 52-year-old Charles Hegwood. Investigators said he was punched in the head last Thursday afternoon in a north side neighborhood. Hegwood died yesterday at a hospital from a head injury. Police say they’ve been looking for a known suspect – but as of mid-day, an arrest had not been made.

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Construction is underway on a $627-million pollution control project at one of Wisconsin’s largest coal-fired power plants. Governor Scott Walker attended a ground-breaking ceremony yesterday at the Columbia Energy Center just south of Portage. Air pollution scrubbers are being installed, with the goal of reducing emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide, and various particulates. The Columbia plant has been the state’s largest source of sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions – both of which can cause health problems. Wisconsin Power-and-Light spokesman Steve Schultz said construction actually began in February. The project is due to be completed in 2014. Schultz said the project will create around 600 construction jobs, with up to 400 workers on the site each day. State utility regulators approved the new pollution controls in February of last year. Customers of Columbia’s owners – Power-and-Light, Wisconsin Public Service, and Madison Gas-and-Electric – will help pay for the work.

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State consumer protection officials are telling businesses and local governments to watch out for fake billing notices for telecommunication services. A number of operations have received $425 invoices from a California firm which claimed to provide a “telecom maintenance agreement.” City governments in Eau Claire and Racine have told state officials they received the billings, both saying they never did business with the company. Businesses in Green Bay, Waupun, and Elkhorn have complained about the same thing. The state’s consumer agency sent the firm an official warning, saying it’s against the law to send solicitations disguised as bills.

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Milwaukee Police are checking to see if a 57-year-old woman suffered a medical problem right before her van slammed into a parked truck. Christele Williams of Milwaukee died in that crash, which happened Sunday afternoon on the city’s northwest side. The medical examiner’s office identified Williams yesterday. Police said she was going at 35-miles-an-hour before she turned left and hit a truck that was parked at a business docking bay. An 18-month-old child in the vehicle escaped injury, but was taken to a hospital to be checked out. The medical examiner said Williams was prescribed oxycodone and morphine for chronic back pain – and a daughter said she was acting dizzy lately.

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Six Milwaukee residents pleaded guilty yesterday to a one-million-dollar Medicaid fraud scheme. 44-year-old Kimberly Thomas, 40-year-old Darius Jarrett, 35-year-old Erica Danley, 35-year-old Elizabeth Thomas, 31-year-old Lynnesha Craig, and 26-year-old Ericka Thomas were each convicted of three Medicaid fraud counts. They all arranged plea deals in which 7-to-28 other charges were dropped for each defendant, including identity theft. State Justice officials said all six people filed false claims with Medicaid for mechanical devices that support weak limbs – but the equipment was never given to patients. The total amount billed was just over one-and-a-quarter million dollars. But state health officials said they caught about 200-thousand-dollars of fraudulent claims before they could be paid. A seventh defendant, 37-year-old Donnis Carrington, pleaded guilty last month. Sentencing in that case is set for May 23rd.

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A northeast Wisconsin man will spend time on probation, for getting caught with marijuana soon after he was freed from prison for an attempted murder he didn’t commit. 47-year-old Cody Vandenberg of Pulaski had his sentencing withheld yesterday in Oconto County on a felony marijuana possession charge. And Circuit Judge Jay Conley told Vandenberg to undergo a psychological exam to see if he has post-traumatic stress disorder which turned up in a pre-sentence investigation. Vandenberg was freed from prison last August, after serving 16 years for the robbery and stabbing of a man in Bellevue which a co-defendant later admitted committing. Five months after being freed, Vandenberg was arrested for having a small amount of marijuana when police stopped him in Little Suamico for a mechanical problem with his vehicle. Judge Conley ordered absolute sobriety, and he urged Vandenberg to try and put his prison time behind him. As part of his plea deal, a charge of possessing drug paraphernalia was dropped. And he pleaded no contest to driving while intoxicated. He was fined almost $700, and had his driver’s license suspended for six months.

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More charges were filed yesterday against a Madison couple accused of starting and torturing the husband’s 15-year-old daughter. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne filed new felony charges of false imprisonment, failing to protect a child, and causing mental harm to a youngster. That’s in addition to earlier counts of child abuse and neglect. Both parents pleaded innocent to all their counts today in Dane County Circuit Court. Authorities said the girl was kept in the couple’s basement in Madison for years, and was forced to eat scraps off the basement floor while being starved. She ran out of the house in February, and a passer-by called for help. Her step-brother is also charged with molesting her.

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Later this year, when upgrades are completed on a storage tank at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s South Shore sewage treatment plant, tanker trucks will be able to off-load liquid industrial wastes rich in sugar, starch or protein. The work should be completed later this year. A Fond du Lac Company was given the $495,000 contract by the district’s commission earlier today. Pipes will be installed from an unloading station to an existing tank, along with pumps to move up to 100 thousand gallons a day only larger tanks. Bacteria and other microbes in the tanks eat the waste and create methane – which is then used to generate electricity and heat.

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A Milwaukee man is due back in court Wednesday on charges that he spun a four-year-old girl in a clothes dryer, broke her arm, and choked her brother. 26-year-old Nicholas Fuchs is facing six felony charges including reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, strangulation-and-suffocation, and three counts of child abuse. Prosecutors said Fuchs repeatedly placed his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter in a spinning dryer because she wet her pants. Authorities said he also hurt the girl’s five-year-old brother by bruising his genitals, and choking him by the neck. Investigators said the abuse took place from January through October of last year. A judge ordered a $20,000 cash bond. At his next court appearance, the court will decide if there’s enough evidence to order a trial for Fuchs.

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A Milwaukee grocery store customer who shot-and-wounded an armed robber with his concealed weapon is going to federal court to get his gun back. 35-year-old Nazir Al-Mujaahid was cleared of wrongdoing. But police and prosecutors say the gun is still needed as evidence in the cases of two men accused of trying to rob an Aldi’s store in Milwaukee on January 30th. Al-Mujaahid was shopping when he foiled the robbery by shooting at the two men. It was the state’s first known case of a man using a gun to defend himself or others under the five-and-a-half month old concealed carry law. Al-Mujaahid and the pro-gun group Wisconsin Carry Incorporated filed a federal lawsuit. They claim the police and courts are violating Al-Mujaahid’s constitutional rights by not returning his weapon. The man previously went to court twice to get a gun back after it was seized, and a third such case is pending in a state appeals court.

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The Veterans Administration says construction is “moving along” for a new outpatient health clinic in Green Bay. The $45-million facility is expected to open in May of next year – but advocates hope it will be earlier. Bernie Erickson, who chairs a Brown County veterans’ committee, says he’s told the project is ahead of schedule after construction began last fall. And it could open as early as the start of next year. Whenever it opens, the new VA facility will provide specialized care for about 20,000 veterans in northeast Wisconsin who must travel to Milwaukee or elsewhere for certain types of care. About 35-hundred veterans are currently served at a smaller VA clinic in Green Bay. The new facility will be much larger, with 162,000 square feet. Summit Smith Health-care of Milwaukee is putting up the building. They’ll own it, and will lease it to the VA for over five-and-a-half million dollars a year.

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A former Green Bay man will be among five survivors observing the 70th anniversary of the bombing attack over Tokyo that changed the course of World War Two. Major Thomas Griffin was among 80 members of “Doolittle’s Raiders” – the group led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle that conducted the raid. The attack will be observed from tomorrow through Friday at the National U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton Ohio. The surviving members of “Doolittle’s Raiders” will reunite on Wednesday, the day of the 1942 attack. And just like they’ve done in the past, they’ll hoist goblets and recite in unison, “To those who have gone.” The survivors are in their 90’s. Eleven had died since their last reunion six years ago. Griffin is now 95 and living in Cincinnati. He said America needed to strike back after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor more than four months before. And he could not help but think this reunion will be their last major one.

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The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance says there are lots of problems with the state income tax code. The group said some people were hit with an 11-percent tax hike last year, just because their credits and personal exemptions were not adjusted for inflation. The alliance also said married couples are taxed more than if they got divorced and filed as singles. Young workers making 40-thousand-dollars are taxed up to eight times more as seniors with the same income, due to a tax break for Social Security recipients. Those making 50,000 to 150,000 get hit with some of the country’s highest tax rates, while low-income earners pay some of the lowest. The tax alliance also says there are still dozens of discrepancies between the state and federal tax codes – and too much is withheld from paychecks. State Revenue Secretary Rick Chandler says many of those concerns should be reviewed – but some have been addressed. He said over 40 changes were made this year to get the state tax code in line with the federal code. And Chandler said Governor Scott Walker plans to make tax cuts a high priority in the next legislative session. But the secretary disagreed that too much is being withheld. He said most taxpayers want to avoid paying Madison when they fill out their returns – and those who want less withheld can arrange it with their employers.

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Wisconsin utilities will start cutting off electric service yesterday to those behind on their bills. The state’s winter moratorium on disconnections ended yesterday. Kerry Spees of the Wisconsin Public Service utility says the numbers of customers who are past due – and the total amount they owe – are both lower than a year ago. That’s because of the mild winter and an improved economy. Spees says about 24,000 Public Service customers in central and northeast Wisconsin can have their service cut off today if they’re at least four months behind on their bills, and they have not made payment arrangements. The firm said about 18,000 customers were disconnected a year ago. Spees says customers who are behind, and have not connected with the company, should do so as soon as possible.

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More Wisconsin high schools have been making their students sign codes-of-conduct which say they’ll dance appropriately at their proms. Wausau East High School has had such a code for years, due to an increase in sexually-suggestive dancing. And other high schools in the area have followed suit for all of their dances. D.C. Everest High School in Schofield also makes parents sign the behavioral standards. Wausau East principal Joe Svitak said his school’s code was revised about seven years ago, when grinding became popular among teens. He said kids were doing things on the dance floor which would get them arrested on the streets.

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Wisconsin food shoppers spent about two-and-a-half percent more for the same groceries in the first three months of the year. The state’s Farm Bureau Federation said the cost of 16 food items in two dozen cities rose to $49.55, about $1.20 more than in the final three months of last year. But Wisconsin shoppers are getting a bargain compared to their national counterparts. The same food items cost about three-dollars more throughout the country. And the national price hike since New Year’s Eve was seven-percent – almost three times the Wisconsin increase. Ground-chuck, bacon, and cheddar cheese all cost at least seven-and-a-half percent more in the Badger State. Casey Langan of the state’s Farm Bureau said the higher cheese prices reflected a strong demand through the holidays and the Super Bowl – and those prices went down since then. The Farm Bureau says farmers only get about one-sixth of what food shoppers pay. That’s down from about one-third in the mid-1970’s. But while store prices have gradually gone up, Americans still spend only about 10-percent of their disposable incomes on food – the smallest percentage in the world.

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Two Milwaukee police officers are recovering, after their squad car was struck head-on by a suspected drunk driver. A captain said the officers were not seriously hurt. The crash happened Sunday on Milwaukee’s north side. Police said the other driver hit a parked car, swerved into the opposite lane, and hit the squad car. The 37-year-old suspect said he was not hurt but was taken to a hospital anyway. The mishap is still being investigated.

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The state has canceled a $116-million-dollar maintenance contract for two new trains built by Talgo for Amtrak’s high-speed line from Milwaukee-to-Chicago. But Talgo, of Spain, promises to seek mediation – and if that fails, the firm says a lawsuit could be next. Talgo, of Spain, built the trains in Milwaukee to replace older units on the popular Amtrak Hiawatha line. A separate deal would have provided a maintenance base in Milwaukee for the new trains. But the state Legislature’s finance panel recently killed the project by rejecting new planning funds. As a result, the DOT has told Talgo it cannot afford to make payments under the state’s maintenance agreement. A state attorney also told the train-maker that costs are rising to test the new trains – and the federal government said they don’t meet standards for handicapped accessibility. But Talgo vice-president Nora Friend said the DOT is putting quote, “politics ahead of legality,” and it cannot back out of the contract that easily. DOT spokesman Brock Bergey says the state’s purchasing deal for the two new trains remains in place.

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Green Bay Packers’ receiver Donald Driver continues to be one of the top contestants on “Dancing With the Stars.” It was Latin Week on last night’s show on ABC. And Driver and his partner Peta Murgatroyd scored a 27-of-a-possible-30 from the judges for their Argentine tango. That tied Driver with Maria Menounos for second place, behind Katherine Jenkins who had the night’s top score of 29. The fourth of 12 contestants will be sent home on tonight’s results-show.

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The Powerball jackpot has grown to $131 million for Wednesday’s drawing. Someone in Wisconsin could get very rich by just buying a two-dollar ticket. The lump sum payment will top $81 million dollars. About 30 percent of lottery proceeds in Wisconsin goes to provide property tax relief. The lottery reports at least 95 percent of the revenue generated by ticket sales over the years has been returned to the people of Wisconsin.

Tags: news, wisconsin