Morning State News Briefs: Power restored in Minocqua after outage

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MINOCQUA - Power was restored at mid-morning in the Minocqua area, after about seven-thousand electric customers were left in the dark.

The Wisconsin Public Service utility said two power lines touched each other – and it resulted in early morning outages in parts of Minocqua, Woodruff, Boulder Junction, Lac Du Flambeau, and Arbor Vitae.

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A health alert has been issued in Milwaukee, after a cab driver came down with rubella. It’s also known as the German measles – and a person can spread it simply by talking to someone in close proximity. Milwaukee health officials say they want to talk to anyone who rode an American United cab in the city between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. from April 13th through last Saturday. Any contact a driver might have had with a pregnant woman could put her unborn child in danger. Health officials say a rubella has a long incubation period – so it might be a week before other possible cases begin to surface.

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A rural Dane County man was killed late last night when his pick-up truck hit several trees. It happened around 11 o’clock near Cross Plains. Sheriff’s deputies said a 21-year-old driver was heading north on a town road when his truck veered into the left ditch and struck several trees and an embankment. The driver was ejected, and authorities said he was not wearing a seat-belt. He died at the scene. No one else was in the vehicle at the time.

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They have to have some place to go. As police get ready to shut down the Occupy Madison location, an area agency is stepping up to help the people they expect to be displaced. Madison city officials say the downtown Occupy location has changed – from a group of political protestors to a homeless encampment. When the permit expires next Monday, those people left behind will be evicted. Porchlight, Incorporated, says it is going to open its winter overflow shelter to give homeless men a place to go.

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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will attend two fundraising event for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker next week. Walker’s campaign announced Christie will appear in Milwaukee and Green Bay Wednesday. The e-mail from the campaign calls the two governors “bond and courageous men” who have taken on the status quo. It says Walker and Christie have done more to put American back on track than anyone in a generation. The primary for the recall election is a week from next Tuesday. In addition to four candidates running on the Democratic side, Walker has Republican opposition from Arthur Kohl-Riggs. Winners will meet in the general recall election June 5th.

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Almost 450 Wisconsin prisoners have illegally collected food stamp benefits while behind bars. That’s what state auditors said in a report released this morning. The Legislative Audit Bureau checked to see if Wisconsin’s 831,000 Food-Share recipients from January were also in state corrections’ programs. And besides the 447 prisoners getting food stamps, almost 1,200 others were still getting benefits even though were declared ineligible. Officials said those people were fleeing to avoid prosecution or imprisonment – or were violating conditions of probation or parole. The Audit Bureau said it provided information about those cases to law enforcement, and to the state Health Services Department which runs the Food-Share program. The auditors suggested that the health agency improve its fraud investigations, and determine how the state’s new Inspector General’s office can work to prevent Food-Share fraud. The corrections’ review was part of an overall study of Food-Share. That program gave out a total of $1.1 billion dollars in benefits in the state’s last fiscal year. That’s 207-percent more than the benefits given out four years earlier.

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Democrat Tom Barrett said this morning that he raised $750,000 in just 25 days in his bid for governor in the Walker recall election. Barrett’s announcement comes in advance of a Monday deadline, in which candidates in six recall contests must report how much they’ve raised and spent. It will be the last campaign finance reports before the May eighth primaries. Barrett, the Milwaukee mayor, did not enter the governor’s race until March 30th. He faces fellow Democrats Kathleen Falk, Douglas La Follette, and state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout of Alma in a primary a week from Tuesday. That winner will face Walker on June fifth. In January, Walker reported raising $12-million. The Republican governor has said he expects out-of-state unions and Democratic supporters to spend that much or more against him.

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Milwaukee’s medical examiner has identified skeletal remains found on an island in a park lagoon. Officials said dental records helped identify the remains of Jeffrey Avery. A U.S. agriculture employee found the remains March 28th when he was working on the island. Clothing and jewelry items were also found there. Officials said Avery had not been seen alive since February of 2008.

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A new report says Wisconsin residents and businesses will get about $17-million in rebates from their health insurers this year. That’s because those firms spent more on administrative costs than allowed under the national health reform law. The Kaiser Family Foundation says over 365-thousand Wisconsinites can expect rebates from companies that did not spend the required 80-percent of their premium revenues on actual care. That includes people who buy their own insurance, as well as those in group plans. Kaiser says the rebates will average $28 for each customer in a small group plan, to 81-dollars for individual policy-holders. Kaiser CEO Drew Altman says the rebates are quote, “tangible benefits” for consumers and employers. Altman says it’s an effective tool for getting insurance companies to put more of their premium revenues toward health care instead of administrative costs and profits. But an industry group called America’s Health Insurance Plans says consumers will actually lose out. It says the new benefits required under the health reform law will make premiums rise by more than amounts of the rebates.

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One of Milwaukee’s largest private foundations will help provide training for some of the highly-skilled workers that manufacturers are searching for. The Helen Bader Foundation has awarded one-point-one million dollars in grants to 23 organizations. The main goal is to eventually help employers find skilled workers for positions that go vacant while thousands in southeast Wisconsin remain unemployed. The Milwaukee-Seven economic development group estimates that 5,600 industrial jobs in the region have gone unfilled. Some of the new grant recipients are employers. But most are non-profit groups that will use the money for either direct job training or related functions like transportation and legal help. One grant will hire people to keep up some of the thousands of homes in Milwaukee vacated by foreclosures. The Bader Foundation also says it will budget one-and-a-half million dollars a year in workforce training grants for the forseeable future.

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It’s against the law for Wisconsin parents to host underage drinking parties in their homes. But 18 communities have even tougher laws against providing alcohol and hosting underage parties anywhere – including parks and hotels. And the fines are often bigger. Oregon in Dane County just passed a “social host” ordinance that carries a fine of two-thousand-dollars for first-time violations – four times higher than the state’s penalty. A number of communities are looking at toughening up their “social host” laws. They include Stoughton, where Police Chief Greg Leck says it would encourage parents to quote, “Just think what you’re doing a little bit, and the consequences that are out there.” Frank Harris of Mothers Against Drunk Driving says all Wisconsin communities should consider tougher ordinances. He says the state’s problem with underage drinking is quote, “astronomical.”

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A charity event will be held in Monroe tonight, where folks can taste up to 100 of the top cheeses from this year’s World Championship Cheese Contest. The proceeds will go to the Monsignor Thomas Campion Charitable Fund – which serves a number of non-profit, religious, and educational groups in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. The Wisconsin Cheese-makers Association and the Foreign Type Cheese-makers are sponsoring the fund-raiser, which is called the “Championship Cheese Tasting Event.” Folks will be served beer, dinner, and dozens of the cheeses entered in the recent world contest in Madison.

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Congress is being asked to waive military time limits, so a Civil War hero from Delafield can be honored. Senate Democrat Herb Kohl and La Crosse House Democrat Ron Kind have introduced bills to allow Army First Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing to be awarded the Medal of Honor. The 22-year-old Cushing was killed in the Battle-of-Gettysburg, and he refused to drop his guns despite being seriously wounded. A number of people have campaigned since the 1980’s to give Cushing the Medal-of-Honor – even though the award must normally be presented within five years of a heroic act. If Congress agrees to waive the time limit, President Obama would have to give final approval to the award. The Army Secretary had recommended in 2010 that Cushing be awarded the Medal-of-Honor.

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Wisconsin Senate Democrat Herb Kohl of Milwaukee voted yes and Republican Ron Johnson of Oshkosh voted no, when the U.S. Senate reauthorized the popular Violence Against Women Act. Yesterday’s vote was 68-31 to renew programs that prevent-and-react to domestic and sexual abuse. The act was extended for one year, with $650-million dollars in funding. Normally, the 18-year-old law gets routine bi-partisan renewals. But in this politically-charged election year, Republicans initially balked when majority Senate Democrats added provisions to protect lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and trans-gender abuse victims. Republicans rejected those provisions and added more penalties for abusers. But after being accused of waging a “war on women,” 15 Republicans side-stepped another partisan battle on the subject – and they joined Democrats in passing the act. Johnson held his ground, accusing Democrats of politicizing the measure. Johnson said it should have included an interstate DNA database to catch sex offenders across state lines – and hiring more analysts to reduce a backlog of DNA investigations in rape cases. Kohl said the package protects victims. And he said his colleagues approved new protections he suggested for elderly victims. The package now goes to the House, where majority Republicans are talking about a number of changes – including a five-year extension instead of one year.

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A Milwaukee animal shelter that was saved by a unique cat will open its new location tomorrow. The non-profit Milwaukee Animal Rescue Center had been located in a shopping mall, until it learned last fall that its rent was about to double. Right about then, the shelter took in a cat with 26 toes – two more on each foot than normal. So they made the animal the centerpiece of a fund drive in which people donated 26-dollars – one for each toe. That raised $125,000, enough to rent to a new building in Greenfield that will open tomorrow. Center owner Amy Rowell is grateful for the support – but after buying the facility, her staff learned they cannot fix the basement to bring it up-to-code. So they’ll seed more donations in the future for a new shelter. But in the meantime, Daniel the cat is being hailed for his accomplishments. He’s now the shelter’s mascot.

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One woman was killed overnight in an apartment fire in Racine. Units were called about 12:15 this morning to the building. Authorities said the fire was put out quickly, and it caused about 15-thousand-dollars in damage. Officials did not say if the woman lived in the building. Other tenants were evacuated, and the Red Cross was providing temporary housing for those people at last word. Other details were not immediately available.

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A Rhinelander man is due in court this afternoon on allegations that he choked a nine-month-old boy he was baby-sitting last week. 23-year-old Christopher Schimke faces three felony counts, and a judge in Oneida County is expected to decide if there’s enough evidence to order a trial. According to authorities, the boy’s mother paid Schimke to babysit her infant – and when she came home, she noticed that the child had red shoulder marks along with a swollen cheek and ear. Prosecutors said Schimke first claimed he accidentally hit the baby with a video-game controller – but later, he told police he briefly tried to choke the youngsters because he wouldn’t stop crying. Schimke is charged with strangulation-and-suffocation, reckless endangerment, and felony child abuse. A $50,000 bond was ordered at his first court hearing.

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Wisconsin voters were assured yesterday that they will not need to show a valid photo ID to vote in the six recall elections in May and June. The Fourth District Court of Appeals in Madison said no to re-instating the voter ID law, until it can decide whether to throw out a permanent injunction against the mandate. That injunction was sought by the League of Women Voters, and the appellate court said its final decision won’t come until sometime after the general recall elections on June fifth. Today’s ruling comes one day after a second appellate court in Waukesha refused to throw out the temporary injunction which halted the ID law, until a judge makes a final decision in a trial held earlier this month. The trial was connected with a separate lawsuit against the voter ID law from black and Hispanic groups in Milwaukee. The judge said his decision probably wouldn’t come until late June. As a result, the State Justice Department failed to bring back the photo ID mandate in time for the upcoming recall elections against the governor, lieutenant governor, and four state senators.

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The Democratic front-runner in the governor’s recall election said today that jobs have become the defining issue in the race. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett held a news conference at Ingeteam, a maker of wind energy turbines in Milwaukee. He said Walker’s virtual elimination of public union bargaining – as well as the GOP budget policies – cost the state thousands of jobs, as reported in two federal-and-state employment surveys released this week. But Ciara Matthews of the Walker campaign took aim at Barrett’s job creation record as Milwaukee’s mayor. She called that record “abysmal” and said it’s quote, “an anchor weighing on Wisconsin’s ability to create jobs.” The Walker camp said unemployment in Milwaukee jumped by 29-percent during Barrett’s eight-plus years as Milwaukee’s mayor, and the city is the ninth-poorest in the nation. Barrett said some of that is Walker’s fault. He said the state’s rejection of funding for a new high-speed train maintenance depot shows that Walker’s killing jobs in Milwaukee instead of creating them.

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The state Justice Department says it’s creating a separate unit to handle mortgage fraud, anti-trust allegations, and other consumer protection cases. Those matters have been handled in the department’s criminal litigation unit. But the Justice agency says the new division will quote, “enhance the roles we play in this area.” Wisconsin’s consumer laws prohibit deceptive and unfair business practices in things like advertising, sales, debt collections, and charitable solicitations.

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The Democratic front-runner in the governor’s recall election said today that jobs have become the defining issue in the race. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett held a news conference at Ingeteam, a maker of wind energy turbines in Milwaukee. He said Walker’s virtual elimination of public union bargaining – as well as the GOP budget policies – cost the state thousands of jobs, as reported in two federal-and-state employment surveys released this week. But Ciara Matthews of the Walker campaign took aim at Barrett’s job creation record as Milwaukee’s mayor. She called that record “abysmal” and said it’s quote, “an anchor weighing on Wisconsin’s ability to create jobs.” The Walker camp said unemployment in Milwaukee jumped by 29-percent during Barrett’s eight-plus years as Milwaukee’s mayor, and the city is the ninth-poorest in the nation. Barrett said some of that is Walker’s fault. He said the state’s rejection of funding for a new high-speed train maintenance depot shows that Walker’s killing jobs in Milwaukee instead of creating them.

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The state Justice Department says it’s creating a separate unit to handle mortgage fraud, anti-trust allegations, and other consumer protection cases. Those matters have been handled in the department’s criminal litigation unit. But the Justice agency says the new division will quote, “enhance the roles we play in this area.” Wisconsin’s consumer laws prohibit deceptive and unfair business practices in things like advertising, sales, debt collections, and charitable solicitations.

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Wisconsin’s largest mortgage insurance company has been authorized to sell more stock if it has to. Shareholders have agreed to let MGIC of Milwaukee increase its total number of shares from $460-million to $680-million. The company has lost money for five straight years, due to large amounts of insurance claims from lenders who suffered losses from defaulted mortgages during the recession. MGIC raised a billion dollars in new capital two years ago. The new stock authorization can raise even more capital, but CEO Curt Culver calls it a tool for the future – and it will only be used if it’s absolutely necessary. The law requires mortgage insurers have certain amounts of capital on hand before they can underwrite new policies. Culver says recent trends are positive, and his business is improving – but he could not say when MGIC could make a profit again.

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Mike Block of New Berlin is Wisconsin’s latest lottery millionaire. He cashed in his winning Powerball ticket yesterday, after matching all five regular numbers on Wednesday night to win the game’s second-prize of a million dollars. Block let the computer pick 10 sets of numbers – and besides his big win, he won four-dollars on a another set. After taxes, he took home just over $672,000 A Speedway convenience store in New Berlin sold the ticket, and they’ll get a 20-thousand dollar commission. Block is the third million-dollar Powerball winner in Wisconsin this year, and the second this month. Julie Trainor of Whitehall won a pair of million-dollar prizes in the April 14th game.

Tags: news, wisconsin