News 03.07.16
7 March 2017 News
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a case involving a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a bicyclist in Fond du lac County. Last August a Wisconsin Appeals court reversed Fond du lac judge Gary Sharpe’s decision to toss out Adam Blackman’s .10 percent blood-alcohol test results. Sharpe says Blackman was compelled to give a sample under a coercive portion of the state’s implied consent law. The appellate court concluded that Blackman was not coerced because he had the choice to submit a sample or have his driver’s license revoked. The June 2013 crash on County Highway WH in the town of Taycheeda seriously injured Steven Kuphal of Fond du Lac.
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Firefighters in the Wisconsin community of Mayville had to respond to a fire at a familiar scene — their own firehouse. Firefighters were dispatched round 10 p.m. Saturday after a passer-by reported seeing flames at the station, which is not staffed around the clock. The volunteer fire department says crews arrived to find a vehicle on fire inside the station and put it out. The fire was confined to the vehicle, but the station had to be ventilated due to the heavy smoke. Investigators are still trying to figure out what sparked the fire. The department says the fire won’t affect its operations. Cleanup took place on Sunday.
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The owner of three scrap metal companies is accused of defrauding a Fond du lac scrap metal company out of millions of dollars. Sterling Kienbaum is charged with racketeering and theft. According to a criminal complaint Kienbaum is accused of stealing $14 million from Sadoff Iron and Metal between 2009 and May of 2015. Investigators say Kienbaum directed the operation where vehicles were packed with dirt and other debris to fraudulently increase the weight of what was being sold to Sadoff’s. According to the complaint Kienbaum made cash payments to a semi driver who pocketed some of the cash for himself and paid some to a Sadoff employee. Those individuals, Daniel Christianson and Donald Krueger were convicted last year and placed on probation.
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A new report says borrowing by Wisconsin public school districts is at its highest levels in at least 20 years. The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance reported Monday that voters approved $1.35 billion in new borrowing for Wisconsin public schools last year. The previous high, adjusted for inflation, was more than $1 billion in 1996. And this spring 23 districts are asking voters to approve nearly $708 million in additional debt. The Taxpayers Alliance says most of the money is being used to pay for new construction or remodeling projects. As recently as 2011, new debt by K-12 public schools was one-tenth of what it was last year. Borrowing has skyrocketed from around $2,300 per student in 2010 to more than $9,700 per student in 2016.
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Gov. Scott Walker says his budget proposal sets the state up for a sunny future. But that depends on how you look at it. The budget Walker submitted to the Legislature in February balances, as it’s required to under state law. But when that same budget is measured using generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, the picture is much different. With that measurement, the state’s true budget deficit would grow to more than $2 billion by 2019 — the largest it’s been since 2012. Walker campaigned on a platform of eliminating the deficit. And he did chip away at it during his first few years in office, getting it as low as $1.4 billion from a high of $3 billion. But his proposed budget would send it back up.
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Consumers from Wisconsin are crossing the border to Illinois to stock up on a commodity they can’t buy in the Dairy State — Irish butter. A 1954 Wisconsin law prohibits the sale of butter without a state or federal grade mark. So fans of Kerrygold Irish-made butter must cross the border to get the butter made from hormone-free milk that’s produced from grass-fed cows — or turn to the internet. Despite the 1954 law, Kerrygold butter sometimes finds its way to the shelves of Wisconsin grocers, including a Target store in Waukesha recently. The company that markets Kerrygold, Ornua Foods North America, says it has been working with regulators so it can sell its butter in Wisconsin. Ornua spokesman Brian Cleere says there’s no timetable on when that might happen.
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