Month: October 2017

Wisconsin’s budget finished the fiscal year that ended June 30 with a $579 million surplus, $126 million more than expected and the fourth-largest surplus of the past two decades. The amount was higher than expected mostly because agencies spent about $116 million less than they were authorized to spend.

Tax collections and departmental revenues came in almost level — $4.9 million more than projections that were made when the 2015-17 budget was approved two years ago, an indication that economic growth has held steady since then.

“Our pro-growth, pro-taxpayer reforms are working, and this is evidenced by the fact we have ended every year with a surplus since taking office,” Walker said in a statement.

Targeting small and midsize manufacturers, three Wisconsin business organizations have launched an initiative to boost productivity in factories across the state.

Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, Milwaukee 7 and Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership say the new program, called the Transformational Productivity Initiative, will identify factors that limit productivity growth and then work with companies to solve those problems.

The WEDC has awarded Milwaukee 7 a $190,000 matching grant to implement the program, and between five and 10 companies are being sought for a two-year trial period.

The Wisconsin business groups say they aim to develop a user-friendly set of diagnostic and assessment tools for productivity issues.

The tools will come from teams representing select manufacturers, Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership and University of Wisconsin programs in Milwaukee, Stout and Madison.

“It’s a different, comprehensive approach that we haven’t seen anywhere else,” said Kelly Armstrong, the project’s lead for the WEDC.

“TPI is a long-term strategy directed at moving the needle on productivity in the aggregate, working with small and midsize manufacturers in a way that will ultimately drive wage and job growth in Wisconsin,” Armstrong said.

The productivity initiative is aimed at companies with fewer than 500 employees. “This initiative is critical if Wisconsin and the Milwaukee region are to remain globally competitive,” said Pat O’Brien, executive director of Milwaukee 7, an economic strategy group for the seven counties in southeastern Wisconsin.

In the next 30 days, companies will be chosen for the two-year trial period. They will be from various industries but must be manufacturers.

Applications are being accepted through the WEDC.

“What we will do is pick between five and 10 private companies that have volunteered to go through this process, at no charge to them, to be the pilot program,” Armstrong said. “The idea is to develop the (diagnostics) tools that can be used for small and midsize manufacturers across the state,” she added.

President Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday morning aimed at taking action on health care after Congress’s failure to repeal ObamaCare. The order will:

• direct the Department of Labor to “modernize” rules to allow small employers to create association health plans, the source said. Small businesses will be able to band together if they are within the same state, in the same “line of business,” or are in the same trade association.

A state Senate panel plans to vote this week on a bill that would set the ratio of journeymen needed to oversee apprentices coming into construction strictly at one-to-one for all trades.

Current journeymen-to-apprentice ratios vary from trade to trade. For carpenters, for instance, the mandated ratio is already one-to-one when there is only one apprentice in a given class. But for every apprentice who joins after that, three more journeymen must be added.

Proponents of setting the ratios at one-to-one argue the change will eliminate an artificial barrier to recruitment and thus help combat the industry’s persistent labor shortage. Some contractors have complained that it is hard to find enough journeymen to meet the current requirements, especially as many older workers retire from the trades.

At a public hearing last week, several industry groups expressed reservations about the proposal. A lawyer representing Local 139 of the International Union of Operating Engineers – the biggest construction union in the state – warned that the bill seemed to give the state license to override collective-bargaining agreements reached between labor and management groups. Such authority, he warned, could run afoul of federal labor law.

If Bill 411 became law, state officials would not have to cede all their control over journeyman-to-apprentice ratios. Although losing their power to require more than one journeyman for each apprentice, they would still be able to increase the number of apprentices who could work under a single journeyman.

Should Senate Bill 411 receive a favorable recommendation on Thursday, it would next go to the full state Legislature.

The Trump administration on Tuesday will formally propose repealing Barack Obama’s landmark climate change rule for power plants, a key part of the U.S. commitment to reduce emissions under the Paris accord.

The rule was the centerpiece of Obama’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and show the rest of the world that the U.S., a top polluter, is committed to climate action. It aims to cut emissions from the electricity sector by 32 percent by 2030.

The EPA’s announcement is the first major step toward fulfilling a key campaign promise Trump made to repeal the climate rule that he’s called “stupid” and “job-killing.” Trump’s EPA argues that the agency overstepped, arguing it can only regulate pollution from individual plants and not sector-wide.

The EPA will open the door to replacing the rule with a weaker, more industry-friendly standard to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, though it did not promise to pursue a new regulation.

Microsoft announced Thursday it is teaming up with communities in six states to invest in technology and related jobs in rural and smaller metropolitan areas. Microsoft has selected Appleton, Wisconsin as one of the six sites. The other communities will be announced later.

Company president Brad Smith launched the TechSpark program Thursday in Fargo, a metropolitan area of more than 200,000 people that includes a Microsoft campus with about 1,500 employees. Smith says the six communities are different by design and not all have a Microsoft presence. Smith says TechSpark is a multi-year, multi-million dollar investment to help teach computer science to students, expand rural broadband and help create and fill jobs, among other things. The other programs will be in Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Microsoft planned to use “white space” technology, tapping buffer zones separating individual television channels in airwaves that could be cheaper than existing methods such as laying fiber-optic cable. The company had originally envisioned using it in the developing world, but shifted focus to the U.S. this summer.

“We are a very diverse country,” Smith said. “It’s important for us to learn more about how digital technology is changing in all different parts of the country. So we are working to be more present in more places.”

Smith said there are 23.4 million Americans living in rural communities who don’t have broadband coverage and the TechSpark program is going to focus on bring coverage to these six regions.

Three Republican legislators introduced a bill Thursday in an attempt to simplify Wisconsin laws on family and medical leave, according to a press release from the Legislature.

State Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, and Reps. Joan Ballweg, R-Markesan, and Mike Rohrkaste, R-Neenah, introduced the bill to clear up the distinctions between state law and the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. The sponsors identified confusions among businesses as the primary impetus for the bill.

In the bill, anyone covered under FMLA is excluded from state medical leave laws.

“As a former Human Resources executive, I have seen firsthand how Wisconsin’s family and medical leave laws and the federal FMLA together create an unnecessary regulatory burden for employers across our state. This legislation will ensure that Wisconsin employees are protected, while also simplifying an overly complex system for local employers,” Rohrkaste said in the release.

Wisconsin’s electoral maps were put to the test Tuesday morning during a tense session of oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. Gill v. Whitford is the court’s first significant test in years on partisan gerrymandering, or the idea of crafting district lines for the benefit of one party, and whether courts should police such practices.

Following the intensive hour of questioning, Wisconsin Solicitor General Misha Tseytlin sounded confident in the state’s case. “When you have the law on your side, that’s a good place to be going into the argument,” he told MacIver News Service Tuesday afternoon.

Defenders of Wisconsin’s redistricting plan also have history on their side – and, perhaps, standing. Tseytlin reminded the justices that the high court has never tossed out a map on the basis of partisan gerrymandering.

In 2004, the court narrowly determined it shouldn’t referee a Pennsylvania redistricting case, very similar to Wisconsin’s. But Justice Anthony Kennedy said at some point in the future a case so clearly partisan could rise to a judicable level – that is, meriting court review.

Liberals believe in their hearts the Wisconsin redistricting plan is that case. They won last year when a lower court panel of judges, in a 2-1 ruling, determined Wisconsin’s district maps ran afoul of the Constitution by putting Democrats at a distinct disadvantage. Liberals complain that the redrawn maps give Dems little chance of ever winning back the Legislature, which they lost in the Republican revolution of 2010.

William Whitford, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor emeritus and lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, argues the state Assembly “bears no resemblance to its evenly split electorate.” He claims Republicans “wield legislative power unearned by their actual appeal to Wisconsin voters. This pro-Republican skew is no accident.”