Brian Dake

A new shipping facility for agricultural products — expected to generate $63 million in statewide economic impact each year — officially opened in Port Milwaukee Tuesday.

The $40 million Agricultural Maritime Export Facility is one of the first facilities in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway to move bulk agricultural exports through intermodal transportation. Instead of sending products down the Mississippi River, Wisconsin farmers and businesses can now send their products by truck or rail directly to the facility where they will be loaded onto international shipping vessels.

The DeLong Co. helped develop the new facility, which began construction in 2021 on Jones Island. The public-private partnership is the largest one-time investment in Port Milwaukee since the 1950s. The project was funded by a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, private funds from The DeLong Company, grants from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and funds from Port Milwaukee.

The facility will primarily handle dried distillers grains and other grains and feedstuffs from across the state and the Midwest. It can store 30,000 metric tons of dried distillers grains, or 45,000 metric tons of soybeans. Dried distillers grains are a major coproduct from the production of ethanol from grain, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. They’re typically used as animal feed.

The DeLong Company moves about $1 billion worth of agricultural exports annually and will now be able to do that directly from Wisconsin, while reaching new markets in Europe and northern Africa.

Wisconsin, along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other law enforcement partners nationwide, including attorneys general from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, announced a new crackdown on illegal telemarketing targeting operations responsible for billions of calls to U.S. consumers.

The joint state and federal “Operation Stop Scam Calls” initiative builds on the efforts of Wisconsin and other state and federal partners to combat the scourge of illegal telemarketing, including robocalls. This initiative targets telemarketers, the companies that hire them, and lead generators, who deceptively collect and provide consumers’ telephone numbers to robocallers and falsely represent those consumers have consented to receive calls. It also targets Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers who facilitate tens of billions of illegal robocalls every year, which often originate overseas.

As part of Operation Stop Scam Calls, Wisconsin announced Attorney General Josh Kaul sued Michael D. Lansky, LLC, which does business under the name Avid Telecom, its owner Michael Lansky, and its vice president Stacey S. Reeves, for allegedly initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people and violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws. Wisconsin also announced that DATCP has given 152 presentations in the last year that educated consumers on the use of robocalls to perpetrate scams and fraud.

Wisconsin’s actions build on the work of its state and federal partners including the FTC, which announced five new cases against companies and individuals responsible for distributing or assisting in the distribution of billions of illegal telemarketing calls to consumers nationwide. Other contributing law enforcers include the U.S. Department of Justice, Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Federal Communications Commission.

Retail sales rose 0.2% in June from the previous month, lower than Wall Street’s estimates for 0.5% growth. Sales excluding auto and gas increased 0.3%, in line with estimates from economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Meanwhile, May’s sales were revised up to 0.5% from 0.3%.

Seven of the 13 categories highlighted in the release saw increases from a month ago. Furniture and home furniture stores increased 1.4% while electronics and appliance stores gained 1.1%. Growth at nonstore retailers, which includes online sales, helped keep total sales higher than the month prior with a 1.9% increase from May.

Department stores saw sales decline 2.4%. Meanwhile, gasoline stations declined by the most of any major category, falling 1.4% from the month prior. Sales at grocery stores fell 0.7%. The monthly retail sales report does not adjust statistics for inflation.

The details are fairly encouraging overall, but we still remain of the view that the consumer is slowing down,” Jefferies US Economist Thomas Simons wrote on Thursday. “Were it not for the Social Security-fueled jump in January, the first half of this year would look fairly subdued. Consumers are facing tougher choices when it comes to spending, now that they have their biggest incentive to rebuild and increase their savings in decades.”

If you live in the north suburbs of Milwaukee — including Germantown, Grafton, Menomonee Falls and Mequon — you may have a special election on Tuesday.

Voters in parts of Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha counties will head to the polls to elect Republican Paul Melotik or Democrat Bob Tatterson to the state Assembly. The seat became vacant when Republican Dan Knodl won a special election for a seat in the state Senate this spring.

Melotik has co-owned and operated several businesses, including Fire Ridge Golf Club in Grafton. He has served on the Ozaukee County Board for 11 years and the Grafton Town Board for six years. He describes himself as a “fiscal conservative” and is interested in working on budgetary issues if elected to the Assembly. His other priorities include education and conservation, and he supports school choice and 2nd Amendment rights.

Tatterson is a retired engineer and now invests in and advises start-up companies. He is also active in community volunteering and was formerly a volunteer firefighter. He describes himself as a “moderate Democrat.” His priorities include public education, including building a skilled workforce through higher education. He supports abortion access and wants to see “common sense gun safety laws” like red flag laws.

Both candidates said they support fully funding law enforcement and working to address EMS staffing challenges in their district.

The government’s producer price index — which measures inflation before it reaches consumers — rose just 0.1% last month from June 2022, the smallest such increase since August 2020. And from May to June, prices rose an identical 0.1% after having fallen 0.4% from April to May.

The index that the Labor Department issued Thursday reflects prices charged by manufacturers, farmers and wholesalers.

Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, noted that wholesale price increases are already coming in below the 2% year-over-year inflation rate that the Fed wants to see.

“On the consumer side,’’ she cautioned in a research note,“ progress has been slower,” though she expects consumer prices to decelerate further this year and into 2024.

Farooqi said she didn’t expect the June inflation numbers to “to change the outcome of the upcoming (Fed) meeting’’ at which she, like most economists, expects a quarter-point hike in the central bank’s benchmark rate. That rate affects many consumer and business loans throughout the economy.

The Milwaukee Common Council voted 12-3 on Tuesday to approve the higher sales tax. That was two more than the two-thirds majority needed to succeed. The sales tax in Milwaukee will go up 2 cents per dollar next year.

The state sales tax is 5%. If the county goes along with the city and approves the higher sales tax rate, sales taxes in the city of Milwaukee would be 7.9%.

The additional sales tax in the city of Milwaukee will bring in nearly $200 million more in revenue next year, which the city has to use to pay for its pension and to increase the number of police officers and firefighters.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that the consumer price index, a broad measure of the price for everyday goods including gasoline, groceries and rents, rose 0.2% in June from the previous month.

Prices climbed 3% on an annual basis. Although inflation has cooled from a peak of 9.1%, it still remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target rate.

Other parts of the report pointed to a steady retreat for inflation. Core prices, which exclude the more volatile measurements of food and energy, climbed 0.2%, or 4.8% annually.

The report is the last before the Fed’s policy-setting next meeting on July 25-26 and will have major implications for the U.S. central bank, which raised interest rates 10 straight times over the course of 15 months in a bid to crush out-of-control inflation.

“Prices for everything from eggs to used cars dropped in June, causing a big deflation in inflation,” said Robert Frick, a corporate economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union. “By one measure, inflation is just one-third of what it was a year ago. However, this is not yet a turning point. Core inflation will prove tougher to beat.”

One of the biggest questions headed into this year’s state budget debate was how Republican lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers would handle Wisconsin’s record surplus. Now that the dust has mostly settled, there’s plenty of money left over.

Wisconsin began the two-year budget cycle with a projected surplus of roughly $7 billion in its general fund. Following the budget vetoes last week by Evers, the current projected surplus for the next budget is about $4 billion.

“There’s still a massive amount of money that the state has in reserve,” said Jason Stein, research director at the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

Neither side planned it that way, exactly.

The budget Evers presented to lawmakers in February would have spent more of the surplus on education, broadband, child care, paid family leave and a range of other government programs. That budget would have ended with gross balance of about $634 million.

The budget Republicans passed in June would have spent more of the surplus on a $3.5 Billion income tax cut. That budget would have left a similar balance of about $588 million.

In the end, Republicans gave Evers less than half of what he wanted for public schools and zeroed out other programs altogether. And Evers used his partial veto to reject a GOP income tax cut for the state’s top two brackets.

The end result leaves lawmakers and the governor with some of the same choices they faced when the budget debate began earlier this year. The trick is, they still have to agree.

In his veto message to lawmakers, Evers suggested that by eliminating the bulk of the GOP tax cut, he had preserved enough funding for a budget do-over.

That is never going to happen,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, during an appearance last week on WISN-AM. “We’re not going to all of a sudden decide to spend the money.”

Vos indicated that Republicans would try to override Evers’ vetoes, a move he acknowledged was unlikely to succeed in the Assembly where the GOP is just short of a two-thirds supermajority. He also told conservative talk radio host Jay Weber that Republicans would send Evers standalone bills to cut taxes even if they’re destined for more vetoes.

“I think that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Vos said.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says Republicans are preparing to sue over Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that increases public school funding for 402 years, saying he sees “very little option left but to go to the courts.”

“When you say he has the broad authority, that is clearly in question,” Vos said on WISN’s “UpFront. “We do not know that. He has taken the broad authority, but it doesn’t mean that it’s right.”

Vos said Republicans will also consider introducing a proposed constitutional amendment to further limit the partial veto powers of Wisconsin’s governor.

“I never thought it was necessary, frankly,” Vos said, referring to a constitutional amendment that would require passage from two consecutive sessions of the Legislature before going to voters. “This is something that is unprecedented. Gov. Evers has taken this to a new level. Talking about how the Legislature is undemocratic, well, having one person using a creative veto that is clearly in question — we won’t know until the court says whether it’s constitutional — but it’s clearly questionable.”

Evers’ education veto was one of 51 partial vetoes he issued. He increased the amount public school districts can raise by $325 per student each year through 2425 by striking a dash and “20” from the original 2024-25 language.

In doing so, Vos accused Evers of lying to Republican leaders during private negotiations surrounding the shared revenue agreement and education funding, a claim Evers called “breathtaking” Friday in response to Vos’ “UpFront” interview, telling WISC-TV, “I never lied.”

HHS, the Treasury Department and the Department of Labor issued proposed rules on Friday that clamp down on short-term limited duration health plans. If finalized, short-term health plans would last for three months and can only be renewed for one more month.

The Trump-era rule enabled these types of plans to last up to a year and be renewed for up to three years.

Short-term plans do not have to meet the same requirements as a health insurance plan sold on the Obamacare insurance exchanges. These requirements can include coverage of pre-existing conditions and certain essential health benefits such as prescription drugs.

Consumers currently enrolled in short-term plans will be grandfathered in under the old rules, according to a senior administration official granted anonymity to discuss the details of the Biden plan.

The rule does not limit the sale of short-term plans during Obamacare’s open enrollment.