News of the Day

The Department of Safety and Professional Services is announcing a two-week blackout period for initial license applications for 72 license types (the list of affected licenses is available HERE – https://dsps.wi.gov/Pages/LicensE.aspx). This black-out is part of the transition to LicensE, the department’s new self-guided, online platform that is replacing paper-based applications for occupational licenses.

The department will accept no new initial applications for the 72 license types from 12 p.m. on April 29 through 11:59 p.m. on May 15. The black-out period is a critical step to ensuring the successful launch of this new system. Applications received after 12 p.m. on April 29 will not be processed. Paper applications postmarked after this date will be returned to applicants. Current applications awaiting decisions will be evaluated in the order they were received.

LicensE will launch on May 16, and all initial applicants for the 72 license types will be able to use the new platform. Other licenses (initial applications and renewals) will transition to LicensE in subsequent phases.

Renewals are not included in the blackout, and any license types in active renewal during the blackout window can renew during their entire renewal period. Temporary licenses related to the pandemic are also not included in the blackout.

Today – Tuesday, April 5 – is the date of the nonpartisan Spring Election. The Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

State offices to be elected are:

• Court of Appeals Judge in Districts II, III and IV; and
• Circuit Court Judge in Barron, Crawford, Dane, Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, Iowa, Kewaunee, Lincoln, Marathon, Milwaukee, Monroe, Oconto, Outagamie, Pierce, Portage, Racine, Rusk, St. Croix, Sauk, Vilas, Walworth, Waushara, and Winnebago counties.

In communities throughout Wisconsin, there will also elections for county supervisors, city mayors and alderpersons, village presidents and trustees, town chairs and board members and school boards.

To find your polling place and what is on your ballot, visit the Wisconsin Election Commission voter assistance website – My VoteWisconsin – https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/.

The U.S. economy expanded at an annual rate of 6.9% in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the final estimate of gross domestic product released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Wednesday.

While the report is a look in the rearview mirror, it puts a rubber stamp on what was an extraordinary recovery from the economic shocks brought about by the coronavirus. Earlier estimates had put the quarterly gain at 7%. Much of the growth was driven by businesses restocking inventories.

State regulators voted 2 to 1 to approve plans from two of the state’s largest utilities to build a $171 million natural gas plant near Wausau.

We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service say the 128-megawatt plant is a key part of a $3.5 billion plan to retire 1,600 megawatts of fossil fuels and replace that with power from wind, solar and battery storage. Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group, which owns the two utilities, has pledged to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2030 and go carbon-neutral by 2050. The Utilities hope to begin construction of the plant this year and place it in service in 2023.

As part of the transition, they plan to keep a “modest amount” of natural gas in their power mix that includes the new plant, which will have seven reciprocating internal combustion engine (RICE) units in Rothschild and Kronenwetter.

Public Service Commission Chair Rebecca Valcq agreed the gas-fired units are important to ensure that reliable power can be dispatched quickly when renewable resources aren’t available. “The company will be able to call on that capacity to fill in the gaps for intermittent resources when it’s needed,” Valcq said.

As Wisconsin and the federal government aim to go carbon-neutral by mid-century, Commissioner Ellen Nowak argued regulators need to “be the adults” to ensure reliable and affordable power throughout the clean energy transition.

“The record here shows that we have to build these units. They’re necessary,” Nowak said. “If you like renewables, then … you need these units. They are a necessary part of the transition.”

Nowak highlighted studies by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and Midcontinent Independent System Operator that underscore the variability of renewable energy and need for more flexible resources like natural gas.

Business groups celebrated this week after the Senate rejected David Weil, President Biden’s pick to run the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.

The Senate failed to advance Weil’s nomination by a 47-53 vote on Wednesday night, with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Mark Kelly (Ariz.) joining all Republicans in blocking Biden’s nominee.

Weil, who previously held the wage division post in the Obama administration from 2014 to 2017, issued rules to reclassify independent contractors as employees and attempted to hold corporations accountable for their franchisees’ labor practices during his previous tenure.

Business groups, including the National Restaurant Association and National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, centered their lobbying efforts around the three moderate Democrats who ultimately sank Weil’s nomination.

They warned that Weil would use his broad powers to bypass Congress and implement sections of the PRO Act, a sweeping pro-labor bill opposed by the business lobby that remains stalled in the Senate due to GOP opposition.

Weil, who is currently dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, has long complained that the franchise model allows corporate giants to dodge accountability and is a fierce critic of gig companies such as Uber and Lyft.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing amendments to its occupational injury and illness recordkeeping regulation. The current regulation requires certain employers to electronically submit injury and illness information – that they are required to keep – to OSHA. The agency uses these reports to identify and respond to emerging hazards and makes aspects of the information publicly available.

In addition to reporting their Annual Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses, the proposed rule would require certain establishments in certain high-hazards industries to electronically submit additional information from their Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses, as well as their Injury and Illness Incident Report.

As part of OSHA’s mission to protect workers and mitigate workplace hazards, this rule would improve OSHA’s ability to use its enforcement and compliance assistance resources to identify workplaces where workers are at high risk. The proposed rule would also advance the department’s mission to empower workers by increasing transparency in the workforce.

The proposed rule would:

• Require establishments with 100 or more employees in certain high-hazard industries to electronically submit information from their OSHA Forms 300, 301 and 300A to OSHA once a year.
• Update the classification system used to determine the list of industries covered by the electronic submission requirement.
• Remove the current requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees not in a designated industry to electronically submit information from their Form 300A to OSHA annually.
• Require establishments to include their company name when making electronic submissions to OSHA.

Establishments with 20 or more employees in certain high-hazard industries would continue to be required to electronically submit information from their OSHA Form 300A annual summary to OSHA annually.

Inflation is the issue voters are most concerned about heading into the midterms even amid concerns about the war in Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll.

Thirty-two percent of voters in the poll said inflation is the most important issue facing the country, followed by 27 percent who said the top issue was the economy and jobs and 21 percent who said immigration.

Seventy-six percent of voters said they have been impacted by inflation somewhat or a lot. Forty-six percent of voters also said they anticipate inflation to stay high and 35 percent said they feared it would go even higher.

Inflation has been spiking in recent months, hitting a 40-year high of 7.9 percent earlier in March. The surge has been fueled by a rise in prices in food, energy, shelter and a broad range of consumer goods.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey of 1,990 registered voters was conducted from March 23-24. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.

More than half of U.S. households paid no federal income taxes in 2021, a temporary spike attributed to massive COVID-19 relief spending in the form of tax credits and stimulus payments.

A recent analysis from the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimated that 57% of Americans paid no taxes last year. While that’s down slightly from last year’s 60%, it marks a significant increase from the 44% recorded before the pandemic began.

The increase stems from the pandemic-driven surge in government spending, including three stimulus checks, expanded federal unemployment aid and the expanded child tax credit.

Because the stimulus checks were designed as refundable tax credits, they significantly reduced tax liability in both 2020 and 2021, the analysis said. And in some cases, the checks flipped some households from paying income tax to not doing so.

Essentially, no household making less than $28,000 paid federal income tax last year, nor will a majority – about 75% – of those making between $28,000 and $55,000. Among middle-income households, about 43% paid no federal income tax.

Still, while many households did not pay federal income tax, most Americans still owed payroll or state income taxes. The study shows that about four out of five individuals paid at least one of these taxes. Nearly everyone paid the government in another form, whether through state and local sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes or state income taxes.

The real estate transfer fee is imposed on the person selling or granting real estate and equals $3 for every $1,000 of the value of real estate property being transferred. The vast majority of these transfers are property sales. Certain transactions are exempt from the fee, such as those by units of government, property transferred as gifts, or between spouses. The fee is collected at the county level by the register of deeds, and revenue proceeds are split between the state’s general fund, which receives 80%, and the county, which receives 20%.

State and local revenues from fees on transfers of real estate in Wisconsin increased 37% in fiscal year 2021, the largest annual increase in nearly four decades. This was driven by robust increases in real estate sales and residential property values during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase benefits state government at a time of fiscal strength, which may suggest consideration of options to share the wealth.

After rising rapidly during the real estate bubble of the mid 2000s, transfer fee revenues plunged sharply during the financial crisis and housing collapse of the Great Recession and slowly rebounded from 2011 to 2018 before plateauing the following two years. Department of Revenue data show the volume of real estate transfers and other information, such as the value of the properties, by calendar year from 2016 to 2021. At a statewide level, the number of transfers roughly held steady from calendar 2016 to 2018, ticked down slightly in 2019, then increased 5.5% in 2020 and 11% in 2021.

While the increased volumes of transfers certainly contributed to the sharp increase in fee revenues in 2021, soaring real estate values also played a key role. The growth was driven primarily by residential values, which showed strong growth throughout the five-year period from 2016 through 2021 – with a particularly pronounced uptick amid the pandemic in 2020-21.

The median value of single-family residential properties transferred in Wisconsin increased from $126,500 in 2016 to $170,000 in 2021, or 34.4%. More than half of the increase came in 2020 and 2021, the data show, with statewide increases of 7.7% and 7%, respectively.

The United States Supreme Court ruled March 23 that redistricting maps for the state legislature created by Governor Tony Evers under a Wisconsin Supreme Court-ordered “least change” requirement contain a racial gerrymander. The nation’s top court sent the maps back to the state’s top court, and ordered it to hold proceedings to fix these maps or approve different ones.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to overturn the “least change” congressional maps submitted by Evers and approved by a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, meaning those new district boundaries will be in place for the fall 2022 election.

The issue at the heart of the legislative maps is whether it was lawful to expand the number of Milwaukee-area Assembly seats with a majority of Black voters. In the maps approved in 2011, there have been six districts with a majority of Black voters. The maps submitted by Evers would increase that number to seven districts, by adjusting the lines and lowering the percentage of Black voters in each district to just above the 50% mark.

After the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved the governor’s “least change” legislative maps, Republican lawmakers and a conservative legal group asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in, saying the Evers maps illegally used race as a primary factor in drawing the district lines.

The issue of the legislative maps now returns to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which may pursue a number of options.

“On remand, the court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider the Governor’s maps rather than choose from among the other submissions,” stated the U.S. Supreme Court’s order.

Essentially, the Wisconsin high court can ask parties to submit a revised version of the Evers maps that would keep the number of majority Black districts at six, or it could reverse its earlier decision and choose the maps submitted by the Republicans in the state Legislature, which contained six black districts in Milwaukee.