Your Right to Know: Bill Lueders named to National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame

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Bill Lueders was a young journalist at Madison’s Isthmus newspaper in the late 1980s when he learned the value of public records. Lueders wanted to see the complaints filed by citizens against the Madison police. 
Bill Lueders
This straightforward request led to a lawsuit — and then another one — joined by the Wisconsin State Journal and the Cap Times. The Dane County Circuit Court rulings established the right of the public to see citizen and internal complaints filed against police. 
Those battles led Lueders to begin attending meetings of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. After years of watching, Lueders joined the small nonprofit dedicated to government transparency and enforcement of Wisconsin’s public records and open meetings laws. In 2004, Lueders was elected president, a position he continues to hold.

Wisconsin Weekly: COVID-19 surge ‘feels like Groundhog Day’ to exhausted Fox Valley doctors and nurses

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Inside a COVID unit; GOP redistricting strategy; food shortages in schools; children’s college savings programs; unemployment system overhaul

 

Of note: This week we highlight the Appleton Post-Crescent’s look inside ThedaCare Regional Medical Center-Appleton’s COVID-19 unit, where exhausted doctors and nurses entered their 19th month of a pandemic that persists despite the widespread availability of effective vaccines. The Fox Valley region’s 13 hospitals saw 106 people hospitalized with COVID-19 on Wednesday and just two of 104 intensive care unit beds were open, Madeline Heim reports. “The latest flood of patients is a depressing repeat for hospital staff, many of whom thought the arrival of vaccines earlier this year would bring the end of the pandemic.” Fully vaccinated Wisconsinites in August were nine times less likely to face COVID-19 hospitalizations and 11 times less likely to die from the virus, according to Department of Health Services data. But just 62% of eligible Wisconsinites — and about 54% of all residents — are fully vaccinated. “I’d just like (people) to know that we don’t want people to keep coming here, having to relive this,” Trevor Cordes, a registered nurse, told Heim.

Wisconsin Weekly: Criminalizing kids: Wisconsin schools topped nation in calling police on Native American students

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Student police referrals high; COVID-19 spreading among Wisconsin kids; Milwaukee’s killing epidemic; tribes sue to halt wolf hunt; restoring March’s legacy

Of note: This week we highlight our collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity, USA TODAY and Madison365, which examines racial disparities in police involvement at schools. An analysis of 2017-18 data from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico found that Wisconsin had the fourth highest rate of referring students to the police for school-related incidents. The state also had the highest rate nationally when it came to referring Native American students to the police — a rate more than three times higher than for their white peers. Access to some stories listed in the Wisconsin Weekly roundup may be limited to subscribers of the news organizations that produced them. We urge our readers to consider supporting these important news outlets by subscribing. 
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Wisconsin schools called police on students at twice the national rate — for Native students, it was the highest

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This story was produced as part of a collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity and USA TODAY.  A version of this story also appeared on Madison365.  

The 2017-18 school year was difficult at Lakeland Union High School. Disciplinary problems came in waves for the Oneida County school — in February 2018, two students were arrested for making terror threats — just days after the mass shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. 
“That was a rough year,” said Chad Gauerke, the school principal. Lakeland referred over 6% of its students to police, including the two teenagers, whose separate threats shut down the school for a day. 
Lakeland wasn’t the only Wisconsin district which saw a high level of police involvement that school year. Public schools in Wisconsin referred students to police twice as often as schools nationwide in 2017-18 — nine students were referred to police for every 1,000 students enrolled compared to the national rate of 4.5, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of U.S. Department of Education data found.

Wisconsin Weekly: Many long-term care staff in Wisconsin reject vaccine, despite risks

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Unvaxxed nursing home workers; Wisconsin’s  ‘shadow governor;’ custody rules endanger abused parents; refugees decry conditions; rocky start for election probe

Of note: This week we highlight Wisconsin’s poor showing when it comes to vaccinating long-term care workers. At about 62%, the state ranks 32nd, including D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico, in the percentage of nursing home and assisted living staff who are vaccinated. The story, reported by Wisconsin Watch’s Madeline Fuerstenberg, features nursing student Hannah Miller of Eau Claire. Miller believes she should have the same right as the patients she cares for to control her health care. But studies show having a highly vaccinated staff is the key to protecting vulnerable long-term care residents, who make up 42% of all deaths in Wisconsin from COVID-19.

He Beat Her Repeatedly. Family Court Tried to Give Him Joint Custody of Their Children.

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Reading Time: 18 minutes

 

This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Jennifer Moston was about seven months pregnant when, she said, her husband grabbed her by the arms, picked her up and threw her against the staircase. Each time she tried to get up, he pushed her down again.

A Fox Valley builder provides affordable housing. It’s not easy.

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This piece was produced for the NEW News Lab, a local news collaboration in Northeast Wisconsin. It originally appeared in the Appleton Post-Crescent and is part of their series “Unaffordable: No Place to Call Home.”
Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. Fox Valley home builder Tom McHugh is trying to fill a much needed gap in the Northeast Wisconsin housing market: affordable, newly built homes. 
McHugh owns Tom McHugh Construction LLC, a Greenville-based homebuilding company that specializes in production building, also called tract building. 
Here’s how it works: McHugh buys a chunk of lots in a subdivision from a developer. He offers buyers an option of five floor plans to choose from, then builds the homes all in one batch so he can get a volume discount on high-quality materials and reduce the cost for the buyer. 
All of McHugh’s homes are modestly sized, ranch-style houses that range from 1,350 square feet to 1,550 square feet. Most have three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The basic models, with no additions, cost between $265,000 and $325,000.

Many long-term care staff in Wisconsin reject vaccine, despite risks

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Reading Time: 7 minutes

Hannah Miller, a nursing student and employee of a long-term care facility in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, received her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Aug. 23 — and not voluntarily. 
“(The vaccine) hasn’t been out long enough to know what long term effects are,” Miller told Wisconsin Watch. “We don’t know if it could cause bigger health issues in the future or cause issues, such as fertility.”
Miller said she was required to receive the vaccine by the hospital where she is completing her clinicals for school. She said she would not be able to graduate without getting it. Miller asked that her school and her workplace not be disclosed in this article.

Wisconsin Weekly: Critics say lead pipeline removal too slow

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Replacing lead pipes; disabled workers sue; COVID-19 surge angers Madison hospital workers; conservatives funding culture wars in Wis. school districts

Of note: This week we highlight our update on efforts to remove dangerous lead pipes serving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Wisconsin. Diana Butsko, a Fulbright scholar who reported for Wisconsin Watch this summer, found that statewide, communities have removed about 20% of known lead service lines. But in Milwaukee, the progress has been much slower. At the current pace, it would take the city 70 years to get the lead out.

Worried about lead poisoning in Wisconsin? Here’s what you should know.

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Test your child and yourself — especially if you are pregnant. No level of lead is considered safe. Young children are particularly vulnerable to lead and may face higher levels of exposure because they often put their hands or other objects in their mouths, including paint chips. But drinking water can make up 20% of a person’s total exposure to lead, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — or up to 60% for infants consuming mostly mixed formula. Children with elevated lead levels do not typically act sick, meaning blood tests are the only way to confirm a problem.

Spurred by Flint crisis, Eau Claire aims to eliminate lead pipelines

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In 2016, then-President Barack Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint, Michigan after a botched drinking water switch tainted the city’s water supply and spiked lead poisoning rates among children. 
The city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, received its first state grant to replace an estimated 1,266 residential lead service lines only a year later. The city has replaced about 400 lead service lines with those made of copper or plastic, and more are soon slated for swapping. 
“We want every lead service line out of our system,” Lane Berg, the city’s utilities manager, said while giving a reporter an up-close look at a replacement job. “So, we’ve set a goal: By the end of 2023, we want to have all the lead out.”
In meeting that goal, Eau Claire would join Madison and Green Bay on a list of Wisconsin cities that have rid their water systems of lead service lines, which typically consist of both utility-owned and privately owned portions. 
Since 2016, Wisconsin communities have replaced more than 115,000 utility-side and private-side portions of pipelines made of lead, galvanized steel that may contain lead flake buildup — or other materials that might contain lead, state Public Service Commission data shows. That’s about 20% of Wisconsin’s known pipelines made of those materials. 
Flint’s water crisis was a “driving force” behind Eau Claire’s removal efforts — even though Eau Claire’s drinking water system did not face the conditions that triggered the Flint disaster, Berg said. 
In Flint, state officials in 2014 approved a drinking water switch from Detroit’s water to the Flint River. But the state failed to require treatment to control corrosion of aging lead pipelines.

‘It’s criminal’: Milwaukeeans call for speedier lead pipeline removal to cut childhood poisoning

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Reading Time: 15 minutes

This piece was produced for the NEW News Lab, a local news collaboration in Northeast Wisconsin. Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. Sitting in his North Side Milwaukee rental house, Nazir Al-Mujaahid spoke matter-of-factly about the challenges his son Shu’aib faces, while the quiet 9-year-old lingered in another room. Shu’aib excels at sports, Al-Mujaahid said, but his speaking skills developed late, and he still lags behind his 6-year-old brother in reading. Al-Mujaahid, 45, believes that lead poisoning is hindering his son’s development.