A national debt: Should government compensate for slavery and racism?

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Reading Time: 12 minutes

Reggie Jackson, a writer for the Milwaukee Independent and the former head griot, or oral historian, at America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, has a long history of military service in his family stretching back to the Civil War. But when two of his uncles who served in World War II returned to their home state of Mississippi, they found their veteran status wasn’t enough to reap the benefits of the GI Bill passed in 1944. 
This is because Jackson’s uncles were Black. 
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act provided veterans with financial aid to reduce the possibility of a post-World War II depression. But Jackson said that two components of the GI Bill — receiving free college tuition and attaining home loans under the VA Guarantee Home Loan Program — were not available to his uncles at the time. 
“It just didn’t work out that way, because the federal government allowed the states to control the allocation of both programs,” Jackson said. “It’s just unfortunate.” 
In many southern states like Mississippi, Black soldiers were denied access to these wealth-building programs. And when it came to college, many were denied the opportunity to attend southern state schools because of segregation. Only 12% of Black veterans born between 1923 and 1928 were enrolled in college programs, and on average spent fewer months in the programs than white veterans. 
Reggie Jackson’s great-grandfather Ed Diltz is seen with his grandmother Sallie, in the late 1920s.

Your Right to Know: Fee recovery is key to transparency

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

Many states, including Wisconsin, have public records laws. But that doesn’t mean requesters always get the records they seek, or even that the laws are followed. What provisions in a state’s laws are most associated with compliance? Christa Westerberg
The answer may surprise you. It’s not the strength of a law’s penalty provisions or whether a state has an ombudsman office to mediate records disputes (Wisconsin does not).  
Instead, a 2019 study by University of Arizona journalism professor David Cullier found a significant correlation between compliance and laws that “mandate judges to impose attorney fees” to requesters deemed to have been wrongly denied access to records.  
That’s why a recent Wisconsin court of appeals decision, in a case known as Meinecke v. Thyes, is good news.

‘Skipping the middleman’: Defendants faced shifting demands in Outagamie County judge’s one-man drug court

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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. In September 2015, Charles Joe Reuter IV knew two things for certain: He needed help to beat his growing dependence on opiates — a habit that landed him behind bars, waylaid his career goals and separated him from his two children — and he was not going to get the treatment he needed in jail. 
The then-29-year-old Appleton man faced jail time for a domestic battery conviction, one of several drug-fueled crimes he had committed after 16 years of drug use morphed into destructive heroin addiction. 
Had Reuter served his sentence in jail, he would have been free in less than five months. But when Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Vincent Biskupic agreed to pause his jail time so he could attend treatment — a practice he has done in more than a dozen other cases — it sounded like a smart option. 
“I’ve never gone to jail and then gotten out and been better for it,” Reuter told Wisconsin Watch. 
“It’s dry time. You’re not going to be getting high.

Wisconsin Weekly: Nearly 200 ousted Wisconsin officers return to policing

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Reading Time: 4 minutes
‘Wandering’ officers; electrical fires and injustice; biased mortgage algorithms; delta variant in Wisconsin; Waukesha schools refuse expanded meal aid  

Of note: This week we highlight our story revealing that nearly 200 Wisconsin law enforcement officers who lost their jobs in the past five years are back working in law enforcement in the state. That’s out of more than 1,000 officers ousted during that period. 

The Badger Project’s Peter Cameron reported the story for Wisconsin Watch. Cameron obtained data from the state Department of Justice, which tracks officers who have been fired, resigned in lieu of termination or quit before the end of an internal investigation. Experts say rehiring such officers can put the public at risk of additional misconduct. A bipartisan bill before the Legislature would require law enforcement agencies to maintain a personnel file for each employee and disclose that file to any agency that may want to hire them.

Nearly 200 Wisconsin officers back on the job after being fired or forced out

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Reading Time: 11 minutes

One officer was accused by a supervisor of snoozing in his squad car while on duty. Another had multiple drunken run-ins with police, including after bar fights. A third repeatedly sent lewd photos to a female officer. All of them were fired or forced out. And all of them are back working in law enforcement in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch adds two new reporters, says goodbye to record number of interns and fellows

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Reading Time: 3 minutes
Mario Koran joined the Center in July 2021 as an investigative reporter. Credit: Will Cioci / Wisconsin Watch

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and its news arm, Wisconsin Watch, have added two investigative reporters to the staff, and we are bidding adieu to our largest class ever of summer interns and fellows. Mario Koran joined the Wisconsin Watch staff as an investigative reporter in July after serving as a 2021 Knight Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan. Previously, Koran was a West Coast correspondent for the Guardian US and covered education for Voice of San Diego, where he was named 2016 reporter of the year by the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Appeal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Wisconsin Weekly: Wisconsin cities eye basic income

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Reading Time: 4 minutes
Closing Wisconsin’s wealth gap; low-income residents face ‘benefit cliffs;’ Kenosha police blamed in shooting; anti-mandate senator gets COVID-19 

Of note: This week we highlight the latest installment in Wisconsin Watch’s Color of Money series. This story, reported by Harrison Freuck and Zhen Wang, looks at proposals to give people a basic amount of income to close large, persistent wealth and income gaps in the United States, especially between white and Black residents. Three Wisconsin cities — Milwaukee, Madison and Wausau — plan to roll out basic income programs this year. Milwaukee actually ran such a project in the mid-to-late 1990s, which participants including Towanda Perkins credit with helping them get jobs and get off public assistance. 

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. 

Thanks for reading!

‘It’s all or nothing’: A small pay bump can cut benefits for Wisconsin workers

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Reading Time: 7 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. Owning a home once seemed like “an impossible dream” to Jaleesa Gray, though she began thinking about when her son was born a decade ago. Now that she finally has a home, she sees possibility everywhere. She could paint her bedroom a calming light blue, the bathroom lavender, and the kitchen white and blue, like in a country home.

Wisconsin cities look to basic income to close racial, other wealth gaps

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Reading Time: 14 minutes
Towanda Perkins is a single mother with two grown sons. She works as an office manager at a nonprofit organization in Milwaukee. During the pandemic, she has seen many mothers with children who have lost their jobs and been evicted by landlords. Perkins is expecting to see more homelessness once the temporary halt on certain evictions issued by the CDC — recently extended to Oct. 3 — ends. 

Between June and November of last year, the national poverty rate increased by 2.4% overall — but 3.1% for Black Americans, according to economists from the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame.

Wisconsin Weekly: Ron Johnson’s push for billionaire tax breaks

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Reading Time: 4 minutes
Tax relief for the wealthy; WI election officials at conspiracy forum; state feeling impact of climate change; Madison seeks to be more LGBTQ friendly

Of note: This week we highlight ProPublica’s revelation that Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson pushed for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for some of the state’s wealthiest business owners. Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign. The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life. Access to some stories listed in the Wisconsin Weekly roundup may be limited to subscribers of the news organizations that produced them.

Opinion: Kewaunee County water study looks backward, not forward

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Reading Time: 3 minutes
This letter to the editor was submitted in response to the story: Cow manure predicted to cause most sickness from contaminated wells in Kewaunee County

Another study about Kewaunee County has popped up dealing with groundwater, cows and humans in our community. News stories about the study, which uses data collected in 2016-17, are causing some unfounded concerns about people getting sick, today, from farming practices. Don Niles is the president of the nonprofit Peninsula Pride Farms.

The fact is no farmer wants to cause even one person to become ill, and we go to great lengths to keep that from happening. That commitment won’t change, with or without a study. As to the most recent study, people deserve a more complete explanation of what it is and is not.

Wisconsin Weekly: Could ‘baby bonds’ narrow Wisconsin’s gaping racial wealth gap?

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Reading Time: 5 minutes
Baby bonds; Justice Deferred; COVID-19 resurgence; tainted water; employment after prison

Of note: This week we highlight the latest installment of our series, Color of Money, which examines the exclusionary policies and other reasons why Wisconsin’s Black residents own less, earn less and owe more on average than whites — and what can be done to narrow the gap. Reporters Ben Baker and Zhen Wang focus on “baby bonds,” a program touted by former presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Cory Booker as a way to narrow racial wealth disparities. The reporters profile a Ho-Chunk tribal member who got a large payout upon turning 18 and finishing high school. While “18 money” allowed Donald Robert Greengrass Jr. to buy a La Crosse restaurant while he was still in college, others have quickly squandered their money — raising questions about what restrictions, if any, a national program should have. And don’t miss the latest story in our Justice Deferred series, which focuses on Outagamie County Circuit Judge Vincent Biskupic’s unusual practice of holding review hearings to push defendants to pay overdue court costs.