Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/tag/development/)
Two senior executives with distinguished careers in philanthropy, management and journalism have joined the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism to strengthen its ability to generate revenue.
In two instances, Wisconsin appears to be violating state laws in its failure to maintain committees and update standards. Critics say this failure also means lost savings for homeowners and taxpayers, reduced accessibility for people with disabilities and increased dangers for building occupants.
Many of the building code advisory councils established to advise the state have not met in years, and many state codes have not been promptly updated to reflect contemporary national models. These models, when they exist, are typically updated every three years. This chart presents relevant information in selected code areas.
“Developers are often demonized, but I have probably planted more trees than 99 percent of citizens and the city of Madison,” said Wall, the 2009 recipient of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Energy Efficiency and a one-time Republican U.S. Senate candidate who lost to Ron Johnson. “There is nothing worse than a town filled with concrete.”
Sites that have been funded through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s brownfields program, as of August 2012.
The stated goals of the federal government’s Brownfields Program are to fund the cleanup of contamination, to improve the quality of life of blighted communities and to provide economic stimulus. But an investigation by nonprofit newsrooms across the country, coordinated by the Investigative News Network, found problems in every community examined.
On Feb. 2, 2011, the Legislature voted to exempt a little patch of land, less than a mile down the road from the Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field, from the state’s wetlands rules, once called “the strongest wetland protections in the country.” The bill, passed on World Wetlands Day, will let up to three acres of the so-called Bergstrom wetland be filled with no additional permits or process.