Author: Wisconsin Watch

Some Wisconsin counties use risk assessment tools to predict who will skip out on court or commit new crimes but critics say there are better ways to cut incarceration. Eddie Armstrong had been sitting in the Dane County Jail for nearly two weeks when a judge set him free to await trial. His release was based in part on computer-generated scores that rated Armstrong’s likelihood to return to court as fair and predicted he had a good chance of not committing a new crime. Locked away from his fiancé and three children, Armstrong said, he was “going crazy.” “I...

One of the largest solar projects on cropland in the U.S. is pitting renewable energy boosters against each other, and farmers against farmers. Bob Bishop is a 61-year-old farmer living in dairy country in southwestern Wisconsin. Today he is helping his two sons pull a downed tree off of a fence line, stepping through piles of cow manure and corn stalks as he drags the branches into the big claw of a skid loader. Soon, the family will stop raising dairy cows because the industry is in trouble. In 2018, Wisconsin lost 638 dairy farms because of falling milk...

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and across the country, poor defendants can spend days, weeks, and even years behind bars awaiting trial, an approach that judges increasingly find as unconstitutional. On a summer night in 2017, a police officer conducting a drunken-driving sweep in northeast Wisconsin tried to pull over an SUV after a check showed the owner had a revoked driver’s license. The driver fled. As the officer gave chase, siren blaring, the vehicle blew through multiple stop signs in a residential area. The officer stopped the pursuit for public safety reasons. When police found the vehicle parked later,...

From December 3 through the early morning of December 5, 2018, members of the press, the public, and legislators bustled through the halls of the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison as the Senate and Assembly held an extraordinary session to push through a series of fast-tracked bills before Governor Scott Walker leaves office in January. The bills represent sweeping efforts to shift power to the Legislature from the executive branch, limit early voting and enact major changes to road spending, agency oversight and public benefits. Critics say they were clearly aimed at stripping power from incoming Gov. Tony Evers...

Anonymous budget amendments and ‘Body Snatcher’ bills give power to special interests and change the scope of legislation with no chance for public input. It was 10:30 p.m. on June 3, 2011, the last day of deliberations on Wisconsin’s state budget. Members of the Joint Finance Committee, some with deep circles under their eyes after days of fighting over budget items, perked up when two Republicans, Sen. Glenn Grothman and Rep. Robin Vos, unveiled a surprise: a massive tax cut worth hundreds of millions of dollars for manufacturers and agricultural businesses. The official estimate projected that when fully phased...

Research into Voter ID laws nationwide shows that their effect caused a lower turnout in Wisconsin and other states, affecting students, people of color, and elderly, making it much harder for disadvantaged demographic groups to vote. With all of her necessary documentation, University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brooke Evans arrived at her polling place on November 8, 2016, for the presidential election. For her, voting that day meant not only casting a ballot for the first female presidential candidate with a real shot of winning, but having a voice in a society in which homeless people such as herself were...