Author: Wisconsin Public Radio

Milwaukee County is ending its 25-year relationship with a national nonprofit organization because of the group’s operations at the southern border of the United States. On September 19, the Milwaukee County Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) sent a letter to Austin, Texas-based Southwest Key terminating their contracts totaling $2.5 million in 2018. Southwest Key currently operates the county’s “JEDI” program, which is a substance abuse day treatment program for teens who are typically 15 to 17 years old. That contract runs through the end of 2019. The organization also operated a GPS monitoring program for trouble youth....

Authorities have accused a Wisconsin resident of running a 10-man operation that manufactured thousands of counterfeit vaping cartridges loaded with THC oil every day for almost two years. Kenosha County prosecutors said 20-year-old Tyler Huffhines had employees make professionally packaged cartridges. Authorities said the employees filled about 3,000 to 5,000 cartridges per day and were sold for $16 each. “Based on how everything was set up, this was a very high-tech operation that was running for some time,” said Andrew Burgoyne, Kenosha County assistant district attorney. Police said the business started in January 2018. The Drug Enforcement Administration, the...

Somewhere between Manitowoc and Sheboygan at the bottom of Lake Michigan rests a special meteorite of interest. The 600-pound meteorite made headlines across Wisconsin when it lit up the skies and was captured on dash cams and cell phone cameras as it crashed into Lake Michigan on February 6, 2017, about 10 miles from the shore. Settling in 200 feet below the surface, finding the meteorite is no simple feat. Meteorites are basically iron, so a group of scientists and teenage volunteers from the Adler Planetarium in Chicago built a magnetic sled that skids along the bottom of the...

Foxconn’s plans to build a nine-story circular office building reminiscent of Epcot’s iconic Spaceship Earth building at the entrance of its Orlando theme park in Mount Pleasant have been put on hold. On Thursday morning of September 12, Sam Schultz, community development director with the village of Mount Pleasant, released plans about the project at 12001 Braun Road. Included was a design for an approximately 34,000-square-foot building at the site. The building was going to serve as Foxconn’s network operations center. It would have been a central location where administrators will “manage, control and monitor one or more networks.”...

A new study has found that the number of Wisconsin residents who could lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits has increased by 18 percent. Researchers from Mathematica, a policy research organization, estimate that 3.6 million SNAP recipients nationwide will lose benefits under the proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture rule. Under the proposed USDA rule, the agency would eliminate SNAP’s broad-based categorical eligibility, which is a policy that allows households to qualify for SNAP benefits by meeting the financial criteria for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) instead of the SNAP criteria. TANF programs in some states...

Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele is asking the bus drivers union to set aside their differences so Milwaukee County Transit can find a way to get more money from the state. Milwaukee County and its bus drivers have been in contentious contract negotiations for more then 18 months. In an open letter sent Thursday to the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998, Abele praised bus drivers for their hard work, but stressed the county has reached a financial crisis point. Facing a $6.4 million budget deficit next year, Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is preparing to reduce bus service by...