The Durand City Council is meeting tonight. Items on the agenda include an update on the budget process for the 2023 city budget, discussion and possible action on the Tarrant Park Pool project, and reports from the Mayor and city department heads. Tonight's meeting begins at 6:30 at Durand City Hall and will be live-streamed on our YouTube Channel at Durand Broadcasting WRDN.
A Pine Island man is serving four years in prison after kidnapping a woman in Rochester and setting her house on fire. Michael Drury was sentenced last week for the incident that took place in October of 2021. The defendant pleaded guilty in June to felony arson. Other charges including kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon have been dismissed. Drury will receive 11 months credit for time spent in jail and also must register as a predatory offender.
Eau Claire County wants to hear from the community as to how it should spend its opioid settlement money. County supervisors last week agreed to create a commission that will help decide how to spend the two-point-six million dollars the county is getting as part of the national opioid settlement. The idea is to focus on treatment and help for people dealing with addiction. Eau Claire County hopes to get the first 300 thousand dollars from the settlement by the end of the year.
We're going to have to wait a bit to find out if Wisconsin's Assembly Speaker will be forced to testify in front of the January 6th Committee. A judge yesterday set a hearing for October 24th in the case. Democrats on Capitol Hill want to hear from Robin Vos about what he and former President Trump talked about in connection to the 2020 election. Vos says any conversations he had with Trump came long after January 6th, and had nothing to do with the riots at the Capitol that day.
Wisconsin taxpayers will be able to see all of the records from the partisan investigation of the 2020 presidential election that cost them several hundred thousand dollars. Attorney James Bopp has told a judge that those records – electronic and paper – have been turned over to the Assembly chief clerk’s office and are being uploaded to a website. The investigation was led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman – but he was fired in August after failing to turn up any widespread fraud. The special counsel’s office still exists even after Gableman’s departure and it is still the target of four open records lawsuits.
The Sawyer County Sheriff’s Office says one person is dead following a vehicle fire in the Town of Hunter last week. A 9-1-1 caller reported the fire Friday night just after 10:30 p-m. W-E-A-U/T-V reports that when emergency responders arrived on the scene they say they found a vehicle fully engulfed in flames and a motionless body lying in the roadway also on fire. When the flames were extinguished the victim was found to be dead. Witnesses say the car veered off the road and into a ditch, hit a mailbox, and came back onto the road when it caught on fire. The victim hasn’t been officially identified.
The wish-list for the next state budget is at least seven-and-a-half billion-dollars larger than the current spending plan. The Institute for Reforming Government yesterday said their analysis of the budget requests from state agencies and the UW System shows a potential massive increase in state spending. The largest potential increases are a three-point-seven billion request from the Department of Health Services and a two-and-a-half billion-dollar request from the Department of Public Instruction. The UW System is asking for nearly a half-billion more. IRG says the massive spending increase comes at a time when Wisconsin families are struggling to make ends meet. IRG says it shows just how out of touch state government really is.
The judge hearing the case against the Waukesha Christmas Parade attack suspect isn't sure the defendant knows what's going on. The judge yesterday didn't make a decision on whether Darrell Brooks Jr. can represent himself. Brooks complained several times in court yesterday that he didn't understand the charges against him. He's facing six homicide counts and a slew of other charges after police say he killed six people and injured 60 others when he plowed through the parade last November. Prosecutors have said they don't mind if Brooks represents himself, but they won't tolerate any delays in the case.
The latest edition of the “Cost of Voting in America” indicates it’s getting harder to cast a ballot in Wisconsin. Two years ago this state was ranked the 38th easiest state to vote in – in 2022 Wisconsin has fallen to 47th. That means it’s harder to vote in only three other states. Political expert Joe Heim tells W-K-B-T/T-V there have been new regulations and restrictions on voter registration, voter I-Ds, absentee ballots, and drop boxes. Heim says a series of laws have been passed to avoid voter fraud following the 2020 presidential vote. He says while more voting laws may be passed a majority of Wisconsin voters aren’t affected. The state’s voter turnout in national elections is still fifth among the 50 states.
A new set of videos from the Wisconsin Elections Commission will walk people through the process of how the election system works. The videos are available to the public. Commission spokesperson Riley Vetterkind says many conversations about elections are based on misunderstandings of the process. Vetterkind says the commission wanted to take a step back and focus on the fundamentals of voting in Wisconsin. They’re aimed at correcting misinformation about the process and ensuring people can be confident in election results.
[Videos are available online at: WI.gov/101]
The conservative news organization Wisconsin Right Now is suing the state Parole Commission over an open records request. The suit filed in Washington County Circuit Court accuses the commission of refusing to release the names of people who have been granted parole this year. Wisconsin Right Now says it made the request in May and the commission hasn’t replied. The news organization has been running a series of stories about paroles but it says it has only received the names of those paroled through the end of last December.
The Minnesota Department of Traffic Safety is rolling out another round of grants for school bus stop arm camera systems. Spokesman Mike Hanson says this latest round of funding contains two-point-nine million dollars for 21 schools and transportation companies around Minnesota. He says too many drivers are disregarding the extended stop arms when school buses are picking up or dropping off kids before and after school. In the past five years, law enforcement has cited more than 46-hundred (4,652) drivers for stop-arm violations.
Assembly Speaker Robin has filed a lawsuit to block a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee, commanding Vos to provide a deposition today Monday. The committee is reportedly seeking information from Vos about a call he had in July with former President Donald Trump, in which Trump asked Vos to take steps to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin. In the suit filed Sunday, Vos argues that the subpoena infringes on the speaker's legislative immunity from civil process, lacks a lawful purpose, and was issued by an unlawful committee. Vos also said he had no knowledge of events leading to the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, and that the subpoena was politically motivated.
A new plan from the Biden administration would require airlines and travel agencies online to disclose fees for seat selection, checked baggage, and other add-ons. Kyle Potter with Thrifty Traveler says if enacted, it would be “the most significant change” for air travel in at least a decade. However, he also says IF it happens it’ll take “at least many months, probably several years” to implement the changes. U-S Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (BOOT-edge-edge) says passengers “deserve to know the full, true cost of their flights” before buying tickets.
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