East Washington Avenue warming shelter for homeless closes
On Sunday, the warming shelter located at 827 E. Washington Ave. will close its doors. The facility was intended to be open for only one season, but Dane County officials wanted a permanent, year-round...
View ArticleZoning Board of Appeals says 'no' to Occupy Madison camp near I-90/94
Madison's Zoning Board of Appeals typically handles requests from homeowners who want to build a detached garage or an addition that juts into their neighborhood's required setbacks. On Wednesday...
View ArticleArmy of election observers find few problems in Madison, but Milwaukee and...
Kurt Reinhold was expecting the worst. An election observer with President Obama's Protect-the-Vote campaign, Reinhold was sitting at the UW-Madison's Gordon Commons on Dayton Street, on the lookout...
View ArticleOpposition to mining unites activists in Wisconsin and El Salvador
El Salvador and northern Wisconsin seem like worlds apart. But the two societies face a common debate over mining operations. As the Wisconsin Legislature plans to take up a mining bill again next...
View ArticleMadison Common Council approves 2013 capital budget, set to grapple with...
The Madison Common Council's first night of deliberations over the 2013 budget was relatively uneventful. The "process" ended up being the most hotly debated issue of the evening. Just before midnight,...
View ArticleDane County plans warming center, then day shelter for homeless
Dane County officials are moving ahead with plans to operate a day shelter for the homeless, not just this winter, but year-round. On Monday night, the Dane County board approved a $698 million budget...
View ArticleRedevelopment of the 100 block of State Street moves ahead
The Block 100 Foundation is quietly moving ahead with redevelopment of the 100 block of State Street. The developers, Overture benefactors Jerome Frautschi and Pleasant Rowland, are renovating three...
View ArticleMary Kolar to run for Scott McDonell's seat on the Dane County Board
Although open downtown seats are rare for both the Dane County Board and Madison Common Council, the seat being vacated by county Supv. Scott McDonell so far has just one official candidate.
View ArticleWalker gives little indication of how he'll deal with Obamacare
About a year after Congress passed the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- a.k.a. Obamacare -- Wisconsin was one of six states to get a unique opportunity. The federal government awarded...
View ArticleMadison Common Council approves 2013 operating budget, despite potential...
The Madison Common Council approved a $267.1 million operating budget for 2013 last night, giving an additional $900,000 to the Overture Center. This came over protests from Mayor Paul Soglin, who...
View ArticleWalker to let federal government establish Wisconsin's health care insurance...
Gov. Scott Walker announced Friday morning that Wisconsin won't be developing its own insurance exchange and will leave that task up to the federal government. The 2010 Patient Protection and...
View ArticleSoglin won't veto Madison's 2013 budget, but blasts Overture on lack of...
Saying it would be a "futile effort," Mayor Paul Soglin won't veto the 2013 budget, despite his unhappiness with the high level of spending and debt in the $267 million spending plan the Common Council...
View ArticleGlobal warming activists with 350 Madison Climate Action Team want to force...
When William Minter was a graduate student at UW-Madison in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was active in a group pushing the university to sever connections with companies doing business in South...
View ArticleSatya Rhodes-Conway joins growing list of Madison alders stepping down
Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway announced this week that she won't run for reelection in the spring, joining at least five other council members who are stepping down. Nominating petitions cannot be...
View ArticleChallengers emerge in 2013 Madison Common Council races
When Tim Bruer was first elected to the Madison Common Council in 1984, one of the council leaders told him he "had a district nobody else wanted." Alders came and went, in rapid succession, Bruer...
View ArticleWalker's next big move on Obamacare: Is Medicaid expansion too sweet to pass up?
Although Gov. Scott Walker announced last month that Wisconsin won't set up a health insurance exchange as part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a decision with much bigger...
View ArticleTo mine or not to mine? Lifting the mining moratorium could change the face...
When the idea for a moratorium on mining projects in Wisconsin was floated in the early 1990s, few people gave it much chance of succeeding. The speaker of the state Assembly, Scott Jensen, vowed the...
View ArticleThe 2013 legislative landscape for mining in Wisconsin
At the start of the Dec. 6 hearing of the state Senate Select Committee on Mining, Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) praised the open process the senators have taken in looking at changes to the mining laws....
View ArticleMadison seeks new proposals for 800 block of East Washington Avenue
Madison will once again try to spur development on East Washington Avenue, and Tim Metcalfe, president of Metcalfe's Market, says he's still interested in building a grocery store there. This week a...
View ArticleOverture Center and Soglin maintain prickly relationship
During the contentious budget debate over city funding for the Overture Center, Mayor Paul Soglin at one point sent the city's finance director, David Schmiedicke, to the arts center to review salary...
View Article