Milwaukee hotels that are located downtown can help cut back on costs during a vacation. Walking to various sites will avoid any costs associate with public transportation. People or families traveling on a budget may be excited by a low price tag while they are shopping for possible hotel rooms. They should do a little background research to make sure these prices do not reflect a high-crime neighborhood or other deterring factors.

Some people prefer their vacations to be a source of relaxation and rejuvenation. Fancy hotel amenities like room service, spas, and pools can help accomplish this. Find out what kind of facilities and services are provided by various hotels to get the most of the luxurious hotel experience.

When planning a trip, it is important to decide what kinds of sites to visit. This can help a person choose a hotel fairly easily. In Milwaukee, the breweries are among the city’s most popular attractions. Other tourist destinations include the zoo, the art museum, and beautiful lakefront tours. Picking a place to stay based on its surroundings is a way to make the most out of a short vacation. In addition to saving people money, the location of a hotel can also save time spent traveling between sights.

The hotel with the cheapest rates is not always the most valuable choice when planning a vacation. Consider the amenities of the hotel, its location within the city, and its proximity to tourist attractions. Milwaukee hotels can provide a comfortable and convenient place to rest your head if they are selected based on these criteria.

To learn more, visit: Milwaukee hotels

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The wrongful imprisonment of Green Bay’s Cody Vandenberg for 15 years on a recently overturned conviction of robbery and attempted homicide was one of the worst such cases in state history. Even if prosecutors decide against retrying or appealing the case, however, Vandenberg is unlikely to collect much in reparations, because Wisconsin’s compensation program for exonerated convicts is badly underfunded.

A shrinking minority of states, 23, offers no compensation program at all for people wrongfully imprisoned. In Wisconsin, after proving their innocence before the Wisconsin Claims Board, a panel of state officials representing the Governor, state Legislature, Department of Administration and Department of Justice, exonerated convicts can receive up to $5,000 a year. Total compensation is capped at $25,000.

(illustration by adrian palomo)

“It’s miserable. It’s the lowest compensation amount of any state in the nation and the second-lowest cap in the country,” says Keith Findley, a UW-Madison law professor and co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a program at the university providing legal aid to people who may have been wrongfully convicted.

Findley is part of Vandenberg’s defense team.  Facing a total of 80 years in prison, the now 45-year-old man was released on Tuesday after a court of appeals decision reversed his conviction in Brown County Circuit Court and concluded “he is entitled to a new trial in the interest of justice.” Vandenberg had been convicted of the 1996 robbery and stabbing of a Bellevue man. But Vandenberg’s alleged getaway driver, Larry Pearson, has since confessed to the crime – most recently under oath in Brown County Circuit Court in a hearing for post-conviction relief requested by the defense.

Pearson and Vandenberg were coworkers at a local repair shop. During Vandenberg’s trial in 1996, Pearson testified as part of his own plea deal but didn’t implicate Vandenberg. Pearson instead claimed the stabbing wounds were inflicted by a third man, a stranger he had met at a bar.

At the trial, the prosecution argued Pearson was trying to cover for his friend Vandenberg by making up the story about “the stranger” and called to the stand a man who had spent time in jail with Pearson. The fellow inmate said Pearson told varying accounts of what happened on the night in question, including one version where Vandenberg was the stabber. But the key piece of evidence, according to the appeals court, was the stabbing victim’s identification of Vandenberg. He and Vandenberg looked similar – but Vandenberg had a beard at the time.

cody vandenberg

To the jury, it sounded like convincing evidence. But a series of wrongful convictions have led judges across the country to treat identifications of defendants with skepticism. “Eyewitness misidentification is now the single greatest source of wrongful convictions in the United States, and is responsible for more wrongful convictions than all other causes combined,” the Wisconsin Supreme Court noted in 2005.

The appeals court wrote that the victim’s identification of Vandenberg was the key to the prosecution’s case, a key that looked a little rusty in light of new evidence provided by the defense that the victim was intoxicated during the attack with a blood alcohol content of .22. Prosecutors lacked “any physical evidence tying Vandenberg to the scene,” the opinion says.  Yet Pearson’s bloody shoe-print was found inside the trailer.

Pearson, it turns out, actually confessed to his defense attorney at the time he was guilty of the stabbing – but the lawyer, because of attorney-client privilege, was unable to reveal the confession.

Vandenberg’s first appeal failed. Filed after his trial, it was based not on Pearson’s confession, unknown to him at the time, but on his contention that his defense attorney didn’t present evidence establishing an alibi for him.

Released from custody on Tuesday, Vandenberg will remain under house arrest until he returns to court on Sept. 28 to learn if prosecutors will retry his case in light of Pearson’s confession or challenge the appeals court decision before the Supreme Court.

Making a claim of innocence

If they decide to do neither, Vandenberg can petition the Claims Board for compensation, but in doing so he faces a months-long process whereby he must prove his innocence with “clear and convincing” evidence. “For many truly innocent people, that’s a burden that’s difficult to meet. How do you prove a negative?” says Findley.

Wisconsin law also requires exonerated convicts to prove they didn’t contribute to their conviction in some way through a false confession or some other means. This violates the national Innocence Project’s guidelines for state compensation programs. “This denies justice to those who were coerced, explicitly or implicitly, into confessing or pleading guilty to crimes it was proven they did not commit,” the guidelines say.

Some states provide immediate assistance to exonerated prisoners for housing, psychological counseling, medical aid, job training or other needs, none of which are provided by Wisconsin. “They have nothing as they walk out of prison,” says Mary Delaney, a Madison attorney and member of the Wisconsin Exoneree Network.

Wrongful imprisonment, she says, “is extraordinarily traumatic. A lot of people become agoraphobic and don’t feel like they can rejoin the community.” Long gaps in their employment history are difficult to explain to prospective employers – who may have also seen the charges filed against them on the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access website.

Delaney says quite a few people are denied compensation because they can’t prove their innocence to the Claims Board. Findley says most of the Wisconsin Innocence Project’s clients have not received compensation, either because they were denied or never pursued benefits. The group has lobbied the state Legislature to expand the benefits and make them easier to obtain.

Still, some people wrongly incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons have received the full compensation allowed. One Oak Creek man, Chaunte Ott, released in 2009 after 12 years in prison when DNA evidence cleared him of a rape and murder conviction, received the full $25,000 in an April Claims Board meeting.

Robert Lee Stinson of Milwaukee, also released last year after DNA evidence cleared him of murder charges, spent 23 years in prison. He’s still in the process of seeking compensation.

Texas offers some of the most generous benefits, up to $80,000 a year for life, even though the state is known for its tough criminal justice system and use of the death penalty. People wrongfully imprisoned in the federal system can receive up to $50,000 a year for each year of incarceration or up to $100,000 a year if they spent time on death row.

States have created compensation programs because lawsuits against states for wrongful imprisonment are notoriously difficult. Federal civil rights lawsuits require the former convict to prove the state intentionally incarcerated him or her without due cause.

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A Milwaukee alderman is questioning whether a walkway left underneath a Lincoln Creek bridge by the city Department of Public Works and the county-owned Estabrook Dam contributed to floods that damaged homes on the city’s northwest side during the 500-year rainstorm on July 22.

Ald. Joe Davis, who represents a district containing a section of the creek on the city’s northwest side, writes in a column published in the Milwaukee Courier newspaper that the walkway, constructed out of scaffolding and floor decking, “greatly impeded the flow of storm water” during the rain, and also during a previous heavy rain on July 16.

the scaffolding (photo provided by joe davis)

“In the neighborhood that surrounds this part of Lincoln Creek, water was not allowed to flow into the creek because the massive flow exceeded its capacity limits,” he says, adding that its capacity may have been limited by the scaffolding. The bridge in question is part of North 60th Street and crosses the creek just south of the street’s intersection with West Hampton Avenue.

According to DPW communication manager Cecilia Gilbert, “The scaffolding was needed to allow access for city crews painting the bridge girders. The painting operation was intermittently worked on by crews over this summer.”

The July 22 rains dropped more than seven inches of rain in some sections of the city in less than an hour. Gilbert says DPW took down the scaffolding on July 27 at Davis’ request. The painting was about two-thirds done at the time. According to Davis, the structure was removed after he had “heated discussions with the (DPW) project manager at the site.”

According to Dave Fowler, watercourse maintenance manager for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewerage District, the scaffolding could have contributed to flooding in the area, particularly if it accumulated debris traveling down the creek.

Gilbert says, “It is difficult to determine the effect the scaffolding had on creek flows.” Vegetation such as grass and weeds became trapped in the scaffolding, but there was nothing “that would have created a damming effect,” she adds.

joe davis

Both MMSD and DPW report that it appeared water flowed over the bridge during the floods. Fowler says further study would be required to determine if the water would have run over the roadway without the scaffolding below.

Following flooding in the 1990s, MMSD improve flood controls along Lincoln Creek. It’s now rated to withstand at least at 100-year rain (meaning a 1 percent chance of occurring in a year); as in other area waterways, the MMSD-designed controls allow an extra foot of bank beyond the 100-year mark.

But July 22 brought a lot more water. Fowler says Lincoln Creek’s controls were completed in 2002 and exceed national standards, but the waterway likely overflowed its banks on that day. MMSD hasn’t located all the places where the overflow occurred but has video footage of at least one location.

Much of the flooding could also have been caused by over-taxed storm drains. “It’s difficult to determine whether it was a storm water ponding issue or water actually leaving the banks,” he says.

County Supervisor Theo Lipscomb, who represents a district to the east of Davis’ also containing a section of Lincoln Creek, says he heard from residents the creek overflowed its banks near where the creek joins the Milwaukee River inside Lincoln Park. Homes in the area were severely damaged.

He says he’s met with MMSD to discuss the issue. “I believe there’s a capacity issue there,” he says. Fowler says MMSD isn’t sure if the creek overflowed in this area but is investigating further.

Dam flooding

Fowler and Lipscomb disagree with Davis’ contention that the Estabrook dam, which Lipscomb has tried to save from demolition, contributed to flooding upstream. The dam, which lies about a half-mile downstream from where the creek enters the Milwaukee River, needs major repairs, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Since 2008, the DNR has ordered the dam to stand open due to concerns about structural security. “During heavy rain events, Milwaukee County government just simply lets heavy flow exceed its levels and flow over the top of the dam,” Davis writes. “Although some say this allows the flow of storm water to continue, beneath the water’s surface (it) creates a collection point for debris which again causes restriction to … raging storm water.”

theo lipscomb

Davis notes incorrectly in the column that county workers are still required to manually open the dam’s gates during heavy rains. They stand open at all times under a 2008 DNR order.

Lipscomb says the July 22 storm washed away tree limbs and other debris that had accumulated in a spillway, a channel that runs beside the dam and serves as an alternate route for excess water. PCBs trapped in the spillway, however, were likely washed downstream with the debris, he says. The DNR is currently planning a large PCB cleanup upstream of the dam.

The Milwaukee Common Council meets today for the first time after its August recess. Council President Willie Hines says he plans to introduce legislation that would allow owners of homes that will have to be razed due to flood damage to purchase foreclosed city-owned homes for $1. Davis is also calling for the city, the county and MMSD to set aside a $5 million relief fund for residents impacted by the flood.

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The improvement may be due to moratoriums on mortgage foreclosures enacted by some local banks, the federal government, extensions in unemployment benefits approved by the federal government and other federal aid, according to Milwaukee County Treasurer Dan Diliberti, a Democrat and former county supervisor.

He says the number of delinquent properties in suburbs within Milwaukee County dropped 3.2 percent this year versus last year, the first time since he took office in 2004. Despite this decline, the total amount of back taxes increased by 2.5 percent; however, this was a smaller rate of increase than in other years since 2004.

In Franklin, the number of delinquent properties went down by about a fifth. Total back taxes owed in the city dropped almost as much. Cudahy also saw dramatic declines. Delinquent properties there went down 9 percent and back taxes were reduced by 25 percent.

Two more affluent suburbs, however, suffered less envious fates. In River Hills, back taxes jumped up about 43 percent even as the number of delinquent properties fell 26 percent. In Fox Point, both the totals of back taxes and the number of delinquent properties increased, by 26 and 4 percent, respectively.

Diliberti says “owners of higher value property, both residential and commercial, are feeling the pinch of the continuing recession in Milwaukee County.”

Despite the recent decline in delinquencies, delinquent taxes in the suburbs have more than tripled since 2004, he says.

As reported in a previous NewsBuzz story, poverty has risen dramatically in the suburbs of Wisconsin’s two largest cities in the past decade. Between 2000 and 2008, following a national trend, it rose about 50 percent in the Milwaukee and Madison suburbs, according to a Brookings Institution study.

Comparable statistics regarding City of Milwaukee properties won’t be available until later in the year, according to the office of City Treasurer Wayne Whittow.

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Just how stimulated are we? Republicans and Democrats continue to debate the impact of the stimulus funding on the economy, an issue that may loom large in the fall elections. Even as conservatives trot out foolish sounding examples of federal spending, liberal groups are compiling info to sell us on the impact of the funding in Wisconsin. So who’s right?

Perhaps the most comprehensive effort is a new website WisRecovers.org, detailing awards in the state county-by-county, from the smallest project to the largest. Launched last week by the liberal Institute for Wisconsin’s Future (IWF), the site tracks the $8 billion Wisconsin received from the 2009 stimulus act, which approved a total of $787 billion in spending. Milwaukee County got about 17 percent of Wisconsin’s $8 billion (about $1.37 billion) and the biggest chunk of that, 23 percent, has gone to energy projects, largely because Johnson Controls, a world leader in the manufacturing of batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles, is based here.

The company received almost $300 million last fall to help build a new factory for the batteries in Holland, Mich. Johnson Controls is partnering with Saft, a French battery maker, in the conversion of an existing plant in Michigan. This was the largest grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a large stimulus program for such batteries.

Milwaukee Public Schools take up the second, third, fourth and fifth highest slots on the website’s ranking of the largest stimulus awards. In total, the county received about $258 million for education, including about $21 million for post-secondary schools. Small business loans, transportation and housing/urban development each accounted for 4 percent of the county’s stimulus money. The county’s sixth-largest award was $25.7 million for 45 new Milwaukee County Transit System buses.

Also tracking the stimulus money is the Wisconsin Budget Project, part of the liberal Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. Project analyst Tamarine Cornelius says the focus on infrastructure projects, which often receive some of the harshest criticism, distracts from other stimulus benefits and gives the overall legislation a bad rap. “It seems like a well-kept secret that a large amount of the Recovery Act spending went straight to people,” she says.

Individual benefits in the state from the stimulus act exceeded $3 billion between February 2009 and May 2010, according to the Budget Project report. It tallied the top six programs (pdf), including increased unemployment insurance and FoodShare benefits. The largest benefit was the Making Work Pay tax credit for workers, which expired this year.

“These direct benefits have helped mitigate the recession’s impact on Wisconsin families,” the report says, noting that most of the programs are drawing to a close. “It remains to be seen how the state’s low and middle-income families will be affected by the loss of these benefits.”

IWF Executive Director Karen Royster says people are often surprised to learn how much they’ve benefitted from the stimulus – often because they didn’t realize the Making Work Pay credit was deducted from the federal income tax withheld from their paychecks. “This was much better economics than PR,” Royster says of the credit.

Yet criticism of stimulus projects abounds. Earlier this month, as reported in NewsBuzz, an analysis of 100 allegedly misguided stimulus projects released by U.S. senators Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and John McCain (R-Arizona) included a Main Street beautification project in Twin Lakes, Wis., along with a few other choice projects, including hundreds of thousands of dollars for unneeded window shutters and choreography software.

There’s even criticism of the Johnson Controls project in Holland, Michigan. In an ironic development for a green energy project, city officials there are attempting to expand a coal power plant to meet the increased demand expected once the new Johnson plant and a similar one under construction in the city go online. “You hate to see a dirty coal plant fuel these two new clean energy facilities,” a Sierra Club representative tells The Holland Sentinel. City officials have locked horns in court with state regulators, who are attempting to block the expansion over air pollution concerns.

A recent story in The Weekly Standard conservative news magazine on Scott Walker, Milwaukee County executive and leading Republican candidate for governor, argues that voters in Wisconsin aren’t drinking the stimulus Kool-Aid. “The climb out (of recession) has been anything but easy in Wisconsin or the rest of the country. Voters overwhelmingly believe the stimulus was ineffective and with this fall’s midterm elections shaping up to be a referendum on the size and scope of government, few elected Democrats are defending it,” the story says.

Walker has objected to spending an $800 million stimulus award to link Madison and Milwaukee with high-speed rail. The magazine depicts him chatting with protestors under the Hoan Bridge, agreeing with them that it should be repaired before anything is spent on the rail line. Milwaukee Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett says the stimulus money will go to another state if Wisconsin stops the project.

The Weekly Standard offered no evidence to back up its contention that Wisconsin voters believe the stimulus funding hasn’t worked, yet the story goes on to say that Democratic candidates, including Barrett, are largely keeping mum on the stimulus out of fear of its unpopularity.

Nor did the story note the findings of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimated last week that in the second quarter of 2010 (April through June), the stimulus act decreased unemployment by between 0.7 and 1.8 percent while growing the gross domestic product by between 1.7 and 4.5 percent.

Of course, those statistics are no comfort to all those people who weren’t lifted out of unemployment by stimulus funds.

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Him first.
“The $75,000 rail spur happened before I was even on the scene, and industrial revenue bonds are not government subsidies,” Johnson told the group of about 50 people who gathered in the lower level of Four

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Congressmen David Obey’s stunning announcement last week that he will not run for reelection is particularly bad news for Mayor Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate for governor.

dave obey

Barrett has lost a longtime mentor, and someone who might have helped him as governor by delivering significant federal dollars to this state. Barrett may have also been counting on Obey to deliver voters in his northwest district in the November race for governor, but now that Obey is a lame duck, he may not have the same impact – or the same passion for the effort.

As a long-time ranking Democrat on the powerful House appropriations committee and chairman of the committee since 2007, Obey has been a reliable conduit for federal aid to his district, and for support to the state as a whole.

“If Barrett is governor, his relationship to Obey means a lot,” said former Mayor John Norquist in an interview last fall on Barrett’s future. “That is a good reason for Wisconsin to elect Barrett.”

Barrett and Obey have had a political and personal relationship that goes back to the mid-1980s, when Barrett was in the state Assembly and Obey was in Congress. Losing that relationship is a huge blow for Barrett.

tom barrett

“It’s a blow even if Tom [remains] the mayor,” says Patrick Curley, Barrett’s chief of staff. “It’s a blow to the state.”

Obey campaigned for Barrett in Barrett’s unsuccessful bid for governor in 2002. Obey strongly encouraged him to run again in this year’s gubernatorial race, according to political insiders.

Barrett first learned of Obey’s decision to hang it up in a phone call from Obey on the morning of his announcement. A week earlier, Obey had campaigned with Barrett in Obey’s 7^th district.

Obey apparently will continue to campaign for Barrett. But how effective will a retiring congressman be in delivering votes in a northern Wisconsin district to a Milwaukee-based candidate?

Elected in 1969, Obey had been in Congress nearly 23 years before Barrett won a Congressional seat in 1992. Obey acted as a political godfather to Barrett, opening doors and greasing the skids for federally funded programs to Barrett’s Milwaukee district.

In 1998, Obey lobbied House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt to appoint Barrett to the House Judiciary committee. As a committee member, Barrett was thrust into the national spotlight as he questioned independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr during hearings leading to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

A year ago, Obey helped Barrett with a behind-the-scenes deal that finally freed up $91.5 million in federal funds for public transit in Milwaukee. The funds had languished for years in a political stalemate. Most recently, Barrett and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker (a Republican candidate for governor) had argued repeatedly over how the funds would be divided.

In the end, the city of Milwaukee received 60 percent of the funds for streetcars, while Milwaukee County got 40 percent for bus service.

“Dave is the one who was willing to help us,” Barrett said last year in an interview.

That kind of help, though, will soon be long gone.

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Across the country, states are modernizing their sales tax to reflect changes in the economy, but not Wisconsin. This state’s sales tax is far less inclusive in what it taxes, meaning less revenue is collected – which might surprise the many observers who’ve long complained about Wisconsin’s tax burden.

A recent study found a total of 168 services that at least some states tax. Wisconsin taxed only 76 of them. A total of 19 states tax window cleaning, but this state doesn’t, according to The New York Times. Neither does Wisconsin tax massage services, taxed by 11 others, interior design, taxed by

ten others, dating services, taxed by eight others, or haircuts, taxed by seven others.

Wisconsin pays more income and property taxes than the national average but less in sales tax, according to Dale Knapp, research director of the Wisconsin’s Taxpayer Alliance, a non-partisan tax watch group.

Like Arkansas, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey and Texas, a study by the Federation of Tax Administrators says, Wisconsin taxes utilities and labor and repair services but doesn’t tax most professional services.

And there’s little motivation to change that, Knapp says. “There have been proposals to tax more services, but they haven’t gotten very far.”

He adds, “States are going to have to rethink the sales tax. The sales tax was created when we were a manufactured-good oriented economy. Now we’ve become much more services-oriented. Those aren’t getting taxed.”

The transition to a service-based economy began happening about 50 years ago, according to Jim Eads, FTA’s executive director, but antiquated state sales tax codes have lagged far behind. Most were written in the late 1920s and 1930s, he says.

States that are busy updating their sales tax, particularly Michigan and Pennsylvania, are adding a host of new services to their codes.

White collar bias?

Wisconsin’s sales tax draws from large blue collar services but not white collar ones.

It taxes landscaping, carpet cleaning, fishing and hunting guides, shoe repair, dry cleaning, swimming pool cleaning, printing, sign construction and installation, tire repair, car washing and towing, bulldozer and tool rentals, repair work, taxidermy, dog grooming, horse training, welding and other services at the state’s standard 5 percent rate.

It doesn’t tax veterinary services, insurance services, investment counseling, loan brokering, real estate services, debt counseling, funeral services, tax return preparation, massage, golf or dance lessons, advertising, newspaper or magazine sales, debt collection, graphic design, private investigation, public relations, security services or work by attorneys, architects, dentists, engineers, accountants, doctors, nurses or pilots.

State sales tax exemptions fall along similar lines, according to a state Department of Revenue publication. Medical, manufacturing, biotechnology and some broadband internet equipment are exempt. When businesses cease operations, they can sell off their equipment without having to return sales tax to state government.

Other labor services are treated differently. A contract is classified as “a consumer when constructing, installing, repairing or servicing real property, such as buildings,” the publication says. “The contractor must pay sales or use tax on materials and supplies used in such activities.” Purchases of tools and other equipment contractors use are also not exempt.

Since 2007, there have been no changes in the services taxed in Wisconsin, according to DOR spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis. One of the biggest sales tax changes, she says, was the expansion of taxes on computer software and digital goods. The state Legislature passed the changes in 2009.

Taxing the Girl Scouts

Eads says Michigan and Florida tried to tax services but “it created havoc and was repealed.” Legislators retreated like they had wandered onto political hot coals.

But Michigan is trying again. Gov. Jennifer Granholm introduced a proposal earlier this week that would raise more money from the tax by expanding its base – while lowering the overall rate. Facing financial ruin, she’s proposing taxes on services to rescue her state’s schools from disaster.

A number of states are turning to sales taxes to prop up their finances as income taxes languish in the recession. But Wisconsin isn’t one of them.

But the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the non-partisan research group that advises the state Legislature, warned in June 2009 that the state could face a $2.2 billion budget shortfall by 2003 if existing policies continued. But by July, budget cuts and an income tax increase for wealthy Wisconsinites had balanced the state budget, state officials claimed.

Raising taxes is never easy. Eads tells a story about repeated attempts in the New Mexico legislature to impose sales taxes on non-profits, which are normally exempt.

Each year lawmakers tried, when they convened a public hearing on the bill, state Girl Scout leaders showed up with a line of little scouts behind them. They offered up dramatic testimony, and the response was always the same. The legislators cracked.

By the end of the hearings, Eads says, at least one of the lawmakers would reassure the scouts, “Don’t worry sweetheart, we’re not going to tax your cookies.”

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