Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:34 and sunset is 4:41 for 10 hours 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1930, American novelist Sinclair Lewis becomes the first U.S. writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized for his satirical examination of American culture and institutions.
Gov. Evers recently vetoed a bill that would have required in-person office attendance for state workers:
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has quashed a GOP-backed bill that would have ordered tens of thousands of state employees to work in-person most of the time….
In his veto message Friday, Evers said he opposes a “one-size-fits-all” mandate that would come at “great cost to taxpayers.”
“Under my administration, state government is working smarter and faster than ever before,” Evers wrote. “State agencies already are implementing robust accountability measures to ensure all state workers are fulfilling their responsibilities to the people of this state.”
See Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoes in-person work mandate for state employees (‘Governor says flexible work arrangements are cutting costs, helping recruitment’), Wisconsin Public Radio, November 4, 2025.
Evers is right. Some workers are customer-facing, but many are not. Each workplace should determine which employees are customer-facing and which are not.
The measure of a worker should be how productive he or she is. Are tasks completed? Is value being created? Where the worker completes tasks, or from where the worker creates value, is a secondary matter. Employees who are already productive should not be removed from the very places (wherever) their beneficial production occurs.
Managers should be able to evaluate tasks and value regardless of where those tasks and value are created. If managers require in-office attendance to evaluate these measures, then the problem lies with management. It’s a dull manager who thinks an in-office presence is proof of productivity. Seeing someone sitting at a desk evaluates little more than posture.
Managers who need to see an employee, rather than looking at an employee’s created work, are looking in the wrong place.
Bright meteors caught slamming into the moon: