Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of twenty-four. Sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 5:42 PM, for 11h 09m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 38.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred fortieth day.
Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets at 8 AM.
On this day in 1904, Wisconsin’s second state capitol burns down:
On the evening of the 26th, the generator was turned off for the night. The only lights visible were two gas jets serving the night watchman. At approximately 2 a.m., night watchman Nat Crampton smelled smoke and followed the odor to a recently varnished ceiling, already in flames. A second watchman arrived to assist, but there was no water pressure with which to operate a hose. The fire department encountered a similar situation upon arrival. Governor Robert M. La Follette telegraphed fire departments in Janesville and Milwaukee for assistance. La Follette was at the capitol, directing efforts to douse the fire and entering the burning building to retrieve valuable papers. The fire was completly extinguished by 10 p.m. the next day. Losses were estimated to be close to $1 million.
Recommended for reading in full:
Livestream: Cohen Testimony Before House Oversight Committee:
See also full prepared testimony:
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Cohen-Prepared-Testimony.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]Molly Beck reports Tony Evers seeks to end gerrymandering with state budget provision to create nonpartisan commission:
Gov. Tony Evers will propose in his state budget a process aimed at drawing legislative boundaries in a way that favors neither political party.
The move would put election maps in the hands of a nonpartisan state agency instead of with Republicans who control the Legislature and drew the state’s current legislative boundaries that are being challenged in federal court.
“The people should get to choose their elected officials, not the other way around,” Evers said in a statement. “By creating a nonpartisan redistricting commission in Wisconsin, we’re making sure that when we’re redrawing district maps in 2021, we’re putting people before politics.”
But Republican lawmakers are sure to block the proposal that is the latest in a series of measures to be included in Evers’ first state budget set for release Thursday.
Laura Meckler reports Report finds $23 billion racial funding gap for schools:
Overwhelmingly white school districts received $23 billion more than predominantly nonwhite school districts in state and local funding in 2016, despite serving roughly the same number of children, a new report finds.
The funding gap is largely the result of the reliance on property taxes as a primary source of funding for schools. Communities in overwhelmingly white areas tend to be wealthier, and school districts’ ability to raise money depends on the value of local property and the ability of residents to pay higher taxes.
And while state budgets gave heavily nonwhite districts slightly more money per student than they gave overwhelmingly white districts, in many states it was not enough to erase the local gaps.
See EdBuild report.