Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset 7:10 for 12h 19m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1765, the British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.
Sarah Lehr reports State agencies could offload even more office space, remote work audit finds (‘State administrators say they’re tightening up policies for tracking remote work’):
Wisconsin state agencies could consider offloading even more office space than previously planned, according to an audit presented to state lawmakers this week.
Three years ago, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration released a Vision 2030 plan, which laid out a roadmap for the state workforce in the coming decade. Because of the continued popularity of remote work, it called for consolidating state office space and for selling multiple state buildings in the coming years.
In all, state officials say Wisconsin could save $9 billion in occupancy costs plus more than a half a billion dollars in deferred maintenance expensive by cutting down on office space, according to an update to the plan released last spring.
There’s a hard-nosed (but short-sighted) attitude that says state office workers should sit all day at their office desks. As it turns out, those state office desks are in state office buildings, and state office buildings do not pay for themselves. If workers who do not interact directly with the public can do their work remotely, then the rest of Wisconsin should not be paying for office buildings for those very workers.
It shows a lack of foresight to say one is holding office workers accountable for their in-person attendance when that in-person attendance does not account for wasted money on state buildings.
The State of Wisconsin can and should sell office buildings that have become relics of a last-century service model.
‘Paddington’ bears spotted in Bolivian forest raise hopes for species’ survival: