Eau Claire, Wis., wants to remove all of their lead service lines by 2023. In meeting that goal, they would join Madison and Green Bay on a list of Wisconsin cities that have rid their water systems of lead service lines, which typically consist of both utility-owned and privately owned portions. Reporting by Madeline Fuerstenberg / Wisconsin Watch. Story originally published Sept. 9, 2021.

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Increasingly, health care facilities in Wisconsin and around the country require their employees to be vaccinated. Yet in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes — where residents are highly susceptible to severe illness and death from COVID-19 — some workers refuse the shot. Reporting by Madeline Fuerstenberg / Wisconsin Watch.

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Drug and alcohol courts allow defendants to minimize punishment if they remain sober, receive treatment for substance abuse and participate in a structured program. Outagamie County Circuit Judge Vincent Biskupic created a similar arrangement with defendants with a key difference: The defendants were answerable only to Biskupic, who set no date for the supervision to end. The atypical arrangement meant longer punishments for some who failed to meet shifting demands.

Reporting by Mario Koran, Phoebe Petrovic, Madeline Fuerstenberg and Jack Kelly / Wisconsin Watch and WPR. This piece was produced for the NEW News Lab, a local news collaboration in Northeast Wisconsin. Story originally published on Aug. 28, 2021.

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Workers like Olivia McKnight, a full-time Popeyes employee and mother of three, often struggle to get by even on wages above the federal minimum of $7.25, and those low-wage workers are disproportionately people of color. In Wisconsin, where the racial wealth and income gaps are some of the greatest in the nation, many feel raising the minimum is long overdue. Now, Democrats in the state are proposing a hike to $15 per hour for minimum wage workers, but face daunting political opposition from business interests and their Republican colleagues.

Reporting by Molly Davis and Gretchen Gerlach. Originally published July 20th, 2021.

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Cities across the country, including three in Wisconsin, are piloting basic income programs for residents. The goal: to better understand how providing money with no strings attached can help families turn their financial lives around. Some of these experiments show promising first results, and point to a possible solution to wealth disparities along racial and other lines. But public support for the programs isn't easy to drum up, and exploratory programs are short-lived. Will the trend toward providing guaranteed income to residents continue?

Reporting by Harrison Freuck and Zhen Wang. Originally published August 14th, 2021.

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A program of Wisconsin's Ho-Chunk Nation grants members large sums of money upon reaching adulthood — often allowing young adults to get a leg up in their financial lives. Similar programs, known as "baby bonds," have been floated in recent years as a possible solution to racial wealth gaps. Could it work?

Reporting by Ben Baker and Zhen Wang. Originally published August 5, 2021.

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Over the past seven years, in at least 52 cases involving 46 defendants, Biskupic has used “review hearings” to either monitor a defendant’s behavior or to pressure them to pay court-ordered financial obligations. In at least one case, he went as far as ordering additional jailtime for the failure to pay overdue debts — a tactic the Wisconsin Supreme Court has warned could be unconstitutional.

Reporting by Jack Kelly, Phoebe Petrovic, Mario Koran and Madeline Fuerstenberg in partnership with WPR. Originally published July 31st, 2021.

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Chris Kartsounes had heard enough of Outagamie County Circuit Judge Vincent Biskupic’s demands. In May 2017, at his sixth hearing after having already been sentenced — when a case would normally be over — Kartsounes lost his cool. 

“I’m tired of this, your honor,” he said. “I’ve served my time. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do ... Why do you keep harassing me?” he asked, firing profanities at the judge. 

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Jammes’ case was among 31 such cases between 2014 and 2020 in which a Wisconsin Watch investigation found Biskupic offered to stay or furlough defendants’ jail time if they complied with his conditions.

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To Greg Lewis, the home was beautiful. Cozy and inviting, the two-bedroom house in Milwaukee had a finished basement, two and a half car garage, an attached apartment and a yard.

He had his eyes set on it for 42 days, only to learn that the appraisal, or valuation of the property, was lower than he expected. Lewis thought it was going to be about $100,000, as another house on the same block sold for $130,000. Yet the appraisal only came in at $90,000 — meaning banks would be limited in how much they could lend him to buy the home.

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