A day after a blistering speech before the Heritage Foundation Oct. 27 where he accused President Obama of fomenting class division and envy, Congressman Paul Ryan returned home to Janesville with a more conciliatory message.

As a national figure, Ryan has taken up the mantle of point man in his party’s counteroffensive against the president.

Ryan continued to push his point on Fox’s “On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren the evening following his Heritage Foundation speech, where he accused Obama of polarizing rhetoric that puts class against class and pits people against one another.

“I would simply say, sowing social unrest and class resentment does not make America stronger, it makes America weaker,” he said.

But the next morning, when he arrived at his Janesville listening session, he was distinctly more focused on the issues on the minds of residents of his congressional district.

Many in the audience seemed less interested in the politics of a presidential election more than a year away than they were about jobs, taxes, health care and government regulation.

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ROCKTON — It’s no secret that unemployment remains the greatest drag on the local economy.

But it appears there is a growing realization that unemployment and the lack of jobs are two different things.

There are signs that economic growth is slowly coming back, but the new problem is what’s being called a jobs-mismatch crisis.

Rep. Don Manzullo offered his perspective on the trend Wednesday at a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Rockton Chamber of Commerce.

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Who would have thought we'd be nostalgic for the days when budget balancing simply meant tightening our belts and trimming the fat.

And who remembers when no one from the public would show up for the annual budget hearings, and the budget would pass without much public input.

Well, the fat is gone, and budget hearings now draw a crowd.

Particularly in Beloit, where residents have been vocal about the proposed 2012 operating budget. It's a budget that will require tough choices between public safety or nearly every other service the city provides, and public input will play an important role in how those competing interests are resolved.

City Manager Larry Arft presented the budget to the city council Monday, and laid out a plan to fill a nearly $2.5 million hole. In his letter to the council outlining the budget, Arft notes that the state's budget repair bill significantly reduces funding to the city and limits the city's ability to raise taxes. Add to that, sharp increases in costs in everything from health insurance to fuel and the squeeze is on.

The "tools" the state provides local municipalities, however, don't make up the difference, because police and firefighters were exempt from the mandated public employee pension increases.

Officials are planning to cover the shortfall by spreading the cuts evenly throughout each department. But for fire and police, additional cuts are being considered to make up for the lack of additional pension contributions. Most departments are being asked to absorb a 5.5 percent cut.

But according to the budget presented Monday, "Because the police and fire departments did not receive the savings from employee pension contributions, their percentage of the allocation was 6.3 percent from the police department and 6.8 percent of the fire department, resulting in a need to make deeper budget reductions." Is this approach the best way to balance the budget? That's where resident feedback will be critically important.

(Poll: Should Beloit go forward with its plans for cuts and layoffs in public safety to preserve other city services? VOTE.)

Keep in mind that fewer cuts in police and fire mean greater cuts elsewhere.

According to Arft's budget summary, "An effort to have made all of the necessary budget cuts from the remaining departments of the general fund would have required deep cuts in staffing, the closure of facilities and possibly the elimination of some services that are provided to those other departments and divisions." The cuts include six police officers and six firefighters.

If last month's public safety budget workshop in City Hall's Forum was any indication, residents and public safety officials have plenty of opinions about where the city should go.

At the hearing, Lt. Scott Smith, representing the International Fire Fighters Association No. 583, cautioned that small fires will become big fires and big fires will become vacant lots.

Police Chief Norm Jacobs said that he won't sacrifice the safety of his officers, but services like parade crowd control, funeral procession assistance and high school football games may see a decrease.

It will be a while yet before the budget is finalized, but the options are both clear and stark.

Input from residents will be a key ingredient in how the issue is resolved. Two public workshops are planned from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for Monday, Oct. 10 and Monday, Oct. 17.

Two more workshops are being considered for Oct. 24 and 25.

The formal public hearing will take place at City Council's Oct. 17 meeting with a final vote by the council Nov. 7.

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Despite a persistent gloomy economic outlook, we’re always on the lookout for bright spots as we put together the paper each week.

   Even though Republicans and Democrats in Washington are pitching differing versions of job creation plans, local companies figuring out how to expand their markets and grow their businesses ultimately will do the heavy lifting.

Here are a few highlights close to home that we’ve reported on in the past few weeks:

Unlike our neighboring counties, Walworth County doesn’t have a base of large employers to dramatically affect the job market, but despite that, the unemployment rate dropped in the figures released last week by the state Department of Workforce Development.

In August, the unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent, down from 7.7 percent a month earlier. How the busy tourist season plays into that number is unclear, and the August and September numbers will give a better indication of the long-term employment outlook in Walworth County.

Of course, the interesting measure of economic health in Walworth County is the high-end lakefront home market. Realtors in the market are writing on their blogs that activity has begun to slow heading into the fall, which may push prices down a bit further.

The bargain hunters are expected to turn up around November, although there are plenty of deals already out there if you’re looking for an entry level home in the million-dollar range.

The trickle down of these sales, however, is that buyers also have cash to spend on fixing up their new purchases, and it’s typically not a do-it-yourself crowd who buys these homes.

That’s good news for local contractors who have gravitated to remodeling work as the new home construction market has dried up.

Over in Rock County, the Beloit City Council on Monday agreed to purchase land that it will turn around and sell to NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes for $1. The company produces a necessary isotope used in medical imaging.

In return, NorthStar will invest $194 million in the Beloit facility and create more than 150 jobs by 2016.

Also in Beloit, Kerry Ingredients and Flavours announced plans to expand the company’s headquarters, as well as other Wisconsin facilities during the next year, thanks to a $1.5 million loan from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.

The agency is the public-private initiative created from the former state Department of Commerce.

The expansion is expected to create up to 67 new jobs, along with retaining about 800 jobs already in the state for the global food ingredient company.

And a short drive up Interstate 90, St. Mary’s Janesville Hospital is in the process of hiring more than 300 people by the time the hospital is ready to open its doors in early January.

Human resources staff had sifted through more than 6,000 job applications by early September, and had hired about 125 people, with another 200 to go.

We suspect some of those new hires will be coming from the Mercy Health System, setting up a domino effect that could add fuel to the competitive health care market just beginning to heat up.

That’s in addition to Mercy’s major expansion of the Mercy Walworth Medical Center outside of Williams Bay.

Although these bright spots remain few and far between, this is the kind of activity that will be the engine to drive us out of the economic doldrums.


Editor’s note: Dan Plutchak is an associate editor for CSI Media, publisher of the Janesville Messenger, Walworth County Sunday and the Stateline News. Contact him at dplutchak@communityshoppers.com, on Facebook.com/DanPlutchak or on Twitter @danplutchak

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Janesville's GM Assembly plant will remain on standby status, but will not close, according to details of a new contract between the automaker and the United Auto Workers Union.

The Associated Press reported Saturday that the deal, which was reached late Friday, includes a $2- to $3-per-hour pay raise for entry-level workers over the life of the contract and guarantees of more union jobs, according to sources.

The United Auto Workers union also reportedly won $5,000 signing bonuses and the possibility of sweeter profit-sharing checks as part of a new four-year contract.

Even though the future of Janesville's plant remains in limbo, a former Saturn assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, will be reopened, AP reported, and new products have been promised to plants in Romulus, Michigan; Warren, Michigan; and Wentzville, Missouri.

There were no announcements of any plant closures, however. Along with Janesville and Spring Hill, a plant in Shreveport, La. also has been on standby status.

By keeping the plants idled, it gives the company the option of reopening them in the future.

Source: www.seattlepi.com

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If you thought the hubbub over voter ID legislation had faded into memory like July’s heat wave, a memo to Division of Motor Vehicles staffers in July rekindled the flames into an inferno once again.

In the internal memo, Steve Krieser, executive assistant to the DOT secretary, instructs staffers to refrain from telling members of the public that they can obtain free voter identification cards unless they specifically request it.

“While you should certainly help customers who come in asking for a free ID to check the appropriate box, you should refrain from offering the free version to customers who do not ask for it,” the memo reads. We’ve posted the full memo HERE.

To his credit, Republican Evan Wynn, whose 43rd Assembly District includes most of our readership area and who was a strong supporter of the bill, quickly took issue with the policy.

In a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb, Wynn wrote, “The memo detailing the implementation of free photo identification is concerning, to say the least.

“As long as the individual provides the proper documents to prove that they are who they claim to be, it should be the department’s mission and goal to remove all barriers from obtaining that identification — including the price tag.

“Providing free identification to those who seek to vote is the very foundation of the premise of ‘Voter ID.’ Placing unnecessary barriers undermines our elections and undermines the intent of the law.”

You’d think that after taking heat from Wynn and his colleagues, Gottlieb would back off his comments, but instead, in a letter to Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, Gottlieb doubled down.

In the letter, the secretary says the language of the original voter ID bill “clearly places responsibility on the applicant to request that the product be issued without cost.”

But that’s not how Wynn sees it.

The issue came to light after Chris Larsen, a state employee, forwarded the internal memo to media outlets. Larsen has since been fired for what officials describe as “repeated inappropriate behavior.”

Maybe so, but the timing of the firing did nothing to quell suspicions that it was politically motivated.

Then on Monday, the head of the state’s League of Women Voters, Andrea Kaminski, told the state Government Accountability Board that the group is about to file a lawsuit challenging the voter ID law.

According to Kaminski, the law is unconstitutional, saying it creates a class of people who won’t have the proper IDs to vote.

This latest nonsense illustrates the lack of common sense surrounding the voter ID issue from the very beginning.

The legislation, Act 23, was signed into law May 25 and was one of the first pieces of legislation to move through the state Capitol after Republicans gained control of both the Senate and Assembly. Democrats were able to thwart passage for years.

The Republicans’ argument was that the bill was a way to clamp down on voter fraud and restore confidence in the integrity of the state’s electoral system.

However, despite extensive investigations, major media outlets found few cases of voter fraud have ever been prosecuted. That led Democrats to argue the move was simply a way to limit the number of likely Democratic voters going to the polls.

On the other hand, it was hard to buy Democrats’ claims that large numbers of voters would be disenfranchised when a person needs an ID to do just about anything else in their daily routine.

If anything, the DMV policy to provide free IDs only if asked just adds credence to the argument that Republicans are trying to limit access to the polls.

Other than Wynn, is that really where Republicans want to go with this issue?

Hopefully, common sense will prevail and the free ID hurdle will be eliminated.

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