Reading Time: 13 minutes ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. When the clerk at VJ’s Food Mart confronted Corey Stingley, the 16-year-old handed over his backpack. Inside were six hidden bottles of Smirnoff Ice, worth $12, and the clerk began pulling them out one by one. Stingley watched, then pivoted and quickly moved toward the door, empty-handed. But there would be no escape for the unarmed teen in the light blue hoodie. T ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit to force a northern Wisconsin town to pay unspecified damages for failing to renew access easements on American Indian tribal land. U.S. Attorney Timothy O’Shea filed the action in Madison on Wednesday seeking a declaration that without easements the town of Lac Du Flambeau is trespassing within the ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press. Lawmakers are considering a package of legislation that would tighten prohibitions on sexual assault within the Wisconsin National Guard after a scathing federal report found commanders had for years been flouting federal requirements for handling complaints. A study committee made up of legislators, district attorneys and military veterans ..read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. A 0.1% sales tax in Milwaukee County and its adjoining counties raised $609 million over 24 years for construction of a new stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. A 1995 state law created the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District, composed of Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Washington and Waukesha counties. The district’s board enacted the five-county sales tax, effective ..read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. Wisconsin had the third-slowest increase in PreK-12 education spending per student in the nation between 2002 and 2020, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.  The only states with slower spending increases were Idaho and Indiana. Wisconsin’s increase of 48.6% — from $8,574 to $12,740 per student— was significantly lower than the national average ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes When Madison Metropolitan School District communications director Tim LeMonds sued his employer in March to block release of a complaint against him, he claimed there would be grave repercussions if the public were allowed to see the allegations it contained. Access to the documents, LeMonds’ lawyers argued, would harm the school district’s “ability to effectively function” and “almost certainly subject Mr. LeMonds to unwarranted, unfair and irreversible public ridicule and gossip, negative public perception, and jeopardize his ability to credibly perform his duties as ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Wisconsin Weekly is a Friday news roundup of reports from Wisconsin Watch and other trusted news outlets. Access to some stories may be limited to subscribers of the news organizations that produced them. We urge our readers to consider supporting these important news outlets by subscribing, and sign up to get our free newsletters here.  Here are your headlines from Wisconsin Watch and trusted news outlets for people who care deeply about the state. Of note: We’ve published two new stories in our series examining discrimination in Wisconsin school ch ..read more

Reading Time: 10 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. After a long and frustrating search, Beth Wisniewski felt like she found a haven for her son in Penfield Montessori Academy — a Near West Side Milwaukee charter school that serves children with and without disabilities. Wisniewski’s son, Henry, was born with Down syndrome. As he approached school age, Wisniewski and her husband toured private schools, traditional public schools and charter schools — those that are ..read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. The National Football League announced on May 22, 2023, that Green Bay would host the 2025 draft in and around Lambeau Field. Two Green Bay-area state lawmakers are asking that the state’s next budget include $2 million to help stage the event, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The 2023 draft, a three-day event held in April in Kansas City, drew more than 312,000 people, according to the l ..read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. A 0.1% sales tax in Milwaukee County and its adjoining counties raised $609 million over 24 years for construction of a new stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. A 1995 state law created the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District, composed of Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Washington and Waukesha counties. The district’s board enacted the five-county sales tax, effective ..read more